Gauging Arab support for democracy

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 83-97

  Tessler, Mark ^a,b   Gao, Eleanor ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

^b Democracy and the State   (Algeria)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 23744492715     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2005.0054     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. Adrian Karatnycky, "A Century of Progress," Journal of Democracy 11 (January 2000): 187-200.
2. See also Emmanuel Sivan, "Arabs and Democracy: Illusions of Change," Journal of Democracy 11 (July 2000): 69-83.
3. Lisa Anderson, "Politics in the Middle East: Opportunities and Limits in the Quest for Theory," in Mark Tessler with Jodi Nachtwey and Anne Banda, eds., Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 6.
4. Marsha Pripstein Posusney, "Enduring Authoritarianism: Middle East Lessons for Comparative Theory," Comparative Politics 36 (January 2004): 135.
5. Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, "Middle East Democracy," Foreign Policy, November-December 2004, 23.
6. Rami Khouri, "A View from the Arab World," Jordan Times (Amman), 5 July 2000.
7. Fares al-Braizat, "Muslims and Democracy: An Empirical Critique of Fukuyama's Culturalist Approach," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 2 (Spring 2003): 53.
8. Mohamed Talbi, "Arabs and Democracy: A Record of Failure," Journal of Democracy 11 (July 2000): 62.
9. Nadir Farjani, ed., The Arab Human Development Report 2002 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2002), ch. 7. Available online at www.rbas.undp.org.
10. See the introduction to Nadir Farjani, ed., The Arab Human Development Report 2003 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2002). Available at www.rbas.undp.org.
11. This was the subject of a panel entitled "Missing or Coherent Links: Public Opinion, Civil Society and Institutions in the Arab World" at the Midwest Political Science Association's 2004 annual meeting, Chicago, 15-18 April 2004.
12. Panelists included Mark Tessler, Amaney Jamal, Ellen Lust-Okar, Michael Herb, Lisa Wedeen, and Julian Schwedler. See also Eva Beilin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East," Comparative Politics 36 (January 2004): 139-156.
13. This thesis is developed in Ellen Lust-Okar, "Divided They Rule: The Management and Manipulation of Political Opposition," Comparative Politics 36 (January 2004): 159-79.
14. Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture (London: Frank Cass, 1994), 5-6.
15. Kedourie writes, "The notion of popular sovereignty as the foundation of governmental legitimacy, the idea of representation, or elections, of popular suffrage, of political institutions being regulated by laws laid down by a parliamentary assembly, of these laws being guarded and upheld by an independent judiciary, the ideas of the secularity of the state, of society being composed of a multitude of self-activating groups and associations-all of these are profoundly alien to the Muslim political tradition." See also Bernard Lewis, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 54-56.
16. Youssef Choueiri, "The Political Discourse of Contemporary Islamist Movements," in Abdel Salem Sidahmed and Anoushiravam Ehteshami, eds., Islamic Fundamentalism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 21-22.
17. See for example Shukri Abed, "Islam and Democracy," in David Garnham and Mark Tessler, eds., Democracy, War, and Peace in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 127-28.
18. Mark Tessler, "Do Islamic Orientations Influence Attitudes Toward Democracy in the Arab World: Evidence from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 2 (Spring 2003): 229-49;
19. and Mark Tessler "Islam and Democracy in the Middle East: The Impact of Religious Orientations on Attitudes toward Democracy in Four Arab Countries," Comparative Politics 34 (April 2002): 337-54.
20. In another study, at the country rather than individual level of analysis, Fares al-Braizat reports similar findings. Using World Values Survey data, he correlates average per country support for democracy with average per country religiosity and finds the relationship to be insignificant, with Arab and other Muslim countries for the most part high in both support for democracy and religiosity. See Fares al-Braizat, "Muslims and Democracy," 47-76.
21. Ronald Inglehart et al., eds., Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-cultural Sourcebook Based on the 1999-2002 Values Surveys (Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 2004).
22. Descriptive and methodological information about the World Values Survey in these and other countries is available at http://wvs.isr.umich.edu. Sample sizes, percent female, and year of conduct are as follows: Egypt, N=3000, 48.7 percent female, conducted in 2000; Morocco, N=2264, 50.8 percent female, conducted in 2000; Jordan, N=1223, 51.3 percent female, conducted in 2001; Algeria, N=1282, 49.3 percent female, conducted in 2002.
23. Fares al-Braizat, "Muslims and Democracy," 67.
24. Mark Tessler is the principal investigator for this project, which expects to add surveys in Kuwait and Morocco during 2005. Overseas collaborators include Khalil Shikaki in Palestine, Mustafa Hamarneh in Jordan, and Abdallah Bedaida and Mohammed Abidi in Algeria. All of the surveys are based on highly representative area-probability samples. The surveys in Palestine and Jordan were carried out in December 2003. The survey in Algeria was conducted in July and August 2004; the one in Iraq in November and December 2004.
25. The principal investigators for this project are Mansoor Moaddel, Mark Tessler, and Ronald Inglehart. The collaborator in Iraq is Munqith Daghir, director of the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies. The survey is based on an area-probability sample, with interviews conducted in 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces. The two excluded provinces are Ninawa (Mosul) and Dahuk, the former because of the security situation and the latter because of opposition from Iraqi authorities. Respondents from Baghdad constitute 22.2 percent of the sample. At least 120 respondents, or 4.4 percent of all respondents, were interviewed in every province selected. Respondents residing in urban areas constitute 68.9 percent of the total sample. 375 interviews, or 13.9 percent, were not completed and are not included in the present analysis.
26. One of the response codes in this item differed slightly in the case of the 2003-2004 surveys in Palestine, Jordan, and Algeria. Rather than the response of "fairly good," as in the World Values Survey interview schedule, and also the survey instrument employed in Iraq, the response code in this position was simply "good" in the 2003-2004 Palestinian, Jordanian, and Algerian surveys. This may have contributed to the very slight differences between response distributions in the various countries.
27. For a fuller exposition of the relationship between Islam and politics, see Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996);
28. and John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
29. Mehran Tamadanfar states that "even during periods of quietism, Islam has played a determining role in Arab politics." See Mehran Tamandanfar, "Islamism in Contemporary Arab Politics," in Ted Jelen and Clyde Wilcox, eds., Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 141.
30. The growing strength of political Islam by the early 1990s is reflected in the titles of a series of articles in the New York Times by Youssef Ibrahim, "Militant Muslims Grow Stronger As Algeria's Economy Grows Weaker," 25 June 1990; "
31. Jordan Feels Change Within As Muslims Pursue Agenda," 26 December 1992;
32. and "Palestinian Religious Militants: Why Their Ranks Are Growing" 8 November 1994.
33. For a discussion of the situation through the 1990s, see Mark Tessler, "Democratic Concern and Islamic Resurgence: Converging Dimensions of the Arab World's Political Agenda," in Howard Handelman and Mark Tessler, eds., Democratization and Its Limits: Lessons from Latin American, Asia, and the Middle East (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1999).
34. In the interview schedule, the first survey item included in Figure 3 asks whether men of religion should not wield influence over the decisions of the government. The direction of the item has been reversed in the figure to make it easier to interpret. The figure shows whether respondents agree or disagree that men of religion should wield influence over the decisions of the government.
35. Correlation coefficients between the two items measuring attitudes toward democracy are Palestine: .315; Jordan: .338; Algeria: .444; Iraq: .185. In all cases, p < .001. In dichotomizing the index measuring attitudes toward democracy, respondents who express either a very favorable attitude toward democracy on both of the items, a very favorable attitude toward democracy on one item and a fairly favorable attitude on the other item, or a fairly favorable attitude on both items are rated as more supportive of democracy. Others are classified as less supportive of democracy. Although correlation coefficients between the two items in Figure 3 pertaining to political Islam are significant at the .01 level in all four countries, they are not strong enough to justify combining the items into an index. One reason for this may be that some respondents favor political Islam to the extent of believing that men of religion should have political influence but not to the extent of believing that laws should be based solely on the shari'a. Accordingly, the first of these items has been dichotomized, based on whether or not respondents disagree or disagree strongly that men of religion should not have influence over government decisions, and this dichotomized item has been cross-tabulated with the dichotomized democracy index to construct the four categories reported in the table.
36. This possibility is explored in Mark Tessler, Carrie Konold, and Megan Reif, "Political Generations in Developing Countries: Evidence and Insights from Algeria," Public Opinion Quarterly 68 (Summer 2004): 184-216.
37. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, "An Open Door," Wilson Quarterly 28 (Spring 2004): 36-46.
38. Neil MacFarquahar, "Mubarak Tells Egypt to Hold Freer Elections," New York Times, 27 February 2005.
39. Peter Bergen, "Letter from Riyadh: Are We Witnessing a Saudi Glasnost?" Saudi-U.S. Relations Information Service, 17 February 2005.
40. Neil MacFarquahar, "Mubarak Tells Egypt to Hold Freer Elections."
41. See also "Egypt's Brutal Answer," Washington Post, 24 February 2005, A20. The Post noted that Mubarak's agents were continuing their "interrogation" of Ayman Nour, the imprisoned head of the liberal opposition Tomorrow Party, leading the Egyptian Human Rights Organization to issue a statement warning that Nour's life is in danger.
42. Ziad-Abu Amr, "Palestine: The Region's Second Democracy?" Arab Reform Bulletin 3 (February 2005). Available at www.carnegieendowment.org.
43. Amy Hawthorne, "Political Reform in the Arab World: A New Ferment?" Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Paper No. 52, Washington, D.C., October 2004, 11. Available at www.carnegieendowment.org.
44. Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, "Middle East Democracy," 22, 24.