Echoes of the Spring(s): The Multidimensionality of Party-Movement Nexus in the MENA Area

Diplôme Thèse Echoes of the Spring(s): The Multidimensionality of Party-Movement Nexus in the MENA Area eng 2026-08-06 2026-08-18 author Fiore Enea 0009-0007-9300-1190 956475 director Giugni Marco 24307 Service enseignement, recherche, administratif et technique (SdS) (SCSPS) director Cavatorta Francesco 256 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:195614 urn:nbn:ch:unige-1956146 SdS 317 This dissertation investigates the multidimensional nature of party-movement interactions in the context of the second wave of Arab Uprisings across Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Situated at the intersection of social movement studies and party politics, the thesis challenges the traditional separation between institutional and extra-institutional political action, arguing that parties and movements are best understood as actors that mutually shape each other's strategies, identities, and trajectories. Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon are selected through a comparative design that varies regime type and party-regime relations while holding constant key features of the second Arab Uprisings, addressing a significant geographical blind spot in a field dominated by Western-centric evidences. These claims are examined across three research papers that collectively adopt a multilevel analytical framework, integrating macro-, meso-, and micro-level dimensions of the party-movement nexus. Overarching findings demonstrate that anti-system mobilizations do not produce uniform political effects. Rather, their consequences for partisan alignments, discursive strategies, and individual engagement are decisively conditioned by the structural relationship between parties and the regime within which they operate. In centralized authoritarian contexts, protest cycles can paradoxically reinforce regime-supportive realignments among segments of the public, as regime-linked parties function as perceived anchors of stability. In fragmented, patronage-based systems, the same protest dynamics tend to accelerate partisan disengagement and broader political disaffection. Furthermore, findings highlight that parties are not passive recipients of movement pressure but strategic actors that selectively adapt to anti-system contention. In fact, entrenched sectarian parties can exploit discursive opportunities generated by protest cycles, repositioning their narratives and forging new alliances in ways that translate into concrete electoral behaviour – though the extent and selectivity of such adaptation vary considerably across parties and depend on their positioning within the government-opposition divide. This divide, rather than ideological or socio-cultural cleavages alone, also emerges as the most consequential factor at the individual level. Dual political engagement – i.e., participating in protests while identify with a political party – is driven primarily by partisan loyalty, suggesting that anti-system mobilization may functions as an additional repertoire through which existing partisan commitments are expressed rather than dissolved. Collectively, these findings contribute to party politics and social movement scholarship by demonstrating that mechanisms widely theorized in consolidated democracies – backlash dynamics, discursive opportunities, and hybrid participation – are clearly operative in the MENA region, while their manifestations are shaped by regime-specific institutional logics. Ultimately, the dissertation shows that the relationship between movements and party politics is inherently multidimensional: protests can simultaneously challenge, reinforce, and reconfigure partisan structures, depending on the institutional and political environment in which it unfolds. Thèse en cotutelle avec l'Université Laval Dewey 320 121 Département de science politique et relations internationales T3 false bb5a1530-e066-438d-9ff9-368133c0fb68 Thesis Public Thèse_Dépôt_final.pdf 4743234 application/pdf b6719ea8f260eee388416648665aba74b4fe50d1cdd0d185a803ec2ef171a8fb 7ed2401e-7e2d-4e43-9c87-2888c0c6f114 Imprimatur Public Unige_-_Certificat_Imprimatur.pdf 143727 application/pdf f71ae23b02611c9b2d72cafe5ae490bc36eb22a331cb770c6187225602f58f48 openAccess Faculté des sciences de la société / Département de science politique et relations internationales

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Echoes of the Spring(s): The Multidimensionality of Party-Movement Nexus in the MENA Area				2026	8	68

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