Islam and the institutions of a free society.

• Author: Voigt, Stefan

It has often been claimed that Islam threatens the values and institutions of free societies. The brutal destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon--two foremost symbols of the West--on September 11, 2001, seemed to vindicate Samuel Huntington's (1997) prediction of a "clash of civilizations": terrorists who claim to act in the name of Allah are now fighting a war against the West. Islamist extremists who disdain Western freedoms have succeeded in constraining civil rights in many countries, including the United States. The findings of a May 2003 opinion poll carried out by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2003) seem to provide further evidence in favor of Huntington's thesis. When Muslims in the area under the control of the Palestinian Authority were asked whether they have "a lot" or "some" confidence in certain leaders' ability to do the right thing regarding world affairs, 71 percent declared their confidence in Osama bin Laden. Indonesians ranked bin Laden third (58 percent) and ranked Ararat (68 percent) and Abdallah (the Jordanian king, 66 percent) first and second, respectively. Bin Laden also got very high confidence ratings in Jordan (55 percent), Morocco (49 percent), and Pakistan (45 percent).

Whether Islamic values are compatible with the institutions of free societies is relevant most importantly for the future of Muslim countries. Yet it is also of immense practical relevance for the West, which has received substantial numbers of immigrants from Muslim countries. How should the West deal with them? How can Westerners be liberal in their immigration policies but protective of their values at the same time? Turkey's accession to the European Union (EU) raises related questions. Is the EU united by a common core of values that preclude Turkey's inclusion? The United States and the United Kingdom are currently attempting to establish democracy in Iraq subsequent to military intervention. If the values of Islam are incompatible with democracy, are their efforts likely to fail?

I cannot deal thoroughly with all these questions here. In this article, I concentrate on whether the institutions of a free society are compatible with the values of Islam. First, I take up the relationship between values and institutions, identifying the institutions at the base of a free society and the values that might have fostered the emergence of those institutions. Next, I probe Muslim values, specifically "economic ethics," for their compatibility with the basic institutions of a free society. I then focus on another indicator--namely, opinion polls containing questions that reveal prevalent Muslim values. Finally, I consider the prospects of successfully establishing democracy in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Values and Institutions of a Free Society

What do we mean by values and institutions? Values are "conceptions of the desirable, influencing selective behavior" ("Values," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences). A cluster of values constitutes a value system. Shared values imply shared conceptions of the desirable. In order to share conceptions of the desirable, of what ought to be, the group that shares those conceptions must also have achieved some shared perception of what is. (1) Institutions I define here as commonly known rules used to structure recurring interactions and coupled with a sanctioning mechanism whose use will be threatened in case of noncompliance. We may distinguish various kinds of institutions according to their relevant sanctioning mechanisms: some rules are enforced by representatives of the state and are called external institutions here. Other rules are enforced by mechanisms that work without resort to the state--such as, for example, through their effect on reputation--and are called internal institutions here. (2)

I presume that the values shared by most members of a society will be reflected in the society's institutions, which in turn will determine its prospects for economic growth and its political expression. (3) The hypothesis that "institutions matter" has received widespread attention in recent years. Empirical studies show no clear-cut correlation between democracy and growth (Przeworski and Limongi 1993), but they do show that basic civil and economic rights foster economic growth (see Berggren 2003 and Roll and Talbott 2001 for recent overviews). If my hypothesis is correct, it is necessary to identify the values and norms shared by most members of a society in order to understand its economic performance, which will be mediated by the prevailing internal and external institutions.

The values held by the members of a society should have a decisive influence on its internal institutions because those values contain information on what is right and what is wrong in that society. If someone does not act in accordance with the values, he might be punished. Punishment by other members of society (not by the state) after a rule is broken is evidence of the existence of internal institutions. The connection between values and internal institutions is thus straightforward.

Do the values held by the members of a society also determine its external institutions? The claim that any legislator is restricted by his constituents' values received its classic statement from David Hume: "It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular" ([1777] 1985, 32). If any legislator--democratic or otherwise--deviates too much from the value system of the governed society, opposition will organize and increase the odds of the legislator's violent overthrow. To ensure that violations of newly enacted legislation will be prosecuted, the government has to assure itself of the loyalty of the police and the military. If newly enacted legislation clashes with the shared value system, however, violations will increase, making their prosecution more costly or even impossible, and police forces, thus overwhelmed, may lose their desire to pursue the violators. (4)

What is the connection between internal and external institutions? It has been argued (for example, in Voigt and Kiwit 1998) that many internal institutions are stable and not subject to deliberate change. Because incompatibilities between internal and external institutions greatly increase the cost of governing, the formal (external) institutions that can be set and modified by political will should not be completely at odds with the prevalent informal (internal) institutions. (5) This last argument deals more with the "ought" than with the "is," yet it also shows that incompatibilities between shared values and formal institutions make governing very costly--at the margin, prohibitively so.

Consider now the core institutions at the base of free societies--namely, (1) the rule of law, (2) constitutional democracy, and (3) a market economy. (6) These institutions can function successfully only if a society's underlying values are for the most part compatible with them.

The Rule of Law

The most important trait of the rule of law is that the law applies equally to all persons (isonomia), government leaders included--hence, so-called government under the law. No power used by government is arbitrary; all power is limited. As urged by Immanuel Kant ([1797] 1995), laws should fulfill the criterion of universalizability, which has been interpreted to mean that the law should be: general (applicable to an unforeseeable number of persons and circumstances); abstract (not prescribing a certain behavior, but simply proscribing a finite number of actions); certain (so that anyone interested in discovering whether a specific behavior will be legal can do so with a fairly high chance of being correct and furthermore can expect that today's rules will remain in effect tomorrow); and justifiable in rational discourse between any persons.

A number of institutional provisions typically support the rule of law. Among the most important are the separation of powers; the prohibition of retroactive legislation; the prohibition of expropriation without just compensation; habeas corpus; and other procedural devices, such as protection of confidence, the principle of the least disruptive intervention, the principle of proportionality, and the like. (7)

By necessity, the rule of law implies a market economy (secure private-property rights and the freedom of contract) because decisions by the government about who is to produce what in what quantities and so forth cannot be subsumed under general rules, but imply the arbitrary discrimination between persons (Hayek 1960, 227). Individual liberty is exempt from arbitrary interference by government--or by other powerful groups--only if it is secured by an effectively enforced rule of law. Logically, a rule-of-law constitution does not imply that the political system must be democratic. Hence, we deal separately with constitutional democracy.

Constitutional Democracy

Closely related to the rule of law is the concept of constitutionalism, which was developed primarily by colonists in the British North American colonies. It links the rule of law with the notion of a written constitution in which the basic procedures that government is to use are laid down. Constitutionalism is thus a normative concept not to be confused with the de facto constitution used by any society that has achieved a minimum amount of order to produce and finance public goods.

A constitution can be defined as the rules that establish how a society makes decisions about the provision and financing of public goods. Democracies are called constitutional if the domains to which majoritarian procedures may be applied are limited. A democratic constitution contains specific procedures for the selection (and the replacement) of those who are to...