Are Religious Influences so Influent for Religiously-Oriented Parties?

The relationship between religiously-oriented parties and democracy, and more in general the role of religion in politics, has been out “front and centre” in the real word’s current affairs, with no exception of political studies. Recent contributions on the topic put forward the idea that the relationship between religiously-oriented parties and democratization largely relies on relational aspects attributable to the features of the whole party system, rather than on the features characterizing religiously-oriented parties alone. The paper we present tests this claim against the hypothesis that religiously-oriented parties’ behavior is affected by the kind of religious influences, intended here as different doctrines of the same religion. The aim is to clarify whether it makes sense to further distinguish religiously-oriented parties on the basis of the religious influences they are inspired to. We do so through a comparative study of religiously-oriented parties’ attitude towards democracy and impact on the democratization process in Tunisia and Egypt in last decades. The findings suggest that religious influences represent a characterizing featureduring the early stages of party formation but they fall short in accounting for parties’ behavior when changes in the political theatre occur.