Abstract
Particularly after the so-called Arab Spring, the relevance of the “Turkish model” for other Islamic societies has been the subject of intense debate. Put more directly, the question is whether or not democracy can flourish and be sustained in societies where Islam is the dominant faith. This chapter examines the issue making use of the most recent European Values Study data. Macro-level multivariate analyses demonstrate that, even after controlling for social and economic development, Muslim-majority societies score poorly on various comparative measures of democracy. It is proposed that one possible explanation for this is the absence of a vibrant civil society, a widely accepted prerequisite for democracy, in Islamic societies. It is shown that, by and large, the negative “Islam effect” on civil society cannot be refuted.
In the light of modern liberal democratic thought, Islam is no more, nor any less democratic than Christianity or Judaism. All three monotheistic religions, if proposed as constitutional foundations of the state, and if understood as providing an ineluctable authority for the guidance of all significant human choice, are undemocratic or non-democratic. (Binder, L. (1998). Exceptionalism and Authenticity: The Question of Islam and Democracy, Arab Studies Journal 6, 33–59)
For Islamists, democracy, expressing the will of the people, is the road to power, but it is a one-way road, on which there is no return, no rejection of the sovereignty of God, as exercised through his chosen representatives. Their electoral policy has been classically summarized as ‘One man (men only), one vote, once.’ (Lewis, B. (2003), The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (pp. 111–112). New York: The Modern Library)
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For example, Reza Shah of Iran, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan.
- 3.
President Clinton’s Special Assistant and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council.
- 4.
The reference is to “The Doha Debates,” February 12, 2012. The question debated was whether Turkey is a good or bad example for Arab states. The BBC notes that the program is available for viewing at 400 million homes around the globe.
- 5.
For a brief bibliography of academic works on “Islam and democracy,” see “Select Bibliography on Islam and Democracy’ by Sarsar, Saliba, and Keller Alexander,” www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/islmdem.pdf (downloaded on 25 March 2012).
- 6.
First proposed by Welzel et al. (2003); criticized by Hadenius and Teorell (2005) and Knutsen (2010); response to criticism Alexander et al. (2011). Index scores for 2006 are available at www.worldvaluessurvey.org
- 7.
Our preference for the “Effective Democracy Index” may be criticized on a number of grounds. A comparison of the performances and technical attributes of the various indices of democracy is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, we note that all major indices produce similar results concerning the correlation between Islam and democracy.
- 8.
Rather ironically, at the time of this writing, a military coup had taken place in Mali, the Islamic country with the highest effective democracy score in 2006. The coup brought a halt to 20 years of democracy, closing down the parliament and suppressing the opposition. The country’s democracy score will no doubt have to be revised in the future versions of the index.
- 9.
Religion data (for the year 2008) are taken from World Christian Database.
- 10.
We may note that the correlation between percent Muslim and the Freedom House scores (total score) even larger at 0.52. (Freedom House assigns higher scores to less democratic and less free countries; hence the positive sign of the correlation coefficient.)
- 11.
WEF gender equality statistics are available at www.wef.org
- 12.
In a statistical sense, the six variables do not comprise a highly reliable index (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.47). However, our concern here is theoretical rather than statistical. We believe the index includes the minimal core values of a “democrat.” Whether the items are highly correlated among themselves or not is not irrelevant but is a different issue.
- 13.
Fish (2011: 6–7) gives a partial list of the leading scholars on both sides of this debate.
- 14.
These measures are: (1) civil society organizations working on anti-corruption issues, the media’s effectiveness in reporting on corruption and public access to information taken from Global Integrity Report, and (2) number of civil society organizations per million population; data compiled by Grimes taken from CIVICUS. For more information on the indicators and raw data: www.qog.pol.gu.se
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Esmer, Y. (2013). Democracy, Civil Society, and Islam. In: de Hart, J., Dekker, P., Halman, L. (eds) Religion and Civil Society in Europe. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6815-4_14
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