A new paper asks why the Islamic political theory tradition, in contrast to Greco-Roman classical period political theory, doesn't discuss institutions constraining political power until the 19th century. Its authors conclude that this was due to a political consensus created by Islamic law, which made fear of a popular revolt if leaders strayed to far from Islamic law's mandates more viable.
Despite its roots in an in depth analysis of Islamic political thought and game theory style "social science" analysis, this model is basically wrong. It misses the forest for the trees. It fails to recognize that institutional constraints on abuses of politician power were also missing in the Western and Confucian traditions in the same time period. And, it also fails to recognize that grass roots revolts were not a serious threat to political leaders in that era almost anywhere in the world and didn't last long when the gained brief victories.
A model that sees the rise of democracy as driven by economic development that requires the willing consent and cooperation with the nation's leader from a broad merchant class when its role in the economy eclipses that of economic rents from land and other natural resources which the ruled owned directly or indirectly, better describes the circumstances in which institutional constraints on abuses of political power arise. And this economically driven model explains these developments without regard to religious and moral systems like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Confucianism.
The Paper
Institutional constraints to counter potential abuses in the use of political power have been viewed as essential to well functioning political institutions and good public policy outcomes in the Western World since the time of ancient Greece. A sophisticated intellectual tradition emerged to justify the need for such constraints.
In this paper we identify a new puzzle: such an intellectual tradition did not exist in the Islamic world, even if the potential for abuse was recognized. We develop a model to explain why such ideas might not have emerged. We argue that this is due to the nature of Islamic law (the Sharia) being far more encompassing than Western law, making it easier for citizens to identify abuses of power and use collective action to discipline them. We study how the relative homogeneity and solidarity of Islamic society fortified this logic.
The Rest Of The World Was The Same In This Era
One big flaw is the paper's analysis is that in the time period in question during which Islamic political thought didn't seriously consider institutional constraints on political power, i.e. from the 7th to the 18th centuries, institutional constraints on political power were extremely rare in the Western tradition as well.
While there were periods of democratic governance in the classical Greco-Roman civilization, by the 7th century, those democratic institutions were well and truly dead outside a few free cities and "barbarian" tribes outside the Western political theory tradition. Prior to classical Greco-Roman civilization, monarchy and other forms of dictatorships were predominant in the region that would later be influenced by the classical civilization's influence. Even in the classical Greco-Roman era itself, democratic governance was frequently flawed, geographically spotty, and only intermittent. But, ultimately, the political and legal institutions of Greco-Roman civilization at its peak turned out to be premature and collapsed.
Greco-Roman legal concepts and classical intellectual achievements of other kinds were only starting to be received back into Western civilization in the renaissance starting in the late 15th century, a millennium after the fall of the Western Roman empire. The Reformation, while adopting somewhat democratic religious institutions in some places (e.g. Geneva) in the 16th century, still left the church subordinate to secular rulers. The intellectual seeds that eventually gave rise to the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the diminution of the power of the monarchy vis-a-vis parliament in England were only starting to emerge in the 18th century Enlightenment movement in the West.
Hereditary monarchies were the predominant rule in Western Civilization from the 7th to the 18th centuries, as well as in the Bronze Age and in the early Iron Age civilizations of the Mediterranean represented, for example, by the Hellenic dark ages following the Bronze Age collapse of ca. 1200 BCE.
The only countries that were more than city-states of any consequence in this time period with legally recognized institutional constrains of consequence were the tiny, remote, and weak Icelandic Commonwealth (between the establishment of the Althing in 930 and the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king with the Old Covenant in 1262), the Venetian Republic (from 697 until 1797), a few small "free" city-states, and England (and its colonies) often dated back to the Magna Carta (in 1215 with a rocky start to its acceptance at first). But, even in England from the 13th to the 18th century, the monarchy's political power was far from symbolic only as it is today, and was routinely abused, except during the eleven year interruption of the semi-democratic Republic of the Commonwealth of England (from 1649 to 1660 when England and Wales, later along with Ireland and Scotland, were governed as a republic after the end of the Second English Civil War and the trial and execution of Charles I).
For the most part, in this era, even nominally republican city states were ruled by quasi-hereditary councils of leading quasi-aristocratic families for the most part. For example, per the link above, the Venetian Republic "was ruled by the doge, who was elected by members of the Great Council of Venice, the city-state's parliament, and ruled for life. The ruling class was an oligarchy of merchants and aristocrats." In the period from the 7th to 18th centuries (apart from the last few decades of that time period), in Western civilization, like the parallel periods in Islamic civilization, the primary constraints on abuses of political power were moral condemnations from religious leaders.
Also, in that time period in Chinese civilization, in Korea, and in Japan, the primary constraints on abuses of political power were Confucian moral precepts.
Grass Roots Results Were Not A Check On Abuses Of Political Power
The other big flaw is seeing the threat of a possible revolt or revolution as a significant constraint on abuses of political power.
But, in reality, in both the Islamic world and in the Western tradition (and also in the areas that are part of the Confucian tradition), grass roots revolts were basically non-existent. Leaders who fell were instead taken down in succession fights launched by high aristocrats and conquests launched by other non-democratic regimes.
Monarchs and dictators, for all of their symbolic roles, are still mere human beings, not gods. They only have power to the extent that other powerful and strong people follow their leadership. This is an inherent institutional constraint of every political system, democratic and non-democratic alike. They are followed to a great extent because of the legitimacy arising from their uncontested succession or seizure of power to start a new dynasty or acquire new territory. But if they antagonize their powerful and strong subordinates too much, their power can erode, either incrementally if they are ignored, or dramatically, in some sort of coup. Democratic institutions to check political abuses and provide an alternative non-violent means of securing regime changes can discourage disregard for the authority of the regime's leaders and extra-legal successions. But young democracies in newly independent countries routinely experience both of these kinds of difficulties.
More From The Paper
While its thesis is basically wrong, and its game theoretic styled analysis section has dubious merit, the paper does, nonetheless make some interesting observations. The body text of the paper explains:
[A]n intellectual tradition reaching as far back as Plato and Aristotle. . . . provided mechanisms via which power, unconstrained by institutions, would lead to abuses and undesirable policy outcomes. . . . A similar intellectual tradition never arose in the Islamic world. This is despite the fact that Muslim thinkers were concerned about abuses of power and had access to much of the discussion of institutional political constraints by classical Greek philosophers (for example Plato’s Republic and Laws, and Aristotle’s Ethics, even if not his Politics). Of course, positive theories exist that aim to explain the absence of ruler-constraining institutions in the Islamic civilization. . . .
What this research does not explain however is why notions of institutional constraints on rulers did not develop even in theory in the millennium from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the 18th century, prior to the emergence of broader modernization and Westernization currents in the Ottoman Empire and Iran. . . . Muslim thinkers, jurists, philosophers failed to develop, even in theory, ideas about the necessity of institutional mechanisms that aimed to constrain rulers. This cannot be attributed to an absence of innovation or ignorance of related ideas. . . .
In our model, government policies are divided into two categories: those that are prescribed by divine law, and those that are not. For example, divine law may prescribe a 10 percent tax on particular goods, but may not specify whether the revenue should be spent on improving roads or education. The scope of divine law varies across societies. Some do not have divine law (e.g., the Roman Republic and Ancient Greek city-states); some have divine law with a broad scope (e.g., most Islamic societies and some Jewish societies in antiquity); in others, divine law has a limited scope in public policy (e.g., most Christian societies). . . . Critically, when a government policy is prescribed by divine law, believers know the right policy for them. When divine law is silent, they remain uncertain about the right policy, i.e., the policy that is congruent with their preferences. When the scope of divine law is broader, it prescribes a larger fraction of government’s policies: At one extreme, divine law has no scope, and hence non-existent in public policy; at the other extreme, divine law specifies all public policies. . . . while Islamic law was not monolithic, differences among mainstream interpretations were small compared to the wide range of possible laws that could be. . . .
Our main result is that when the scope of divine law is broader, the added benefits of institutional constraints on rulers are smaller. A broader scope of divine law reduces the uncertainty among majority citizens about the correct government policy, facilitating collective action and reducing the gains from institutional constraints. Moreover, we show that the marginal effect of (a broader scope of) divine law is larger when the society is more homogeneous or when there is more solidarity amongst society. A broader scope of divine law enables citizens to better know when their rulers deviate from the right policy; however, this knowledge helps them only if they can mobilize, and their mobilization capacity depends on their homogeneity and solidarity. This implies a complementarity between the scope of divine law on the one hand and homogeneity and solidarity on the other. Our interpretation of these results is that the characteristics of Islamic civilization (in particular, a law with a broad scope stemming from the Quran, Hadiths, and early traditions), combined with the nature of society, meant that it was less desirable to construct institutional constraints on rulers along the lines advocated in the West in one form or another from Plato and Aristotle onwards.
Given the costs of such institutions, revolt was a more effective disciplining device. We argue that this is a potential explanation for the lack of an intellectual tradition proposing institutional constraints. Islamic intellectuals and scholars were perfectly aware of the problem of tyranny, but saw the desirable solution as being different.
An interesting comparison, as we will discuss, is with Jewish civilization. Here, as in Islam, the scope of divine law was also broad, and the discussion of institutional constraints on rulers was absent throughout the first and second temple periods from the founding of the state up until its absorption into the Roman empire. In contrast, in the Greek and Roman civilization, in which there was no divine law, and in the subsequent Christian civilization, in which the scope of divine (canon) law was far narrower, arguments for institutional constraints on rulers were more common—even if in rudimentary forms in some periods.
. . .
Institutional Constraints on Rulers in the Islamic Tradition
As the prophet, Mohammad (d. 632) was the leader (imam) of the Islamic community (umma). The Constitution of Medina also recognizes Mohammad as the ultimate judge and arbitrator in case of disagreements among the members of umma. The tribal nature of early Muslim society and Mohammad’s emphasis on building consensus through consultation (shur¯a), combined with his prophetic charisma, would alleviate concerns about the concentration of coercive power.
Upon Mohammad’s death, Ab¯u Bakr (d. 634) took over as the imam and adopted the title of caliph (khal¯ıfa, meaning “successor” or “deputy”). The rebellion and killing of the third caliph, ‘Uthman (d. 656), led to a legitimacy crisis, which evolved into the First Civil War (656-661) during the fourth caliph, ‘Ali (d. 661). In turn, ‘Ali was assasinated and his challenger Mu‘awyah (d. 680), a kinsman of ‘Uthman and the governor of Syria, became the next caliph. Concerns about tyranny of rulers became widespread by the time of Mu‘awyah. Mu‘awyah established hereditary succession (and hence is known as the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty) and centralized power.
By the late 7th century, the fourth Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (d. 705) “wanted his subjects to believe that the power and the kingship. . . was a possession. . . granted by God and inalienable according to the divine will. The corollary of the assertion. . . was that disobedience to the caliph and his subordinate officers was a refusal to acknowledge God and so tantamount to unbelief”. The title caliph referring to the deputy of God (khal¯ıfat All¯ah), as opposed to the deputy of God’s messenger (khal¯ıfat ras¯ul All¯ah), appeared on coinage for the first time during ‘Abd al-Malik’s reign.
Umayyad caliphs and their sumptuous lifestyle were sharp departures from the behavior of Mohammad and his immediate successors. Various revolts broke out over “the Umayyad manner of distributing revenues. . . maltreatment of the Prophet’s family, tyranny and the like." However, we have no record of discussions about institutional constraints on rulers in that period. This puzzling absence persists during the Abbasid dynasty, which followed the Umayyads in 750, and throughout various dynasties and kingdoms in the following millennium.
First, we establish this puzzling absence. Then, we argue that the comprehensive nature of Islamic law facilitates disciplining rulers by revolt (at least it was so perceived), thereby reducing the marginal gains from imposing institutional constraints. To establish this puzzle, following Rosenthal’s classic categories, we divide political writings in Islamic civilization into three groups, depending on whether their primary foundation is Islamic law, philosophy, or advice-giving in the manner of Mirrors of Princes. We provide brief discussions of a few well-known examples in each category to touch on the political themes that Muslim thinkers engaged with and to demonstrate the absence of discussions about institutional constraints on rulers in those works. Such discussions are also absent in more comprehensive surveys of Islamic political thought.
Obviously, the corpus of Islamic writings with direct political implications is vast. For example, the above categories do not include the writings and traditions of mystic orders that sometimes had direct political implications. However, mystic orders with their emphasis on the spiritual (and sometimes temporal) leaders with divine inspiration tended to be even less concerned with institutional constraints. While many scholars have studied the absence of institutional constraints on Islamic rulers in practice, the literature has not identified the puzzling absence of discussions about institutional constraints in theory.
Some came close. For example, Crone keenly observes: “it was the scholars who formulated the law that the imam was meant to execute; by their own account, it was also they who elected and deposed him on behalf of the community. One would have thought that there was only a short step from all this to the view that the scholars should also monitor his performance, for example by forming independent councils authorized to signal when the rules had been breached, to strike out illegal decisions, and to block their execution.
Small though the step may seem, however, there were few who took it.” Crone goes on to provide a few, short-lived, attempts on the eve of the Abbasid revolution, in North Africa and in Spain, to form councils that would rule along with the rulers. None of these attempts gained significant traction and they stand as exceptions proving the rule. Roy notes that the “poverty of Islamist thought on political institutions is striking, considering the emphasis Islamism places on politics”.
Overall, institutional constraints on rulers or “republics. . . were ignored by the normative tradition.” These scholars do not offer an explanation for these “missing discussions” in the Islamic normative tradition. One may be tempted to attribute this absence to Muslim thinkers’ limited access to the Greco-Roman philosophical writings or history.
For example, while Plato’s Republic and Laws and Aristotle’s Ethics were familiar to Muslim philosophers, it seems that they did not have access to a translation of Cicero’s De re publica, or Aristotle’s Politics where theories of mixed constitutions were more explicitly advocated. However, this view would imply that, without the help of the Greeks’ discoveries, many generations of Muslim thinkers somehow could not take what Crone calls “a short step” toward even a theoretical discussion of institutional constraints on rulers. Their “political horizon. . . did not reach to suggesting reforms or offering alternative institutions,” as Halbertal and Holmes describe some of their earlier Jewish counterparts in antiquity.
We believe that this view is highly implausible. The vast territory of the Islamic Empire included people of various geographical and religious backgrounds, some of whom interacted routinely with Muslim scholars and many of whom played key roles in translating the vast corpus of Greek knowledge into Arabic. That generations of Muslim scholars over huge geographical and time periods simply did not have any knowledge of the political structure of Greek city-states, the Roman Republic, or even the Roman Empire with its Senate seems unlikely. As Gutas argues, “as late as. . . tenth century, the historian H. amza al-Is. fah¯an¯ı (d. after 350/961) relates that when ‘he needed information on Graeco-Roman history, he asked an old Greek, who had been captured and served as a valet, to translate for him a Greek historical work orally. This was accomplished with the help of the Greek’s son, Yumn, who knew Arabic well.’ This report establishes that oral translation by native speakers of whatever language within the Islamic domain did occur and that, as might have been expected, it must have been widely practiced”.
To make sense of the puzzle, one must go beyond explanations that Muslim thinkers (and their Jewish counterparts, see below) did not discuss institutional constraints on rulers even in theory because they did not learn their potential usefulness from Aristotle and Cicero.
Select Online Comments About The Article
There is discussion of the article at Marginal Revolution where I saw the link to the article myself. Here are some quotes from that discussion from multiple commentators whom I do not specifically cite but are identified in the source (mostly by pseudonyms):
It's hard to envision a culture that comes up with an intellectual tradition to constraints to counter potential abuses in the use of political power like the West has when the central figurehead is a dictatorial warlord whose rules and ethics rules of conquest would shock even middle-age European rulers. . . . many of the rules enshrined in Sharia are precisely what we would call abuses of political power, repression of religious minorities, women, and the citizenry codified into religious law. It's tough to come up with an intellectual tradition of freedom when the intellectual tradition of your culture is codifying highly specific and exact rules for enacting barbarism and warlordism in your holiest texts.
It's arguably kind of hard when your central figure is the unquestionable semi-divine leader of an apocalyptic cult, but eh.
The concept of abuse of political power depends on the notion that there can be such thing as abusing political power. In the vast majority of pre-modern societies, there was a monarch, and the monarch was a god. In Ancient Egypt you had the Pharaohs, for instance, in China you had the emperor with a "mandate of heaven," in 17th century France, Louis XIV said he was the state. Absolutist monarchs did whatever he wanted and that was it. The ancient Greeks were the first who developed this concept because their society was very weird compared to other pre-modern societies. They lacked a centralized government and instead were divided into thousands of tiny city-states which often were democratic. Since power in these city-states was shared instead of concentrated into a single ruler, they had to develop notions of legitimate and illegitimate use of political power.
"A sophisticated intellectual tradition emerged to justify the need for such constraints. In this paper we identify a new puzzle: such an intellectual tradition did not exist in the Islamic world, even if the potential for abuse was recognized." It is not that it didn't exist. It was that it was rejected. The Islamic world is as much an heir to the Greek world as the West. More so as they got the central Greek lands like Alexandria. What is interesting is the Islamic world also rejected the Islamic model of government - rule by an Imam or at least an elected member of Muhammed's family - in favor of military dictatorship by Turks. So when it came to people in power the Islamic world got sophisticated thinkers like Ghazali who said that nothing was as bad as civil strife so the Authorities had to be supported no matter what.
People really shouldn't use the word "law" for Sharia or Jewish law. They are not law in the sense that Western law is law. They are, as they say, all encompassing guides to daily life. Sharia in particular has nothing much to say about government but a lot to say about diet and masturbation. It does not help to have a religious scholar who can tell you whether you can eat a goat that has been properly slaughtered after it has been gang raped when the issue is despotism. It is made worse because the Cadi Justice Max Weber criticized is a real thing in Sharia. Any hand book of Islamic law will have scholarly opinions but they will usually go something like "The Founder of the School and his second most famous student said you can't, while the most famous student said you can". So the judge gets to pick. Both options are valid.
"making it easier for citizens to identify abuses of power and use collective action to discipline them." Notice the smooth glide from identifying an abuse to correcting it. Not sure that the two have much to do with each other. The problem is that Islamic law is not much concerned about government and so it allows a lot of leeway for the people in power. Essentially if the ruler really wants to do something, it is Islamic. This is why the Ottomans can take the children of their dhimmis even though it is specifically forbidden by Sharia. Why they can have more than four wives too.
"We study how the relative homogeneity and solidarity of Islamic society fortified this logic." No one in their right mind would describe Islamic societies as anything like homogeneous. That is the point of Coons' mosaic model. And solidarity? Please. Someone needs to read Ibn Khaldoun.
I would temper some of this commentary, however, by noting that just as there is nothing inherently Christian about Western political theory, there is nothing about Islam that inherently prevents it from evolving republican governments with institutional constraints on abuses of political power.
While they aren't perfect examples, in part, because they are fairly young democracies, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Kosovo, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Indonesia, for example, all have reasonably democratic governments in Islamic countries, at least compared to the absolute monarchies of the past and those of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, and Oman, to give a few examples, today. Syria and Morocco are edge cases transitioning between democratic and autocratic systems and are not entirely one or the other.
Basically, different Islamic countries are at different places in their political development and mostly lag behind developed Western countries. The most politically advanced approach the level of development seen in the early 20th century in some countries in the West. Many are at a level of development comparable to the Victorian era. Some are culturally back where the West was in the 18th century.
I have little doubt that in due time, many of these countries will evolve political driven by their economic development. In time, many will come to develop a culture similar to that of Muslims who have lived their entire lives fully participating in the cultural life of developed Western countries like the U.S., Canada, Sweden, England, France, Italy, and Germany.