Discussions about democracy in the Arab world often include attention to the political orientations of ordinary men and women. In particular, questions are raised about whether popular attitudes and beliefs constitute an obstacle to democratization, possibly because the religious traditions that predominate in most Arab countries inhibit the emergence of a democratic political culture. But while questions are frequently raised about the views of ordinary citizens, about what is sometimes described as the Arab street, answers are most often based on impressionistic and anecdotal information. Indeed, some analyses appear to be influenced by Western stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims. By contrast, systematic empirical inquiries into the nature, distribution, and determinants of political attitudes in the Arab world are rare. Against this background, the present paper examines the influence of Islam on attitudes toward democracy using public opinion data collected in Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt. In surveys conducted by or in collaboration with Arab scholars, interview schedules containing questions about governance and democracy and also about conceptions and practices relating to Islam were administered to comparatively large and representative samples of adults in all four countries, including two samples in Egypt. These data provide a strong empirical foundation for addressing questions about the relationship between Islam and democracy at the individual level of analysis.

  Democracy in the Middle East and Political Culture

 Despite a few exceptions, the Arab world has made relatively little progress toward political liberalization in recent years. On the contrary, many of the experiments in democratization that were launched a decade or so ago have been cut back substantially or even abandoned. A prominent American scholar describes the situation as exceptionally bleak… from the 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 political movements] to the obvious reluctance of Palestinian authorities to embrace human rights.

Yet the importance of political liberalization, and ultimately of democracy, has been emphasized by Arab as well as Western scholars. According to a Lebanese political scientist,unchecked authoritarianism in many Arab countries is paving the way to a deep crisis in the fabric of society.  Similarly, a Jordanian journalist writes that one of the leading sources of instability and political-economic distortion in the Arab world is the unchecked use of state power, combined with the state s whimsical ability to use the rule of law for its own political ends.  An Egyptian sociologist thus argues that political reform must be initiated, or else there is a real danger of political chaos, while a second Egyptian scholar laments that although I dreamed of democracy in my youth, I now see that our country is regressing politically.  Studies of democratic transitions and democratic consolidation identify two analytically distinct concerns to which attention must be devoted. One involves political institutions and processes. The other involves citizen attitudes and values, often described as political culture.

Institutional and process considerations call attention to the need for mechanisms that make political leaders accountable to those they govern, including free, competitive, and regular elections. Political culture calls attention to the orientations of ordinary men and women and, so far as democracy is concerned, to the need to develop civic and participatory norms at the level of the individual citizen.

The importance of political culture, the focus of the present study, has been documented in a growing number of empirical studies carried out in new democracies. This is illustrated, for example, by Mainwaring s conclusions about the reasons democratic consolidation has been more successful in Latin America than many other developing areas. An important factor that has contributed to the greater survivability of Latin American democracies, he writes, revolves around changes in political attitudes, toward a greater valorization of democracy.  Chu, Diamond and Shin offer a similar assessment in their study of Korea and Taiwan, stating that the consolidation of democratic transitions requires sustained, internalized belief in and commitment to the legitimacy of democracy among the citizenry at large.  Thus, as summarized by Inglehart, democracy is not attained simply by making institutional changes or through elite level maneuvering. Its survival depends also on the values and beliefs of ordinary citizens.  The applicability of these conclusions to the Arab world is noted by Harik, who writes in the long run, of course, a democratic government needs a democratic political culture, and vice versa.

Research in new democracies also sheds light on the particular attitudes and values that are necessary for successful democratization. Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer, for example, note that relevant citizen orientations include both support for democratic political institutions and such democratic values as tolerance of diversity and an appreciation of political competition and pluralism.0 According to Gibson, a democratic citizen is one who believes in individual liberty and is politically tolerant, has a certain distrust of political authority but at the same time is trusting of fellow citizens, is obedient but nonetheless willing to assert rights against the state, and views the state as constrained by legality.

Despite the importance of such research, there have been few studies of the attitudes and values related to democracy held by ordinary Arab men and women. There has been some relevant research using public opinion data from Palestine, as well as political attitude surveys of more limited scope and relevance in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. Overall, however, the absence of such research has been noted and lamented by students of Middle East politics. With public opinion data from four Arab societies and attitudes toward democracy treated as the dependent variable, the goal of the present study is to help fill this important gap.

Religion and Politics

To what extent do religious orientations account for variance in attitudes related to democracy in the Arab world? Two very different bodies of scholarly literature may be consulted for possible insights, and findings from the present study may contribute to each of these literatures. The first asks about the relationship between Islam and democracy, focusing for the most part on issues of doctrine and political thought. The second consists of empirical studies that assess the influence of religion and religiosity on various political attitudes in Western countries. There is much discussion, and considerable disagreement, about the relationship between democracy and Islam. Although stereotypes are sometimes advanced, questions about the influence of Islam are appropriate. There is a strong historic connection between religion and politics in the Muslim world, reflecting Islam s character as a religion of laws pertaining to societal organization as well as individual morality. Thus, as summarized in a recent study, Islam plays a critical role in shaping political culture, with no Middle Eastern Muslim country able to escape completely from its overarching reach. Indeed, this analysis continues, the intersection of culture and politics may be more pervasive than in other [non-Islamic] contexts.

In addition, Islam has become increasingly influential in Arab cultural and political life during the last quarter-century. On the one hand, new Muslim associations, study groups, welfare organizations, and financial institutions have emerged, accompanied by a sharp increase in such expressions of personal piety as mosque attendance and public prayer. On the other, Islam has become an important point of reference in debates about how the Arab world should be governed. Campaigning under the banner Islam is the solution, Muslim political organizations have had notable success in attracting new followers, including younger individuals, women as well as men, and many well-educated persons. So far as democracy is concerned, some observers, particularly some Western observers, assert that democracy and Islam are incompatible. Whereas democracy requires openness, competition, pluralism, and tolerance of diversity, Islam, they argue, encourages intellectual conformity and an uncritical acceptance of authority. Equally important, Islam is said to be antidemocratic because it vests sovereignty in God, who is the sole source of political authority and from whose divine law must come all regulations governing the community of believers. In the view of some scholars, this means that Islam has to be ultimately embodied in a totalitarian state.

The late Elie Kedourie, a prominent student of Arab and Islamic society, gave forceful expression to this thesis in Democracy and Arab Political Culture. He wrote: 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.

But many others reject the suggestion that Islam is an enemy in the struggle for accountable government. They note that Islam has many facets and tendencies, making unidimensional characterizations of the religion highly suspect. They also report that there is considerable variation in the interpretations of religious law advanced by Muslim scholars and theologians, and that among these are expressions of support for democracy, including some by leading Islamist theorists. Finally, they insist that openness, tolerance, and progressive innovation are well  represented among traditions associated with the religion, and thus entirely compatible with Islam. Such assessments receive institutional expression in the newly established Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, which in 000 cosponsored two international conferences at which scholars from five countries sought to demonstrate that the essence of Islam is not anti-democratic. Rather, participants argued, forces of history and economics account for the absence of democratic governance in much of the Arab world.

These various and competing assessments suggest that there are to be found within Islamic doctrine and Muslim tradition both elements that are and elements that are not congenial to democracy, and this in turn means that the influence of the religion depends to a very considerable extent on how and by whom it is interpreted. There is no single or accepted interpretation on many issues, nor even a consensus on who speaks for Islam. Further, serious doubts have been expressed about the motivation of some religious authorities. As one Arab scholar observes, there are numerous examples of ulama manipulating Islamic teachings Motivated by political rather than religious considerations, they have offered doctrinal interpretations that are deliberately designed to justify the behavior of political leaders. All of this points to a need for systematic empirical research on the connections between religious orientations and political culture in the Arab and Muslim world.

A small but growing number of studies explore these connections with public opinion data from Western countries. Findings from this research are not entirely consistent. Nor are there studies in which attitudes toward democracy is the dependent variable. But this body of literature does offer evidence about whether and how religion and religiosity influence political attitudes.

One conclusion is that strong religious attachments usually push toward more conservative political views. Several studies conducted in the U.S. report, for example, that personal religiosity is strongly and positively related to a conservative stance on issues of public policy, especially when these issues involve an ethical or moral dimension. Another study, also using data from the U.S., found that religiosity defined in terms of Biblical literalism and a tendency to seek religious guidance are positively correlated with anti-Communism and higher levels of support for military and defense-related spending. Research based on survey research in the U.S. has also shown these hawkish foreign policy attitudes to be more pronounced among individuals with strong Evangelical beliefs.

On the other hand, a study using European data found that greater religiosity was positively correlated with higher levels of internationalism, and specifically with more support for European integration and for aid to developing countries.0 In this case, religiosity was measured by the degree to which respondents reported that religion was important in shaping their personal outlook. A study based on survey data from twelve European countries found a direct positive correlation between religiosity and support for military security in three countries, a direct but negative correlation between these variables in two countries, and a positive but indirect correlation in seven countries.

A final observation for which there is some evidence is that the explanatory power of religion may vary as a function of demographic characteristics. For example, a study using data from six European countries reported that religion is a more salient independent variable among women than among men, apparently because women are more religious and are thus more likely to be influenced by the teachings of their religion, as they understand these. Although stressing the need for further study, the authors hypothesize that the higher level of religiosity among women helps to account for their greater conservatism relative to men. Neither of these bodies of scholarly literature leads to clear expectations about whether and how attitudes toward democracy will be influenced by the religious orientations of individual Muslim Arabs. Both, however, will benefit from findings based on additional empirical research. Such research has the potential to increase confidence in one position or another in debates about whether Islam is an obstacle to democratization, or at least to the emergence of pro-democracy attitudes among ordinary citizens. It will also expand the comparative dimension of social science efforts to determine the nature, extent, and locus of the relationship between religion and political attitudes more generally.