This comprehensive Handbook analyses the political parties and party systems across the Middle East and North Africa. Providing an in-depth empirically grounded and novel study of political parties the volume focuses on a region where they have been traditionally and often erroneously dismissed. The book is divided into five sections examining: the trajectories of Islamist Salafi leftist liberal nationalist and personalistic parties drawing from different countries; the role political parties play in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries; the centrality of political parties in democratic or democratising settings; the relationship between parties and specific social constituencies ranging from women to youth to tribes and sects; and the policy positions of parties on a number of issues including neo-liberal economics identity foreign policy and the role of violence. This wide-ranging and systematic analysis is a key resource for students and scholars interested in party politics democratization and authoritarianism and the Middle East and North Africa. Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780429269219 |Routledge Handbook on Political Parties in the Middle East and North Africa | Middle Eastern Studies