Islamist parties and social movements: cases of Egypt and Tunisia

Purpose - This paper aims to shed light on the previous ideological stands of the newly established Islamist parties in terms of the idea of party formation, and different models of their relations with the social movements from which they emanated through focusing on some case studies, namely, Egypt and Tunisia, with an attempt to study their impact on the parties’ paths by concentrating on two dimensions: the decision-making process and alliances’ building. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is written according to the comparative case studies approach and Huntington’s new institutionalism. Findings - The research findings proved that, in the light of the two case studies, there are two different models of relations exist between the Islamist political parties and the social movements they emanated from, and despite that both parties had come out from social movements or took the form of a movement in their beginnings and were established within the same context, they showed different perspectives in dealing later on with the new institutional and political context and their rising challenges. These perspectives affected the parties’ decision-making process and alliances’ building, as well as their institutional legitimacy and determined their political future. Originality/value - In the end, this paper attempts to deal with the degree of institutionalization these parties enjoyed, based on how the movements they emanated from had dealt with the dilemma of party building and the party-movement relations.