This is a time when the Islamic world is engulfed in religious violence and also when many Muslim-majority countries in West Asia, northern Africa and South Asia are increasingly adopting democracy as a system of government. Is there a link between electoral outcomes in relatively new democracies with a religious majority and sectarian/ethno-religious violence? Does the presence or the success of moderate/secular outfits limit or exacerbate sectarian violence in such countries? Gareth Nellis and Niloufer Siddiqui sought to answer these questions in “Secular Party Rule and Religious Violence in Pakistan” in the American Political Science Review in November 2017.
The authors looked at closely fought elections in Pakistan from 1988 to 2011, a period featuring a substantive, albeit fragile, democratic political environment, and events involving sectarian violence during that time to find if secularists managed to stamp out such violence better or not. The hypothesis was that secularist parties have constituencies of support among ethno-religious minorities. These minorities face the brunt of sectarian violence and are therefore likely to punish such parties for failing to protect them while in power.
The authors found that it was indeed the case that violence was tamped down better when secularists were in power in places where the contest was close and minorities helped swing the election in their favour. They also found that secularists won such elections largely due to their party’s stated positions on secularism rather than the presence of specific political leaders. They also found that the ability of these parties to stem the violence was best when there was a substantive presence of security forces/police.
The findings are useful as they indicate that in countries such as Pakistan with a relatively fragile democratic environment, the substantive presence of secularist/moderate forces is more likely to yield outcomes on addressing issues related to religious violence. The authors suggest that international help to moderate/secularist governments would help peace-building efforts in these societies riven by religious tensions.
They, however, caution that the findings cannot be directly interpreted to hold true for other Muslim-majority countries that are only newly democratic or have only a fledgling moderate or a secularist force.
