How Muslims Understand Democracy: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

This study examines how Muslims understand democracy and its essential components. We hypothesize that, although Muslims tend to value democracy as high as non-Muslims, Muslims may have a unique understanding of procedural, as well as substantive, components of democracy, which is significantly different from non-Muslims. Employing the latest data from World Values Survey, our descriptive statistics suggest that while Muslims highly value democracy, and believe they don’t have enough of it, their notion of democracy is distinct from that of non-Muslims. Muslims tend to associate democracy with its perceived outcomes, and do not have a substantial reservation against the interference of the army or religious authorities in the governing process. On the other hand, they view procedural aspects of democracy, such as elections, civil rights and gender equality, as less essential than their non-Muslim counterparts. We then use ordered logit regression model, controlling for various macro-, as well as micro-level determinants of democracy. Our regression results show that the determinants of Muslims’ attitudes towards democracy, and its different notions, are considerably distinct from those of non-Muslims.