internal dynamics of the prosperous justice party and jamaah tarbiyah 39
The second is the dilemma between the collective and selective system
of incentives. The former deems that the collective incentives a political
organisation gives to its members should be distributed amongst all
members equally. The most fundamental of these are identity and solidar-
ity. As politics is about collective goods, not owned by certain groups but
available to all, political organisations also promote collective incentives
to all of their members. This explains why people join and participate
in political organisations without being paid or receiving other material
rewards. Meanwhile, the latter system proposes to understand an organ-
isation as an arena in which to pursue personal interests and, therefore,
different members will receive different rewards according to their dif-
ferent roles, efforts and achievements. This perspective explains why in
political organisations, which are by default voluntary organisations – i.e.
people participate not because they are being paid or coerced – members
are constantly competing for control of the organisation and for power
and resources. This is because different organisational positions provide
different authorities that entail different sets of incentives.²³
Perceived from this perspective, the tensions and frictions within and
between the jt and pks are part of the normal process of organisations
seeking to survive in a rapidly changing political environment. However,
these developments are interesting in light of current discussions on
Islam-based politics. Two theories are relevant at this point: namely,
Oliver Roy’s thesis on the failure of political Islam, and Asef Bayat’s notion
of post-Islamism. Roy built his observations on Islam-based politics in
Afghanistan. He argues that Islam-based politics failed to accomplish its
mission to build a comprehensive Islamic system of life that included an
Islamic society and an Islamic state. For him, the failure was due to its
circular ideological and political programme, in which proponents of
political Islam believe that a true Islamic society can only be built under
an Islamic state – which will ensure the enactment and enforcement of
Islamic values. Yet, at the same time, a true Islamic state can only be
created if politicians uphold and enact Islamic principles, i.e. under an
Islamic society. Unable to break this vicious circle, they abandoned the
idea of creating an Islamic state and resorted to promoting Islam in terms
of private values.²⁴
Meanwhile, Asef Bayat, based on his observations of post-revolu-
tionary Iran, found a different feature of political Islam that he calls
Angelo Panebianco,Political Parties: Organization and Power(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), chapter 1.
Oliver Roy,The Failure of Political Islam(Harvard: Harvard University Press,
1994), 60–68.