Attitudes in the Arab world

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 97-110

  Jamal, Amaney ^a   Tessler, Mark ^b  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 39349103033     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2008.0004     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. Arab Human Development Report ("New York: UN Development Programme, 2002); ch. 7, www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/hychapter.html.
2. Arab Human Development Report ('New York: UN Development Programme, 2003); Introduction, www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/english2003.html.
3. Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, "Middle East Democracy," Foreign Policy, November-December 2004, 22-28.
4. See also Marcia Posusney and Michelle Angrist, eds., Authoritarianism in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2005).
5. See, for example, Mark Tessler and Eleanor Gao, "Gauging Arab Support for Democracy," Journal of Democracy 16 (July 2005): 83-97;
6. 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;
7. Mark Tessler, Mansoor Moaddel, and Ronald Inglehart, "Getting to Arab Democracy: What Do Iraqis Want?" Journal of Democracy 17 (January 2006): 38-50.
8. Ronald Inglehart et al., eds., Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-cultural Source-book Based on the 1999-2002 Values Surveys (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2004).
9. The Arab Barometer team consists of partners in five Arab countries: Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies, Jordan; Khalil Shikaki of the Center for Policy and Survey Research, Palestine; Ghanim al-Najjar of Kuwait University, Kuwait; Mhammed Abderebbi of Hassan II University-Mohammadia, Morocco; and Abdallah Bedaida of the University of Algiers, Algeria. The first wave of the Arab Barometer project was funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) of the U.S. Department of State.
10. Additional surveys in the first wave of the Arab Barometer are scheduled to be carried out in Yemen and Lebanon in early 2008.
11. The characteristics attributed to democracy were assessed by the following item: "People often differ in their views on the characteristics that are essential to democracy. If you have to choose only one thing, what would you choose as the most important characteristic, and what would be the second most important?" The response code listed the four attributes discussed in the text and also gave respondents the option of specifying another characteristic. Almost 99 percent of the respondents selected one of the four listed characteristics.
12. For excellent discussions of the compatibility of Islam and democracy, see Khaled Abou Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004);
13. John Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);
14. José Casanova, "Civil Society and Religion: Retrospective Reflections on Catholicism and Prospective Reflections on Islam," Social Research 68 (Winter 2001): 1041-80;
15. and Vali Nasr, "The Rise of 'Muslim Democracy'?" Journal of Democracy 16 (April 2005): 13-27. For a data-based examination of why support for Islam in politics is compatible with support for democracy,
16. see Amaney Jamal, "Reassessing Support for Democracy and Islam in the Arab World: Evidence from Egypt and Jordan," World Affairs 169 (Fall 2006): 51-63.
17. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York; Simon and Schuster, 1996), 135-39.
18. See also his article "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984): 193-218.
19. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon, 1992), 45-46.
20. See, for example, Daniel Pipes, "Debate: Islam and Democracy," PBS "Wide Angle," 15 July 2003, www.danielpipes.org/article/ 1167.
21. See also Bernard Lewis, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);
22. and Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1992).
23. We used factor analysis to assess the consistency among a number of survey items designed to measure judgments pertaining to political Islam. Many of these items loaded highly on a common factor, offering evidence of reliability and increasing confidence in validity. The item asking whether men of religion should have influence over government decisions was the best single indicator of this dimension, and for purposes of clarity and parsimony it is used in the present analysis as a measure of support for political Islam.
24. Our regression tables may be found at www.journalofdemocracy.org/ articles/gratis/TesslerGraphics-19-1.pdf.
25. The regression table in question may be found at www. journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/TesslerGraphics-19-1.pdf.