Why do people support political Islam? A comparative study of eight Muslim societies.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the reasons behind the support of political Islam in the eight Muslim societies. Three main arguments are tested at the individual level. The result shows that the explanations of religious attachment and premodernist predisposition are much more powerful than the explanation of socioeconomic perceptions. However, if the behavioral support is differentiated from the attitudinal support, the explanation of socioeconomic perceptions is corroborated and stronger than the other two explanations. In a nutshell, people with greater personal piety or premodernist attitudes are more supportive of political Islam, but when it comes down to voting behavior, they are very rational to hold the incumbent government responsible, no matter whether Islamist parties are part of it. Another research goal is to build a unifying two-level theory to explain how societal changes would affect the individual-level causal relationships. Contrary to the conventional wisdoms, country-level religiosity countervails the positive individual-level relationship between personal piety and support of political Islam. Level of modernization reinforces the individual-level relationships of personal piety and premodernist attitudes on the attitudinal support of political Islam. However, the most important finding is that the worse the socioeconomic situation, the stronger the above two individual-level relationships. Overall, religiosity and socioeconomic situation are inversely related to the support of political Islam at the country level, but level of modernization has mixed effects, depending on whether the attitudinal or behavioral support is referred. The entire findings challenge the liberalist argument at the individual level that personal piety and premodernist predisposition are not associated with the support of political Islam, but meanwhile they support the liberalist argument at the country level that a religious or premodern society is not associated with stronger support of political Islam. The above conclusions indicate that past studies all suffer the level of analysis problem. In this case, the three explanations work at different levels: socioeconomic situation is a country-level explanation; but religious attachment and premodernist predisposition are individual-level explanations.