Testing Islam's Political Advantage: Evidence from Indonesia

Abstract

Saiful Mujani Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah JakartaAcross the Muslim world, Islamic political parties and social organizations have capitalized upon economic grievances to win votes and popular support. But existing research has been unable to disentangle the role of Islamic party ideology from programmatic economic appeals and social services in explaining these parties' popular support. We argue that Islamic party platforms function as informational shortcuts to Muslim voters, and only confer a political advantage when voters are uncertain about parties' economic policies. Using a series of experiments embedded in an original nationwide survey in Indonesia, we find that Islamic parties are systematically more popular than otherwise identical non-Islamic parties only under cases of economic policy uncertainty. When respondents know economic policy platforms, Islamic parties never have an advantage over non-Islamic parties. Our findings demonstrate that Islam's political advantage is real, but critically circumscribed by parties' economic platforms and voters' knowledge of them.

The <I>Sharia</I> Controversy in Northern Nigeria and the Politics of Islamic Law in New and Uncertain Democracies

“…Sharia advocacy by elected officials serves as an "informational shortcut" for Muslim citizens, who interpret a commitment to sharia-inspired policies as a commitment to supporting social, economic, and political reforms meant to provide economic and physical security and accountability. 17 As the good governance promised by sharia proponents has proven illusive, dissatisfaction among lower and middle class Muslims continues to be expressed in religious terms. The majority of Nigerian Muslims continue to support democracy while endorsing sharia as simply one of many sources of state law, 18 but the perceived failure of elite sharia proponents to live up to their promises has created space for a violent Islamic radical movement-Boko Haram, a Salafi-inspired terrorist sect that proffers religious authoritarianism as an alternative to democracy.…”

Sentimen Politik-Agama Dan Dinamika Keamanan Nasional Di Indonesia Pasca 2014

“…Dalam konfigurasi partai politik, meskipun di tingkat elite mereka terdorong untuk bertindak pragmatis, tetapi di kesempatan lain partai-partai seringkali memanfaatkan isuisu dan identitas agama untuk menarik simpati. Partai-partai Islam akan terus berupaya untuk menyimbolkan diri, walau tidak membatasi diri, sebagai representasi kalangan santri dan orientasi kebijakan yang pro terhadap syariat atau pro mendudukkan Islam dalam politik (Pepinsky, Liddle, & Mujani, 2012 (Ufen, 2006). Pada era reformasi, Megawati Sukarnoputeri mendirikan PDI Perjuangan (PDIP) yang menolak tunduk kepada Suharto.…”

Genießen islamistische Parteien tatsächlich einen politischen Vorteil? Das Beispiel Tunesien

“…Dass die konkreten Politiken von IslamistInnen die Quelle eines politischen Vorteils darstellen könnten, wird dabei größtenteils nicht in Betracht gezogen bzw. sogar explizit verneint (Pepinsky et al 2012 (Cammett/Luong 2014, 193f., 202). Zweitens erklärt die bloße Existenz solcher Stärken noch nicht, wie diese den Wahlentscheid der WählerInnen in mehrheitlich muslimisch geprägten Ländern zugunsten islamistischer Parteien beeinflussen könnten.…”

“…Wir argumentieren, dass islamistische Parteien ihren Wählern einen "information shortcut" oder "cue" als Heuristik 3 bereitstellen, der die von ihnen zu erwartenden moralischen Qualitäten (Cammett / Luong 2014) bzw. die damit verbundenen politischen Positionen (Pepinsky et al 2012) signalisiert und so bei WählerInnen positive Evaluierungen auslöst.…”