The Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda

Organisational Dynamics in Egypt and Tunisia since 2011
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-81213-7
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 158 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Democratization and Government

The Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda: Organisational Dynamics in Egypt and Tunisia since 2011 examines the organisational dynamics and capacity for change of the Arab world’s two most influential Islamist movements.

Rather than foregrounding external political pressures, the book explores the internal organisational worlds of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Ennahda, treating them as long-standing institutions shaped by their own cultures, structures, and internal debates. Drawing on an analytical framework that places organisational culture and intra-party politics at the centre of the analysis, it investigates how each movement confronted the pressures of governing, adapting, and redefining its political role and identity after 2011. The study argues that the capacity for change within these organisations was shaped by internal dynamics: the Brotherhood’s strong commitment to preserving its long-standing mission and organisational vision often constrained reform, while Ennahda struggled with a weak conceptualisation of how and why change should occur. By comparing their contrasting trajectories of party formation and institutional reconfiguration, the book highlights how each movement came to understand organisational change differently - whether as variation or replication, and as an opportunity or a threat to their foundational identity.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East politics, political Islam, and comparative politics, as well as to readers seeking an alternative analytical lens to Social Movement Theory and a deeper understanding of the evolution of Islamist movements in the post-Arab Spring era.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fulco, Carmen

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Religiöse Institutionen & Gemeinschaften, Klerus, Mönchstum
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien
• Geisteswissenschaften Islam & Islamische Studien Islamische Gruppen: Sunniten, Alsalaf
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Politische Parteien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Notes on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction
Conceptual note on Islamists and Islamism

On research design and methods
Book outline

Chapter 1. Institutional Framework for Understanding Change in the Egyptian Muslim Brothers and Ennahda
1.1 Debating ‘change’: Quest for an alternative to epistemic stagnation
1.2 Integrated institutional framework
1.2.1 Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective
1.2.2 Institutional agents, identity work and institutional maintenance
1.2.3 Theorising change and change capacity
1.3 Institutional logics at work in the pre-2011 Muslim Brothers and Ennahda
1.3.1 The Muslim Brothers’ prevailing logic: Gradual reformist movement or an oppositional political group?
1.3.2 Ennahda and the prevalence of the ‘political’ logic

Chapter 2. Formation of the Freedom and Justice Party as a Case of Coercive Modelling
2.1 Making of the Freedom and Justice Party: A case of coercive modelling
2.1.1 Handpicked from within: The Brotherhood’s control over Freedom and Justice Party leadership
2.1.2 ‘Who funds, rules’: Organisational overlap and resource dependency
2.1.3 ‘No model but the movement’: Lacking vision, mimicking the parent
2.2 Purely mimetic or coercive modelling? Role of agency in isomorphic change
2.2.1 ‘Listen and obey’: Sacred obedience and the militarisation of belief
2.2.2 Freedom and Justice Party in power: Gradual approach to formal politics, informal and elitist practices
2.2.3 ‘Still sitting in the dark:’ Tracing fear in the legacy of underground survival
2.3 Side-effects of a coercive isomorphic change as a mechanism of party derivation
2.4 Hybrid formula and coercive modelling: Top-down organisational strategy

Chapter 3. Repairing and Maintaining the Brotherhood
3.1 Breaking with tradition?
3.1.1 Restructuring under repression: New leadership and specialised committees
3.1.2 Innovative non-violence
3.1.3 New rebranding effort: Muslim Brothers’ anti-coup narrative
3.2 Rising challenge to the power vertical
3.3 Institutional maintenance work
3.3.1 Repairing the Brotherhood
3.3.2 Maintaining the organisational status quo
3.4 Propensity not to change?

Chapter 4. Ennahda’s Process of Party Transformation
4.1 Ennahda a decade before the Arab Uprisings: A ‘dormant’ movement?
4.2 Ennahda’s early phase of party formation
4.3. Diluting the old movement’s Islamist flavour?
4.4 Ennahda’s non-isomorphic change
4.4.1 Ennahda’s specialisation in politics: A weak theorisation of organisational change
4.4.2 Revealing Ennahda’s organisational transformation
4.5 Ennahda in a neoliberal establishment: A new Democratic Constitutional Rally?

Chapter 5. Organisational Identity Recrafting within the Party of Ennahda Movement
5.1 Rerouting Ennahda’s change process?
5.2 Non-homogeneous identification: Role of identity targets in affecting change direction
5.2.1 Ennahda’s Islamist base: Disidentification from a movement in denial
5.2.2 Post-Uprisings’ newcomers: ‘Being part of a quasi-secular party’
5.2.3 In the shadows of the past: Conditional and subtle resistance to a top-down change
5.3 Recrafting Ennahda’s organisational identity: Muslim Democrats, Islamists, or Seculars?
5.4 Discouraging Ennahda’s progressive change: Public opinion, media, and bias in post-revolution Tunisia
5.5 Ten years on: Ennahda’s waning cohesion and growing exclusion

Conclusion
Multilevel perspective on change: Meanings, direction, and intentionality
Contrasting models of party formation
On legitimacy and agency
Lasting imprint of a decade-long quest for change
Rethinking change within and beyond the Organised Islamiyyun
Postscriptum

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Carmen Fulco is a Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a Research Fellow at Demos Tunisia. She is a scholar of Middle East politics whose research explores contemporary Islamist movements, authoritarian populism, and youth politics, with a focus on Tunisia.