Muslims and Democracy: An Empirical Critique of Fukuyama's Culturalist approach.(Francis Fukuyama)

Introduction Since the nineteenth century the question of Islam and has been at the heart of intellectual debates in both the world and the West. Throughout this time-span three distinct but somewhat analogous strands of debates have emerged. One believes that the religion of Islam is incompatible with modem thinking and scientific rationality. The second posits the opposite view (i.e., a compatibility thesis). A third view posits that are some elements that can be incorporated, adapted, and adopted by the Islamic world but simultaneously rejects other elements of or deem them as alien. These three views have advocates both within and outside of the world. Their rationale to adopt a particular view may differ; Muslim advocates of the incompatibility thesis would advance their view in the name of cultural authenticity, while Western counterparts would advance their view in the name of, for example, ethnocentricity or secularism. Recently, Francis Fukuyama claimed that, in his view, Islam and are incompatible. He argued, there does seem to be something about Islam, or at least the fundamentalist versions of Islam that have been dominant in recent years, that makes Muslim societies particularly resistant to modernity (Fukuyama October 11, 2001). For Fukuyama, it is institutions such as liberal democracy and capitalism that characterize modernity. The prevalence of these two institutional systems in a given society qualifies that society as modern or, according to Fukuyama, as having reached the end of history (Fukuyama October 11, 2001). Fukuyama remains at the macro level of analysis. Accordingly, his claim will be tested at the appropriate level. Due to limitations of space, I will restrict the analysis to democracy. Fukuyama uses Islam as a yardstick that offers an easy cultural essentialist explanation for the absence of democracy from most Muslim countries. In this he converges with other culturalists blaming Islam for whatever goes wrong in a Muslim country. This cultural essentialism, when empirically tested, does not seem to offer much explanation. Is a better model that can explain the undemocratic nature of political systems in most Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East? In order to find out, we must test Fukuyama's theory in a Muslim context. The analysis will be carried out at the macro level and will focus on democracy as one dimension of modernity. It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine other manifestations. Even democracy will be examined at the abstract level, for instance, measuring support for democracy as an ideal form government as opposed to other forms of government. The data available from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey EVS allow for comparative analysis covering 80 percent of the world population. At the macro level, two statistical techniques are implemented. First, a correlation analysis is used to establish the strength of the relationship between the dependent variables (support for democracy, years of uninterrupted democracy) and the independent variable (religiosity with a focus on Islam). Then, regression analysis is implemented to evaluate the impact of religiosity (Fukuyama's single explanatory variable is religion), Human Development, and Political Opportunity Structures (POS) upon support for democracy. The latter is meant to measure the over-stretched state structure in the Muslim Middle East. I argue that support for democratic ideals is universal, although the institutional state of democracy may not reach the ideal, or falls far short of it, in some societies (particularly Muslim societies). Many prominent scholars (Fukuyama 2001; Huntington 1996) have attributed this state of affairs to cultural factors. It is the aim of this paper to evaluate these claims. The data set, which consists of representative samples of each population, covers Islamic countries as varied as Arab-Islamic societies such as Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco and None-Arab Islamic societies such as Iran, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey. …

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