Ideology and electoral choices in Arab elections

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Since the Arab uprisings, the MENA region has been going through a phase of continuous transformation, with political regimes experiencing both democratic expansion and regression. However, two factors seem to be quasi-constant, albeit with different degrees of impact: parties are at the heart of political life and elections are held quite regularly. Therefore, it is important to ask what political determinants lead Arab citizens to vote and whether and how ideology plays a role. This chapter explores two of the best-known hypotheses on elections in the MENA area: the ‘patronage’ hypothesis, which states that elections in the region are devoid of political and ideological components and are instead driven by clientelism and crony relations; the ‘religious-secular divide’ hypothesis states that elections are highly ideologised around the role that religion should play in politics. Both assumptions relegate other political issues in elections to residual importance. Both hypotheses appear to be robust. However, the introduction of three other contextual variables – regime type, voter turnout, and changes in democratic desirability over time – yields a more complex picture of electoral dynamics. On the one hand, the results suggest that in authoritarian regimes, massive abstentionism is highly politicised and turning out is driven mainly by patronage. When voter turnout is compared to democratic desirability, it becomes clearer how the former becomes the yardstick by which citizens evaluate the regime. On the other hand, in quasi-democracies, the post-Arab uprising democratic enthusiasm – which coincided with a high turnout – is followed by a combined collapse of both democratic desirability and electoral participation as a result of the failure to meet redistributive-related expectations. The MENA electorate is ultimately found to be in large part made of swing voters who (don’t) cast their ballots based on incumbents’ performance and economic evaluation.