How Does Power Affect the Ideology and Behavior of Islamist Groups?: A Comparative Policy Analysis

While scholars have written extensively on the general ideologies and objectives of Islamist political parties, there has been little close study of their performance as elected governing powers. Current scholarship does not provide the specific, data-based analysis required to determine the success or failure of governing Islamist parties in the fields of education policy, healthcare, human security and gender equality, among others. Existing literature is particularly thin on Islamist parties that rule on a sub-national level, and on how they perform compared to their non-Islamist counterparts in the same country.

The Capstone project aims to help fill that gap by evaluating the success of two sub-national Islamist governments: the Muttahida Majilis-e-Amal (MMA) in the North Western Frontier Province, Pakistan, which held power from 2002-2007, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, formerly SCIRI) and Al-Fadhila in Basra province, Iraq, which held power from 2005-2009. In both cases, Islamists took provincial and municipal power after democratic elections, governed for one term and subsequently lost power in the following round of elections. We chose to focus on these two cases rather than more well-known Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah because research on their performance was much sparser, and because of the relevance of Iraq and Pakistan to policymakers dealing with conflict and post-conflict environments.