Yet opposition parties face serious costs whether they boycott these semi-charades or take part in them. If oppositionists participate in elections and parliament, they risk becoming coopted—or at least being seen as such by a cynical and disaffected electorate. Yet if they boycott the “inside game” of electoral and parliamentary politics, the “outside game” of protest and resistance offers little realistic prospect of influence, let alone power. Caught on the horns of such dilemmas, political oppositions in the Arab world become divided, suspicious, and torn from within. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Even the Islamists in countries such as Egypt, Kuwait, and Morocco are fragmented into different camps, along moderate and militant (as well as other tactical and factional) lines. Islamist parties that stand resolutely outside the system, while building up social-welfare networks and religious and ideological ties at the grassroots, garner long-term bases of popular support. Secular parties, by contrast, look marginal, halting and feckless. “Caught between regimes that allow little legal space . . . and popular Islamist movements that are clearly in the ascendancy . . . they are struggling for influence and relevance, and in some cases even for survival.”
Yet opposition parties face serious costs whether they boycott these semi-charades or take part in them. If oppositionists participate in elections and parliament, they risk becoming coopted—or at least being seen as such by a cynical and disaffected electorate. Yet if they boycott the “inside game” of electoral and parliamentary politics, the “outside game” of protest and resistance offers little realistic prospect of influence, let alone power. Caught on the horns of such dilemmas, political oppositions in the Arab world become divided, suspicious, and torn from within. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Even the Islamists in countries such as Egypt, Kuwait, and Morocco are fragmented into different camps, along moderate and militant (as well as other tactical and factional) lines. Islamist parties that stand resolutely outside the system, while building up social-welfare networks and religious and ideological ties at the grassroots, garner long-term bases of popular support. Secular parties, by contrast, look marginal, halting and feckless. “Caught between regimes that allow little legal space . . . and popular Islamist movements that are clearly in the ascendancy . . . they are struggling for influence and relevance, and in some cases even for survival.”
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