Democratization in the Muslim World

The issue of the democratization of the Muslim world has puzzled scholarship since the end of the Cold War, when the third wave of democratization swept across the world but seemed to bypass most Muslim-majority countries, particularly the Arab world. Central to the debate about democratization in the Muslim world is the relationship between the Islamic religion and the political system supposedly bound up with it. As we will see, for some authors there is an inherent contradiction between the precepts of the Muslim faith and the requirements of democracy, while for others the two can be compatible or causally separated. When the debate on democratization is framed in these terms, it becomes very important to specify the definitions, issues, and processes investigated and evaluated to avoid confusion. When discussing processes of democratization—the move away from authoritarian practices to a political system based on political pluralism—there is a tendency in the literature to consider primarily the emergence of a very specific form of democracy: liberal democracy. There is therefore an important difference between democracy and democratization. Democratization is concerned with the introduction of democratic mechanisms and procedures and not necessarily with the granting of extensive liberal individual rights. One can then imagine a democratic political system where individual rights are limited and focus on the minimal requirements for equal political participation. Liberal democracy for its part is concerned with democratic political systems seeking to operationalize the progressive extension of different liberal individual rights. When this distinction is taken into account, it becomes easier to interpret and explain the changes—or absence thereof—occurring across the Muslim world. At this stage, a further distinction is necessary: the one between the Muslim world as a geographical area, in which people belonging to the Muslim faith are the majority or a very significant part of the population, and an Islamic system in which religious precepts actually organize social and political life. In this respect, one finds that a significant number of Muslim-majority countries can be labeled procedural democratic, while authoritarianism characterizes in fact the Arab world (with exceptions) and not the Muslim world per se, suggesting that there is nothing inherently antidemocratic in the Islamic religion. It should also then be noted that an Islamic system is actually in place in a very limited number of countries and that authoritarianism in Muslim and Arab countries is commonly not the product of the adoption of an Islamic system of government.