Salih, M.A. Mohammed and El-Tom, Abdullahi (2009) Introduction. In: Interpreting Islamic Political Parties. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-28. ISBN 978-0-230-61865-7

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Abstract

Parties are indispensable political organizations through which people channel commonly shared values, beliefs, and ideas of governing and ordering priorities. Once political parties gain power; preferably, in free and fair elections, they can control the state and the resources and personnel of the government individually or in coalition with other political parties. As instruments of collective action, argues Weiner, political parties are the creation of the political elite in a bid to control the resources and personnel of government to implement an ideology or a political program.1 From this perspective, Islamic political parties that entered competitive politics are no different from other political parties in that all parties struggle to gain power and to control the government and its resources. Moreover, much like other political parties, they have various types of organizational structures, ability to mobilize financial resources, provide support and goodwill, recruit cadres, select or elect officers, and, in some cases, develop procedures for internal control and management.

Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	Islamic; political parties;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	4274
Depositing User:	Dr Abdullahi El-Tom
Date Deposited:	25 Mar 2013 12:39
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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