Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone. “Moderation through Exclusion? The Journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to Conservative Party”. Democratization, Vol. 20, No. 5 (2013): 857–875.

Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone. “Moderation through Exclusion? The Journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to Conservative Party”. Democratization, Vol. 20, No. 5 (2013): 857–875.

• After decades of being illegal and heavily repressed, the Islamist Ennahda party was legalized in Tunisia on 1 March 2011. It then went to win the first democratic elections in October 2011, taking 89 out of the 217 legislative seats. It then formed a government with two center-left parties (857).
• Liberal and secular groups in Tunisia generally distrust Ennahda and accuse it of being moderate only to disguise its true intentions. Despite these accusations, Ennahda is generally moderate and willing to work within the democratic system in Tunisia (858, 860).
• Ennahda originated as a conservative Islamist party in the 1970s, suspicious of democratic processes and making the imposition of sharia law its central demand (858). It was led by Rachid Ghannouchi and was part of the Muslim Brotherhood, adopting that organization's view that Islam provided the solution to all societal issues (860).
• In the 1980s, Rachid Ghannouchi started to question the Brotherhood's views and their vague solutions to societal issues. This led to a schism where a radical fringe left the party to seek an Islamic state (860-861). By the late 1980s, it had moderated to accept democratic elections, a liberal society, and a market economic (858).
• Although it still advances a conservative view of women's role in society, Ennahda has accepted the legal equality of men and women in society (861).
• After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and strongly influenced by the work of Ali Shariati, Ennahda adopted a third position between capitalism and communism, heavily criticizing the inequality and exploitation of capitalism. It has since accepted neoliberalism and has not objected to free trade organized under its governance in Tunisia (861-862).
• Since their legalization in 2011, Ennahda leaders have been sure to emphasize the moderate tone of their party. This vocal acceptance of electoral democracy makes them markedly different from Salafi groups, which have been explicit in their condemnation of liberal democracy (861).
• Ennahda has also limited their anti-imperialist and anti-American criticism of previous decades now that they are in power. They have taken no steps against the US, EU, or Israel since being elected in 2011 (862).
• Most scholarly literature on the moderation of Islamist and extremist parties suggests that inclusion in an electoral political system causes parties to moderate their positions. The case of Ennahda upends these assumptions because it moderated under conditions of violent oppression (857, 859).
• This literature developed rapidly on Islamism during the 2000s, since a number of Islamist groups entered government at this time. They generally tended to moderate their stances and cooperate with ruling regimes, adding support to the thesis that inclusion breeds moderation (863).
• Repression and imprisonment did not make Islamists more moderate, since the process of moderation was a response to political failure and had already begun before repression. Repression did not reverse moderation, but it was not the cause of Ennahda's moderation (868-869).
• Islamism in Tunisia was excluded from society and repressed by the government. This meant that, not only were Islamists subject to arrest and torture by the government, but their views were excluded from the dominant trends of Tunisian society. Most Tunisians viewed Islam as apolitical and Islamist viewpoints were marginalized (865-866). 
• Tunisian society generally rejects many conservative Islamic practices and views them as culturally alien; this includes polygamy, which is culturally unacceptable. This means that Salafi groups and other Islamic extremists are not seen as authentically Tunisian (866).
• Islamists were excluded from nearly all political dialogue since their foundation in the 1970s in mosques associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. During the 1970s and 1980s, political discourse centered around revolutionary leftist and nationalist secularism. There was no room for Islamism in this political atmosphere (866-867).
• Throughout the 1990s, the Tunisian government repressed Ennahda and other Islamist groups, escalating these efforts in the name of counter-terrorism after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 (859).
• The social marginalization of Islamism in Tunisia explains Ennadha's movement towards moderation despite its exclusion from electoral politics. The social exclusion forced it to become more moderate (871).
• Ennahda has most of its membership among merchants and businessmen. The Tunisian lower classes usually are drawn to Salafi groups among the Islamist movement (862).
• Islamist experienced a crisis in Tunisia during the early 1980s as it recognized that its current incarnation was not making any gains against revolutionary leftism or the Bourguiba regime supporters. There were three major responses to this realization: Liberal Islamists tried to reform notions of Islam within the movement to a view more accepted by Tunisian society; radical Islamists under Mohammed Ali Hurath and Mohammed Khouja who establish an Islamic state by force; and a group under Rachid Ghannouchi and Abdelfattah Mourou that founded a political party to compete in electoral politics (867).
• There was a brief democratic opening in the late 1980s before Ben Ali took control of the country. Ennahda registered itself as a party and participated, doing very well. This success scared both the Ali government and the secular opposition, both of which were now convinced that the secular order was endangered by Islamist politics; fearing that Ennahda victory would unleash Islamist violence as was occurring in Algeria (869-870).
• The vision of Tunisian identity, as fiercely secular on the French model, imposed by Habib Bourguiba had died out since its inception in the 1970s. A plural Tunisian identity, including Islam, has become increasingly acceptable and now seems to be dominant in Tunisia (871).