Minimal democratic audit of Islamic and other identitarian regimes

Abstract

Empirical evidence overwhelmingly shows that democracy in Muslim societies is poorly institutionalized. Many scholars of democratization studies critique that the methodology of Western institutions that audit democracy and freedoms worldwide employs normative metrics which are insensitive to cultural particularisms and thus biased. This paper presents a minimal framework for democratic audit of electoral Islamic regimes that while being normative, answers to this criticism. It is also shown to be in the self-interest of modernizing elites in such regimes. This framework is premised on the transference of the burden of legitimacy from ‘majority consent’ to ‘minority concern’ by basing itself on the substantive ‘political equality’ proviso of Dahl. This is achieved without constraining the democratic capacity of the majority. Structured as a guarantee of rights and two guarantees of justice in a system of fairness, the framework can be used for democratic audit of a much larger set of electoral regimes.

Keywords:

• democracy
• democratization
• Islamic regimes
• minorities
• equality
• identity

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the very incisive critiques of an earlier version of this paper by Dr John Thrasher and the anonymous reviewers. This work has greatly benefitted from their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. ‘Positive’ freedom is meant in Isaiah Berlin's sense as the ‘instrument of my own, not of other men's, acts of will’ (Berlin, 1958, p. 13) distinguished from ‘negative’ freedom which implies limiting state's coercive capacity against an individual person (the ‘Harm’ principle of Mill, 1859/2001, p. 13). Politically, ‘positive’ freedoms imply culture-affirming institutions. Berlin, however, underscored that that ‘positive’ liberty cannot sustain democratic pluralism: ‘The “negative” liberty … seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek, in the great, disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of “positive” self-mastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind’ because that requires an ‘a priori guarantee for the proposition that a total harmony of true values is somewhere to be found’ (Berlin, 1958, pp. 50, 52). Liberalism, of course, contains no such guarantee (Shklar, 1984, pp. 226–249).

2. For FH reports, see http://www.freedomhouse.org. Latest FH audit methodology is available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2014/methodology#.U2nJuJ1--Uk. For EIU report, see http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democracy-Index-2012.pdf&mode=wp&campaignid=DemocracyIndex12; the methodology is at pp. 27–39.

3. Arab authoritarianisms are sometimes explained as exceptions to the ‘Muslim’ democracy rule (Stepan & Robertson, 2003). This perspective, however, is seriously challenged by Lakoff (2004).

4. The original eight institutions are freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of information, right to vote, right to public offices, right to compete for support and votes, free and fair elections, and policy dependence on votes and other expressions of preference (Dahl, 1971, p. 3).

5. Ironically, minorities’ vote was restored by Musharraf in 2002 and not by the intervening ‘Muslim’ democracy regimes (the right to ‘freely’ profess faith was restored only in 2010). Zakaria's (2004) argument that in Islamic regimes minority inclusion is likely to be supported by dictators rather than by the elected parliamentarians is noteworthy (see also el-Gaili, 2004, p. 511).

6. All fatwas are available at the Malaysian government portal http://www.e-fatwa.gov.my/.

7. The electoral data for Pakistan are available at the official Pakistan National Assembly Archives available at http://www.na.gov.pk/en/content.php?id=121 (accessed 10 June 2014). For Malaysia, these archives are available at the official Malaysian Parliament portal at http://www.parlimen.gov.my/arkib-ahli.html?uweb=dr&lang=en (accessed 10 June 2014).

8. Perhaps, in Mill's sense as well: his argument for weighted vote was precisely that otherwise democracy would become tyranny of the (self-interested) working-class majority (Mill, 1861/2004, pp. 108–124). More recently, Guinier (1994) proposed the more democratic ‘supermajority’ and ‘cumulative’ voting to countervail the tyranny of the majority.

9. Strictly speaking, British Malaya, except for the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore, was a protectorate, not a colony. The sovereignty of other peninsular states remained vested in their respective Sultans.

10. The order of identitarian cleavages given corresponds to the contemporaneously observed relations of dominance.