Book Review: Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties

Some books, as they are published, raise the bar for a whole field of study. This is the case of Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties for research on the role of religion in political parties. In particular, its wide comparative approach based on a robust mix of quantitative and qualitative analytical tools has been sorely needed in a field dominated for a long time mostly by narrow geographical approaches based mainly on historical and qualitative perspectives. Although the book is focused only on Muslim majority countries, and mainly engages with the literature related to these, its significance surely extends far beyond the Middle Eastern region.

The main aim of the book is to understand the impact of religious parties on citizens’ civil liberties. To do so, the author puts the role of religious parties in relation to a wide array of variables, to find that their presence in a government is not a sufficient condition to engender a process of restriction of liberties in a country. This happens if both a severe inflationary crisis is underway and religious organisations aiming at curbing civil liberties have become sufficiently institutionalised in a number of fields, from welfare provision to business and the media.

These conclusions are the result of a wide Large-n empirical analysis carried out in chapters 4 and 5, which considers all 49 Muslim majority countries in the world. These results are then further tested through qualitative in-depth analysis of two case studies, Turkey and Pakistan, carried out in chapters 6–9. According to the author, the history of both countries supports her thesis, bearing in mind that the presence of religious parties has become a negative factor for civil liberties only in phases marked by both a high rate of inflation and a high levels of institutionalisation of religious organisations in civil society. Finally, in the concluding chapter the author summarises the main findings of the research and briefly sketches a few non-Muslim majority cases whose features, in her opinion, support the idea of extending such findings beyond the Muslim world.

Although the book can surely be considered a watermark in the literature on the relationship between religion and political parties, there are some assumptions and methodological points in it that can be regarded as partly controversial and need some attention.

First of all, the research project seems to be tainted by a slight pro-secularist bias – which, in turn, leads, in some parts of the book, to a kind of circular logic. Indeed, Yadav does not really seem to consider the possibility that religious parties can desire anything else than to curb civil liberties, as a consequence of their “orthodox” interpretation of Sharia. The point is surely correct in methodological terms, considering the narrow definition of religious party adopted in the book, which de facto excludes parties with a religious orientation that nonetheless accept the secular nature of the state. As a consequence, however, it leads the author to consider as “religious parties” only fundamentalist ones: which, indeed, makes the conclusion that they indeed curb civil liberties quite obvious.

This problem is also the consequence of another methodological choice made in the book, which considers the religious/secular domain as a dichotomic variable rather than a continuum: which leaves no room for a middle way between a “secular” party and a “religious” (fundamentalist) one. In some cases, this criterium leads to questionable choices. For example, in relation to the Turkish case, the choice to consider Turgut Özal’s Motherland Party as a secular party can be questioned: this party, as also acknowledged by the author, was well connected to the religious brotherhoods and carried out religiously-friendly policies in several domains (particularly, Özal’s government was the first trying to pass legislation aiming at liberalising the Muslim veil in universities: a traditional battle horse of Turkish Islamists). On the other hand, Fethullah Gülen’s movement is frequently mentioned among religious organisations supporting Erdogan’s AKP, while its struggle against this latter in the 2010s on the basis of a religious but pro-democratic agenda is mostly neglected. The fact that, according to a significant literature, the AKP itself, in the early 2000s, widened rather than restricting the field of some civil liberties in Turkey, is also largely unaccounted for in the book.

However, the chapter where a pro-secularist bias comes to the fore more clearly is probably the concluding one, where the author puts forward some policy suggestions which could help reducing the negative impact of religious parties and organisations on civil liberties. Among other points, Yadav suggests to “ban the religious organizations from entering the commercial media or commercial business sector.” Wouldn’t this qualify by itself, we can wonder, as a restriction of civil rights?

Another point which maybe needs further consideration is the choice to include in the quantitative analysis all Muslim majority countries. Do factors such as the concentration of seats of religious parties in parliament really have a meaning in contexts such as theocratic Afghanistan, or totalitarian Turkmenistan? Are these latter really comparable to developed pluralist and competitive polities such as Turkey and Tunisia? This point probably needs further consideration.

To sum up, although some of its features can be the subject of discussion, this book represents a needed contribution to the study of the impact of religious parties, and religious organizations, on civil liberties, and, more broadly, democratisation processes. It also represents a significant challenge to all specialists of religion and politics, who are called to test with similar methodologies the conclusions of this book, inside and outside the Islamic world.