Abstract:

After the recognition of democracy as the best political system among the existing alternatives, the waves of democracy that have affected many regions of the world have been experienced one by another. The most discussed issue in democracy literature for the last twenty years is that the Middle East and North Africa, also known as the Muslim World, have not been affected by these waves and that a real democracy has not occurred in the region. This study, which aims to contribute to the literature that discusses the democracy gap in the Muslim World and the underlying reasons, compares what individuals in different regions understand from democracy using the World Values Survey’s sixth wave data. The main reason for the study to focus on this topic is that all of the work on the topic has reached the conclusion that the region’s people support democracy and/or consider it important, although there has not been a memorable change in the region. So one of the important questions to be asked is what the people of the region mean when it comes to democracy. The data set lists nine defined characteristics of democracy – income equality, the role of the army and religious authorities, citizenship rights, women and men equality, etc. – and the interlocutors are asked how necessary each one of these characteristics is. In this study, the comparison of what characteristics in which regions are considered more necessary is trying to understand what motivations people in different regions prefer democracy and what they consider important. In this context, the Muslim World compared the Western democracies, which are considered the role model of democratization in the world, with the Muslim World, which is considered the region with the most severe dimensions of demoracy gap, while the Arab-Arab non-Muslim countries, which have been attracted several times in literature, are also referred to and these two regions are addressed separately. Analysis shows that, in addition to the characteristics that are considered important in all regions, there are also very important factors that separate the regions. For instance, “the capture of the power of the army when the governments remain insufficient” clearly separates the West and the Muslim World—this is an unacceptable situation in the Western democracies—the “state’s guarantee of income equality” clearly separates the Arab Muslim countries and the non-Arab Muslim countries—this is seen as an extremely necessary feature by the second group.

Abstract:

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

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