Vote for Your Family! Particularism, Support for Democracy and Support for Shari’a in the Arab World

1 Introduction

This paper studies the effects of political particularism on support for democracy and support for Shari’a in the Arab World. The so-called “Arab Spring” has been regarded as a potential new wave of democratization, the rise of the peoples within several Arab countries against oppressive elites breathed the promise of a democratic Middle East. Although multifaceted, with causes and implications specific to each country, these protests were in large part moved by feelings of frustration over poor economic performance and by the refusal of the existing political systems that were perceived as corrupted and non-democratic (de Miguel, Jamal, and Tessler 2015). The question that only the future will answer is whether or not these countries will be able to make the transition towards consolidated democracy. One of the important aspects of getting through such a transition is how the new democratic political system is regarded legitimate by its citizens and how these citizens feel that their values actually “fit” with democracy (Lipset 1960). To put it differently, popular support is considered a crucial issue of regime stability, especially in emerging democracies (Diamond 1999).

Several scholars so far have investigated the determinants of individual-level support for democracy. Recently, part of this literature has underlined the central role played not only by structural factors, such as institutional reform and economic development, but also by political culture (Tessler 2002b). One of the key aspects affecting democratic support and stability is the structure of the electoral system (Svolik 2013; Panizza 2001). Accordingly, the way that individuals, experience, assess and undergo the electoral process is likely to have an impact on support for democracy (Robbins and Tessler 2012). The literature about the determinants of individual support for democracy in the Arab world can be classified into three groups. The first group of studies refers to modernization theory and to its cultural implications (Inglehart and Norris 2003; Inglehart and Welzel 2005) according to which education, income and egalitarian gender views are significant determinants of attitudes toward democracy (Jamal 2006). The second group of studies refers to social capital theory according to which social trust, by providing a basis for cooperation among the members of a society, is a fundamental ingredient of democracy (Jamal 2007a, 2007b; Almond and Verba 1963; Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1994). The third group of studies focuses on religiosity and on cultural traits and, as far as the Muslim world is concerned, finds no incompatibility between Islamic values and support for democracy (Ciftci 2012).

In this paper, we argue that there is another determinant of individual support for democracy in the Arab world, namely political particularism. Following Carey and Shugart (1995) and Shugart (1999), political particularism is defined as the ability of policymakers to further their careers by catering to narrow interests rather than to broader national platforms. Political particularism implies the existence of a loyalty between voters and political elites. This loyalty passes through family, clan and friendship obligations (Veenendaal 2014) and, as argued by Weber (1970) and many others, contrasts with modern democratic societies where abstract rules of good conduct apply to several social situations, and not just towards a small circle of personal friends and relatives (Tabellini 2010). ^[1] The manner in which politicians further their careers and the choices of voters with respect to candidates, are likely to influence how democracy is perceived, supported and manifested as well as the quality of the governments (Hicken and Simmons 2008). As suggested by Seddon et al. (2001), politicians who are supposed to please narrow geographical constituencies, are likely to advocate narrower, more particularistic policies than those who further their career by following party dictates (Milesi-Ferretti, Perotti, and Rostagno 2002). At the same time, voters, who must channel their demands through politics, are likely to prefer candidates who are supposed to accord some benefit to the group they feel to be part of. The way how they perceive the breadth of this group determines their preferences in voting. More universalistic voters would prefer candidates who foster the interests of the entire community whilst more particularistic ones would prefer candidates who foster the interests of a narrower circle of related people (i. e. family, clan, and friends). Traditionally, democracy has been seen as the institution aimed at safeguarding the conflicting interests of the entire community of citizens or, at least, of the majority of them. Thus, particularistic voters are less likely to support democracy and democratic values with respect to more universalistic ones.

Recently in the Arab world there has been an extraordinary outbreak of Islamic movements calling for the construction of an increasingly global, Muslim identity, based on common beliefs, rituals, social practices and for a return to the Shari’a. ^[2] These movements, apparently universalist, are indeed rooted in the local contexts so that the universalistic Islamic identity often coexists and is pushed by a more particularistic one (Lapidus 2001). As suggested by Ciftci (2012), in the Muslim world Shari’a and democracy are two sides of the same coin and the analysis of individual attitudes toward democracy will be incomplete without considering support for Shari’a. In fact, the historical legacy and the so-called secular-Islamist cleavage have penetrated almost all political issues and actions in the Muslim world (Hunter 1996) by shaping also individual attitudes (Ciftci 2012). This does not mean that in the Arab world Islam is incompatible with democracy. Rather, this means that, as in Tessler (2011), individual opinion in the Arab world is divided about secular and Islamic governing principles and most Arab citizens voice support for both democracy and Shari’a that are, therefore, inextricably linked.

Given the above considerations, our hypotheses are that (1) political particularism negatively affects support for democracy in the Arab World whilst (2) it positively affects support for Shari’a. To empirically test these hypotheses, we fully exploit the richness of the Arab Barometer. Firstly, we show that political particularism, once controlling for modernization theory indicators (education, income, egalitarian gender views) and for indicators of social capital (social and institutional trust), reduces support for democracy. We then show that this result is robust to the use of alternative specifications of the model and of econometric techniques aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of particularism. Secondly, we investigate the relationship between individual attitudes toward support for democracy and towards support for Shari’a. Overall, our findings indicate that (1) particularism reduces support for democracy. This relationship is, indeed, causal. Moreover, even when allowing for the correlation of the error terms, (2) particularism significantly increases support for Shari’a.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the data and methods, Section 3 presents the results while Section 4 concludes and suggests avenues for following research.

2 Data and Methods

3 Results

Table 2 presents the results of the OLS estimations. Political particularism has a negative and significant effect on support for democracy. ^[11] This result stays virtually unchanged across all specifications of the model and is robust to the use of alternative definitions as described in Section 2 and reported in Table 4 and to the estimation by Ordered Logit as reported in Table 3. ^[12]

The size of the effect is small in absolute terms, ranging between 0.30 and 0.33 points, similarly to related studies based on micro data (e. g., Rotondi and Stanca 2015). Indeed, in relative terms the size of the effect of particularism is sizeable, being larger than that of education, employment status, income and all other individual-level characteristics. Particularism is therefore by far the strongest factor explaining individual-level support for democracy. The inclusion of measures of interest in politics provides a test of the role of political attention in mediating particularism’s impact on democratic attitudes (Evans and Rose 2012). Column 3 of Table 2 shows that the introduction of this variable (which is negative and significantly related with support for democracy), does not attenuate the size of the coefficient for particularism which is, indeed, increased.

Among the indicators of modernization theory, education and income have positive and significant effects on support for democracy with the latter effect being greater than the former, confirming some previous findings (Lipset 1959; Evans and Rose 2012). Among the indicators of social capital theory, general trust is statistically significant with a negative coefficient, a result that corroborates the findings in Jamal (2007b). Trust in army and Internet use turn out to be positively and significantly related to support for democracy. Religiosity does not exhibit statistical significance in either model, which is congruent with the findings of previous studies (Tessler 2002a and 2002b).

The second and third lines of Table 5 report the results of estimating the same equation as in column 3 of Table 2 while adding interaction terms between political particularism and two indicators of modernization theory, namely education and income. While the first interaction term does not reach statistical significance, the interaction term between political particularism and income suggests that the negative effect of political particularism on individual-level support for democracy is greater as income increases. The fourth and fifth lines of Table 5 report the results of estimating the same equation as in column 3 of Table 2 while adding interaction terms between political particularism and two indicators of institutional satisfaction, namely satisfaction with the actual government ruling the country (fourth line) and with the state of democracy and human rights in the country (fifth line). It turns out that the effect of political particularism on support for democracy is greater when support for actual government increases and is smaller as satisfaction with the state of democracy increases.

The main message of the regressions in Tables 2–6 is that there seems to be a strong correlation between political particularism and individual-level support for democracy and that this relationship is moderated by individual-level income and satisfaction with the government and with the state of democracy in the country of origin.

4 Conclusion

In this article we have further explored the underlying dynamics of individual-level support for democracy and support for Shari’a in the Arab world. In particular, we have investigated how political particularism affects these attitudes at the individual level. Our results show that particularism decreases support for democracy. Indeed, in relative terms, the size of the effect of particularism is substantial, being larger than that of education, employment status, income (as posited by modernization theory) and social trust (as posited by social capital theory), hence all other individual-level characteristics. Particularism is therefore by far the strongest factor explaining individual-level support for democracy in the Arab world and its effect on support for democracy is, indeed, causal. Thus, reducing political particularism can be identified as an effective way to increase support for democracy.

Our underlying claim is that voters with a more universalistic stance would prefer candidates who foster the interests of the entire community whilst more particularistic inclined ones would prefer candidates who foster the interests of a narrower circle of related people (i. e. family, clan, and friends). This relates to the distinction between “generalized” versus “limited” morality introduced by Platteau (2000) and stressed by Tabellini (2010) and with the extensive literature showing that particularism is often associated with more widespread informal institutions (Mungiu-Pippidi 2005), lower civic mindedness and higher corruption (Uslaner 2002).

In this perspective, social relations in particularistic societies rely on strong ties informed by principles of tradition, conformity and benevolence inside small circles of related people (i. e., members of the family, friends, and members of the clan) while outside this small network, selfish behavior is considered morally acceptable (Tabellini 2010). Particularism, therefore, can be conducive to several antisocial behaviors and, potentially, can undermine the cohesion of the social fabric. Thus, studying the effects of particularism is relevant to inform development practitioners and policy makers. To date, the determinants of particularism at the individual-level are still unclear and it is not easy to formulate some clear policy interventions to reduce particularism and favor universalism (Rotondi and Stanca 2015). Some scholars have indicated education as the most promising area of intervention. In fact, as argued by Glaeser, Ponzetto, and Shleifer (2007), education enhances social trust thus contributing to overcoming problems of collective action. The relationship between education and particularism, however, is not completely clear and further researches in this direction are needed.

Following Ciftci (2012), in this paper we have also studied how particularism affects support for Shari’a, another side of support for democracy in the Arab world. Our summary statistics show that several supporters of democracy also favor Shari’a in the Arab world. At the same time, the results of the estimation of a simultaneous equation model show that when allowing for the correlation of the error terms, particularism increases support for Shari’a while it decreases support for democracy.

These findings offer new insights into challenges of building widespread support for democracy in the Arab world, particularly after the Arab spring. Our conclusions, however, should be weighedagainst some weaknesses of public opinion data. Greater caution is needed about the available measures of support for democracy. In fact, the existing data do not tell us anything about what respondents really mean by democracy, or, ultimately, how they perceive it. To date, data on support for democracy are diffused and several major empirical research programs are monitoring public support for democratic institutions, including, among others, the LatinoBarometer, the AfroBarometer, the European Values Survey, and the World Values Survey. The questions contained in these datasets are regularly used by scholars in different fields and demonstrate internal consistency. However, as Inglehart (2003), suggests while from a theoretical point of view the relationship between support for democracy and democratic institutions seems to be clear, there is still some doubts regarding whether, at the empirical level,high level of mass support for these issues is actually conducive to democratic institutions. These and other issues should be further investigatedin future research work in the Arab world.