Many attribute the failure of democratization in the Islamic world to the existence of antidemocratic Islamist movements. Why should democratization move forward when the main beneficiaries would allow for “one person, one vote, one time”? Jillian Schwedler in Faith in Moderation refutes this common argument head-on. Schwedler, however, is not merely content in presenting two Islamist parties as “moderate” to show how Islam is not monolithic. She has a more analytical project in which she urges us to unpack many of our assumptions about regime transitions in the Middle East and in general. Her argument targets the linkage between the inclusion of Islamist opposition groups in politics and the effects of their participation in moderating their ideology and behavior. Her treatment of this topic, based in social movement theory, deserves our attention.

Schwedler contributes to an ongoing critique of “transitology” through her structured comparison of two Islamist political parties—the Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan and the Islah (reform) party in Yemen. She argues that the dominant institutional approach to the “stalled” transitions in the two Arab countries fails to explain a key tenet of transitology: The inclusion of nondemocratic opposition parties in the political process will promote the moderation of those parties and thus prompt further democratization. For Schwedler, a focus on the lack of progress toward democracy underappreciates the effects of restructuring of political space on political parties even in the absence of democracy. Moreover, the focus on institutional structures and behavioral patterns cannot directly explain ideological moderation. Schwedler defines such moderation “not as behavioral change, but as change in ideology from a rigid and closed worldview to one relatively more open and tolerant of alternative perspectives” (p. 22).

Thus, her book compares the effects of the limited political openings in Jordan and Yemen on the restructuring of public political space. She finds that the Jordanian IAF became more ideologically moderate over time, but the Yemeni Islah did not. The variation between the two cases results from the restructuring of political space that changed: The political opportunity structures for Islah and the IAF, the internal group structures, and their boundaries of justifiable ideological action within the interplay of cultural narratives of Islam, democracy, and national unity. These dimensions also influenced each other.

As part of the critique of transitology, Faith in Moderation could help us move to the next step of exploring politics in the “gray zone” of autocracy from the analysis of “stalled democratization,” with its reification of nondemocratic regimes, to a focus on authoritarian dynamics. Although Schwedler elucidates the effects of institutional change on opposition groupings, a key variation between the two cases lies in the different natures of authoritarianism in Jordan (a consolidated monarchy) and Yemen (the merger of two republics). She does note this contrast (p. 64); however, she could make more of this structural difference in explaining her other preferred variables—internal party structure and the mechanism of ideological change.

She rightly points out that the cultural dimensions of political contestation are underspecified by structural approaches and provides us with valuable information on the processes of ideological debate in the IAF and Islah. However, she downplays the degree that those debates were strongly influenced—if not determined (but not predetermined)—by regime-led structural changes. The histories of both regime and opposition in Jordan and Yemen enter her analysis (especially in Chapter 2); however, she perhaps too quickly discards notions of path dependency in favor of exploring ideological change in the 1990s in Chapters 4 and 5.

Another area where ideological change may be more strongly influenced by institutional structures than Schwedler argues lies in the issue of cooperation between Islamists and other opposition groups. She notes the issue of the imbalance in power between the Jordanian and Yemeni regimes and the Islamist opposition groups (e.g., p. 182) and the relationship between each party and their domestic Islamist rivals (in Chapter 6). However, how the two parties relate to non-Islamist opposition groups could be explored further. She explains that cooperation between Islah and the Yemeni Socialist Party was strongly influenced by the vicissitudes of the ruling General People's Congress (p. 188). However, a similar analysis of IAF—leftist cooperation in Jordan (p. 174)—fails to elaborate on the gradual reversal in the balance of power between the 1950s, when the Jordanian monarchy's chief rivals came from the left, to the 1990s, when the IAF, and its parent organization the Muslim Brotherhood, led the opposition forces. Such a change does a great deal to explain Islamist “moderation” because it came from a position of relative strength (at least vis-à-vis other opposition groups). On a technical note, all veto powers over the elected lower house in Jordan were in the constitution well before the 1991 National Charter—a document with normative, but not legal, standing (p. 100).

Schwedler offers an important contribution to the literature on democratization in the Middle East as well as to our study of Islamist political parties. Students of other regions who rely on the “inclusion-moderation” thesis should also take notice of this work. She rightly explores the assumption that structural change leads to unmediated ideological change. Moreover, she contributes to our knowledge of two commonly cited moderate Islamist groups. She also brings the often understudied case of Yemen into our discussions. Her exemplary diligence in the field gathering interviews and internal party documents should be commended.

Faith in Moderation should work its way into the reading lists of graduate courses on Middle East politics. Schwedler's more analytical approach means that she does not present the histories of the IAF and Islah chronologically but rather thematically, which may limit the book's utility for undergraduate audiences. However, her exercise in conceptual unpacking, which blends social movement theories and transitology, should help Middle East studies rejoin debates in comparative politics.