“[The PJD] are blamed for everything going wrong in the country,” says Intissar Fakir, director of the Middle East Institute north Africa programme. 

Fakir said support for political Islam in the region is at an all-time low owing to a failure by elected parties to improve living conditions for citizens. There has also been a campaign against Islamist movements from some Gulf states and Egypt.  “The ideological component is not the whole story,” said Fakir. “Now [for both countries] there is a rise of a strong central administration that wants to show a prioritisation of effective governance rather than democratic processes and a focus on liberties, but are they going to be able to deliver that?”