Vote for Your Family! Particularism, Support for Democracy and Support for Shari’a in the Arab World

Bakker Femke E. and Valentina Rotondi
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Bakker Femke E.: LCSR, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation Universiteit Leiden, Instituut Politieke Wetenschap, Leiden, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, 2016, vol. 12, issue 2, 115-137

Abstract: This paper examines the micro-foundations of the relationship between political particularism, support for democracy and support for Shari’a in the Arab World. Our hypotheses suggest that particularism reduces support for democracy whilst it increases support for Shari’a since, at the individual-level, in-group (family/clan) obligations are more binding than obligations towards the state (universal). We test our hypotheses using data from the Arab Barometer. Results suggest that, even when allowing for the correlation of the error terms, particularism significantly increases support for Shari’a whilst it decreases support for democracy. Our results are robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of techniques aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of particularism.

Keywords: support for democracy; political culture; Arab world; Particularism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O17 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1515/rmeef-2016-0004

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