What Does Democracy Mean for Muslims?: A Comparative Study on the Essential Characteristics of Democracy

Once democracy was accepted as the best possible alternative among the available political systems, waves of democratization have been experienced in different parts of the World, although it cannot be argued that each one of them ended up successfully. Within the democratization debate, however, special attention has been paid to the Middle East and North Africa –a region also called as the Muslim World in short- in the last twenty years at least due to the fact that it has not experienced any wave of democratization whatsoever. Studies on the region focused on finding out the major reasons behind this fact and many quiet surprisingly concluded that people of the region indeed support democracy. This conclusion has been repeated so many times that researchers recently went a step ahead and concentrated on the question of “what do these people really mean with democracy?”. Aiming a contribution to the literature on democratic deficit of the Muslim World and reasons behind it, this study aims to discuss how individuals, in different parts of the world, perceive democracy. Using the 6th wave of World Values Survey and the nine characteristics of democracy that are listed in the relevant questionnaire –equal distribution of income, the role of army and religious authorities, civil rights etc.- different categories of people are compared with regards to which charcateristics they regard as very essential. The reasoning behind is that this will reveal what democracy means for them and what they expect from it. In this respect, while the Muslim World is compared to Western democracies, Muslims living in predominantly Arab countries are, at the same time, compared to other Muslims, with reference to the discussion of “Arab exceptionalism” within the literature. Findings suggest that there are factors that significantly distinguish different categories. For instance, “the army taking over when the government is incompetent” distinguishes the Western democracies from the Muslim World –the former not acepting it-, “state providing income equality” makes the same for Arab and non-Arab Muslims –the latter finding it very essential.