Islam and Democracy in Asia: Friends or Foes

Mehdi Zaidi

Dr. Quinn

Comparative Politics

Introduction

In The End of History and the Last Man Francis Fukuyama states about contemporary international relations that “what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” (Fukuyama, 1993, 93). In this book Fukuyama is essentially vindicating that the long ideological struggles of the previous millennia are now over, and that the various phases of socio-cultural evolution have reached their zenith, such that teleos has become a manifestation of “liberal democracy”. Among the innumerable criticisms against Fukuyama, the one that holds the most validity in my opinion concerns Islam. Fukuyama’s fundamental analysis is contradicted by the fact that there is still one great challenge that stands in the way of liberal democracy; the alternate form of government proposed by Islamists, a regime based upon strict Islamic principles. There have been many qualitative claims as to whether Islam represents a force that is inherently anti-thetical to democracy. These range from sympathetic voices that emphasize common ground between Islam and democracy such as those expressed by Fareed Zakaria and Lisa Weden, to hostile articulations that stress incompatibility voiced by scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington and public figures such as Pat Robertson. What is lacking on this subject, however, isquantitative work, and in the limited instances where such work is present it focuses mainly on the Middle East, ignoring the large number of Islamic institutions in other parts of the world. This study hopes to address this theoretical gap in literature through the assessment of democracy as conceived in the realm of Asian politics. This cross-national, time-series study from the years 2000-2005 is intended to analyze the question-- whether Islamic countries in Asia have more or less of a tendency to be free-- through quantitative regression analysis.

Literature Review

The body of qualitative work available displays varying view points on Islam and its relationship with democracy and freedom. Qualitative descriptions are provided by Fareed Zakaria, Samuel P. Huntington, and Inglehart and Norris. Fareed Zakaria alleges that the problem lies not with Islam but rather with the Arab world. Examples of coexistence between the two are rife in Asia. He points to countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan and India to describe models of developing capitalist democracies where Islam is compatible with freedom. In the case of the Arab world however, one finds the opposite situation (Zakaria, 2006, 281). One either discoverssecular despotism or Islamic extremism in the regimes, and often a blend of the two. Of the twenty-two countries in the Arab league none are considered free by the Freedom House (Zakaria, 2006, 282). This study, although far from conclusive due to its normative context, does beg the question whether Islam is compatible with democracy in non-Arab nations.

Another popular descriptive deliberation on the subject is provided by Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington asserts in his classic The Clash of Civilizations that the Islamic world lacks the core political values which are a prerequisite for representative democracy. These ideas include the separation of religious and secular authority, the rule of law, pluralism, representative institutions, and individual rights (Inglehart and Norris, 2003, 63). Inglehart and Norris test this hypothesis through data from the World Values Surveyduring the years 1995-96 and 2000-2002 (Inglehart and Norris, 2003, 65). They discern that on issues related to regime type and democratic ideals Western and Muslim nations barely differ. Both support the idea of democracy at rates greater than 80%. The discrepancy appears over issues of individual rights such as gender equality, abortion, divorce and homosexuality. On average Muslim countries show 25% less support for these ideas. Thus Huntington’shypothesis is half correct. This leads to the conclusion that although democracy would be supported if it appeared in Islamic societies, it would largely be unsustainable if it ventured into the arena of individual rights, and would thus turn into “Illiberal democracy” to quote Zakaria: a society with electoral rights but lacking in civil rights(Inglehart and Norris, 2003, 64).

There are two main quantitative studies done on this subject by Ahmed Mobarak and Robert J. Barro, respectively. Mobarak tests the impact of economic volatility on the level of freedom in a large n study, in which he places a control for Muslim countries. He utilizes a dummy variable for countries where greater than 50% of the population is Muslim. In the case of borderline demographics, the country is assigned as Islamic if the government of the nation is largely controlled by Muslims. Mobarak conceives that there is a negative association between the Islam dummy variable and the level of freedom in a country (Mobarak, 2005, 357). He offers two reasons as to why this statistically significant correlation exists. The first is a cultural explanation. The nations of the Middle East are populated by tribes. In such a culture, hereditary rule and patriarchy is emphasized. These cultural practices are reflected in the government structure as well where autocratic monarchies are visible. Another reason for the discordant tendency is the nature of the Islamic religion. Islam is a religion that pervades into the political domain. Islamic law is obtained from the Sharia, which places emphasis on divine law, as opposed to man-made law. Under such a belief structure,laws and governments are legitimized by religious doctrinerather than democratic consensus (Mobarak, 2005, 355). The shortfall of this study is that it classifies Islam as a dummy variable when it could be more appropriate to evaluate it as a numerical variable.

Robert J. Barro also attempts to decipher the relationship between religion and the level of democracy. From a sample of 100 countries during the time period 1975-1995, he assigns each one into the following religious categories: Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Non-religious. He detects that the average score of 32 Muslim countries on the Freedom House Adjusted Electoral Rights Index is extremely low (.26) when compared with all other religions. For example, a sample of 53 Catholic countries display a mean Index score of .60 (Barro, 1999, S174). Based upon such preliminary analysis Barro decides to include eachreligion in his design as a controlled dummy variable. He observes that the only negatively significant relationship in the design is the one concerning Islamic countries. In fact forevery one unit increase in the independent variable (Muslim country) there is a .32 decrease in the level of Electoral Rights (Barro, 1999, S176). Once again the defect of this study lies in its assignment of Islam as a dummy variable. I will opt to utilize the percentage of the country that is Muslim rather than utilizing a dummy variable to assess the importance of Islam on democracy.

Aside from Islam there are several factors that literature suggests influence the level of democracy in a country. These include economic development, education, oil reliance, and stability. The most important of these, because it has withstood the test of time, is economic prosperity. This idea was initially put forth by Semour Lipset, who conducted a bivariate analysis utilizing a large number of countries. For the independent variable tabulation he divided the countries into one of four categories: stable democracies, unstable democracies, unstable dictatorships and stable dictatorships. He cross tabulated this against the dependant variable which were indicators of the level of economic performance. Lipset concluded that there was an association between the level of economic development of a country and its level of democracy. Although primitive, this study was important in encouraging greater research in the arena of political economy (Sanderson, 2004, 3). Its ammaturity is evident because it could not control for alternate variablesdue to its bivaraite status.

Robert J. Barro executes a cross-sectional, time-series panel study of 100 countries from 1960 to 1995 to measure the impact of economic development on the level of democracy. He operationalizes economic development as the Per Capita GDP of a countryand the level of Democracy through the Gastil indicator of Political/Electoral Rights supplied by Freedom House (Barro, 1999, S158). Gastil defines political rights as the ability to participate meaningfully in the political process. More accurately it is “the right of all adultsto vote and compete for public office, and for elected representatives to have a decisive vote on public policies” (Gastil, 1986–87, 7). Meanwhile civil rights are defined as the “right to freeexpression, to organize or demonstrate, as well as rights to a degreeof autonomy such as is provided by freedom of religion, education,travel, and other personal rights’’ (Gastil, 1986–87, 7). Barro excludes civil rights from his analysis. The rankings of Political Rights on the Freedom House Index range from a scale of 1-7, with one indicating the highest level of rights and sevendisplayingmassive restrictions upon them. Barro rearranges this scale from 0-1 arriving at the denouement that the log of Real Per Capita GDP is positively and significantly correlated with the expansion of rights(Barro, 1999, S161). He subsequently displays that Per Capita GDP has a Beta value of .016 and .013 for the time periodsupon which the scrutiny isadministered(Barro, 1999, S196). Although this study is large enough to be conclusive it does not capture the “principle” aspect of democracy by narrowly defining it in the Shumpeterian view of electoral participation. By limiting the scope of democracy Barro’s study cannot judiciously reflect the economy-democracy relationship.

Burkhart and Lewis-Beck carried out Granger analysis on 131 nations from the period 1972-1989. Through the result of Granger tests, they firmly state economic prosperity “causes” democracy(Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994, 903). The averages of Political and Civil Rights from Freedom House, which range from 2-14, are operationalized for the level of democracy (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994, 904). The Log of Per Capita Energy Consumption is used to measure economic development (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994, 905). Their results display significance. Every tenfold increase in Per Capita Energy Consumption leads to a two and a half point increase in the level of Democracy (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994, 907).Although this study provides good evidence for robustness, it does have a flaw. It includes the World Systems Position of a country as an alternate variable. The World Systems position labels a country as a member of the core, the semi-periphery or the periphery (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994, 903). These positions are assigned based upon economic conditions. As a result, more prosperous nations are likely to fall in the core, developing economies in the semi-periphery and underdeveloped ones in the periphery. Therefore, the possibility of multi-colinearity between Per Capita Energy Consumption and World Systems Position is high. Since the authors do not run any tests for multi-colinearity, one can assume that their association and significance indicators are exaggerated.

There are two explanations available for the economy-democracy hypothesis. The first explanation is offered by modernization scholars such as Lipset and Larry Diamond. Stephen Sanderson explains that industrialization and urbanization leads to the formation of an educated middle class. Such a class establishes a new ideology that is conducive to democracy, while the lower strata become less responsive to leftist political extremism or authoritative rule. This increases the demand for democracy(Sanderson, 2004, 6).Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi offer a different interpretation of the correlation between economic development and democracy. They assess the situation in terms of democratic consolidation rather than the level of democratic rights. They argue that democracy emerges not through industrialization, as modernization theory would suggest, but rather through political actors. Then once it is established, its survival depends on economic conditions. The chances of democratic consolidation are greater in countries with higher Per Capita GDP than those with lower Per Capita GDP (Przeworski and Limongi, 1997, 177).The relationship of economy and democratic consolidation is reflected mathematically as a correlation, when in reality it is not necessarily the case.

In addition to economics, education is stressed as a crucial antecedent that affects the level of democracy. AlbertoAlesina and Dani Rodrik validate this in a large N time series study. While evaluating the economy-democracy hypothesis, Alesina and Rodrik control for the effect of education on the level of democracy. Education is operationalized as the gross enrollment ratio of primary school education (Alesina and Rodrik, 1994, 481). They obtain large N samples (greater than thirty cases) for each five year increment between 1965-1985. For each of the four intervals, the samples display a significantly positive association between education and the level of democracy (Alesina and Rodrik, 1994, 482).The causal impacts on democracy as a result of education can be assessed in light of modernization theory.

In research executed by Dennis Quinn and John Woolley, the authors control for the impact of education on democracy. They perform statistical analysis on a sample of 109 countries from 1974-1989. Education is measured through the gross enrollment ratio of primary school education, as well as the gross enrollment ratio of secondary school education (Quinn and Woolley, 2001, 645). Although they determine significant correlations between economic prosperity and the gross primary ratio as well as the gross secondary ratio, the data appears to be strange. The gross primary ratio shows a positive association while the gross secondary ratio exhibits a negative association (Quinn and Woolley, 2001, 644). This is most likely due to multi-colinearity which has also inflated their measures of significance. This can be corrected by combining the two enrollment ratios or removing one.

Economic development and education have been proven to be important for the level of democracy in the literature. Another important variable to consider is oil. Although the general consensus in political science is that economic growth and development leads to higher rates of democratization, there is an exception to this idea in the case of rich oil-exporting countries.Robert Barro introduces a control for oilto assess the imprint it might have on the level of freedom in a country. Barro codes major oil-exporting countries as a dummy variable, where a nation is considered to be oil-exporting if petroleum constitutes greater than two-thirds of its exports (Barro, 1999, S164).The oil dummy turns out to be significant. It can be mathematically explicatedthat for every addition of an oil-exporting country to the equation there is a .32 decrease in the Level of Electoral/Political Rights. Barro explains this association through the concept of the Rentier State. The Rentier State theory suggests that governments with vast quantities of natural resources are able to employ low tax rates and extensive social welfare expenditures to decrease pressure for accountability, thus inhibiting the emergence of democracy (Barro, 1999, S167). The problem with this design is that it utilizes a dummy variable, implying that there is a threshold point where a state will begin to experience negative effects on democracy associated with oil exporting.

Michael Ross tests the relationship between oil and democracy in 113 countries from the year 1971 to 1997, assuming that the former will hinder the latter (Ross, 2001, 325).He offers two explanations as to why oil might prevent the emergence of high levels of democracy. The first elucidation rests on the repressive capacity of the state. The resource wealth of a country enables the government to boost its coercive abilities through the establishment ofinstitutions for internal security such as the police, thus decreasing the chances of a revolution or a rebellion. The second explication is rooted in the modernization theory. Modernization theory suggests that industrialization causes certain social and cultural changes which increase the demand for democratization. In oil countries, however, the countries grow rich without the need to modernize through the normal process of industrialization. Therefore they never develop into democracies (Ross, 2001, 328). He operatioinalizes oil exports through the Index of Oil Reliance provided by the World Bank which divides the value of petro exports by the GDP. Democracy is operationalized through an assessment of regime type based on a 0-10 scale, where the lower end indicatesauthoritarianism and the higher end displays democracy. Ross determines that there is a significant correlation between oil exports and democracy at the .01 level. For every one unit increase in the Index of Oil Reliance there is .49 decrease in the unit of Regime type (Ross, 2001, 342).

The literature also includes stability as an important instrument related to the level of democracy.Dennis Quinn and John Woolley indulge in such a study. They test the stability-democracy hypothesis on a large sample (Quinn and Woolley, 2001, 634). They operationalize instability in economic terms, that is in terms of economic volatility. If economic volatility is high in a region then bureaucrats may clamp down on electoral and civil rights, leading to deterioration on the democracy scale. The level of freedom is measured through the Bollen Index. (Quinn and Woolley, 2001, 635). The authors deduce that the effect of economic volatility on the level of freedom in a country is significantly negative (Quinn and Woolley, 2001, 640). There are two deficiencies with this study. My primary concern is that they operationalize instability through economic means. This ignores auxiliary determinantsof stability such as corruption, the enforcement of contracts, political violence and others. In fact in many instances a country might not even experience economic volatility when it is unstable, instead it might remain economically stagnant. Secondarily, they draw upon an outdated index for measuring the level of freedom. Many scholars have criticized the Bollen Index because it is not reliable, attaining a reliability score of 68% at a maximum (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994, 904).