Islam and Elections

2004 Background Paper (Continued)


The Problems of Participatory Government

The purpose of this section is to outline some of the structural and practical issues involved in the design and implementation of electoral government. Some questions relate to the structure and functioning of the institutions themselves, some relate to the actual process of organizing and conducting elections, and some relate to the special circumstances of Islam and/or the postcolonial condition.

Structural Problems
Since elections may be considered to have the dual purpose of representing the views of the electorate and legitimating the actions of the people elected, the determination of who may vote and who may stand for election are key issues.

The idea of limiting access to the ballot has a long history. In Europe and the United States, voter eligibility has historically been restricted. In America, slaves were excluded from voting until after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and many black voters subsequently had their access to the ballot restricted on the basis of poverty or illiteracy. Women were prevented from voting in almost every country until the twentieth century. Today, the primary remaining limitations on voting in most Western countries are citizenship and adulthood, as variously defined.

Historically, voting restrictions reflected the ways in which different societies thought about the constituency of the government. Philosophers like John Locke who considered protection of property to be the foremost purpose of government considered the requirement of property ownership to be quite natural.50 Early constitutional thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered government to be derived from the will of the people, did not consider women or members of specific ethnic and religious groups part of “the people.”51 A third type of restriction, exemplified in Lebanon’s National Pact, regards voters as members of specific constituent groups in society, such as religious sects or occupational groups. Under such a system, elected officials represent these groups within the government according to a strict numerical formula.

Standing for election has been similarly constrained. In some historical instances, such as the local assemblies of notables convened by the Ottoman government in the nineteenth century, common people were not eligible to run for office. In that case, eligibility to run may have been regulated informally because of a general recognition of who was and who was not a member of the notable (a’yan) class. In other systems, however, constitutions or electoral law spell out specifically the qualifications candidates must meet to stand for office. Citizenship, age, gender, place of birth, religion, and property are common types of qualifications.

Aside from these legally-specified restrictions, access to a listing on the ballot may be determined by the operations of political parties. In some cases, such as in the United States, nomination by a party is required for listing on a ballot although the definition of a legal party varies, and the determination of how a candidate qualifies for party nomination is left to the internal deliberations of the party itself. In other systems, only the names of parties may appear on the legislative ballot. The votes collected by each party determine the number of seats it will have in the legislature with the identity of the holders of those seats being determined by the party.

Parties function as mechanisms for limiting the number of candidates listed on a ballot, but in some systems, such as that of the Islamic Republic of Iran, other bodies oversee candidacy and determine who is qualified to run for office. Iran’s Guardian Council, an elected body of ‘ulama, rules on the eligibility of each person who presents himself or herself as a candidate for election.

Electoral franchise and systems of nomination combine in many different ways, but they all serve the same basic functions. On the one hand, their purpose is to make sure that the voices of the people deemed most central or legitimate to the constitution of a particular polity are heard. On the other, they ensure that the number of people running for office is not so large as to make reasonable choice impossible. These two functions, in turn, relate to the desire to make the outcome of elections so weighty as to defy any attempt to declare a properly elected government illegitimate.

The goals of consulting the electoral constituency and empowering a legitimate government can be in conflict with other common societal goals. This is seen, for example, in times of emergency when many democratic governments temporarily suspend some electoral processes. Yet the accusation that is most often leveled against democracy by both Muslim and non-Muslim critics is not that it impedes action toward national goals, such as maintaining order or winning a war, but that it makes possible—some would say inevitable—the tyranny of the majority. This can come about in two ways: (1) a society that is sharply divided on some particular issue may vote on that issue, and a majority, or even a plurality, of voters may thereby dictate a policy that is binding on the electorate as a whole; or (2) the tyranny of the majority may manifest itself in the definition of the electorate.

In the first case, the sense of the majority tyrannizing the minority may become especially acute when religious beliefs and practices are involved, as they are in the case of abortion or wearing Islamic garb. Indirect elections lessen but do not prevent this outcome. Voters usually elect officials who are charged with determining government policies on many issues as members of a parliament or as governing executives. But voters rarely vote on each specific issue. Such a direct vote, or “referendum,” is usually confined to especially weighty matters, such as the adoption of a new constitution. Thus under ordinary circumstances, the likelihood of a majority electing officials for the specific purpose of forcing its will on the minority with relation to one single issue is reduced. Though some voters may well decide to vote for a particular candidate solely because of his or her stance on a single issue, the more typical pattern is for voters to consider candidates in terms of a large number of issues. Thus the majority that is finally realized through the election of representatives, as opposed to by a referendum on a particular issue, represents more of an ideology or a frame of mind than a determination to force a particular law upon the defeated minority.

The second case, in which the tyranny of the majority arises from restrictions placed on who may vote, has proven historically viable via the exclusion of large categories of potential voters. Exclusion of women, of people too poor to own property or pay taxes, or of people who do not belong to the ethnic or religious group designing the electoral system often results in a true tyranny of the majority. Though revolts against this majority tyranny by excluded segments of the population have not been very frequent, electoral systems of government have tended to move toward larger and more inclusive definitions of the electorate. Many governments have come to realize that when large segments of the population are excluded from the ballot, the government itself loses some of its legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens.

In addition to representing the views of the electorate and legitimating the actions of the elected, elections can serve the important purpose of changing government in an orderly fashion. There is historically-warranted fear that a regime elected by a majority vote might refuse to leave office after a subsequent vote indicated a preference for a different regime. Yet there is no way of determining in advance whether any particular group or individual will refuse to step down after its term limit expires or to recognize the will of the electorate when the electorate majority vote goes to another group or individual. Experience points to three situations in which electoral systems are abused in this way: when military or paramilitary forces follow the bidding of a government in power and do not respect electoral institutions; when the government in power represents a political philosophy that it considers more important than the integrity of the electoral system; and when electoral results reflect a change in the ethnic, religious, or racial composition of the electorate and threaten what has become a ruling minority with permanent, or seemingly permanent, removal from office. In all three cases, the regimes that refuse to allow free elections, or to step down after defeat, place other allegiances above the polity’s allegiance to electoral institutions.

Elections may also perform a useful, if ultimately less decisive role as advisories to a government that has not, itself, been elected. In this case, the function of representing the views of the electorate is fulfilled, but the function of legitimating the actions of the elected is not. Nor does an advisory electoral system preserve the capacity of the electorate to change government in an orderly fashion. However, when a government adopts a policy that has been recommended by an elected advisory body, the electorate may feel that it has participated meaningfully in the process of government.

The idea that this intangible sense of participation should not be underestimated lies at the heart of democratic ideals. Participatory government, which most often manifests itself in electoral processes, endeavors to relieve negative feelings that build up among a citizenry entirely excluded from government affairs. In extreme cases, these negative feelings prompt people to regard the government as illegitimate, leading some to engage in active revolt against the government and others to stand on the sidelines when a revolt breaks out. In other cases, a population that sees itself totally excluded from government concerns itself with personal and family affairs to the exclusion of working productively for the common interest, except insofar as work for the common interest is conducted by nongovernmental institutions. In the latter case, where nongovernmental institutions come to be seen as the main avenues for advancing the common good, government may increasingly be seen as irrelevant and unworthy of support in time of crisis.

Back to the top.

© 2006, The Center for Dialogues: Islamic World - U.S. - The West

Site Map

Site by Bianchi