Democracy, Security, and Religious Political Parties: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract

This article analyzes the effects of democracy on religious political parties. Using a comparative and cross-regional approach, we argue that religious political parties in democracies can be “tamed” with access to patronage, power, and policy. While democracy tends to have a moderating influence, we identify the conditions and circumstances under which extremism may not be quelled merely by the party's participation in the government. The article briefly considers the arguments – both pro and con – that have emerged in recent debates over the intersection of religion, security, and democracy. The article then provides a framework for assessing the impact of democracy on religious political parties, and considers how these dynamics play out in the Asian region. In addressing the question “does democracy tame the radicals?” it is important to study Asia because it offers a set of varied democratic institutions; demonstrates different ways of adjudicating religion, the state, and secularism; and includes a diverse set of religious political parties espousing both moderate and radical political platforms. The article concludes with an overview of the Forum essays, which analyze democracy, security, and religious political parties in India, Indonesia, Italy and Israel.

We thank the journal's Editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. We also extend our thanks to the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University for providing research support to this project.

Notes

1. India is a democratic, developing Asian country with a dominant Hindu population, a sizeable Muslim minority, a Sikh minority, and small Christian, Zoroastrian, and Ahmadhia Muslim minorities, among others. Israel is a mature advanced industrialized democracy with a dominant Jewish population, a significant Muslim minority, and small Christian and Druze minorities. Italy is a mature advanced industrialized democracy, largely secular, with a dominant nominally Catholic population and small Muslim and Jewish minorities. Indonesia is a Southeast Asian democratizing and developing country with a very large Muslim population, a sizeable Christian minority, and Hindu minority.

2. We define religious political parties as teams of political figures recognized as organizations that participate in elections to win political offices and advance, or have once advanced, religiously inspired objectives. Religious-based political parties are formal but not necessarily legal political organizations. Some may be declared illegal by the laws of the country, but have run candidates and formulated policy goals by working in conjunction with other legal political parties. Such parties often have an armed militia associated with them. For a party to be considered “formal,” it must have a proper name and an identifiable leadership. For objectives to be considered religiously inspired, the party's founding charter, current platform, or public statements regarding policy objectives must appeal directly or indirectly to religious tenets, language, or ideals. In addition, a religious party may also appeal to a religious authority, have a religious name, and/or have a constituency that shares a common religious heritage.

3. Religious political parties range from moderate to extremist, and from pro-political system to anti-political system. Moderate parties are those which support elections, tend to be egalitarian towards other religions, support civil rights and oppose differential access to government services, justice and political participation. A moderate religious political party would not support violence, and it would not discriminate against other religious communities. It works within the system. A moderate party may support a strict separation of church and state, or may support religion in the public sphere. In order to classify them, we analyze the parties’ ideologies but also pay close attention to how the parties use religion. Extremist religious political parties are those which use elections to gain office in order to overthrow the system, are exclusionary towards other religions, and otherwise do not support civil rights. If they advocate limiting the rights and freedoms of others in the polity, we classify them as extremist. If they advocate the use of violence to change the political system, or to eliminate rival parties or adherents of other religions, we classify them as extremist. Our use of the terms moderate and radical are consistent with Gunther and Diamond's distinction between “tolerant and pluralistic” versus “proto-hegemonic” parties. See Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, “Species of Political Parties: A New Typology,” Party Politics Vol. 9, No. 2 (2003), p. 171.

4. For more on the failure of democratization in the Arab Middle East, see for example, Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics (January 2004), pp. 139–157; Fareed Zakaria, “Islam, Democracy, and Constitutional Liberalism,” Political Science Quarterly Vol. 119, No. 1 (2004), pp. 1–20; and Alfred Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, “An ‘Arab’ More than ‘Muslim’ Electoral Gap,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003), pp. 30–44.

5. Vickie Langohr makes a similar argument in her review of the recent literature on Islamist political parties: “In assessing the democratic commitments of various Islamist movements, it is important to remember that the question of whether Islamist movements are prepared to participate in democratic politics is by and large an inaccurate one. This question assumes a political context in which democratic politics actually exist . . . very few examples of such politics exist in most of the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East . . . What is actually on offer to most Islamist movements, as well as to other opposition movements, is participation in electoral contests for political office within regimes that remain highly authoritarian.” Vickie Langohr, “Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes: Rethinking the Relationship Between Islamisms and Electoral Politics,” International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 33 (2001), pp. 591–610, here at p. 592.

6. The voluminous literature on political parties typically sees party entrepreneurship and ideology, as well as state institutions and constituents, as central to the analysis of all types of parties, whether religiously based or not. See, for example, Alexander C. Tan, ed., “Emerging Party Systems,” Special Issue, Party Politics Vol. 11, No. 6 (November 2005), pp. 651–765; Peter Mair, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Fritz Plasser, eds., Political Parties and Electoral Change (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004); and Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party,” Party Politics Vol. 1, No. 1 (1995), pp. 5–28. We agree that these factors are important in the study of religious political parties that operate in democracies. Whether they are equally important for the religion-security nexus in non-democratic polities is beyond the scope of this Forum, but is worth considering in future work on religious political parties.

7. Three of the countries are parliamentary democracies (India, Israel and Italy), which is to say that their governing cabinets are formed from the parties with seats in the parliament and cabinets are not selected separately from a separate vote for a chief executive (as is the case in the “presidential systems” of the US and Mexico, among others). Indonesia in 2003 moved to a mixed system in which the president is directly elected, though candidates’ eligibility depends on party strength in parliament, and the president appoints the cabinet.

8. While we are most concerned with the effects of democracy on religious political parties, the Forum also addresses democracy as a dependent variable – we consider the effect of religious political parties on democracy. The Forum thus touches on larger questions related to the intersection of religion, politics, and democracy: Are religious political parties – and religions more generally – compatible with democratic practice? Are religious political parties a threat to democracy and democracy promotion in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe? Can religious political parties serve as forces for democratization?

9. We thank Chris Lundry for his observations on the demise of the Suharto regime. Robert Hefner, however, also suggests that collusion between the Indonesian state and Islamists worked to perpetuate Indonesian authoritarianism. For years, Suharto's support of “modernist” Muslim movements led to half-hearted calls for democracy from these groups. Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). The Indonesian case thus suggests some interesting parallels with the Arab Middle East where secular states have co-opted religious movements, granting them privileged positions at the expense of leftist democrats or pan-Arabists.

10. Zakaria, “Islam, Democracy, and Constitutional Liberalism,” p. 2, and Langohr, “Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes,” p. 591.

11. For a nuanced argument on Hamas, positioned between the optimist and pessimist camps described here, see Menachem Klein, “Hamas in Power,” Middle East Journal Vol. 61, No. 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 442–459. Klein argues that participating in the political process changed Hamas from a fundamentalist to radical movement.

12. Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond distinguish between religious political parties which are mass-based and ethnic parties. While this distinction works for most religious political parties, we find that they can also often have an ethnic component as well. See “Species of Political Parties.”

13. Religious political parties, however, do not only secure support from the disenfranchised. Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was popular among the urban poor, but also garnered the votes of Algeria's middle class. The rise of India's BJP can also be attributed to its appeal to the middle class, and its adoption of an economic platform in 1991 that criticized state intervention in the economy. Indeed, today the BJP represents high-income groups and the socially privileged, comprising only 20–30 percent of India'spopulation. On Algeria see Stathis N. Kalyvas, “Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies: the Case of Religious Parties,” Comparative Politics Vol. 32, No. 4 (July 2000), pp. 379–398, and Pradeep K. Chhibber, “State Policy, Rent Seeking, and the Electoral Success of a Religious Party in Algeria,” The Journal of Politics Vol. 58, No. 1 (February 1996), pp. 136–148. On India see Pradeep Chhibber, “Who Voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party?” British Journal of Political Science Vol. 27, No. 4 (October 1997), pp. 631–639.

14. Kalyvas, “Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies,” p. 385.

15. Hendrik Spruyt, Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 28–31.

16. Benjamin Reilly, “Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 63–64.

17. For more on how multiparty parliamentary, Westminster two-party, and presidential systems influence political party incentives and strategies, and the resulting impact on foreign security policies, including war initiation; territorial disengagements and decolonization; and postwar negotiations see, respectively, Miriam Fendius Elman, “Unpacking Democracy: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Theories of Democratic Peace,” Security Studies Vol. 9, No. 4 (Summer 2000), pp. 91–126; Spruyt, Ending Empire; and Norrin M. Ripsman, Peacemaking By Democracies: the Effect of State Autonomy on the Post-World War Settlements (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).

18. Vali Nasr, “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy’,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 16, No. 2 (April 2005), pp. 13–27.

19. An example here is Jordan's Islamic Action Front. The IAF has compromised with other secular groups on foreign security policy issues – such as the war in Iraq and Jordan's policies toward Israel. But it has not been willing to discuss with other parties issues covered by shari‘a. According to some scholars, this suggests that we should not expect moderation from Islamist political parties across the board. For an extended discussion on Jordan's IAF, see Janine A. Clark, “The Conditions of Islamist Moderation: Unpacking Cross-Ideological Cooperation in Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 38 (2006), pp. 539–560.

20. On this point see Dan Slater, “The Architecture of Authoritarianism: Southeast Asia and the Regeneration of Democratization Theory,” Taiwan Journal of Democracy Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 2006), pp. 1–22.

21. Matt Rosenstein, “The Political Crisis of Bangladesh's ‘Moderate Muslim Democracy’,” The Illinois International Review, January 30, 2007.

22. Talukder Maniruzzaman, “The Fall of the Military Dictator: 1991 Elections and the Prospects of Civilian Rule in Bangladesh,” Pacific Affairs Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer 1992), p. 212.

23. Maniruzzaman, “The Fall of the Military Dictator,” p. 213.

24. C. Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly, “Bangladesh on the Brink,” The Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2007.

25. Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, “Introduction,” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., Democracy in East Asia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. xvii. See also Thomas B. Pepinsky, “Malaysia: Turnover Without Change,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 113–127.

26. Diane K. Mauzy, “The Challenge to Democracy: Singapore's and Malaysia's Resilient Hybrid Regimes,” Taiwan Journal of Democracy Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 2006), p. 52.

27. Mauzy, “The Challenge to Democracy,” p. 63.

28. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000), pp. 273–287, and Sumit Ganguly, “Ethnic Policies and Political Quiescence in Malaysia and Singapore,” in Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly, eds., Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).

29. Joseph Liow, “Deconstructing Political Islam in Malaysia: UMNO's Response to PAS’ Religio-Political Dialectic,” Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore, Working Paper No. 45, p. 15.

30. Joseph Chin Yong Liow, “Exigency or Expediency? Contextualising Political Islam and the PAS Challenge in Malaysian Politics,” Third World Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 2 (2004), pp. 359–372.

31. Sri Lanka is approximately 70 percent Theravada Buddhist, 15 percent Hindu, 8 percent Christian and 7 percent Muslim. The population is approximately 74 percent Sinhala and 18 percent Tamil (an ethno-linguistic group originating in South India). Muslims, the vast majority of whom are Sinhala speakers, are considered to be an ethnic as well as religious group. The Christian community is almost equally divided between Sinhalese and Tamils. There is considerable overlap between ethnicities and some religions. Almost all Hindus are Tamil. Almost all Buddhists are Sinhalese.

32. Mahinda Deegalle, “Politics of the Jathika Hela Urumaya Monks: Buddhism and Ethnicity in Contemporary Sri Lanka,” Contemporary Buddhism Vol. 5, No. 2 (2004), pp. 83–103.

33. Amita Shastri, “Channeling Ethnicity Through Electoral Reform in Sri Lanka,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics Vol. 43, No. 1 (March 2005), p. 57.

34. Shastri, “Channeling Ethnicity,” p. 49.

35. James W. White, “Mass Movement and Democracy: Sokagakkai in Japanese Politics,” The American Political Science Review Vol. 61, No. 3 (September 1967), pp. 744–750.

36. Cecil C. Brett, “The Komeito and Local Japanese Politics,” Asian Survey Vol. 19, No. 4 (April 1979), p. 367.

37. Daniel A. Metraux, “Japan's Search for Political Stability: The LDP–New Komeito Alliance,” Asian Survey Vol. 39, No. 6 (November–December 1999), pp. 927–928.

38. Metraux, “Japan's Search for Political Stability,” p. 929.

39. Over the last several decades, the Komeito has increasingly sought to distance itself from the Soka Gakkai. A more complete treatment of the Japanese case than is offered here would also consider the effect of the Emperor system on Japan's political parties. We thank an external reviewer for raising these points regarding the Japanese case.

40. Ashutosh Varshney, “India's Democratic Challenge,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 86, No. 2 (March/April 2007), p. 103.

41. Alfred Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations’,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 11, No. 4 (October 2000), p. 49.

42. Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations’,” p. 50.

43. Carolyn M. Warner, Confessions of an Interest Group: The Catholic Church and Political Parties in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Carolyn M. Warner, “Getting Out the Vote with Patronage and Threat,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 28, No. 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 553–582; and Paolo Alberti and Roberto Leonardi, “The Consociational Construction of Christian Democracy,” in Steven Van Hecke and Emmanuel Gerard, eds., Christian Democratic Parties in Europe since the End of the Cold War (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), pp. 21–41.

44. See Martha C. Nussbaum, “Fears for Democracy in India,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Section B, May 18, 2007, pp. B6–B9.

45. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 168.

46. In 1999, all parties competing in Indonesia's transitional elections had to establish branches in one-third of the country's 27 provinces, and offices in more than half of the districts within these provinces. In 2004, new parties had to establish branches in two-thirds of all provincesand municipalities within them, and small parties that failed to gain 2 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1999 elections were required to merge with other parties in order to qualify. See Reilly, “Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific,” p. 65.

47. Our focus on religious political parties should not be construed to mean that we consider secular parties – or indeed secularism – as a more benign influence on national or international security. Many religious political parties, both current and past, have presented no security threats; there are certainly a number of secular ideologies and “state religions” as well as non-religious political parties that have posed far more threats to society, democracy, the state, and international relations. Radicalism should thus not be automatically linked to religious traditions or to religious political parties. We focus on religious political parties in this Forum not because we believe secular ideologies and parties are more moderate, but because religious political parties have been singled out in the current discourse as security threats, and because far less scholarship has been devoted to these parties as compared to the burgeoning literature on, for example, the radical right. See on the latter, Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Pippa Norris, Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Marcel Lubbers, Mérove Gijsberts, and Peer Scheepers, “Extreme Right-wing Voting in Western Europe,” European Journal of Political Research Vol. 41, No. 3 (May 2002), pp. 345–378; and Herbert Kitschelt with Anthony J. McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe: a Comparative Analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

48. A case in point is the Aum Shinrikyo movement in Japan, which increasingly resorted to terrorism and violence following the electoral defeat of its political organization, Shinrito (Truth Party), in the 1990 parliamentary elections.

49. James D. Fearon, “Iraq's Civil War,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 86, No. 2 (March/April 2007), p. 5. See also Noah Feldman, “Ballots and Bullets,” New York Times, Sunday Magazine, July 30, 2006, pp. 9–12.

50. Michael Herzog, “Can Hamas Be Tamed?” Foreign Affairs Vol. 85, No. 2 (March/April 2006), p. 89. See also Meliha Benli Altunisik, “The Turkish Model and Democratization in the Middle East,” Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (Winter/Spring).

51. Nasr, “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy’,” p. 18.