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ABSTRACT
Scholars have long studied whether Islam is compatible with democracy. Quantitative analyses of survey data of Muslim polities have drawn from three broad theoretical and epistemological frameworks: civilizationalist or culturist; modernizationist, and rational choice. In this article, we contribute to this discussion by drawing from survey data from an important but under-studied country: Bangladesh. We use respondent-level data from a novel, nationally representative survey of Bangladeshis which was fielded in 2017 to inveigh upon these debates. Our analysis overwhelmingly undermine civilizationalist and culturalist claims. We find considerable support for modernist assertions that education and urbanization positively correlate with tastes for democracy, but we find little evidence that economic standing does. Our findings lend strong support for rational choice approaches to this puzzle: respondents who want more Sharia also prefer more democracy while those who want more secularism actually want less democracy. We aim to make modest contributions both to the theoretical literature on the relationship between Muslims’ religious and political preferences and to the empirical base of knowledge about Bangladesh, an important, yet neglected country.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Ali Riaz, who was the co-principle investigator on the survey as well as our local firm which wants to remain anonymous. We are also grateful to the leadership at USIP-RESOLVE for undertaking with effort with funding from the USAID. We are thankful to the superb external evaluators whose insights were invaluable as well as to the editors of Democratization. Despite the contributions of many, we alone are responsible for any errors or facto or interpretation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Huntington, Clash; Lewis, Cultures in Conflict.
2 Country Meters, “Bangladesh Population.”
3 UN Peacekeeping, “Troop and Police Contributors.”
4 Global Fire Power, “Bangladesh Military Strength.”
5 UNOCHA, “Rohingya Refugee Crisis.”
6 Fair, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.
7 Fair, Hamza, and Heller, “Suicide Terrorism in Bangladesh.”
8 Fair and Abdullah, “Islamist Militancy”; Hossain, “Contested”; Basu and Brown, “Governance.”
9 Van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh.
10 Biberman, Gambling.
11 Riaz, “Muslim Identity”; Bass, Blood Telegram.
12 Hossain, “Contested.”
13 Huque and Akhter, “Ubiquity of Islam,” 200; Bass, Blood Telegram.
14 Ali Riaz, Lived Islam.
15 Huque and Akhter, “Ubiquity of Islam,” 205; Riaz, Religion and Politics.
16 Huque and Akhter, “Ubiquity of Islam”; Chowdhury, “Strategy of a Small Power”; Kaur, “Foreign Policy.”
17 Huque and Akhter, “Ubiquity of Islam.”
18 Ibid.
19 Riaz, Religion and Politics, 48.
20 Siddiqi, “Political Culture,” 19.
21 Singh, “Islamic Fundamentalism in Bangladesh,” 57.
22 Swami, “Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami ban.”
23 Hossain, “Contested.”
24 Rashiduzzaman, “Bangladesh in 2001.”
25 “Hasina's choice of ally criticized.”
26 One of the authors was an election observer with the National Democratic Institute. See National Democratic Institute, “Bangladesh’s 2008 Parliamentary Elections.” Also see “Bangladesh election loser disputes result.”
27 Chopra, “International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh,” 211–20; Human Rights Watch, “Bangladesh: War Crimes Verdict”; and Amnesty International, “Bangladesh Nizami execution”; Shaon. “Eight years of trials”; Ahmad, “Bangladesh in 2013.”
28 “Bangladesh’s War-Crimes Trials.”
29 Inter alia.Ahmad and Kugelman, “The Death of Democracy in Bangladesh.”
30 Election Manifesto 2008: Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, available at http://kurzman.unc.edu/files/2011/06/Jamaat_2008_English.pdf.
31 Singh. “Modi, Hasina Reiterate Zero Tolerance for Terrorism During Bilateral Meeting.”
32 Fair, “Bangladesh in 2018.”
33 Riaz, God Willing.
34 Zaman, “Social Movements.”
35 Riaz, Unfolding State, 234.
36 Hossain, “Contested.”
37 Huntington, Clash; and Lewis, Cultures in Conflict. See also, inter alia, Lewis, What Went Wrong?; Kedourie, Democracy & Arab Political Culture, 5–6; Bilgrami, “The Clash within Civilizations”; Kramer, “Ballots and Bullets”; Venkatraman, “Religious Basis for Islamic Terrorism”; Leiken, “Europe’s Angry Muslims”; Phares, The War of Ideas; Pasha, “Islam, Nihilism & Liberal Secularity”; Neumann, “Europe’s Jihadist Dilemma.”
38 See discussion in Collins and Owen, “Islamic Religiosity & Regime Preferences,” 499–515.
39 Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, 114.
40 Lapidus, “The Golden Age”; Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy.
41 Inter alia, Acevedo and Chaudhary, “Religion, Cultural Clash”; Acevedo, “Islamic Fatalism”; Russett, Oneal, and Cox, “Clash of Civilizations”; Norris and Inglehart, “Islamic Culture and Democracy”; Fair, Littman, and Nugent, “Conceptions”; Tessler, “Islam and Democracy”; Tessler, Jamal, and Robbins, “Arabs and Democracy”; Jamal and Tessler, “Attitudes in the Arab World”; Teti, Abbot, and Cavatorta, “Beyond Elections”; Driessen, “Support for Muslim Democracy.”
42 Esposito, The Islamic Threat.
43 Inter alia, Tessler, “Islam and Democracy”; Jamal and Tessler, “Attitudes in the Arab World”; Fair, Littman, and Nugent, “Conceptions”; and Collins and Owen, “Islamic Religiosity & Regime Preferences.”
44 Stepan and Linz, “Democratization Theory & ‘Arab Spring’.”
45 Bhuiyan, “Secularism.”
46 Riaz, Lived Islam.
47 Ciftci, “Modernization, Islam, or Social Capital.”
48 Jamal, “Reassessing support for Islam.”
49 Benstead, “Arab citizens.”
50 Kostenko, Kuzmuchev, and Ponarin, “Attitudes towards Gender Equality,” 862.
51 World Bank, “Urban Population (% of Total)- Bangladesh.”
52 Islam, “Urbanisation in Bangladesh.”
53 World Bank, “GNI Per Capita- Bangladesh.”
54 World Bank, “Life Expectancy at Birth- Bangladesh.”
55 UNDP, “Human Development Data (1990–2017).”
56 Kalyvas, Rise of Christian Democracy; Gill, “Religion and Comparative Politics”; and Roháč, “Religion as a Commitment Device.”
57 Blaydes and Linzer, “Women's Support for Fundamentalist Islam”; Note: there is nothing inherently “Islamic” about these practices; rather, they are cultural and, in many cases, pre-date Islam.
58 Blaydes and Linzer, “Women's Support for Fundamentalist Islam.”
59 Inter alia, Rowley and Smith, “Islam’s Democracy Paradox”; Mogahed, “Special Report”; Bratton, “Islam, Democracy, and Public Opinion in Africa”; Hoffman, “Islam and Democracy”; Norris and Inglehart, “Islamic Culture and Democracy”; Rose, “How Muslims View Democracy.”
60 Maseland and Van Hoorn, “Why Muslims like Democracy,” 482.
61 “Take BNP’s Money, but for AL,” The Daily Star, 21 December. https://www.thedailystar.net/bangladesh-national-election-2018/re-elect-awami-league-keep-progress-pm-sheikh-hasina-1676386.
62 Driessen, “Support for Muslim Democracy.”
63 Mutz, “Status Threat, not Economic Hardship,” E4330–9; Schaffner, Macwilliams, and Nteta, “Explaining White Polarization”; Pettigrew, “Social Psychological Perspectives on Trump Supporters”; and Miller and Davis, “White Outgroup Intolerance.”
64 Riaz and Aziz, “Democracy and Sharia in Bangladesh”; Fair and Abdullah, “Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh.”
65 Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, “Population and Housing Census 2011.”
66 Pew Research Methods, “International Methodology.”
67 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2011”; Fair, Malhotra, and Shapiro, “Democratic Values and Support for Militancy”; Munck and Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy.”
68 Fair, Littman, and Nugent, “Conceptions.”
69 Fair, Hamza, and Heller, “Suicide Terrorism in Bangladesh.”
70 Ciftci, O’Donnell, and Tanner, “Who Favors al-Qaeda?”
71 Reviewed in Fair, Littman, and Nugent, “Conceptions.”
72 Jensen and Skaaning, “Modernization.”
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C. Christine Fair
C. Christine Fair is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies. Her research focuses upon political and military affairs of South Asia, including demand for and supply of Islamist political violence. Her most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar‐e‐Tayyaba.
Parina Patel
Parina Patel is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Georgetown Universityʼs School of Foreign Service. Her research focuses on analysing survey data to examine comparative political behaviour, political institutions, public opinion, and elections.