Political Culture in the Islamic World: The Socioeconomic Roots of the Islamic Leviathan

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the author explores how development affects public opinions on an Islamic Leviathan as an appropriate political system in the Middle East. He asks the following: In the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), what influences political attitudes toward the Islamic Leviathan? To answer this question, he looks at the influence of seven independent variables on attitudes toward the Islamic Leviathan as a state system. The seven variables are (1) society’s overall development, (2) the socioeconomic class of respondents, (3) society’s corruption, (4) religiosity, (5) education, (6) gender, and (7) age. The author finds the observations needed to assess his theory in the Carnegie Middle East Governance and Islam Dataset 1988-2014 (CMEGID), which includes 15,194 relevant observations throughout the MENA region. His findings show that societies’ overall development has the most influence over Arab attitudes toward the Islamic Leviathan as an appropriate state system.