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Prospects for Muslim Democracy

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In recent years "Muslim democracy" has emerged as a new political reality in a number of Muslim countries with open politics to define the role of Islam in democracy. Muslim democracy evokes the legacy of Christian Democratic parties of Europe in that it is an electoral platform that seeks to dominate the middle by integrating Muslim values into broader socioeconomic demands. Muslim democracy is not a platform for religious reform nor a theoretical construct, but rather the product of politics on the ground and the give-and-take of electoral politics. Muslim democracy has taken shape in the political process by Islamist parties such as Turkey's AKP, and non-religious parties such as Pakistan's PML. It provides a point of departure for discussing democratization and pragmatic change across the Muslim world, and in particular contending with outcome of recent elections in Iran, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Vali Nasr is Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey.

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Vali Nasr Professor Speaker Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
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Political Reform in the Middle East: How Far Is It Going?

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Marina S. Ottaway specializes in democracy and post-conflict reconstruction issues. She is a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project, a research endeavor that analyzes the state of democracy around the world and the efforts by the United States and other countries to promote democracy. Her new book, Democracy Challenged, a comparative study of semiauthoritarian regimes in Africa, the Caucasus, Latin America, and the Middle East, was published in January 2003. Her current works focus on political transformation in the Middle East and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She is also a lecturer in African Studies at the Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

She received her undergraduate educatin at University of Pavia, Italy and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Ottaway's selected Publications include, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism (Carnegie, 2003); Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, edited with Thomas Carothers (Carnegie, 2000); Africa's New Leaders: Democracy or State Reconstruction? (Carnegie, 1999)

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Marina Ottaway Senior Associate Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Islam and Democracy in the Middle East

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Islam and Democracy in the Middle East provides a comprehensive assessment of the origins and staying power of Middle East autocracies, as well as a sober account of the struggles of state reformers and opposition forces to promote civil liberties, competitive elections, and a pluralistic vision of Islam. Drawing on the insights of some twenty-five leading Western and Middle Eastern scholars, the book highlights the dualistic and often contradictory nature of political liberalization. As the case studies of Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Yemen suggest, political liberalization -- as managed by the state -- not only opens new spaces for debate and criticism, but is also used as a deliberate tactic to avoid genuine democratization. In several chapters on Iran, the authors analyze the benefits and costs of limited reform. There, the electoral successes of President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies inspired a new generation but have not as yet undermined the clerical establishment's power. By contrast, in Turkey a party with Islamist roots is moving a discredited system beyond decades of conflict and paralysis, following a stunning election victory in 2002.

Turkey's experience highlights the critical role of political Islam as a force for change. While acknowledging the enduring attraction of radical Islam throughout the Arab world, the concluding chapters carefully assess the recent efforts of Muslim civil society activists and intellectuals to promote a liberal Islamic alternative. Their struggles to affirm the compatibility of Islam and pluralistic democracy face daunting challenges, not least of which is the persistent efforts of many Arab rulers to limit the influence of all advocates of democracy, secular or religious.

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Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond

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Stanford University
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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