When an authoritarian regime collapses, what determines whether an opposition group will form a political party, be successful in mobilizing voters, and survive or dissolve as a group in subsequent years? Based on unique field research, Alanna C. Torres-Van Antwerp examines the origins of the dramatic political arc of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood - from winning a plurality of parliamentary seats and the presidency in the first free elections in eighty years to being ousted from office eighteen months later through a popular coup - and finds common causal factors that structured the fates of other formerly repressed opposition groups in five comparative cases. She demonstrates how the processes of party formation, electoral mobilization, and party dissolution after the ousting of an authoritarian regime were shaped by the way that regime structured the resources, incentives, and constraints available to opposition groups in the previous era.

An examination of how legacies of authoritarian rule shaped the outcome of Egypt's 2011 founding elections.

About the Author
Alanna Torres-Van Antwerp is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. She has previously served as a Foreign Affairs Analyst, held Middle East research positions at the Political Instability Task Force and National Defense University's Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, and worked for international nongovernmental organizations in Eurasia and the Middle East. She was the recipient of a David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship for research in Egypt. She has authored articles in Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization and Foreign Policy's Middle East Channel.


Book Information
ISBN 9781009100519
Author Alanna C. Torres-Van Antwerp
Format Hardback
Page Count 255
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 630g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 24mm