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“God loves the rich.” The Economic Policy of Ennahda: Liberalism in the Service of Social Solidarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2020

Maryam Ben Salem Open the ORCID record for Maryam Ben Salem [Opens in a new window]
Maryam Ben Salem*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law and Political Science—University of Sousse
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Maryam Ben Salem, Faculty of Law and Political Science - University of Sousse, Tunisia. E-mail: maryambs@gmail.com
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Abstract

The article examines the economic vision of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda focusing on its supposed transformation from a party with socialist rhetoric to one embracing fully the tenets of neo-liberalism. The article argues that such a transformation has been quite easy to achieve because the party and its leaders were always more pragmatic than ideological when it comes to economic policy-making. In fact, the party is more at ease with neo-liberal economics because of the electoral constituency it serves and because of its internal structure and ways of operating, which reward those members who display the virtues that the neo-liberal economy also values.

Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 695 - 718
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

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Footnotes

I thank Francesco Cavatorta and Samir Amghar for their comments on previous drafts of this article.

*Rached Ghannouchi, leader of Ennhadha. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mznr5lPKFXU

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