Islamism between Moderation and Hegemony: Politics of Constitution Making in Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey (2011–2013)

Abstract Despite assuming lead roles during the critical constitution making stage of power transitions, Islamist parties in Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt adopted very different strategies in the process, which produced very different outcomes. Using insights from regime transition literature, this article undertakes an empirical analysis of the observed behavior of Islamist political parties in these countries to address the question of Islam, human rights, and constitution-making. In doing so, the article treats constitution-making as a key stage of democratization and challenges the commonly held assumption that conflict is undesirable for democratization in general and constitution-making in particular. The article demonstrates that consensus is not a prerequisite of democracy, as is commonly believed, but rather a by-product of the democratization process. Moreover, it argues that a serious conflict during the high-stake process of constitution-making may even be necessary. The findings suggest that the outcome of constitution-making does not depend upon the presence or absence of cleavages and entrenched conflict, but rather the approach of the key political actors to conflict in terms of its elimination, management or avoidance. The article utilizes process-tracing methods to compare and analyze the strategies of Islamist political parties within the Tunisian, Turkish, and Egyptian political contexts. Specifically, this article advances a two-pronged thesis. First, the outcome of constitutional processes in these three countries is closely related to the different strategies of conflict management practiced by Islamist political parties: Turkey’s Islamists employed a strategy of delaying constitution-making to ensure they had maximum leverage over the process – what I call a politics of hegemony . Egyptian Islamists, feeling in a “use it or lose it” type of moment for shaping the future of the country’s politics, played a game of chicken vis-a-vis the army and secular civil society activists – an approach that can be called a politics of confrontation . The Tunisian Islamists demonstrated pragmatism and moderation in the constitutional process to survive the increasingly unified opposition from the civil society and other political parties, which can be called a politics of compromise . Such divergence of Islamist politics raises the question of how Islamists form their strategies. The second prong of this article’s thesis is that the specific distribution of power among the actors constrains or enables Islamist actors to act in hegemonic, confrontational, and pragmatic ways. Political contexts with a stable balance of power among the state, political society, and civil society are more likely to produce politics of compromise, whereas unstable power distribution leads to a politics of confrontation, and uneven power distribution leads to a politics of hegemony. By treating constitution-making as a stage of regime transition, this study offers insights that bridge the literature on democratization and constitutionalism, and by examining variation in Islamist politics it contributes to the debate on human rights promotion in the Muslim world. The lessons from this earlier period of power transitions also shed light on the reasons for the fragility of gains in democratization and dynamics behind authoritarian backsliding during the following decade.