Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:22:33.702Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Political Economy of Support for Sharia: Evidence from the Russian North Caucasus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2016

Valery Dzutsati ,
David Siroky  and
Khasan Dzutsev
Valery Dzutsati*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
David Siroky*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Khasan Dzutsev*
Affiliation:
K. L. Khetagurov North-Ossetian State University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Valery Dzutsati, Arizona State University, P. O. Box 873902, Tempe, AZ 85287-3902. E-mail: vdzutsati@asu.edu
David Siroky, Arizona State University, P. O. Box 873902, Tempe, AZ 85287-3902. E-mail: david.siroky@asu.edu
Khasan Vladimirovich Dzutsev, K. L. Khetagurov North-Ossetian State University, 362025, Vatutina 44-46 Street, Vladikavkaz, Republic North Ossetia-Alania. E-mail: khasan_dzutsev@mail.ru.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many scholars have argued that orthodox Muslims harbor attitudes that are more economically communitarian and politically illiberal, since individuals are seen as embedded within a larger community that places a premium on social order. Yet most studies have ignored the potential of Islam as an ideological platform for political reformers. Religion in general and Islam in particular has mostly been treated as a predictor rather than a derivative of political-economic preferences. This article suggests that, in the absence of credible secular political ideologies and representative political mechanisms, reformist-minded individuals are likely to use religion as a political platform for change. When Muslims are a minority in a repressive non-Muslim society, Islamic orthodoxy can serve as a political platform for politically and economically liberal forces. We test these conjectures with original micro-level data from the Russian North Caucasus and find strong support for them.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 695 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank the participants on our panels at the Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (2012) and the Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2015); the workshops at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University (2012), at the Social Science Research Council; and at the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Society, Chapman University (2013). We are grateful to Laura Adams, Cynthia Buckley, Rodolfo Espino, Anthony Gill, Laurence Iannacone, Liliya Karimova, Alexander Knysh, John O'Loughlin, Jean-François Ratelle, Christopher Rhodes, Jared Rubin, Brian Silver, and Carolyn Warner for comments. We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their helpful comments and suggestions on the paper.

References

REFERENCES

Abdulagatov, Zaid. 2012. “O Vliyanii Religioznogo Faktora Na Ekstremistskoe Povedenie Dagestanskoi Molodyozhi (About the Influence of the Religious Factor on Extremist Behavior of the Dagestani Youth).” Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya 1:106–113.Google Scholar
Assyaukanie, Luthfi. 2005. “Democracy and the Islamic State: Muslim Arguments for Political Change in Indonesia.” The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 20:32–46.Google Scholar
Alesina, Alberto, Baqir, Reza, and Easterly, William. 1999. “Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114:1243–1284.Google Scholar
al-Shiekh, Abdallah. 1995. “Zakat.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. L. Esposito, John. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 366–370.Google Scholar
Anderson, John. 2004. “Does God Matter, and if so Whose God? Religion and Democratization.” Democratization 11:192–217.Google Scholar
Babich, Irina Leonidovna. 2004. “Respublika Kabardino-Balkaria: Mecheti i Islamskie Obshestva (Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria: Mosques and Islamic Societies).” Islam i Pravo v Rossii 3 (Moscow RUDN, 2004) 37 (in Russian).Google Scholar
Barry, Ellen. 2011. “Rally Defying Putin's Party Draws Tens of Thousands.” New York Times, December, 10.Google Scholar
Bayat, Asef. 2013. The Making of Post-Islamist Iran in Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam, ed. Asef, Bayat. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Benstead, Lindsay J. 2014. “Does Interviewer Religious Dress Affect Survey Responses? Evidence from Morocco.” Politics and Religion 7:734–760.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L. 1999. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing.Google Scholar
Berman, Eli. 2009. Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.Google Scholar
Blaydes, Lisa, and Gillum, Rachel. 2013. “Religiosity-of-Interviewer Effects: Assessing the Impact of Veiled Enumerators on Survey Response in Egypt.” Politics and Religion 6:459–482.Google Scholar
Bobrovnikov, Vladimir. 2007. “Islamskoe Vozrozhdenie v Dagestane: Dvadtsat Let Spustya (Islamic Revival in Dagestan: Twenty Years Later).” Central Asia and the Caucasus Journal 2:161–172 (in Russian).Google Scholar
Bustikova, L. 2014. “Revenge of the Radical Right.” Comparative Political Studies 47:1738–1765.10.1177/0010414013516069Google Scholar
Cammett, Melani, and Issar, Sukriti. 2010. “Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: Sectarianism and the Logics of Welfare Allocation in Lebanon.” World Politics 62:381–421.Google Scholar
Chen, Daniel L, and Lind, Jo Thori. 2007. “Religion, Welfare Politics, and Church-State Separation.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 42:42–52.Google Scholar
Chiozza, Giacomo. 2002. “Is there a Clash of Civilizations? Evidence from Patterns of International Conflict Involvement, 1946–97.” Journal of Peace Research 39:711–734.Google Scholar
Coene, Frederik. 2010. The Caucasus—An Introduction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Corstange, Daniel. 2009. “Sensitive Questions, Truthful Answers? Modeling the List Experiment with LISTIT.” Political Analysis 17:45–63.Google Scholar
Dancygier, Rafaela M. 2010. Immigration and conflict in Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Nancy, and Robinson, Robert. 2006. “The Egalitarian Face of Islamic Orthodoxy: Support for Islamic Law and Economic Justice in Seven Muslim-Majority Nations.” American Sociological Review 71:167–190.Google Scholar
Davis, Nancy, and Robinson, Robert. 2009. “Overcoming Movement Obstacles by the Religiously Orthodox: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 114:1302–1349.Google Scholar
Derluguian, Georgi M. 1999. “Che Guevaras in Turbans: The Twisted Lineage of Islamic Fundamentalism in Chechnya and Dagestan.” Program on New Approaches to Russian Security. Cambridge, MA: Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Djupe, Paul A., and Gilbert, Christopher P.. 2002. “The Political Voice of Clergy.” Journal of Politics, 64:596–609.Google Scholar
Djupe, Paul A., and Gilbert, Christopher P.. 2006. “The Resourceful Believer: Generating Civic Skills in Church.” Journal of Politics 68:116–127.Google Scholar
Dunlop, John. 1998. Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dzutsev, Khasan. 2008. Puti Preodoleniya Etno-Sotsialnykh Konfliktov v Yuzhnom Federalnom Okruge Rossiyskoy Federatsii (Ways of Overcoming Ethnic and Social Conflicts in Southern Federal District of the Russian Federation). Vladikavkaz: Rosspen (in Russian).Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. [1933] 2013. The Division of Labor in Society. New York, NY: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Eifert, Benn, Miguel, Edward, and Posner, Daniel N. 2010. “Political competition and ethnic identification in Africa.” American Journal of Political Science 54(2):494–510.Google Scholar
Esposito, John, and Mogahed, Dalia. 2008. “Who Will Speak for Islam.” World Policy Journal 25:47–57.Google Scholar
Fish, Steven. 2002. “Islam and Authoritarianism.” World Politics 55:4–37.10.1353/wp.2003.0004Google Scholar
Freedom in the World Report, http://www.freedomhouse.org/country/russia.Google Scholar
Gall, Carlotta, and de Waal, Thomas. 1997. Chechnya: A Small Victorious War. London: Pan Macmillan LimitedGoogle Scholar
Gammer, Moshe. 2003. Muslim resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. London, UK: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1968. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gill, Anthony. 2008. The Political Origins of Religious Liberty. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gill, Anthony. 1998. Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Guiso, Luigi, Sapienza, Paola, and Zingales, Luigi. 2003. “People's Opium? Religion and Economic Attitudes.” Journal of Monetary economics 50:225–282.Google Scholar
Habyarimana, James, Humphreys, Macartan, Posner, Daniel, and Weinstein, Jeremy. 2007. “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?” American Political Science Review 101:709–725.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry. 2008. The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harnischfeger, Johannes. 2008. Democratization and Islamic Law: The Sharia Conflict in Nigeria. New York, NY: Campus Verlag.Google Scholar
Hassner, Ron. 2009. War on Sacred Grounds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hefner, Robert. 2011. Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Honaker, James, King, Gary, and Blackwell, Matthew. 2011. “Amelia II: A program for missing data.” Journal of Statistical Software 45:1–47. http://www.jstatsoft.org/v45/i07/.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. “The Clash of Civilizations.” Foreign Affairs 72:22–49.10.2307/20045621Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1997. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, NY: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1998. “Introduction to the economics of religion.” Journal of Economic Piterature, pp. 1465–1495.Google Scholar
Immerzeel, Tim, and van Tubergen, Frank. 2013. “Religion as Reassurance? Testing the Insecurity Theory in 26 European Countries.” European Sociological Review 29:359–372.Google Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald, and Norris, Pippa. 2003. Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
International Crisis Group. 2013. “The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (III), Governance, Elections, Rule of Law.” Europe Report #226, September 6.Google Scholar
Jamal, Amaney A. and Tessler, Mark A. 2008. “Attitudes in the Arab world.” Journal of Democracy 19(1):97–110.Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa, and Inglehart, Ronald. 2011. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Iacus, Stefano M. 2012. “rrp: Random Recursive Partitioning, R package version 2.94/r4.” http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rrp/ (Accessed on February 18, 2016).Google Scholar
Khanbabaev, Kaflan. 2004. “Shariatizatsiya Postsovetskogo Dagestana: mify i realnost, (Shariatization of the post-Soviet Dagestan: myths and reality.” Islam i Pravo v Rossii, 1–3 (Moscow RUDN, 2004), 158 (in Russian).Google Scholar
Knysh, Alexander. 2004. “A Clear and Present Danger: ‘Wahhabism’ as a Rhetorical Foil.” Die Welt des Islams 44:17.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 2010a. The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur. 2010b. “The Economic Roots of Political Underdevelopment in the Middle East: A Historical Perspective.” Southern Economic Journal 78:1086–1095.Google Scholar
Kurzman, Charles and Naqvi, Ijlal. 2010. “Do Muslims vote Islamic?” Journal of Democracy 21(2):50–63.Google Scholar
Kurzman, Charles and Türkoğlu, Didem. 2015. “Do Muslims vote Islamic now?” Journal of Democracy 26(4):100–109.10.1353/jod.2015.0073Google Scholar
Klasnja, Marko, and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2013. “The Economy, Corruption, and the Vote: Evidence from Experiments in Sweden and Moldova.” Electoral Studies 32:536–543.Google Scholar
Lander, Jared P. 2016. coefplot: Plots Coefficients from Fitted Models. R package version 1.2.4. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=coefplotGoogle Scholar
Mazarr, Michael. 2007. Unmodern men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mernissi, Fatema. 2002. Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World. Cambridge: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mozaffar, Shaheen and Scarritt, James R. 1999. “Why territorial autonomy is not a viable option for managing ethnic conflict in African plural societies.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 5(3–4):230–253.10.1080/13537119908428578Google Scholar
Mujani, Saiful, and William Liddle, R.. 2009. Muslim Indonesia's Secular Democracy. Asian Survey 49:575–590.10.1525/as.2009.49.4.575Google Scholar
Neiheisel, Jacob R., Djupe, Paul A., and Sokhey, Anand E.. 2008. “Veni, vidi, disseri: Churches and the Promise of Democratic Deliberation.” American Politics Research 37:614–643.Google Scholar
Noland, Marcus. 2005. “Religion and Economic Performance.” World Development 33:1215–1232.Google Scholar
Ozbudun, Ergun. 2014. “AKP at the Crossroads: Erdogan's Majoritarian Drift.” South European Society and Politics 19:155–167.Google Scholar
Olzak, Susan and Shanahan, Suzanne. 2014. “Prisoners and paupers the impact of group threat on incarceration in nineteenth-century US cities.” American Sociological Review 79(3):392–411.Google Scholar
Pepinsky, Thomas B., William Liddle, R., and Mujani, Saiful. 2012. “Testing Islam's Political Advantage: Evidence from Indonesia.” American Journal of Political Science 56:584–600.Google Scholar
Platteau, Jeanphilippe. 2008. “Religion, Politics, and Development: Lessons from the Lands of Islam.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 68:329–351.Google Scholar
Pokrovsky, Nikolai. 2009. Kavkazskie Voiny i Imamat Shamilya (Caucasian Wars and Shamil's Imamat). Moscow: Rosspen.Google Scholar
Posner, Daniel N. 2004. “The political salience of cultural difference: why Chewas and Tumbukas are allies in Zambia and adversaries in Malawi.” American Political Science Review 98(4):529–545.10.1017/S0003055404041334Google Scholar
Pryor, Frederic L. 2007. “The Economic Impact of Islam on Developing Countries.” World Development 35:1815–1835.Google Scholar
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 2013. “Two North Caucasus Republics Set Election Precedent.” Caucasus Report, May 19.Google Scholar
Ragab, Ibrahim. 1980. “Islam and Development.” World Development 8:513–521.Google Scholar
Robinson, Glenn E. 1997. “Can Islamists be Democrats? The Case of Jordan.” The Middle East Journal 51(3):373–387.Google Scholar
Rodinson, Maxime. 1974. Islam and Capitalism. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce M., Oneal, John R., and Cox, Michaelene. 2000. “Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism déjà vu? Some Evidence.” Journal of Peace Research 37:583–608.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Seligson, Mitchell A. 2002. “The Impact Of Corruption On Regime Legitimacy: A Comparative Study of Four Latin American Countries.” Journal of Politics 64:408–433.Google Scholar
Siroky, David, Dzutsev, Valeriy, and Hechter, Michael. 2013. “The Differential Demand for Indirect Rule: Evidence from the North Caucasus.” Post-Soviet Affairs 29:268–286.Google Scholar
Siroky, David, and Dzutsati, Valery. 2015. “The Empire Strikes Back: Ethnicity, Terrain, and Indiscriminate Violence in Counterinsurgencies.” Social Science Quarterly 96:807–829.Google Scholar
Stark, Rodney. 1999. “Secularization, Rip.” Sociology of Religion 60:249–273.Google Scholar
Stark, Rodney, and Finke, Roger. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tanuwidjaja, Sunny. 2010. “Political Islam and Islamic Parties in Indonesia: Critically Assessing the Evidence of Islam's Political Decline.” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs 32:29–49.Google Scholar
Tessler, Mark. 2010. “Religion, Religiosity and the Place of Islam in Political Life: Insights from the Arab Barometer Surveys.” Middle East Law and Governance 2:221–252.Google Scholar
Tessler, Mark, Jamal, Amaney, and Robbins, Michael. 2012. “New Findings on Arabs and Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 23:89–103.Google Scholar
Thomas, Scott. 2005. The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tibi, Bassam. 2008. “Why they can't be Democratic.” Journal of Democracy 19:43–48.Google Scholar
Toft, Monica Duffy, and Zhukov, Yuri M.. 2015. “Islamists and Nationalists: Rebel Motivation and Counterinsurgency in Russia's North Caucasus.” American Political Science Review 109:222–238.Google Scholar
Toft, Monica Duffy, Philpott, Daniel, and Shah, Timothy Samuel. 2011. “God's Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics.” New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Walker, Sir Arnold Thomas. 1896 [1913]. The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith. Westminster: A. Constable and Co.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1999. “Islam, the West, and the World.” Journal of Islamic Studies 10:109–125.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. [1930] 2005. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. 2002. Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism and Political Change in Egypt. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Willis, Michel. 2006. The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Yavuz, Hakan. 2009. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Dzutsati supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Dzutsati supplementary material(File)
File 419.6 KB