The past decade has witnessed several electoral successes for Islamist movements in the Arab world, an issue which has stimulated a broad political and academic debate around how democracy can and will develop in the region.

In order to understand the role that Islamist movements have or can have on their political contexts and to evaluate Western polices towards them, it is necessary to start from a non-ideological and non-Western-centred analysis of the ongoing structural changes in these countries, prioritizing empirical data collection over normative schemes.

Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale, International IDEA and Istituto Affari Internazionali jointly implemented a research project on this topic. The report includes case studies on Islamist movements and parties in Egypt, Morocco, Palestine and Lebanon. Carried out by different researchers, it offers an in-depth analysis of the structures of such movements, the socio-economic interests they represent and the mobilization and political participation strategies they have adopted.