Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Why do people support Islamist Parties?

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This Doctoral Dissertation addresses the following question: What factors explain the popularity of political parties that promise an Islamic solution to social ills? Since the 1970s, the importance of Islam in social and political life visibly increased not only in authoritarian Middle Eastern states but also in the secular state of Turkey and in immigrant Muslim communities in the Western World. At a time when liberal-democracy has achieved victory over socialism, Islam stands as an alternative to liberal-democratic values. The project relies on three different data sets. First, it uses the information obtained from World Values Surveys conducted in eight predominantly Muslim countries. These countries are Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey. These surveys contain valuable information about the value-systems, political behavior, and attitudes towards public issues of the respondents. The Principal Investigator will also conduct a comparative analysis of two districts of Istanbul to see how they differ in their popular bases for political Islam. Although, these regions have very similar socioeconomic and demographic conditions, Islamist parties managed to establish a popular base in only one of the districts. These natural settings provide an excellent opportunity to discern the factors that explain the popularity and the limits of political Islam. Finally, it uses data generated from open-ended interviews from Islamist politicians in Turkey. This third data set serves two goals. On the one hand, it helps the Principal Investigator to identify what political Islam offers to the people. On the other hand, it illuminates how the elites of the Islamist movements think about politics along with spotting their perceptions of liberal-democracy and West. In summary, this project aims to contribute to the scholarly knowledge in the following realms: the relationship between secularization and liberal-democracy; the prospects of democracy in the Muslim world; the implications of Islamic revival for liberalism; and the reasons for the rise of Islam as a major political force.