Islam and Authoritarianism

Abstract

Are predominantly Muslim societies distinctly disadvantaged in democratization? If so, why? The article presents a straightforward cross-national examination of the link between Islam and political regime. The evidence strongly suggests that Muslim countries are in fact democratic underachievers. The nature of the causal connection between Islam and political regime is investigated. Many conventional assumptions about Islam and politics do not withstand scrutiny. But one factor does help explain the dearth of democracy in the Muslim world: the treatment of women and girls. The rudiments of a provisional theory linking the treatment of females and regime type are offered and the implications of the findings for democracy, both in Muslim societies and elsewhere, are discussed.

Why Muslims like democracy yet have so little of it

“…On top of such general determinants of democracy, researchers have called attention to historical particularities such as colonial legacy (Anckar 2002;Clague et al 2001;Huntington 1984;Weiner 1987), religious background, and cultural traditions (Clague et al 2001;Huntington 1993;Inglehart 1988). In particular, Islam consistently shows up as a significant, negative factor in many empirical studies (Barro 1999;Fish 2002;Karatnycky 2002;Midlarsky 1998;Rowley and Smith 2009;Ross 2001). Several explanations have been proposed to explain this empirical regularity.…”

“…These range from the absence of separation of church and state in Islam (Huntington 1993(Huntington , 1996; see also Minkenberg 2007), through gender inequality (Fish 2002;Inglehart and Norris 2003), to endowments of oil (Barro 1999;Ross 2001). As it turns out, material conditions such as the availability of oil and the associated inequality explain something, but do not take away the significantly negative relation between a Muslim background and democratic institutions (Barro 1999;Fish 2002;Rowley and Smith 2009). The answer thus seems to lie in beliefs and attitudes associated with Islam itself.…”

State-sponsored development, oil and democratization

“…In Eritrea and Ethiopia, Muslims do not make up the majority and Islam is not the predominant religious tradition. 84 These two countries, therefore, are excluded from the sub-sample. Results for the sub-sample are presented in Table 4.…”

Twenty Years of Political Transition

“…It is one thing to estimate some regressions, another to believe that what they are telling is 'the truth.' That a Muslim tradition constitutes some sort of obstacle-although by no means an insuperable one-to liberal democracy echoes a result found by scholars who have looked at the determinants of democracy in broader datasets of countries (Fish 2002 It is also possible that in this region authoritarianism has been fueled not so much by elements of Islam as by the fear of it, and by the attempts by incumbent regimes to protect against Islamic fundamentalism in anti-democratic ways. In Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the late 1990s, leaders used arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and expulsion to crack down on those believed to be potential Islamic extremists (Collins 2002;Luong 2003).…”