In When Victory Is Not an Option, Nathan J. Brown focuses on Islamist movements in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine, showing that uncertain benefits lead to uncertain changes.

Nathan J. Brown is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of several books, including The Dynamics of Democratization; Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords; and Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World.

This is an important book not only for its rich empirical exploration of the Muslim Brotherhood in four settings (Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and the Palestinian territories) but also for its insights into semiauthoritarian regimes, which allow opposition groups just enough room to organize and compete but not enough to win elections or form governments. Relying on extensive contacts with Brotherhood leaders, Brown explains how they saw advantages—such as gaining the right to legal assembly and being allowed to propagate their views and deliver basic services to the needy—to playing a game they were destined to lose.

Daniel Martin Varisco:

His metaphor of 'Islamist' survival, that they survive 'as a cat-and-mouse game so long as the cat allows the mouse to live and the mouse remains a mouse' (p. 240) is prophetic as well as salient. The value of Brown's approach is that he compares and contrasts movements across the Middle East and not just on one organization or country.

Ahmet T. Kuru:

Brown's book... captures the main dynamics of Arab politics today, and it serves as a guideline to predict the future of Arab Islamists. This theoretically deep, empirically rich, and politically insightful book is a must-read for students of Middle East politics.

Brown examines the organization, operation, and impact of Islamist movements in semi-authoritarian states, or systems in which opposition parties are permitted to participate but not win, arguing that while these movements become 'politicized' (i.e., they are participants in politics and elections), they are so in a limited way.... He provides an excellent framework for understanding the recent political dynamics of the Arab world.

Eva Bellin, Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics in the Department of Politics and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, author of Stalled Democracy:

Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, Nathan J. Brown explores the impact that participation in semi-authoritarian politics has had on the character, organization, and ideology of Islamist movements, and reciprocally, on the semi-authoritarian regimes themselves. Grounding his analysis in the cases of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine, Brown explores the irresistibility of joining the electoral game, the democratizing impact that participation has had on Islamist rhetoric, as well as the limited incentives to fully embrace liberal values created by a context of never being able to truly win. When Victory is Not an Option is an original, lively, and completely up-to-date account that makes accessible to the reader the latest thinking on the phenomenon of Islamist political inclusion.