We want to participate: the role of shared religious values in the Tunisian Islamist political party Ennahdha’s responses and adaptations to a hostile and shifting opposition political space under authoritarian regimes between 1981 and 2011

The opposition Islamist political party Ennahdha sought to participate politically in Tunisia under successive authoritarian regimes that were in place from 1981 to 2011. This effort caused the party to come under often extreme outside pressures from the regimes and their allies, with extended periods of heavy persecution that saw many party members imprisoned or strongly harassed as well as many others in exile outside the country, and short periods of semi-legalisation though with ongoing surveillance and harassment. These pressures caused extensive turmoil and intra-party tensions for Ennahdha, visible in strong internal disagreements about its methods of action vis a vis the regime as well as on values-based commitments such as its position on the rights of women. In seeking to cope with these, the party effectively shaped and reshaped its political positions and strategy, and in turn its political practices, all while avoiding falling apart as a unified opposition party. How? In answering this question, the presentation will draw upon theories from the political parties literature in examining the role of religious values in this process, including how those values helped to provide an ongoing shared identity amongst party members; how they helped members to articulate, debate and commit to shared, including new, positions related to its opposition strategy; and, how party leaders used the values as well as how the structural channels for member involvement within the party helped to reinforce them. The presentation does so by adopting a qualitative case study approach focusing upon the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahdha, and sheds light on Ennahdha’s intra-party conflicts and conflict management strategies (a topic that is under studied in the parties literature, which tends to be elite-centric and to treat parties as unitary entities) while also linking together the Middle East and North Africa politics literature with the often Western-centric and democratic-settings focused political parties literature (a linkage that is highly useful for informing analysis by both literatures). In so doing, it aims to shed light on the intra-party dynamics of an important opposition party operating under non-democratic regimes and how it successfully responded and adapted to a hostile and shifting opposition political space.