Democratic transition in the Muslim world : a global perspective / edited by Alfred Stepan.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [227]-236) and index.

Why different democratization outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt? Islamic-Secular Party accommodations, constitutions, militaries, and the content of international assistance -- "Ennadha's democratic commitments, and capabilities : major evolutionary moments and choice" / Rachid Ghannouchi -- "The challenges of democratization in the Arab world : some reflections on the Egyptian case" / Carrie Rosefsky Wickham -- "Mutual accommodation between moderate Islamic and moderate secular activists" / Alfred Stepan -- "The roots of Egypt's constitutional catastrophe : the necessity of marrying analysis of context, process and text" / Nathan J. Brown -- "Civil and political society compromises in the crafting of a progressive and consensual constitution" / Monica Marks -- "Legacies for democratization of prior patterns of civil-military relations" / Hicham bou Nassif -- "Why so much international assistance for an authoritarian military in Egypt and so little for democratic transition and consolidation in Tunisia? / Radwan Masmoudi -- Rethinking other democracies with large muslim populations: what policies helped in Indonesia and india? -- "Crafting Indonesian democracy : inclusion- moderation and the sacralizing of the postcolonial state" / Jeremy Menchik -- "Crafting of a democracy with the world's largest Muslim minority" / Sudipta Kaviraj.

Contributors to this book are particularly interested in expanding our understanding of what helps, or hurts, successful democratic transition attempts in countries with large Muslim populations. Crafting pro-democratic coalitions among secularists and Islamists presents a special obstacle that must be addressed by theorists and practitioners. The argument throughout the book is that such coalitions will not happen if potentially democratic secularists are part of what Al Stepan terms the authoritarian regime's "constituency of coercion" because they (the secularists) are afraid that free elections will be won by Islamists who threaten them even more than the existing secular authoritarian regime. Tunisia allows us to do analysis on this topic by comparing two "least similar" recent case outcomes: democratic success in Tunisia and democratic failure in Egypt. Tunisia also allows us to do an analysis of four "most similar" case outcomes by comparing the successful democratic transitions in Tunisia, Indonesia, Senegal, and the country with the second or third largest Muslim population in the world, India. Did these countries face some common challenges concerning democratization? Did all four of these successful cases in fact use some common policies that while democratic, had not normally been used in transitions in countries without significant numbers of Muslims? If so, did these policies help the transitions in Tunisia, Indonesia, Senegal and India? If they did, we should incorporate them in some way into our comparative theories about successful democratic transitions.