Religious parties in a democracy

Ok, I am revealing a little bit of my inner geek here, but the way I learn about the world is not Time Magazine or the Washington Post like most people, but rather by reading the geopolitical intelligence reports from Stratfor (the same place many US Presidents turn) and to research journals like Democratization.  These sources tend to be a lot more comprehensive, objective, penetrating.  But a lot harder to read because they are long and use lots of scholarly language. 

The latest of Democratization was a special issue that brought together a series of papers from some of the leading experts around the world on religious political parties.  The researchers are all from different places and so they have very different ideas (hence the more objective perspective you get when you read them all). 

The impetus for the collection was the Arab Spring and how the different Muslim Brotherhood parties are handling their newfound power in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, etc.  For example, why did the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia put together a broad, pluralistic coalition while the Egyptian Brotherhood decided to become the autocrat they replaced? Is it because of the way the party had been treated over the last few decades by the former leadership/society?  Or because of the values of the society itself?  Or socio-economic differences?  Or was it due to differences in the parties?  The extremity of their religious views?  Their conservative/progressive political stance independent of their religion?  How connected they are to the military? If they were a minority part of a governing coalition in the past (and got a taste of governance)?  If they have a nationalistic ideology? 

It is really hard to do valid research in this area because there are no control groups.  Do these studies used a case study method and looked all over the world (I was shocked by how many religious parties there are around the world), including India, Northern Ireland, Italy, Chile, Turkey, Israel as well as the Arab Spring examples.  It is really the questions that they raised that I found interesting:

·         What would you think of a party that has extreme religious views but believes in pluralistic governance (compared to the moderately religious party that wants total control)?

·         What about a party with a great deal of support from the general population but dominates the military and favors a militaristic foreign policy?

·         What about a party that wants to force the whole country to follow its religious laws and practices, but those laws and practices happen to be very open and tolerant (allows same sex marriage, feeds the hungry, etc)?

More questions than answers, but I found this to be really good food for thought.