The ‘incomplete’ failure of political Islam: The Justice and Development Party and the Freedom and Justice Party as case studies
| Author | Shaimaa Magued |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221077182 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221077182
Politics
2022, Vol. 42(4) 505 –523
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957221077182
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The ‘incomplete’ failure of
political Islam: The Justice and
Development Party and the
Freedom and Justice Party
as case studies
Shaimaa Magued
Cairo University, Egypt
Abstract
How would Islamists succeed to sustain their rule in spite of their lack of an Islamic blueprint for
governance? I draw on an original fieldwork study conducted in Turkey and Egypt from 2010 to
2013 to advance a theory linking Islamists’ rule sustainability and political leverage vis-à-vis the
state establishment. In contrast with post-Islamism, the results contended that Islamists sustain
their rule if they have a high political leverage based on the adoption of a three-fold strategy
comprising identification, differentiation, and alliance mobilisation. Based on 45 open-ended
and semi-structured interviews conducted with members of Turkey’s Justice and Development
Party and Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party, findings significantly hold in authoritarian and hybrid
regimes in the Middle East.
Keywords
Middle East politics, post-Islamism, the Justice and Development Party, the Freedom and Justice
Party
Received: 3rd February 2021; Revised version received: 22nd August 2021; Accepted: 10th January 2022
Introduction
Although Islamists became politically visible in the Middle East since the 1990s, post-
Islamism underlined Islamists’ inability to develop a distinct model of governance that is
different from nation-state’s secular and institutional order (Brown, 2011; Feldman, 2012;
Roy, 1994). After the eruption of the Arab uprisings that ousted four dictatorships,
Islamists ascended to power in Tunisia and Egypt following Turkey’s Justice and
Development Party Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) in 2002. Bayat (2013) and Hallaq
Corresponding author:
Shaimaa Magued, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Al-Nahda Square, Giza 12613,
Egypt.
Email: shaimaamagued@feps.edu.eg
1077182POL0010.1177/02633957221077182PoliticsMagued
research-article2022
Article
506 Politics 42(4)
(2013), in their take on Post-Islamism, confirmed that Islamists are shaped by their con-
text and, accordingly, establish a conservative neoliberal order based on populist speeches
cloaking national exigencies in a religious mantle. Building their own counter-society and
benefitting from socioeconomic liberalisation, Islamists became gentrified in a paternal-
istic institutional framework without a strategic vision for an alternative national order
and worldview inspired by the Muslim ummah. Yet, despite variations among Islamists in
the region, few studies accounted for successful cases.
This study used qualitative evidence drawn from a study of Turkey’s Justice and
Development Party and Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party Hizb-ul-Hurriyyah wal-
Adalah (FJP), to examine how Islamists sustain their rule in spite of their lack of a genu-
ine model for governance. Results provided an evidence for Islamists’ reliance on a
three-fold strategy, identification, differentiation, and mobilisation of strong alliances, in
order to sustain their rule. This study used a combination of three qualitative research
methods. It relied on 45 open-ended and semi-structured interviews conducted by the
author with Turkish officials in the Ministries of Economy, Foreign Affairs, Prime
Ministry, the AKP headquarter, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from 2010
to 2013 in addition to FJP members in Cairo from 2011 to 2012. Also, it used surveys
conducted by research centres on Islamists in Turkey and Egypt and the Critical Discourse
Analysis of leaders’ speeches in both parties. The triangulation of these three methods
helped in verifying the study results by comparing findings in order to understand varia-
tions among Islamists in sustaining their rule.
Scholars examining Islamists’ political participation have emphasised Islamists as
rational actors who, in adaptation to their operational contexts, have developed a wide
range of ideological frames and survival strategies (Ashour, 2009; Burgat and Dowell,
1993; Cavatorta and Merone, 2013; Ismail, 2004; Ranko, 2014). Unlike Post-Islamism,
they did not highlight Islamists’ ideological singularity or unique strategies of action.
Instead, they depicted nuances of Islamists’ strategies ranging from moderation to radi-
calisation in order to identify and distinguish themselves from rivals. Although scholars
have analysed Islamists’ political participation through the lens of Social Movements
Theories (SMT), they did not address Islamists’ successful strategies for rule sustainability.
Borrowing fragments of SMTs in emphasis of Islamists’ adaptation to existing opportuni-
ties, cause framing, and mobilisation tactics, studies have not provided a comprehensive
and unified strategy.
In order to identify how Islamists sustain their rule in spite of their lack of an Islamic
blueprint for governance, this study presents a comprehensive strategy for Islamists’ rule
sustainability. Engaging with SMTs, this study fills in theoretical gaps in scholarship
addressing Islamists’ political participation. It does so by broadening SMTs’ application
on the Middle East towards the conceptualisation of Islamists’ tools of governance and
reconsidering Post-Islamism’s scope of analysis to include variations among Islamists.
With this respect, the study examined the AKP and the FJP’s three-fold strategies of
action, identification, differentiation, and alliance formulation. It argued that, regardless
of the possession of a genuine vision of governance, Islamists succeed to sustain their
rule whenever they have a high-political leverage vis-à-vis the state establishment.
While the AKP did not present a blueprint for Islamic governance and conformed to the
neoliberal order on the national and international levels, it did not fail in sustaining its
rule. Unlike the FJP, it succeeded to maintain its authority due to its high political lever-
age in terms of forging strong socioeconomic alliances and mobilising masses around
common demands.
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