The True Clash of Civilizations
Foreign
Policy Magazine, March/April 2003
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036
Fax: 202-483-4430
Samuel Huntington was only half right. The cultural
fault line that divides the West and the Muslim world is not about democracy
but sex. According to a new survey, Muslims and their Western counterparts
want democracy, yet they are worlds apart when it comes to attitudes toward
divorce, abortion, gender equality, and gay rights—which may not bode well
for democracy’s future in the Middle East.
By Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris
Democracy promotion in Islamic countries is now one of
the Bush administration’s most popular talking points. “We reject the
condescending notion that freedom will not grow in the Middle East,”
Secretary of State Colin Powell declared last December as he unveiled the
White House’s new Middle East Partnership Initiative to encourage political
and economic reform in Arab countries. Likewise, Condoleezza Rice, President
George W. Bush’s national security advisor, promised last September that the
United States is committed to “the march of freedom in the Muslim world.”
But does the Muslim world march to the beat of a
different drummer? Despite Bush’s optimistic pronouncement that there is
“no clash of civilizations” when it comes to “the common rights and
needs of men and women,” others are not so sure. Samuel Huntington’s
controversial 1993 thesis—that the cultural division between “Western
Christianity” and “Orthodox Christianity and Islam” is the new fault
line for conflict—resonates more loudly than ever since September 11.
Echoing Huntington, columnist Polly Toynbee argued in the British Guardian
last November, “What binds together a globalized force of some extremists
from many continents is a united hatred of Western values that seems to them
to spring from Judeo-Christianity.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the
Atlantic, Democratic Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, after sitting
through hours of testimony on U.S.-Islamic relations on Capitol Hill last
October, testily blurted, “Why doesn’t democracy grab hold in the Middle
East? What is there about the culture and the people and so on where democracy
just doesn’t seem to be something they strive for and work for?”
Huntington’s response would be that the Muslim world
lacks the core political values that gave birth to representative democracy in
Western civilization: separation of religious and secular authority, rule of
law and social pluralism, parliamentary institutions of representative
government, and protection of individual rights and civil liberties as the
buffer between citizens and the power of the state. This claim seems all too
plausible given the failure of electoral democracy to take root throughout the
Middle East and North Africa. According to the latest Freedom House rankings,
almost two thirds of the 192 countries around the world are now electoral
democracies. But among the 47 countries with a Muslim majority, only one
fourth are electoral democracies—and none of the core Arabic-speaking
societies falls into this category.
Yet this circumstantial evidence does little to prove
Huntington correct, since it reveals nothing about the underlying beliefs of
Muslim publics. Indeed, there has been scant empirical evidence whether
Western and Muslim societies exhibit deeply divergent values—that is, until
now. The cumulative results of the two most recent waves of the World Values
Survey (WVS), conducted in 1995-96 and 2000-2002, provide an extensive body of
relevant evidence. Based on questionnaires that explore values and beliefs in
more than 70 countries, the WVS is an investigation of sociocultural and
political change that encompasses over 80 percent of the world’s population.
A comparison of the data yielded by these surveys in
Muslim and non-Muslim societies around the globe confirms the first claim in
Huntington’s thesis: Culture does matter—indeed, it matters a lot.
Historical religious traditions have left an enduring imprint on contemporary
values. However, Huntington is mistaken in assuming that the core clash
between the West and Islam is over political values. At this point in history,
societies throughout the world (Muslim and Judeo-Christian alike) see
democracy as the best form of government. Instead, the real fault line between
the West and Islam, which Huntington’s theory completely overlooks, concerns
gender equality and sexual liberalization. In other words, the values
separating the two cultures have much more to do with eros than demos. As
younger generations in the West have gradually become more liberal on these
issues, Muslim nations have remained the most traditional societies in the
world.
This gap in values mirrors the widening economic divide
between the West and the Muslim world. Commenting on the disenfranchisement of
women throughout the Middle East, the United Nations Development Programme
observed last summer that “no society can achieve the desired state of
well-being and human development, or compete in a globalizing world, if half
its people remain marginalized and disempowered.” But this “sexual clash
of civilizations” taps into far deeper issues than how Muslim countries
treat women. A society’s commitment to gender equality and sexual
liberalization proves time and again to be the most reliable indicator of how
strongly that society supports principles of tolerance and egalitarianism.
Thus, the people of the Muslim world overwhelmingly want democracy, but
democracy may not be sustainable in their societies.
Testing Huntington
Huntington argues that “ideas of individualism,
liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of
law, democracy, free markets, [and] the separation of church and state”
often have little resonance outside the West. Moreover, he holds that Western
efforts to promote these ideas provoke a violent backlash against “human
rights imperialism.” To test these propositions, we categorized the
countries included in the WVS according to the nine major contemporary
civilizations, based largely on the historical religious legacy of each
society. The survey includes 22 countries representing Western Christianity (a
West European culture that also encompasses North America, Australia, and New
Zealand), 10 Central European nations (sharing a Western Christian heritage,
but which also lived under Communist rule), 11 societies with a Muslim
majority (Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran,
Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey), 12 traditionally Orthodox societies
(such as Russia and Greece), 11 predominantly Catholic Latin American
countries, 4 East Asian societies shaped by Sino-Confucian values, 5
sub-Saharan Africa countries, plus Japan and India.
Despite Huntington’s claim of a clash of civilizations
between the West and the rest, the WVS reveals that, at this point in history,
democracy has an overwhelmingly positive image throughout the world. In
country after country, a clear majority of the population describes “having
a democratic political system” as either “good” or “very good.”
These results represent a dramatic change from the 1930s and 1940s, when
fascist regimes won overwhelming mass approval in many societies; and for many
decades, Communist regimes had widespread support. But in the last decade,
democracy became virtually the only political model with global appeal, no
matter what the culture. With the exception of Pakistan, most of the Muslim
countries surveyed think highly of democracy: In Albania, Egypt, Bangladesh,
Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Morocco, and Turkey, 92 to 99 percent of the public
endorsed democratic institutions—a higher proportion than in the United
States (89 percent).
Yet, as heartening as these results may be, paying lip
service to democracy does not necessarily prove that people genuinely support
basic democratic norms—or that their leaders will allow them to have
democratic institutions. Although constitutions of authoritarian states such
as China profess to embrace democratic ideals such as freedom of religion, the
rulers deny it in practice. In Iran’s 2000 elections, reformist candidates
captured nearly three quarters of the seats in parliament, but a theocratic
elite still holds the reins of power. Certainly, it’s a step in the right
direction if most people in a country endorse the idea of democracy. But this
sentiment needs to be complemented by deeper underlying attitudes such as
interpersonal trust and tolerance of unpopular groups—and these values must
ultimately be accepted by those who control the army and secret police.
The WVS reveals that, even after taking into account
differences in economic and political development, support for democratic
institutions is just as strong among those living in Muslim societies as in
Western (or other) societies. For instance, a solid majority of people living
in Western and Muslim countries gives democracy high marks as the most
efficient form of government, with 68 percent disagreeing with assertions that
“democracies are indecisive” and “democracies aren’t good at
maintaining order.” (All other cultural regions and countries, except East
Asia and Japan, are far more critical.) And an equal number of respondents on
both sides of the civilizational divide (61 percent) firmly reject
authoritarian governance, expressing disapproval of “strong leaders” who
do not “bother with parliament and elections.” Muslim societies display
greater support for religious authorities playing an active societal role than
do Western societies. Yet this preference for religious authorities is less a
cultural division between the West and Islam than it is a gap between the West
and many other less secular societies around the globe, especially in
sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. For instance, citizens in some Muslim
societies agree overwhelmingly with the statement that “politicians who do
not believe in God are unfit for public office” (88 percent in Egypt, 83
percent in Iran, and 71 percent in Bangladesh), but this statement also
garners strong support in the Philippines (71 percent), Uganda (60 percent),
and Venezuela (52 percent). Even in the United States, about two fifths of the
public believes that atheists are unfit for public office.
However, when it comes to attitudes toward gender
equality and sexual liberalization, the cultural gap between Islam and the
West widens into a chasm. On the matter of equal rights and opportunities for
women—measured by such questions as whether men make better political
leaders than women or whether university education is more important for boys
than for girls—Western and Muslim countries score 82 percent and 55 percent,
respectively. Muslim societies are also distinctively less permissive toward
homosexuality, abortion, and divorce.
These issues are part of a broader syndrome of tolerance,
trust, political activism, and emphasis on individual autonomy that
constitutes “self-expression values.” The extent to which a society
emphasizes these self-expression values has a surprisingly strong bearing on
the emergence and survival of democratic institutions. Among all the countries
included in the WVS, support for gender equality—a key indicator of
tolerance and personal freedom—is closely linked with a society’s level of
democracy.
In every stable democracy, a majority of the public
disagrees with the statement that “men make better political leaders than
women.” None of the societies in which less than 30 percent of the public
rejects this statement (such as Jordan, Nigeria, and Belarus) is a true
democracy. In China, one of the world’s least democratic countries, a
majority of the public agrees that men make better political leaders than
women, despite a party line that has long emphasized gender equality (Mao
Zedong once declared, “women hold up half the sky”). In practice, Chinese
women occupy few positions of real power and face widespread discrimination in
the workplace. India is a borderline case. The country is a long-standing
parliamentary democracy with an independent judiciary and civilian control of
the armed forces, yet it is also marred by a weak rule of law, arbitrary
arrests, and extrajudicial killings. The status of Indian women reflects this
duality. Women’s rights are guaranteed in the constitution, and Indira
Gandhi led the nation for 15 years. Yet domestic violence and forced
prostitution remain prevalent throughout the country, and, according to the
WVS, almost 50 percent of the Indian populace believes only men should run the
government.
The way a society views homosexuality constitutes another
good litmus test of its commitment to equality. Tolerance of well-liked groups
is never a problem. But if someone wants to gauge how tolerant a nation really
is, find out which group is the most disliked, and then ask whether members of
that group should be allowed to hold public meetings, teach in schools, and
work in government. Today, relatively few people express overt hostility
toward other classes, races, or religions, but rejection of homosexuals is
widespread. In response to a WVS question about whether homosexuality is
justifiable, about half of the world’s population say “never.” But, as
is the case with gender equality, this attitude is directly proportional to a
country’s level of democracy. Among authoritarian and quasi-democratic
states, rejection of homosexuality is deeply entrenched: 99 percent in both
Egypt and Bangladesh, 94 percent in Iran, 92 percent in China, and 71 percent
in India. By contrast, these figures are much lower among respondents in
stable democracies: 32 percent in the United States, 26 percent in Canada, 25
percent in Britain, and 19 percent in Germany.
Muslim societies are neither uniquely nor monolithically
low on tolerance toward sexual orientation and gender equality. Many of the
Soviet successor states rank as low as most Muslim societies. However, on the
whole, Muslim countries not only lag behind the West but behind all other
societies as well. Perhaps more significant, the figures reveal the gap
between the West and Islam is even wider among younger age groups. This
pattern suggests that the younger generations in Western societies have become
progressively more egalitarian than their elders, but the younger generations
in Muslim societies have remained almost as traditional as their parents and
grandparents, producing an expanding cultural gap.
Clash of Conclusions
“The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve
the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation,” President
Bush declared in a commencement speech at West Point last summer. He’s
right. Any claim of a “clash of civilizations” based on fundamentally
different political goals held by Western and Muslim societies represents an
oversimplification of the evidence. Support for the goal of democracy is
surprisingly widespread among Muslim publics, even among those living in
authoritarian societies. Yet Huntington is correct when he argues that
cultural differences have taken on a new importance, forming the fault lines
for future conflict. Although nearly the entire world pays lip service to
democracy, there is still no global consensus on the self-expression
values—such as social tolerance, gender equality, freedom of speech, and
interpersonal trust—that are crucial to democracy. Today, these divergent
values constitute the real clash between Muslim societies and the West.
But economic development generates changed attitudes in
virtually any society. In particular, modernization compels systematic,
predictable changes in gender roles: Industrialization brings women into the
paid work force and dramatically reduces fertility rates. Women become
literate and begin to participate in representative government but still have
far less power than men. Then, the postindustrial phase brings a shift toward
greater gender equality as women move into higher-status economic roles in
management and gain political influence within elected and appointed bodies.
Thus, relatively industrialized Muslim societies such as Turkey share the same
views on gender equality and sexual liberalization as other new democracies.
Even in established democracies, changes in cultural
attitudes—and eventually, attitudes toward democracy—seem to be closely
linked with modernization. Women did not attain the right to vote in most
historically Protestant societies until about 1920, and in much of Roman
Catholic Europe until after World War II. In 1945, only 3 percent of the
members of parliaments around the world were women. In 1965, the figure rose
to 8 percent, in 1985 to 12 percent, and in 2002 to 15 percent.
The United States cannot expect to foster democracy in
the Muslim world simply by getting countries to adopt the trappings of
democratic governance, such as holding elections and having a parliament. Nor
is it realistic to expect that nascent democracies in the Middle East will
inspire a wave of reforms reminiscent of the velvet revolutions that swept
Eastern Europe in the final days of the Cold War. A real commitment to
democratic reform will be measured by the willingness to commit the resources
necessary to foster human development in the Muslim world. Culture has a
lasting impact on how societies evolve. But culture does not have to be
destiny.
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Ronald Inglehart is program director at the Center
for Political Studies at the University of Michigan’s Institute for
Social Research and directs the World Values Survey.
-
Pippa Norris is the McGuire lecturer in comparative
politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
They are the authors of Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change
Around the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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