Religion and nationalism in a traditional society: Ideology, leadership and the role of the Umma Party as a force for social change in the northern Sudan

The emergence and leadership of western-style political parties in developing countries is an important, but little understood aspect of modernization. The dissertation examines the emergence of one such party, the Umma or Nation Party in the Democratic Republic of the Sudan, from its genesis until the present. At the time of its formation in 1945 by Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, son of the celebrated Sudanese Mahdi of the late Nineteenth Century, the Umma Party represented the revanchist aspirations and fundamentalist ideology of the Ansar, the Mahdi\u27s religious followers. Today, with an outwardly secular program, the party polled the largest number of votes in the 1986 Sudanese general election. Its Oxford educated leader Sadek al-Mahdi, great grandson of the Mahdi, has formed a coalition government which while sympathetic to the West has tried to maintain a position of non-alignment. An examination of Sadek al-Mahdi\u27s leadership style makes up a second strand of the dissertation