Islam and Politics in the Middle East

Explaining the Views of Ordinary Citizens

Mark Tessler

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780253016577
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Some of the most pressing questions in the Middle East and North Africa today revolve around the proper place of Islamic institutions and authorities in governance and political affairs. Drawing on data from 42 surveys carried out in fifteen countries between 1988 and 2011, representing the opinions of more than 60, 000 men and women, this study investigates the reasons that some individuals support a central role for Islam in government while others favor a separation of religion and politics. Utilizing his newly constructed Carnegie Middle East Governance and Islam Dataset, which has been placed in the public domain for use by other researchers, Mark Tessler formulates and tests hypotheses about the views held by ordinary citizens, offering insights into the individual and country-level factors that shape attitudes toward political Islam.

1A Two-Level Study of Attitudes toward Political Islam

Data and Methods

UNTIL A DECADE or so ago, the investigation of individual attitudes, values, and behavior patterns was the “missing dimension” in political science research dealing with the Arab and Muslim Middle East.¹ Such research, although not completely absent, was limited to a very small number of American, Arab, and Turkish political scientists. It was also limited with respect to the countries where systematic survey research could be conducted, the degree to which representative national samples could be drawn, and the extent to which sensitive questions about politics could be asked.²

There are complaints about the paucity of research in this area going back to the 1970s. A major review of the scholarship on Arab society, published in 1976, called attention to the absence of systematic research on political attitudes and behavior patterns. The author of this review, I. William Zartman, stated that “the critical mass of research [in the field of political behavior] has been done outside the Middle East” and “data generation and analysis in the region remain to be done.”³ Malcolm Kerr, another leading student of Arab politics, offered a similar assessment a few years later. Writing in the foreword to Political Behavior in the Arab States, Kerr stated that there is a need for much more research in which the individual is the unit of analysis in order “to bring a healthier perspective to our understanding of Arab politics . . . and so that we may see it less as a reflection of formal cultural norms or contemporary world ideological currents and more as [the behavior] of ordinary individuals.”⁴

Political scientist Michael Hudson echoed these concerns in the mid-1990s. In his contribution to a 1995 volume, Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, Hudson observed that “compared to other regions, empirical survey work on the Arab world is meager.” Like Kerr, Hudson also noted that this encourages a “reductionist” approach to inquiry, one in which grand generalizations are advanced in the mistaken belief that citizen orientations can be explained and predicted from a knowledge of the “essential” attributes of Islamic or Arab culture.⁵ William Quandt, yet another prominent scholar who studies the Middle East, similarly wrote about the danger of accounts that are not based on systematic and objective empirical research and that, therefore, can easily lead to misconceptions and stereotypes. In a discussion of the extensive civil violence that plagued Algeria during the 1990s, Quandt noted that people, including some Arabs, often ask, “why does Algeria have this deep crisis?” and they then answer their own question with statements like “the Algerians are violent people; they live in mountains. That is the way they have always been.” Emphasizing the problematic nature of such explanations, Quandt wrote: “It is too easy to explain any country’s problems by ‘that’s just the way they are.’ ”⁶

Essentialist explanations are problematic not only because they assert that people hold certain views or behave in certain ways because they are Arabs and/or Muslims but also, and even more fundamentally, because they mistakenly assume that there are clear and uncontested definitions of what constitute “Arab” and “Muslim” orientations. This approach ignores the significant differences that exist between Arab and Muslim countries, as well as the equally important individual-level variation that exists within countries. Important differences associated with age, education, class, gender, ethnicity, and residence are, in effect, defined out of existence by essentialist characterizations, or they are at least deemed to have so little explanatory power as to be unworthy of attention. The antidote to such flawed reasoning resides in rigorous survey research, which offers an objective, empirical basis not only for determining the aggregate views held by Arab and Muslim populations but also for mapping the normative and behavioral variation that exists both across and within countries.

Beyond contributing to misinformation, and perhaps even to myths and stereotypes, the absence of valid and reliable survey data has significantly limited the degree to which insights about the Arab and Muslim world can contribute to the less descriptive and more theoretical research agenda of contemporary political science. For example, the initiation of democratic transitions in many developing and post-Communist countries in the 1980s and 1990s brought increased interest in the political attitudes and values of ordinary citizens. But while important generalizable insights emerged from survey research in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Eastern Europe, little was known about the extent to which patterns observed elsewhere might apply to Arab countries or whether evidence from the Arab world might itself contribute to the refinement of generalizable explanatory models.

Writing in this connection in 1999, political scientist Lisa Anderson discussed some of the ways in which research on the Arab world might inform, as well as be informed by, approaches and theories within the discipline of political science. Among the examples she discussed in connection with a broader analytical contribution are studies that account for individual-level variance in support of Islamist political movements and in conceptions of national identity, subjects that relate, in part, to the focus of the present study. Further, although Anderson also complained about the paucity of rigorous survey research in Arab countries, she went on to observe that “the limited survey research done in the Arab world has had disproportionately high payoffs, as both transient attitude shifts and more profound changes in conceptions of national identity have been revealed and verified.”⁷

The most important reason for the dearth of survey research dealing with political issues is not a lack of interest on the part of political scientists or an absence of the training necessary to carry out such research. Nor is it, as is sometimes alleged, that ordinary citizens in the Arab and Muslim world are overly deferential to political authority and hence do not have clear and independent views on salient political issues. The explanation lies, first and foremost, in the undemocratic character of most Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa. This made survey research impossible in many places, or at least required investigators to accept very severe limitations on the questions they could investigate, and this in turn discouraged scholars and students with an interest in Arab and Muslim politics from selecting topics that require this kind of research. As explained in 1987 by political scientist Iliya Harik, political attitude surveys are possible “only under conditions of political freedom,” and the most important explanation for the paucity of such surveys in the Arab world is that the “political climate for this type of research does not exist.”⁸ Another prominent Arab social scientist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, made the same point. Basing his conclusion on surveys carried out under the auspices of the Center for Arab Unity Studies, Ibrahim reported that “the Arab political environment is extremely hostile to scientific field research and deeply suspicious of the motives of serious and objective inquiry.”⁹

Harik and Ibrahim offered these observations in the 1980s, and to a great extent they characterize the 1990s and the first few years of the twenty-first century as well. The situation has changed to a significant degree during the last decade, however. The Middle East still lags far behind other world regions with respect to freedom and civil liberties. But even before the Arab uprisings of 2011 there had been notable progress in some countries, at least to the point where official approval for survey research either was not needed or could be obtained; and so at present there are approximately a dozen Arab countries, as well as Turkey, in which it is possible to carry out systematic and objective political attitude surveys.

This situation has made possible a significant increase in political surveys of Muslim populations in the Middle East and North Africa. The number of opinion surveys dealing with political subjects does remain low, not only in comparison with regions where democratic political systems are more common but also in absolute terms. Nevertheless, the difference between the present and the period through the end of the twentieth century is striking.

One factor that differentiates the present from the preceding period is the growing number of local scholars with the interest and training needed to carry out valid, reliable, and representative political attitude studies. Important, too, is the growing number of academic institutions that conduct public opinion research, including research on political attitudes and behavior. A good example is the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, which conducts surveys not only in Jordan but also, occasionally, in other countries as well. In 2005, the center presented findings from political attitude surveys in five Arab countries in a volume entitled Revisiting the Arab Street: Research from Within.¹⁰ Another important example is the Ramallah-based Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research, which began its work in the mid-1990s and has now carried out several hundred polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A more recent example is the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute at Qatar University in Doha. Established in 2008, the institute has included political attitude questions on a number of its recent surveys of Qatari citizens and the country’s expatriate and migrant worker populations. An even more recent example is the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, which is also based in Doha. Established in 2010, the Arab Center works with partners in a number of Arab countries to conduct surveys on political, economic, and social issues.

The increasingly hospitable political climate is also reflected in the growing number of marketing and media research firms that study public opinion. Although not academic in character and only occasionally investigating topics of direct political relevance, these polling agencies are increasingly in evidence in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Some, like Tunisia’s Sigma Conseil, operate in a single country, although Sigma plans to open branches in other North African countries. Others, like the Pan Arab Research Center, which is based in Dubai, have branch offices in many Arab countries. The presence of these firms and the broadening scope of the topics about which they do surveys reflect both an increase in the ability to ask sensitive questions and greater recognition that the views of ordinary citizens matter.

Greater freedom to conduct public opinion research has led some individuals and institutions in the Middle East and North Africa to seek opportunities to benefit from the experience and expertise of established survey methodology programs in the United States, and this has contributed further to the frequency and quality of survey research in the region. The institute at Qatar University has a multiyear partnership with the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, for example. More generally, since 2003 the University of Michigan has brought roughly one hundred social scientists from seven different Arab countries to Ann Arbor for survey methodology training, while its faculty and graduate students have conducted survey research workshops and seminars in six Arab countries. More than 500 local scholars, analysts, and graduate students have participated in these workshops.

American scholars and doctoral students in political science are also conducting surveys in the Middle East and North Africa much more frequently than in the past. For example, with partial funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, I conducted one or more surveys of political attitudes and values in seven Arab countries between 2003 and 2006. Local scholars collaborated in much of this work. Prominent among the growing number of other examples that could be cited are Amaney Jamal of Princeton University and Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland. Both have gained visibility for their research on Arab political attitudes and both have recently presented their findings in very well-reviewed books.¹¹ Jamal’s first book was awarded the American Political Science Association’s prize for the best book in comparative politics in 2008.

Among political science doctoral students who study the Middle East and North Africa, dissertation research that includes a survey component is no longer the rarity that it was a few years ago. This reflects not only the opportunities that have emerged in the region in recent years but also the increasing likelihood that these students will have received training not only in Middle East politics but also in the theory and research methodology of the discipline. At the University of Michigan, recent political science dissertations focused on the Middle East have been based, at least in part, on surveys conducted in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Qatar; and three these dissertations have won American Political Science Association “best dissertation” awards.¹² In all of these examples, the University of Michigan had until recently been something of an outlier, but in fact the pattern is increasingly similar among scholars and students of Middle East politics at other major research universities in the United States.

A related development, further illustrating the changing regional climate for politically focused survey research, is the degree to which there is collaboration between local and foreign scholars. An important example, perhaps the most important, is the multicountry Arab Barometer,¹³ which was established in 2005. The Arab Barometer is governed by a steering committee composed of both Arab and American scholars and works with local scholars and researchers in the participating Arab countries. It is one of the six autonomous regional units that make up the Global Barometer Surveys network.¹⁴ Between 2006 and 2013, the Arab Barometer carried out three waves of surveys dealing with governance and political affairs. The first wave, conducted between 2006 and 2009, included Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Bahrain. The second and third waves, conducted in 2010–2011 and 2012–2013, respectively, added Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. All of the surveys are based on face-to-face interviews with large and nationally representative samples of ordinary men and women. Following a short embargo, the data are placed in the public domain and may be obtained for secondary analysis from either the Arab Barometer website or the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.

It is also notable that the World Values Survey (WVS) has been extended to the Muslim Middle East. The WVS is a global network of social scientists who have been surveying the social, cultural, and political orientations of ordinary men and women at five-year intervals since 1990.¹⁵ Hundreds of scholarly articles and policy papers have been written using WVS data, and, during the fourth wave of surveys in 2005–2006, the WVS questionnaire was administered to national samples in more than eighty societies. The WVS was not carried out in a single Arab country during the first two waves of surveys, but, beginning with the third wave in 2000, the WVS has been conducted at least once, and in many cases twice, in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, and Qatar, as well as the non-Arab Muslim-majority countries of Turkey and Iran. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Carnegie Middle East Governance and Islam Dataset
• Introduction: The Decline and Resurgence of Islam in the Twentieth Century
• 1 A Two-Level Study of Attitudes toward Political Islam: Data and Methods
• 2 Islam in the Lives of Ordinary Muslims
• 3 Why Individuals Hold Different Views about Islam’s Political Role
• 4 How and Why Explanations Vary across Countries
• Conclusion: What We Know and What Comes Next
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index