President George W. Bush threw trillions of dollars—not to mention thousands of U.S. lives—at trying to make Iraq a functioning democracy. Let’s just say a democratic Iraq is still a work in progress.
Given the overwhelming tendency for Islamic countries to be governed by authoritarian regimes, or close to it, one has to wonder if Bush’s advisors ever considered the evidence.
The Economist magazine publishes an annual Democracy Index where it ranks nearly every country based on five categories: “electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.”
Take the 10 countries most closely associated with Islam: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan. All have Muslim populations that exceed 90 percent.
The 2014 Democracy Index labeled seven of the 10 countries as “authoritarian regimes.” The other three—Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey—are considered “hybrid regimes.” And though The Economist doesn’t define a hybrid regime, it appears to mean a country where the leader may be elected, but imposes a very heavy hand. Venezuela, for example, falls in that category, according to The Economist.
Of the next 15 countries with 90 percent-plus Muslim populations, only Somalia and Tunisia are classified as “flawed democracies.” Four others are hybrids and the rest are listed as authoritarian regimes.
So out of the 25 or so countries that are at least 90 percent Muslim, you have about an 8 percent chance of living in a somewhat functioning democracy.
Now, reasonable people could quibble with some of The Economist’s rankings. But it’s important to remember that democracy is more than just getting to vote, as the five categories mentioned above imply.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t millions of Muslims who would love to live in a well-functioning democracy. There are, and many of them live in the U.S. But implementing that vision in Islamic countries has been largely unsuccessful.
Of course, the Arab Spring of 2011 saw a surge of popular efforts to throw off some of those strongman regimes and replace them with democratic governments. The most notable efforts were in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria.
Tunisia had the most success, as the Democracy Index notes. Egypt fell into chaos under its democratically elected leader, Mohamed Morsi, who was eventually ousted by the country’s longtime military leader, who was later elected to the position.
Libya, Yemen, and Syria are in shambles.
Turkey is often touted as an example of a Muslim democracy. But the country’s modern founder, Kemal Atatürk, was himself a strongman, and he was fiercely secular with respect to the political regime. Turkey is still run by an elected strongman, though with a more Islamist bent, which is why Democracy Index calls it a hybrid.
The tension between Islam and democracy may have arisen because clans and tribes, and the long-standing animosities between them, dominate much of Middle Eastern culture. And then there is the age-old division between the Sunnis and the Shias.
In other words, it may be that the only way to control the historic rivalries is for a despot, whether elected or not, to keep a heavy hand on the population. Otherwise, the country could devolve into chaos.
Several years ago I was in a cab in Washington D.C. around election time, and my taxi driver, clearly of Middle Eastern origin, responded to a radio news story by telling me that’s what he loved about the U.S. He said that when an election was over, everyone shook hands and got back to work. When an election was over in his country, he said, the losers get guns and try to kill the winners.