Details

Subject(s)

• Democratization—Islamic countries [Browse]
• Democracy—Islamic countries [Browse]
• Islam and politics—Islamic countries [Browse]
• Islamic countries—Politics and government—21st century [Browse]

Editor

• Stepan, Alfred C. [Browse]

Series

Religion, culture, and public life [More in this series]

Summary note

Contributors to this book are particularly interested in expanding our understanding of what helps, or hurts, successful democratic transition attempts in countries with large Muslim populations. Crafting pro-democratic coalitions among secularists and Islamists presents a special obstacle that must be addressed by theorists and practitioners. The argument throughout the book is that such coalitions will not happen if potentially democratic secularists are part of what Al Stepan terms the authoritarian regime's "constituency of coercion" because they (the secularists) are afraid that free elections will be won by Islamists who threaten them even more than the existing secular authoritarian regime. Tunisia allows us to do analysis on this topic by comparing two "least similar" recent case outcomes: democratic success in Tunisia and democratic failure in Egypt. Tunisia also allows us to do an analysis of four "most similar" case outcomes by comparing the successful democratic transitions in Tunisia, Indonesia, Senegal, and the country with the second or third largest Muslim population in the world, India. Did these countries face some common challenges concerning democratization? Did all four of these successful cases in fact use some common policies that while democratic, had not normally been used in transitions in countries without significant numbers of Muslims? If so, did these policies help the transitions in Tunisia, Indonesia, Senegal and India? If they did, we should incorporate them in some way into our comparative theories about successful democratic transitions.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-236) and index.

ISBN

• 9780231184311 ((pbk. ; : alk. paper))
• 023118431X ((pbk. ; : alk. paper))
• 9780231184304 ((hardback ; : alk. paper))
• 0231184301 ((hardback ; : alk. paper))

LCCN

2017037856

OCLC

1002211699

Statement on language in description

Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...