Today democracy has become one of the features of contemporary politics in the Middle East. Many leaders, scholars and citizens consider themselves to be democrats but fail to come up with a single definition of democracy. In his book Democratization: Theory and Experience, Laurence Whitehead defines democracy in a constructivist view as a democratic system of government in which power is alternate (through personal policies not through government), power is diffused (by participatory society), and power is constrained (by public opinion and election, etc.) The normative minimalist view of Joseph Schumpeter defines democracy as a method to choose a political leader. According to Schumpeter, democracy is a kind of institutional arrangement for people to make decisions and citizens to acquire power in order to compete in free competition for free elections. Similarly, Adam Przeworski defines democracy as a system in which parties lose an election. Also, Przeworski emphasizes that in order for a democracy to survive, economic development is a necessary force. For Seymour Martin Lipset, a democracy is regular constitutionally supplied opportunities for the people to choose political officials; in addition economic development is a prerequisite for democracy to be born. Lipset advocates the importance of industrialization, educational development, cross-cut cleavage and wealth as things necessary for democracy to arise. For Robert D. Putnam, vibrant civic institutions and history matter for democracy to flourish. In his now iconic work Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, he assesses what is necessary for institutions to be more responsive. Then he looks at northern Italy where civic traditions allow everyone to participate in social clubs, to read newspapers, and to interact with each other with the effect that they are more interested in politics and more developed than the southern part of Italy, where most of the people are illiterate, do not have a vibrant social interaction, and do not participate in sport clubs or other organizations; further, because of cliental kinship, the leaders in the south are more corrupt.
In the mid 1800s, Alexis de Tocqueville was very impressed when he studied the prison system in USA. Tocqueville noted that “Americans of all ages, in all stations of life, in all kinds of dispositions were forever forming civil institutions.” He was fascinated by the way Americans participated in town meetings and discussed the issues and problems publicly. By contrast, Aristotle considered democracy as a bad form of government; he categorized two forms of government as better than democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. In his view democracy was rule by and for the needy. True, it was the rule by many but for their own interests. Similarly, James Madison feared the tyranny of the majority and the problem of factions, consequently advocating representative government. For Robert Dahl the essence of democracy is equality. He wanted to ensure that everyone has the right to vote, the right to access resources, the right to form independent associations, and the right to run for office in free and fair elections.
According to Michael Walzer, “Only civil society can sustain a democratic state and only a democratic state can create a civil society,” but Whitehead argues that civil society is formed gradually. However, according to Przeworski and Lipset, in order for democratization to take place, the country needs economic development. Przevorski argues that the reason there is a rise in the number of democracies since 1974 is because of the death of authoritarian regimes and the vibrancy of economic development. For Arendt Lijphart in order for consolidated democratic transitions to take place, consociational democracy is necessary for more ethnically divided societies. He introduced this concept in the early 1970s in European countries like Sweden and Belgium. His model tried to bring all ethnic leaders to agreement to rule the society,
What constitutes a democracy is controversial. According to Whitehead’s definition of democracy and Dahl’s definition of democracy, America was not a full democracy until 1965 with the passing of the Voting Act. Even during the small city states in ancient Greek, slaves, women, and foreigners were deprived from voting. That is why many scholars today argue whether Greece had democracy or not.
Dahl goes further to discuss how democratic the American Constitution is. For him, America is a complete democracy with the full exercise of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as well as with separation of power between the three branches of government, a competitive electoral law, a competent bureaucracy, an independent judiciary, and an independent media; however, some scholars argue that the American representative system of government is not that deliberative, and that they have lost confidence in elected officials. Like Fareed Zachariah, some are more concerned with the rise of illiberal democracy in recent years. To be sure, some politicians through elections come into office, but many mostly ignore term limits for reelection, so he argues election is not the only factor to determine whether a country is a democracy or not.
For example, in Egypt an election was held, and through the election the Muslim Brotherhood came to power and tried to monopolize the political power without checks and balances. Former President Mohamed Morsi thought that a majority of electoral votes is enough of a mandate to impose Islamic measures on secular Muslims and other religious groups. Instead, he failed to improve the economy and ignored the will of the people while trying desperately to preserve his own power within the system. Morsi failed to protect the rights of all Egyptian people; consequently this now ousted leader became the target of mass protests with people demanding his resignation just one year after he won the June election in 2012. The ideal situation for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is to make a deal with the current military-backed administration. However, if the Muslim Brotherhood cannot return to power in Egypt, it will have a huge negative impact on Turkey’s Islamic AKP party and the entire region. We already have seen some of the protests against the Muslim Brotherhood in Benghazi and have also seen the same scenario in Tunisia where one of the outspoken voices against the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia was assassinated.
Our world is headed toward a world where no one is in charge; there is much diversity of opinions about how the direction of our world is going. International politics has become a multi-polar system but has moved toward anarchy with no one in charge. The question is whether political Islam has failed the test of democracy. So what is the alternative political system to more than 1.4 billion Muslims?
I don’t believe the western notion of democracy will work in conjunction with Islamist ideology and simply is not working. Democracy, in its western form according to the scholars I mentioned above, is a constitutional, representative government, and has check and balances among the branches of the government. Many people in non-democratic countries are beginning to see the Western form of democracy the best solution for their problem. For a democracy to grow, the methods and purpose of the democratic system depend on those who live by them.
Most of the Islamist political parties have recast their direction in national terms and haven’t given up the idea that Sharia should be the basis of the state. A democracy for Muslims is only a vehicle to arrive at a destination. Once they get to their destination, they will get off. Basically, Muslims are telling the West, “Your democratic system of government does not act in harmony with my values, cultural beliefs, or lifestyle; therefore, do not enforce your own values, culture, belief or lifestyle on us.” Because every good Muslim desires to follow the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, this means that they desire to live in an Islamic state where the Quran is operative and the constitution based on Quranic law is enforced. This makes it difficult for good Muslims to separate the mosque from the state. Because God’s law is higher than man- made law and democracy is a man-made system, Muslims want to be ruled in accordance to God’s law and not man’s law. In short, most of the Arab world and Muslims countries are not ready for democratic change. If democracy is not only winning the majority of votes, but also respecting the right s of the minority, moderate Islam has failed to meet those criteria.
Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the MCI and a regular contributor to The Kurdistan Tribune, Kurdishaspect.com, Mindanao Times and Kurdish Media.You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com