Conservative Convergence

Why does party competition across Muslim-majority countries so often gravitate toward the center-right? This book offers the first systematic comparative study of political parties across eight Muslim-majority nations-Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco. Drawing on original data from the Global Party Survey and the World Values Survey, alongside in-depth country analyses, it explains why competition repeatedly clusters within a conservative, center-right band despite wide variation in histories, institutions, and regime types. It shows how Islamic and cultural values are enduring conservative anchors of party politics, promoting stability and limiting polarization while also constraining pluralism and narrowing the space for minority rights. The book illuminates how convergence can generate conditions conducive to populist mobilization even in otherwise stable systems. By placing values, and not institutions alone, at the center of party-system analysis, it reframes long-standing debates on Islam, democracy, and political change in the contemporary Muslim world.