Do Islamic Orientations Influence Attitudes toward Democracy in the Arab World? Evidence from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria.(World Values Survey)

The Absence of Democracy in World During last two decades, democratic currents swept across developing and post-communist world. While democratic regimes were in minority just a few years ago, electoral democracy is predominant form of government among today's nation-states and guides lives of more than half of world's population (Karatnycky 2000). The world, however, has been largely unaffected by this revolution, which Huntington has called Third Wave of democratization (Huntington 1991). According to Freedom House, not a single country qualifies as an electoral democracy (Karatnycky 2000; Sivan 2000:70). The 1980s and early 1990s did witness halting moves toward democratization in some countries. Confronted with popular anger fueled by economic difficulties, government mismanagement and corruption, and violation of human rights, a number of governments enacted programs of liberalization. For most part, however, these reforms were part of a containment strategy designed to increase regime legitimacy at a time when calls for change were widespread. Accordingly, and not surprisingly given their strategic purpose, most of these democratic experiments were slowed or even abandoned during 1990s. By end of decade, as Anderson wrote in 1999, landscape was littered with the remnants of so many of democratic experiments--from spectacular crash and burn of Algeria's liberalization to Tunisia's more subtle but no less profound transformation into a police state, from Egypt's backsliding into electoral manipulation [and repression of Islamic movement s] to reluctance of Palestinian authorities to embrace human rights (Anderson 1999:6). This situation is acknowledged and lamented by intellectuals as well as Western scholars. A Lebanese scientist writes, for example, that unchecked authoritarian rule is paving way to a deep crisis in fabric of society (Khashan 1998:43-44). Similarly, according to a Jordanian journalist, one of leading sources of instability and political-economic distortion in world is unchecked use of state power, combined with state's whimsical ability to use rule of law for its own ends (Khouri 2000). Against this background, intellectuals from thirteen countries attending a December 1999 conference in Amman, Jordan, issued a final communique emphasizing need for greater freedoms and intellectual pluralism (Al-Farawati 1999). Their concern, in assessment of still another scholar, is that Arab countries do not allow freedom of thought. . . Where necessary, their surveillance spares neither telephone nor mail, neither fax nor Internet (Talbi 2000:62). There are some exceptions to this depressing characterization. In Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Qatar, for example, some would argue that there is continuing albeit uneven progress and that it is possible to a meaningful debate about whether glass is half full or half empty. In Palestinian Authority, too, there been accomplishments as well as setbacks in struggle for democratic governance. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, world clearly stands apart from other world with respect to authoritarian character of its governments and limited influence of institutions and individuals working for democracy. This point is emphasized by recent Human Development Report (AHDR) of United Nation's Development Program, published in 2002. The report observes that, as in 1980s, openings remain heavily regulated and partial and systems have not been opened up to all citizens. Thus, report continues, political participatio n is less advanced in world than in other developing regions and, with understatement, transfer of power through ballot box is not a common phenomenon (AHDR 2002, chap. …

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