Commitment problems in emerging democracies: The case of religious parties

Comparative Politics

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 379-398

  Kalyvas, Stathis N ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0007343120     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/422385     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Religious parties are political actors who rely on appeals that incorporate and appropriate religious symbols and rituals.
2. In parliamentary systems, a parliamentary majority; in presidential systems, both the presidency and the parliament.
3. Challengers in need of allies must make concessions. Examples include France in 1981, Turkey in 1995, and India in 1998-99. As Turkey indicates, although coalition cabinets might be sufficient in restraining challengers, they still might dissatisfy incumbents, especially the military.
4. Obviously, when incumbents do not have the power (or are unwilling) to subvert the electoral outcome, then challengers can (and will) enact their program. For example, in Weimar Germany the Nazis were able to subvert the democratic regime only when a segment of incumbents colluded with them. Collusion between incumbents and challengers at the expense of democracy requires a willingness to ally with the challenger and adopt its program, as the Nationalists did in Germany.
5. In the context of a negotiated transition, guaranteeing submission to democratic control is analytically equivalent to guaranteeing the incumbents' postelectoral position and interests; negotiated transitions tend to produce socially conservative democracies.
6. Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 170.
7. Even if successful, the initial incorporation of powerful challengers into democratic institutions does not guarantee democratic consolidation. However, without their incorporation democratization fails.
8. I. William Zartman, "The Challenge of Democratic Alternatives in the Maghreb," in John Ruedy, ed., Islamism and Secularism in North Africa (New York: St. Martin's Press), p. 209.
9. Robert Mortimer, "Islam and Multiparty Politics in Algeria," Middle East Journal, 45 (October 1991), 592.
10. Jean-Jacques Lavenue, "Le FIS et la constitution algérienne," Praxis Juridique et Religion, 10 (March 1993), 132.
11. This fact is hardly surprising since (free) elections are rare in the Middle East.
12. Christian Democratic parties won such victories after they shed their religious character. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
13. I refer to the way in which religion is organized. Here I adopt a simple distinction between centralized and decentralized religious institutions.
14. In 1959 the West German Social Democratic Party convened a special party conference in the town of Bad Godesberg at which Marxism was rejected, private ownership of the means of production embraced, and party opposition to NATO reversed.
15. Oliver Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 4.
16. Mustafa Al-Ahnaf, Bernard Botiveau, and Franck Frégosi, L'Algérie par ses islamistes (Paris: Karthala, 1991).
17. Roy, p. 195; John P. Entelis, "Islam, Democracy, and the State: The Reemergence of Authoritarian Politics in Algeria," in Ruedy, ed., p. 231.
18. Pradeep K. Chhibber, "State Policy, Rent Seeking, and the Electoral Success of a Religious Party in Algeria," Journal of Politics, 58 (February 1996), 126-48.
19. The FIS won 55 percent of the popular vote and control of 856 of 1,541 municipalities; the FLN won 28 percent of the popular vote.
20. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 150.
21. Severine Labat, Les islamistes Algériens: Entre les urnes et le maquis (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1995);
22. Amine Touati, Algérie, les islamistes à l'assault du pouvoir (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995);
23. Andrew J. Pierre and William B. Quandt, The Algerian Crisis: Policy Options for the West (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), p. 13.
24. Labat, p. 74.
25. Madani's 1989 book, The Crisis of Modern Thought and the Justifications of the Islamic Solution, included calls for a political system based on "God's sovereignty." Al-Ahnaf, Botiveau, and Frégosi, pp. 77-87.
26. Labat, pp. 173-75.
27. Excerpts from articles published by Benhadj in the FIS newspaper Al-Munquith, as translated by Al-Ahnaf, Botiveau, and Frégosi, pp. 87-100.
28. Also see Abdelasiem El-Difraoui, "La critique du système démocratique par le Front islamique du salut," in Gilles Kepel, ed., Exils et Royaumes: Les appartenances au monde arabo-musulman aujourd'hui (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1994), pp. 105-24.
29. Pierre van Zuylen, "La Belgique et le Vatican en 1879," Revue Générale Belge, 21 (1954), 1906.
30. Stathis N. Kalyvas, "Democracy and Religious Politics: Evidence from Belgium," Comparative Political Studies, 31 (June 1998), 291-319.
31. Alphonse Bellemans, Victor Jacobs (1838-1891) (Brussels: Albert Dewit, 1913), p. 365.
32. Camile de Hemptinne, Questionnaire Politique No 2: Le libéralisme (Ghent: Siffer, 1877), p. 6.
33. Arthur Verhaegen, Catholique et Politique (Bruges: Imprimerie Classique de Saint-Augustin, Desclée de Brouwer et Cie, 1878).
34. Prosper de Haulleville, "Vainqueurs, que ferons-nous?," Revue Générale, 23 (1876), 138.
35. J. D'Anethan, "Les devoirs de l'opposition," Revue Générale, 29 (1879), 97.
36. Journal de Bruxelles, Nov. 10, 1877.
37. Bellemans, p. 365.
38. Charles Woeste, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire contemporaine de la Belgique, vol. 1 (Brussels: Librairie Albert Dewit, 1927), p. 149.
39. Journal de Bruxelles, July 27, 1878.
40. Quoted in Alois Simon, L'hypothèse libérale en Belgique: Documents inédits 1839-1907 (Wetteren: Scaldis, 1956), p. 174.
41. Verhaegen, Catholique et Politique.
42. Touati, p. 70.
43. Labat, pp. 147-71; Touati, p. 71; Sophie Bessis, "Les specificités de l'islamisme algérien," in Reporters sans Frontières, Le drame Algérien: Un peuple en otage (Paris: La Découverte, 1994), p. 197.
44. Charles Woeste, "Les progrès de l'évolution du Libéralisme Belge," Revue Générale, 28 (1878), 634.
45. Yahia H. Zoubir, "Stalled Democratization of an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Algeria," Democratization, 2 (Summer 1995), 129; Lavenue, p. 137; Touati, p. 71.
46. Ghazi Hidouci, Algérie: La libération inachevée (Paris: La Découverte, 1995), p. 267.
47. Ahmed Rouadjia, "Le FIS et l'Etat islamique," in Reporters sans Frontières, p. 202.
48. Nineteenth century Belgium was an exclusionary regime whose political actors displayed mutual intolerance and distrust and where the masses, as well as the radical Liberal and Catholic elites, lacked a democratic culture. Class and religious conflict raged; Catholics and Liberals battled against each other in bloody street demonstrations, while workers lived in utmost misery and were violently repressed by the Belgian army at the cost of dozens of lives. Warnings that politics had become "a religious struggle" leading to "no other possible outcome than the proscription of liberalism or the destruction of the church" were commonplace. Indeed, two leading Belgian historians metaphorically describe Belgian politics during the 1870s as a "true ideological civil war." In contrast, the failure of democratization in Algeria came as a surprise. As Carlier points out, "nobody could imagine, in the summer of 1988, that Algeria could fall into the most bloody civil war of the contemporary Arab world." In fact, francophone North Africa was for a long time thought to be culturally immune to Islamism. Algeria, in particular, stands out in the Arab world because of its close ties to Europe, its more egalitarian society, and its highly literate urban population, factors that turned it into a "perfect candidate for democratization." Its early and vigorous associational life established the foundations of a robust civil society. Its political culture was marked by the legacies of the French humanist and legalist tradition in Algerian society. Finally, both Belgium and Algeria were young states under French supervision, vulnerable to foreign intervention, undergoing a process of modernization, state-building, and nation-building in a period of international democratic expansion (the first and third "waves"). Els Witte and Jan Craeybeckx, La Belgique politique de 1830 à nos jours: Les tensions d'une démocratie bourgeoise (Brussels: Editions Labor, 1987), pp. 100, 54; de Haulleville, p. 133;
49. Omar Carlier, Entre Nation et Jihad: Histoire sociale des radicalismes Algériens (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1995), pp. 9, 151-62;
50. John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 152;
51. Giacomo Luciani, "The Oil Rent, the Fiscal Crisis of the State, and Democratization," in Ghassan Salamé, ed., Democracy without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994), p. 145; Rouadjia, p. 202.
52. Charles Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 23.
53. Kalyvas, "Democracy and Religious Politics," pp. 291-319.
54. A historian has termed the radical Catholic project "ultramontane fundamentalism." C. Weber, "Ultramontanismus als Katholischer Fundamentalismus," in W. Loth, ed., Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur Moderne (Stuttgart: 1991).
55. John Waterbury, "Democracy without Democrats? The Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle East," in Salamé, ed., p. 40.
56. Jean Leca, "Democratization in the Arab World: Uncertainty, Vulnerability and Legitimacy: A Tentative Conceptualization and Some Hypotheses," in Salamé, ed., p. 75.
57. Steven Heydemann, "Is the Middle East Different?," Journal of Democracy, 7 (April 1996), 175.
58. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
59. Dankwart A. Rustow, "Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics, 2 (April 1970), 345-53.
60. John Waterbury, "Fortuitous By-Products," Comparative Politics, 29 (April 1997), 383-402.
61. Labat, p. 220; Zoubir, p. 129.
62. Leca, p. 76.
63. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market.
64. Zoubir, p. 117.
65. "The same totalitarian statism and vilification of dissent (only worse) could be found elsewhere, yet change has not always come at such price - witness the case of so much of the former Soviet bloc." Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 248.
66. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market.
67. Carlier, p. 383.
68. There was a "clear will on the part of the government to engage in democratization." Luciani, p. 147. Also see Pierre and Quandt, p. 7; and John Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 250.
69. Mohand Salah Tahi, "Algeria's Democratisation Process: A Frustrated Hope," Third World Quarterly, 16 (June 1995), 212. Madani even thought that the military might side with the FIS during the May 1991 strike. Touati, p. 45; Zoubir, p. 126.
70. Mortimer, "Islam and Multiparty Politics," p. 592.
71. Robert Mortimer, "Islamists, Soldiers, and Democrats: The Second Algerian War," Middle East Journal, 50 (January 1996), 24.
72. Touati, p. 225; Mortimer, "Islam and Multiparty Politics," p. 576.
73. Touati, p. 126.
74. Ibid.
75. Anna Bozzo, "Strategie dell' Islam politico: Il case del Algeria," Parolechiave, 3 (1993), 172. Pierre and Quandt, p. 8, point out that "many Algerians breathed a sigh of relief when the military stepped in to prevent the FIS from coming to power with a large parliamentary majority."
76. Mortimer, "Islamists, Soldiers, and Democrats," p. 19.
77. Mortimer, "Islamists, Soldiers, and Democrats,Ibid., p. 16; Labat, p. 291.
78. Abed Charef, Algérie: Le grande dérapage (Paris: L'Aube, 1994), p. 188; Touati, p. 75.
79. Negative shifts of power within the frame of competitive institutions appear to have a moderating effect on political actors. Kalyvas, "Democracy and Religious Politics."
80. Labat, pp. 119-24; Touati, pp. 9, 74; Charef, p. 219. 72. Labat, p. 119.
81. Arun Kapil, "Algeria," in Frank Tachau, ed., Political Parties of the Middle East and North Africa (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 43.
82. Labat, pp. 105-8.
83. Touati, pp. 102-3.
84. François Burgat, L'islamisme en face (Paris: La Découverte, 1996), pp. 158-59; Labat, p. 106.
85. As quoted in Charef, p. 243. While many of the FIS's positions on social issues and its references to Islamic law and the Islamic state appear extremist in a western context, they were less so in Algeria, where Islam occupied a central place in the country's constitution. During the 1970s and 1980s the "symbiosis" of Islam and the state was reinforced. Bozzo, p. 173.
86. Charef, pp. 189, 196.
87. Kapil, p. 5; Bessis, p. 197.
88. Severine Labat, "L'islamisme: Facteur paradoxal de sécularisation et de construction d'une société civile?," Paper presented at the fifth congress of the Association Française de Science Politique, April 23-26, 1996, p. 8; Al-Ahnaf, Botiveau, and Frégosi, p. 33.
89. Carlier, pp. 370, 376; Esposito, p. 177; Zoubir, p. 120.
90. Charef, pp. 109, 195.
91. Barbara Smith, "Algeria: The Horror," New York Review of Books, 45 (April 1998), 28.
92. Touati, pp. 103-4.
93. Hugh Roberts, "The Algerian State and the Challenge of Democracy," Government and Opposition, 27 (Autumn 1992), 451; Charef, p. 243; Entelis, p. 233.
94. Smith, p. 28.
95. Touati, p. 122.
96. Esposito, p. 177; Touati, p. 123.
97. Charef, p. 254.
98. J. Vander Vorst-Zeegers, Le "Journal de Bruxelles" de 1871 à 1884 (Leuven-Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1965), p. 237.
99. Van Zuylen, pp. 1733-37.
100. Simon, p. 277. Incumbents in Belgium were firmly opposed to a radical Catholic victory. The king, an autonomous actor within the incumbent block, was proliberal and had a high degree of influence over the (proliberal) military. Woeste recalls in his memoirs: "Liberals of all hues willingly depicted the conservative [Catholic] party as possessing subversive projects whose ultimate goal was the establishment of a powerful theocracy; they pointed to the existence of an extreme right within the party, whose secret aim was to react against public freedoms in order to impose the temporal domination of the clergy." Jean Stengers, L'action du Roi en Belgique depuis 1831: Pouvoir et influence (Paris: Duculot, 1992), pp. 89-105;
101. Woeste, Mémoires, pp. 61, 78.
102. Woeste, Mémoires, p. 160.
103. What about the varying strength of the two mass movements? The Islamist movement in Algeria was stronger than its counterpart in Belgium and hence less amenable to control by the moderate leadership. However, it is not clear that the ultramontane movement in Belgium was weaker than the Islamist movement in Algeria relative to their respective parties. Moreover, the experience of social democratic parties suggests that moderate leaders are able to impose their decisions even on extremely powerful mass movements. Robert Michels, Political Parties (New York: Free Press, 1962).
104. Jean-Claude Vatin, "Revival in the Maghreb: Islam as Alternative Political Language," in Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, ed., Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World (New York: Praeger, 1982), p. 237.
105. Ahmed Rouadjia, Les frères et la mosquée: Enquête sur le mouvement islamiste en Algérie (Paris: Karthala, 1990).
106. Malley, p. 241; Severine Labat, "L'université Emir Abd El Kader de Constantine: L'islamisation sous contrôle," in Reporters sans Frontières, p. 87.
107. In addition, the Belgian Catholic church provided alternative options to rank-and-file radicals; it channeled them into the labor movement, a decision that eventually led to the development of the strongest Catholic labor movement in Europe.
108. Kalyvas, "Democracy and Religious Politics."
109. Esposito, p. 152; Roy, pp. 36-37.
110. Bernard Lewis, "Islam and Liberal Democracy: A Historical Overview," Journal of Democracy, 7 (April 1996), 54.
111. Samuel P. Huntington, "Democracy for the Long Haul," Journal of Democracy, 7 (April 1996), 9.
112. Charef, pp. 246-47. Obviously, the military prefers to intervene before.
113. Zoubir, p. 135.
114. Lahouari Addi, L'Algérie et la démocratie: Pouvoir et crise du politique dans l'Algérie contemporaine (Paris: La Découverte, 1994), pp. 188-95.
115. Waterbury, "Fortuitous By-Products."
116. "Some accuse the Catholic party of mixing religion to all its manifestations. But would it not be a supreme inconsequence for the believers not to assert publicly their Christian faith?" Bellemans, pp. 724-75.
117. Burgat, p. 233.
118. Charef, p. 516.
119. As quoted in Lavenue, p. 129.
120. Still, many leaders of the Islamist guerrillas have never been FIS activists. Luis Martinez, La guerre civile en Algérie (Paris: Karthala, 1998).
121. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," American Political Science Review, 90 (December 1996), 715-35.
122. David D. Laitin, "Language Conflict and Violence," unpublished paper, University of Chicago, 1999.
123. As pointed out above, there exists a structure of political competition such that authoritarian challengers may be able to accede to power through collusion with some incumbents. In this case, there obviously arises no commitment problem.