The use of religion as a resource by a “secular” party in post-revolutionary Tunisia

Are Islamist parties the only ones that use religion as a resource? This paper, based on our fieldwork in Tunisia (between 2011 and 2018) on the relationship between state and religion, as well as on the literature on the sociology of political parties, intends to analyze the electoral strategies of the parties Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes, the winners of the first two free elections in the country. With the emergence of Nidaa Tounes in 2012, this party and its president Béji Caïd Essebsi managed to counteract the cultural hegemony of the Islamist party (which until then had held the monopoly on the discourse on Islam) through the ballot box by choosing to show themselves alongside politicians and academic experts on Islam, as well as a group of clerics openly opposed to Islamism and Salafism.