Public Religion, Democracy, and Islam: Examining the Moderation Thesis in Algeria

Abstract

Much of the scholarly debate over Islam and democracy has centered on what has been referred to as the “inclusion-moderation hypothesis” (Schwedler 2006) and whether democratic institutions are capable of incorporating hostile religious actors. This paper proposes to build on this debate by broadening both our concept of inclusion and our expectations about its political effects. The paper presents a theoretical model for understanding the interaction between religion-state relationships and democratization processes in predominantly Muslim societies and argues that inviting ambivalently democratic religious actors into the public democratic space produces dynamics of both political moderation and religious change. The second half of this paper evaluates the mechanisms of the theory by tracing the evolution of two Islamist political parties in Algeria, the MSP-Hamas and Ennahda-Islah. Acknowledgements: I would like to heave hearty thanks to Fran Hagopian, the three anonymous reviewers of Comparative Politics, Bob Parks and the Centre des Etudes Maghrebines en Algerie for making this article possible. Author Details: Michael D. Driessen is currently finishing his PhD dissertation at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. His research explores the dynamics of religiously friendly democratization processes in predominantly Muslim and Catholic nations. He has recently published an article on religion-state arrangements in democracies in general and has conducted substantive fieldwork in Algeria and Italy.