Political parties in the Arab Middle East

This chapter reviews the state of play with regard to scholarship on political parties in the Arab Middle East. It examines work on party ideologies, functions and organisation as well as on parties in elections, pivoting on relevant research on Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. It argues that, while political parties research has gained substantially in traction over the past two decades, ultimately it remains tilted towards the study of Islamist organisations (at the expense of non-Islamist players), is insufficiently engaged with the wider theoretical literature and is limited in its comparative scope.