Democratic Change in the Arab World, Past and Present

Eric Chaney

Abstract Will the Arab Spring lead to long-lasting democratic change? To explore this question I examine the determinants of the Arab world democratic decit s in 2010. I nd that the percent of a country landmass that was conquered s by Arab armies following the death of the prophet Muhammad statistically accounts for this decit. Using history as a guide, I hypothesize that this pattern re ects the long-run in uence of control structures developed under Islamic empires in the pre-modern era and nd that the available evidence is consistent with this interpretation. I also investigate the determinants of the recent uprisings. When taken in unison, the results cast doubt on claims that the Arab-Israeli con or Arab/Muslim culture are systematic obstacles to ict democratic change in the region and point instead to the legacy of the region s historical institutional framework.

Department of Economics, Harvard University. This paper was prepared for the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity, March 22-23, 2012. I thank George Akerlof, Pol Antrs, Lisa Blaydes, Edward Glaeser, David Romer, Andrei Shleifer and Justin Wolfers for helpful discussions and comments. I also thank Gallup for sharing their data. Any remaining errors are mine.

Will the Arab Spring lead to long-lasting democratic change? As Islamists perform well in elections across the Arab world, many have begun to predict that the recent uprisings will usher in a wave of Islamist-dominated autocracies instead of the democratic institutions many protestors initially demanded. These observers often point to the political trajectories of non-Arab states such as Iran and implicitly claim that Islamist-dominated states cannot be democratic. Others note that the emergence of democratic regimes in Indonesia and Turkey demonstrates that Islamists can play a constructive role in democratic institutions.1 One challenge that those interested in forecasting the evolution of institutions in the Arab world currently face is that there is little consensus regarding the factors that led to the region democratic decit before the recent uprisings. Some studies s stress the eects of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian con (El Badawi and Makdisi ict 2007), while others highlight factors as diverse as the subservient status of women (Fish 2002), fossil fuels (Ross 2001), Muslim culture/religious beliefs (Huntington 1996) or Arab-specic cultural and/or institutional characteristics (Sharabi 1988, Noland 2008). Many of these studies reach con icting conclusions. Perhaps more importantly, they fail to explain why the Arab democratic decitseems to extend to neighboring non-Arab, Muslim-majority countries but not to other Muslim-majority regions. The geographic clustering of less democratic regimes in and around the Arab world in 2010 is presented in gure 1. In this gure, more democratic states are shaded grey, while the region outlined in black denotes areas conquered by Arab armies in the centuries following the death of the prophet Muhammad.2 The concentration of non-democracies within the outlined boundaries is striking and suggests
1

For an example of this debate see the article on Islamists, elections and the Arab spring in the

December 10th issue of The Economist. Available at: http://www.economist.com/node/21541404. 2 Students of Islamic history will note that the boundaries in gure 1 do not exactly correspond to the regions conquered by Arab armies. Throughout the paper I use the short-hand conquered by Arab armies to denote the early (and persistent) incorporation into the Islamic world throughout the paper for expositional simplicity. When I refer to countries conquered by Arab armies I mean the group of countries that had at least half of their present-day landmass persistently controlled by Islamic dynasties since at least 1100 CE. See section 1 below for a more detailed discussion.

a possible explanation for why countries such as Azerbaijan, Chad, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan share the Arab League democratic decit today s whereas Muslim-majority countries such as Albania, Bangladesh, Guinea, Indonesia, Malaysia or Sierra Leone do not. I hypothesize that the former countries were more exposed to the control structures that developed following the Arab conquests than the latter. These historical arrangements, in turn, have had enduring eects that help explain the geographic clustering of non-democracies detailed in gure 1. To investigate the empirical relevance of this hypothesis, I calculate the percentage of a country landmass that was conquered by Arab armies in the centuries s following the death of the prophet Muhammad. I then show that from a statistical standpoint this variable accounts for the Arab League democratic decit today. s This empirical pattern is interesting, in part, because it provides an opportunity to distinguish between a number of competing theories regarding the determinants of the Arab world democratic decit on the eve of the recent uprisings. For example, s the fact that the Arab world democratic decit is shared by 10 non-Arab countries s that were conquered by Arab armies casts doubt on the importance of the role of Arab culture in perpetuating the democratic decit. Hypotheses stressing the role of Muslim theology also do not receive empirical support. Once one accounts for the 28 countries conquered by Arab armies, the evolution of democracy in the remaining 15 Muslim-majority countries since 1960 largely mirrors that of the rest of the developing world. Alternative views attribute the region democratic decit to the eects of oil s or to the Israeli-Palestinian con ict. But if one omits oil exporters and countries that are in close geographic proximity to Israel the results are almost identical to those obtained when these countries are included. Consequently, my reading of the evidence provides little support for these hypotheses. A nal group of hypotheses, which I believe provides the best explanation for the empirical patterns I document, is the institutional persistence hypothesis (Acemoglu et al. 2001, 2002; Nunn 2008, 2009; Dell 2010). Many scholars maintain that the roots of the Arab world democratic decit are to be found in the region history s s of unrelieved autocracy(Lewis 1993b) which date[s] back to the early ninth cen3

tury(Khashan 1998). This view builds on a distinguished line of scholarship going back at least to Montesquieu (1989 [1748]) suggesting that historical developments in the Islamic Middle East have made the region particularly prone to autocratic rule. If the Arab League democratic decit today can be traced to the long-term efs fects of the region institutions, what institutional developments following the Arab s conquests had such enduring an enduring impact? Although data limitations preclude an investigation of the precise channel(s) of causality generating this empirical relationship, I use history and recent scholarship as a guide (Blaydes and Chaney 2011, Kuran 2011, Chaney 2012) to suggest that this pattern re ects the long-run in uence of control structures developed under Islamic empires in the pre-modern era. This literature suggests that these historic control structures have left a legacy of weak civil societies where political power is concentrated today in the hands of military and religious leaders that work to perpetuate the status quo. One empirical prediction that arises from this literature is that the government share of GDP s should be higher in areas conquered by Arab armies. One would also expect regimes in these areas to prevent the emergence of independent centers of political power and to undermine the in uence of trade unions. I nd that the available data is consistent with these predictions. Have the numerous structural changes over the past century (Rauch and Kostyshak 2009) helped lessen the weight of history, making Arab states fertile ground for sustained democratic change? Since data limitations again preclude a systematic investigation of the channels through which the region autocratic institutions have s persisted, my strategy in this section is simply to investigate the characteristics of countries that experienced uprisings in 2011. The most robust nding that emerges is that countries that experienced uprisings witnessed signicantly lower levels of self-reported well being in the year before the uprisings. This result suggests that the Arab Spring shares characteristics with other popular movements that have led to stable democratic institutions (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006). On the one hand, the results provide reasons to be cautiously optimistic that the Arab Spring will lead to sustained democratic change. For example, they cast doubt 4

on claims that Muslim theology, the Israeli-Palestinian con or Arab culture are ict systematic obstacles to democracy. On the other, they provide sobering evidence that the region democratic decit has deep historical roots. While such impedis ments to democratic change may have been weakened by structural changes over the past decades, it is also possible that they remain in place today. In this sense, the interpretation that I believe best explains the empirical patterns I observe echoes recent studies suggesting that the region democratic decit is more a product of its s unique political equilibrium than its cultural, ethnic or religious characteristics (e.g. Stepan and Robertson 2003, Jamal and Tessler 2008). Inasmuch as the region institutional history is useful for forecasting the future, it s suggests that democracy is less likely to emerge where political power remains largely divided between religious leaders and the military (e.g. Egypt or Yemen). Where popular support for secular and religious leaders is more balanced (e.g. Tunisia) Islamist groups may play an important role in sustaining democratic institutions by constraining (and being constrained by) rival political groups. Since recent history suggests that Islamists are just as likely to establish autocratic rule as other groups in the absence of checks on their power, popular support for Islamists may undermine democratic eorts if such groups are not checked by other contenders for power. Finally, it is important to stress that while this paper provides new empirical evidence for the reasons behind the Arab world democratic decit, our understanding s of the determinants of democracy in the region remains incomplete. This provides both an impetus for future research and reasons to be cautious about the evidence we have regarding democratic change in the Arab world, at least as a guide for future policy decisions.

Arab Conquest and Democracy: the Empirical Evidence

This section presents the main results.3 To measure the extent to which countries were persistently exposed to the institutional framework developed in the early Islamic world I dene the variable ArabConquest as the proportion of a country that was ruled by Muslim dynasties in the year 1100 CE, interacted with dummy equal to one if at least half of the country landmass was controlled by Muslim dynasties s in both 1500 and 1900 CE.4 This interaction term removes countries such as Spain that lost the relevant institutional framework centuries ago. Since the majority of the lands under the control of Muslim dynasties in 1100 CE were conquered by Arab armies, for expositional simplicity I use Arab conquest to refer to early incorporation into the Islamic world throughout the paper.5 In table 2 I investigate the extent to which ArabConquest can statistically account for the democratic decit in the Muslim world in general and the Arab League specically. To do this I estimate a regression of the form:

Democracyic =

1 M uslimic +

2 ArabLeagueic +

3 ArabConquestic +

X + "ic (1)

where Democracyic is the normalized polity score of country i on continent c in 2010 (where the normalized polity score lies on the interval [0,1] with higher values denoting more democratic institutions), M uslimic is an indicator variable equal to one if at least half of a country population is Muslim, ArabLeagueic is an indicator equal s to one if a country is a member of the Arab League, ArabConquestic is as dened above and X is a vector of covariates including continent dummies and an indicator equal to one if Rauch and Kostyshak (2009) dene a country as fuel-endowed.6
3

For expositional ease I leave the description of the majority of the data used in the paper to

the appendix. 4 In addition, I set the variable ArabConquest equal to zero for Israel. 5 The results presented in the paper are robust to a variety of alternative measures of early incorporation into the Islamic world. 6 The Arab League is dened in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009, p. 165) as consist[ing] of all

In column (1) of table 1 I provide an estimate of

omitting all other covari-

ates. The point estimate shows that Muslim majority countries are 0.31 normalized polity points (over one standard deviation) less democratic than the rest of the world. Throughout table 2 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors are given in parentheses whereas standard errors clustered by UN regions are given in brackets to address potential concerns of spatial correlations in the error terms.7 In column (2) I add an indicator variable equal to one if the country was a member of the Arab League in 2010. When this indicator is added, the coe cient on M uslim decreases in absolute value although it remains negative and statistically signicant. The coe cient on ArabLeague is also negative and statistically signicant. These results are consistent with previous studies that have found both Arab and Muslim democratic decits. In column (3), I add the variable ArabConquest. When this variable is added, the point estimates on the variables M uslim and ArabLeague drop sharply in absolute value and become statistically insignicant. In column (4) I add continent dummies and a dummy variable equal to one if the country is fuel-endowed. The results do not qualitatively change and show that from a statistical standpoint ArabConquest explains both the Arab and Muslim democratic decits found in previous studies. In columns (5)-(8) I limit the sample to Muslim majority countries. In columns (5)-(7) I use all countries who have Muslim population shares greater than or equal to 0.5. These results show that within the Muslim-majority world, the Arab League s democratic decit is shared by countries that were conquered by Arab armies. In column (8) I show that the result continues to hold when one increases the cuto to only include countries whose Muslim shares exceed 0.8.
countries in which (a dialect of) Arabic is the spoken language of the majority. See table 1 for a list of the member states of the Arab League in 2010. 7 Since the clustered standard errors and heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors are almost identical throughout the paper, in subsequent tables I only report the heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors. The UN regions are: Eastern Africa, Middle Africa, Northern Africa, Southern Africa, Western Africa, Caribbean, Central America, South America, North America, Central Asia, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia, South-Eastern Asia, Western Asia, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Australia/ New Zealand and Melanesia. The countries in each of these regions are detailed at: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

1.1

The Emergence of the Democratic Decit

The evidence presented so far documents that countries conquered by Arab armies experienced a democratic decit in 2010. When did this decit emerge? To examine this question, gure 2 plots the average polity score by countries in three groups since 1960 (before this date, small sample sizes limit the analysis). The rst group contains countries conquered by Arab armies. The second group contains Muslim majority countries that were not conquered by Arab armies. The third group contains developing countries that neither possess Muslim majorities nor were conquered by Muslim armies.8 In the year 1960 -when the majority of the developing world had been decolonizedboth Muslim-majority non-Arab conquest and non-Muslim developing countries had (normalized) polity scores of roughly 0.4. The scores in countries that were conquered by Arab armies were signicantly lower at around 0.2. Until around 1990 this gap of around 0.2 points remained roughly constant. After 1990 the non-Muslim developing world experienced a wave of democratization that was followed by the nonArab-conquest Muslim countries with a lag of roughly ten years. Although countries conquered by Arab armies have seen a slow trend towards increasing political openness since 1990, the levels of democracy in this region in 2010 remained well below that of the rest of the developing world. In sum, the democratic decit of countries that were conquered by Arab armies dates back at least to 1960. Although systematic statistical analyses are not possible before this date, the average normalized polity score remains approximately constant prior to 1960 in the two Arab-conquest countries where these scores go back to 1800.9 This result is consistent with the claim that the region democratic decit has deep s historical roots.
8

I dene developing countries as those that were not members of the OECD before 1980. The

qualitative implications of the analysis are robust to alternative denitions. 9 These countries are Iran and Turkey.

Hypotheses and Explanations for the Arab World s Democratic Decit

In this section I examine the extent to which existing hypotheses for the Arab world s democratic decit on the eve of the Arab Spring are consistent with the empirical evidence presented above.

2.1

The Culture Hypothesis

The culture hypothesis claims that the Arab League democratic decit is a prods uct of the region culture. One version of this hypothesis is that Arab culture is s inimical to the emergence of democratic institutions (Sharabi 1988, Noland 2008). The empirical evidence presented so far is not consistent with this hypothesis. Of the 28 countries that were conquered by Arab armies in the sample, 18 are members of the Arab League today whereas 10 are not. Within countries conquered by Arab armies, there is no evidence that member states of the Arab League have systematically lower polity scores. Since membership in the Arab League is generally used as a proxy for Arab culture, this result casts doubt on the importance of Arab culture in perpetuating the observed democratic decit. Results in table 3 demonstrate this point in a more formal manner (that complements the inclusion of the Arab dummy in the previous section). In column (1) I present regression output from a regression similar to equation (1) using the entire sample. In column (2) I run the same regression omitting the member states of the Arab League. The results show that the omission of the Arab League states has almost no eect on the point estimate on the variable Arab conquest. In other words, the eect of Arab conquest on democratic outcomes today seems to be independent of Arab culture. Another version of the culture hypothesis suggests that Muslim religious beliefs are responsible for the region democratic decit (Huntington 1996, Lako 2004). s In column (3) I omit all countries that were conquered by Arab armies. When this is done, the results show that the coe cient on Muslim majority is small and not 9

statistically signicant. This result is not consistent with claims that Muslim theology or gender norms in the Islamic world are responsible for the region democratic s decit (Fish 2002).10 Have Islamic religious beliefs put down stronger roots in the areas that were conquered by Arab armies? To investigate this hypothesis, I gather data on alcohol consumption across the world. If stronger religious beliefs are driving the result, one would expect the inclusion of per-capita alcohol consumption to signicantly aect the point estimate on Arab conquest when limiting the sample to Muslim countries since Islam prohibits the consumption of alcohol. Results in column (4) show that this is not the case. In the appendix I provide additional evidence showing that religious beliefs do not seem to be abnormally strong in regions conquered by Arab armies. Together with the ndings presented in column 3, these results cast doubt on Islam as the primary obstacle to democracy.11

2.2

The Con ict/Resource Curse Hypotheses

Another group of studies stresses the importance of the Arab-Israeli con (Stepan ict and Robertson 2003; El Badawi and Makdisi 2007; Diamond 2010). Such studies, however, explicitly claim that any negative eects on democratic outcomes should be limited to the Arab world. However, as I have shown above, the region democratic s decit extends to a sizeable number of countries outside of the Arab League. In addition, in column (5) of table 3 I present results omitting Israel and the neighboring Arab counties (i.e. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria). Since these countries have experienced the con most directly, one would expect these countries to drive the ict con results if they existed. However, the results in column (5) show that the ict point estimates are almost identical when these countries are removed. Thus, when taken in unison these results cast doubt on the importance of the Arab-Israeli con ict as a systematic obstacle to democratic change across the region.
10 11

In the appendix I provide additional evidence supporting this claim. And thus echo the conclusions of recent analyses such as Stepan and Robertson (2003) or Jamal

and Tessler (2008).

10

Another in uential literature argues that large amounts of oil wealth are inimical to the development of democratic institutions (Ross 2001). Are the results driven by oil rich countries? To investigate this possibility, I have included a dummy variable denoting fuel-endowed countries as dened in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009) in the regressions above and shown that the inclusion of this variable does not qualitatively aect the results. As a further robustness check, in column (6) of table 3 I present the results of regression (1) omitting all fuel-endowed countries. Again, the omission of these countries does not aect the point estimate on ArabConquest in a signicant way. In other words, the data do not support the hypothesis that oil wealth drives the Arab League democratic decit.12 s

2.3

The Institutional Persistence Hypothesis

The institutional persistence hypothesis attributes the Arab League democratic s decit today to the long-term in uence of the control structures developed in the centuries following the Arab conquests. The view that the region has a propensity toward autocratic institutions that is rooted in historical events goes back at least to Montesquieu (1989 [1748]) and was echoed by prominent Arab thinkers in the 19th century (Hourani 1962). Following decolonization, many saw the failure of the parliamentary-democratic form of government as the legacy of the region historical s institutional framework (Issawi 1956, p. 27). More recently, scholars such as Bernard Lewis (1993b) and Kedourie (1994) have emphasized that a unique set of institutions developed in the areas conquered by Arab armies and that these historical institutions have had enduring political impacts. Historical evidence supports the notion that an abnormally autocratic political equilibrium developed in the Arab-conquest regions. In the ninth century, rulers
12

I do nd evidence later in the paper, however, consistent with the claim that popular pressures

for democratization are more muted in oil-rich counties. Consequently, the results in the paper are not inconsistent with the hypothesis that oil wealth discourages the emergence of democratic institutions. Rather, they suggest that oil wealth cannot account for the entire region democratic s decit.

11

across this region began to use slave armies -as opposed to native populations- to sta their armies. Blaydes and Chaney (2011) argue that the widespread use of these slave armies allowed rulers to achieve independence from local military and civilian groups and helped remove constraints on the sovereign in pre-modern Islamic societies. In this autocratic environment, religious leaders emerged as the only check on the power of the sovereign (Chaney 2011). The historic division of power between the military (i.e. the sovereign backed by his army of slaves) and religious leaders did not produce democratic institutions. Instead, both religious and military elites worked together to develop and perpetuate a classical institutional equilibrium. This institutional framework -which is often referred to as Islamic law- seems to have been designed with the interest of both military and religious leaders in mind (Kuran 2011, Chaney 2012). Although religious leaders devised equilibrium institutions to protect the interests of the general population to a degree, both the military and religious elites worked to resist the emergence of rival centers of political power such as merchant guilds that could have facilitated institutional change (Lapidus 1984, pp. 103-104). Concentration of political power in the hands of a few groups and weak civil societies are thought to be the long-term legacy of this historical institutional framework (e.g. Kuran 2011, p. 301). Areas incorporated into the Islamic world after the era of Arab conquests had ended did not adopt this classical framework in its entirety (Lapidus 1988, p. 252). For example, in regions conquered by non-Arab Muslim armies such as India and the Balkans, local elites remained in power and perpetuated previous institutional arrangements (Lapidus 1988, pp. 247-248). Where Islam spread by conversion (e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia or sub-Saharan Africa) institutions were shaped by a local elite which preserved its political and cultural continuity (Lapidus 1988, p. 249). Consequently, an institutional divide arose within the Muslim world between areas that had been incorporated into the Muslim world by Arab conquest and those that were incorporated in later periods. These institutional divisions within the Islamic world have proven remarkably resilient. For example, although Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 12

1517 CE, remnants of the local elite eventually reestablished themselves and continued to rely on slave armies to support their positions until the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt in 1798 CE. Despite the many changes that Arab-conquered regions have undergone over the subsequent 200 years, both colonizers and native rulers following independence seem to have worked to perpetuate the historic concentration of political power in the hands of the ruler. This point is stressed by Bernard Lewis (1993b) who notes that [m]odernization in the nineteenth century, and still more in the twentieth, far from reducing this [historic] autocracy, substantially increased it. Contemporary observers have also noted that the present day political equilibrium bears more than a passing resemblance to the historical equilibrium. For example, some Arab critics have called their rulers Mamelukes, alluding to the slave-soldiers who exercised unrestrained and arbitrary power in those countries(Kedourie 1994, p. 92) and Sonbol (2000, p. xxvi) notes that that the military [in Egypt...] practice[s] prerogatives similar to those enjoyed by the [slave soldiers]. This autocratic environment has led religious leaders to again emerge in their historical role as the primary check on the power of the state (al-Sayyid Marsot 1984, Chaney 2011). 2.3.1 Institutions or Geographic Endowments?

Is the Arab League democratic decit today a product of institutional persistence? s An alternative explanation for the empirical patterns I observe is that countries dominated by desert terrain selected into Arab conquest and that the results are picking up the long-run eects of desert institutions(Haber and Menaldo 2010) or even a direct eect of desert terrain on democracy today. To investigate this possibility, in the upper graph of gure 3 I detail the relationship between desert terrain and democracy in the entire sample. Although the negative relationship between desert terrain and democratic outcomes in 2010 is striking, it is entirely driven by countries conquered by Arab armies (which are denoted with grey boxes). Once these countries are removed from the sample, the relationship between desert terrain and democracy is no longer statistically signicant and is given in the lower graph.

13

In columns (7)-(9) of table 3 I demonstrate this point in a more formal manner. In these specications I add controls for desert terrain to regression (1). In column (7) I use the percent of a country current landmass that is occupied by desert s terrain. In columns (8) and (9) I use the logarithm of a country average rainfall s in both a linear and cubic specication as suggested by Haber and Menaldo (2010). Although the roughly 50% increase in the standard errors is a product of the fact that Arab conquest and desert terrain are highly correlated, the point estimates on the variable Arab conquest do not substantially change when measures of desert terrain are added to the regression and these estimates remain statistically signicant. The coe cients on desert terrain, in turn, are small in absolute value and statistically insignicant. Thus, the available evidence provides little support for the hypothesis that desert terrain has eects on democratic outcomes today that are independent of Arab conquest.13 If the only way desert terrain impacts democratic outcomes today is through institutional developments that followed Arab conquest, then desert terrain should be a valid instrument for Arab conquest in equation (1). In table 4, I present results instrumenting for Arab conquest with desert terrain. I do this for two reasons. First, if Arab conquest is a noisy measure of treatment with the relevant historical institutions then IV results can help address biases caused by this measurement error. Second, overidentication tests provide an additional test of the hypothesis that desert terrain only in uences democratic outcomes today through Arab conquest. Why do I expect desert terrain and Arab conquest to be statistically related? It is well known that Arab armies had signicant military advantages in areas that were dominated by desert terrain. Bernard Lewis sums up this point by noting that [t]he strategy employed by the Arabs in the great campaigns of conquest was determined by the use of desert-power [...] [t]he desert was familiar and accessible to the Arabs and not to their enemies (1993a, p. 54). Similarly, Kennedy (2007, p. 371) notes that bedouin armies were particularly able in the barren and inhospitable milieus that constituted much of the territory conquered by Arab armies, while Hill
13

In the appendix I provide further evidence in support of this claim.

14

(1975) suggests that the Arab use of the camel greatly facilitated conquest on or near desert terrain. Consequently, areas with desert terrain should have been more likely to select into conquest by Arab armies.14 In table 4 I present the relevant results in four panels. In panel A I present the IV (2SLS) estimates. In panel B I present the rst-stage for Arab conquest. In panel C I provide the OLS results and in panel D I provide the p-value from the overidentication tests when relevant. The rst three columns use the entire sample and the nal three columns limit the sample to countries with Muslim majorities. In columns (1) and (4), I instrument for Arab conquest with the distance of the geographical center of a country (i.e. its centroid) from Mecca. Panel B shows that there is a strong rst stage relationship between distance from Mecca and Arab conquest. In both specications the point estimates and standard errors on Arab conquest roughly double. In columns (2) and (5), I instrument for Arab conquest using desert terrain. The rst-stage results show that there is also a strong relationship between desert terrain and Arab conquest. In panel D I present the p-value testing that the IV coe cients obtained using Mecca and Desert as instruments are equal. I cannot reject the hypothesis that they are equal at conventional levels of statistical signicance. In columns (3) and (6), I instrument for Arab conquest using the logarithm of a country average rainfall. Again, I cannot reject the null hypothesis that the IV s coe cients obtained using Mecca and rainfall as instruments are equal. The overidentication tests are useful since they are a direct test of the exclusion restriction that desert terrain only aects democratic outcomes today through Arab conquest. Although it should be noted that such tests may not lead to a rejection if all instruments are invalid but still highly correlated with each other (and thus should be treated with some caution), the data support the exclusion restriction implied by my approach. Thus, the evidence is consistent with the claim that desert terrain aects democratic outcomes today through institutions developed following
14

See Michalopoulus et al. (2010) for a related discussion of how desert terrain and unequal agri-

cultural endowments may have aected the selection of countries into the classical institutional framework.

15

Arab conquest and not through channels that are unrelated to Arab conquest.15 2.3.2 Government Share of GDP, Access to Credit, Trade Unions and Arab Conquest I now turn to the channels through which Arab conquest may continue to aect institutional outcomes today. I view this analysis as preliminary and exploratory, as data limitations make it di cult to pin down the precise channels underlying the observed empirical patterns with any reasonable degree of certainty. Instead, I examine the extent to which the available data are consistent with the historical evidence. The main prediction of the institutional persistence hypothesis as developed above is that political power should be abnormally concentrated in areas conquered by Arab armies and that civil societies in the region should be unusually weak. Since I do not have direct measures of either, I instead use as proxies government share of GDP, the extent to which existing institutions facilitate access to credit and the number of trade unions normalized by GDP. The logic behind the use of the government share of GDP metric is rooted in s the region economic development over the past 60 years. After the end of the s colonial era, governments worked to impede the emergence of autonomous social groups in Arab-conquered regions. For example, the state stymied the emergence of politically powerful merchant groups (Pamuk 2004, Malik and Awadallah 2011). As a consequence, government today should be directly involved in an abnormally large share of economic production in Arab conquered regions (Kuran 2011, p. 301). In table 5 I present results investigating the empirical relevance of this prediction. In columns (1)-(3) I present results from a regression similar to equation (1) using government share of GDP in 2010 as the dependent variable. Results in column (1) s show that countries conquered by Arab armies have government GDP shares that are 7 percentage points higher than in areas that were not conquered by Arab armies.
15

In this sense, the results complement recent studies that nd that geography in uences present-

day outcomes through historical events (e.g. Nunn and Puga 2012).

16

In column (2) I show that this result is not driven by the region democratic decit. s In column (3) I show that although there is not much evidence that Arab League countries are dierent from non-Arab League countries, the results on Arab conquest lose statistical signicance when one introduces an Arab League dummy. In columns (4)-(6) I examine the extent to which governments in Arab-conquered areas continue to resist the development of autonomous social groups today. To do this, I use the World Bank Strength of Legal Rights Index as the dependent s variable. I normalize this index to range from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating that the legal system is better designed to expand access to credit. I expect the legal system in countries conquered by Arab armies to be inimical to the expansion of credit since the region historical institutions have both endowed ruling elites with s unusual levels of political power and have left civil society groups such as merchants abnormally weak. The results are consistent with this prediction. Namely, the legal systems in countries that were conquered by Arab armies are between 0.21 and 0.29 points (or roughly one standard deviation) less hospitable to the expansion of credit than legal systems in other regions. Finally, in columns (7)-(9) I present the number of trade unions normalized by GDP (measured in billions of dollars). To measure the number of trade unions, I use the number of trade unions a liated with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) per country. The point estimates on Arab conquest in columns (7)-(9) shows that areas conquered by Arab armies have between 0.28 and 0.35 fewer trade unions per billion dollars of GDP (or just over one standard deviation). These results do not seem to be driven either by the region democratic s decit or by membership in the Arab League. They are, however, consistent with the prediction that civil societies are abnormally weak in Arab-conquest areas. In sum, although it is di cult to measure the extent to which political power is abnormally concentrated and civil societies are weak in areas conquered by Arab armies, in this subsection I have presented evidence that is largely consistent with this prediction.

17

The Arab Spring: Past as Prologue?

The ndings presented in this paper suggest that the democratic decit in the Arab League on the eve of the Arab Spring had deep historical roots. However, this result does not imply that the Arab Spring will not lead to sustained democratic change. Indeed, the numerous structural changes over the past 50 years (Rauch and Kostyshak 2009) may have helped to lessen the weight of history, rendering many Arab states fertile ground for sustained democratic change today.

3.1

Advances in Education

While space considerations limit the extent to which I am able to investigate the evolution of the many available indicators in the Arab League over the past decades, in this section I detail the evolution of average education in the region over the past 60 years. I concentrate on this indicator because a large literature views high levels of educational attainment as a prerequisite for democracy.16 In gure 4 I present the evolution of the average years of education since 1950 for three groups of countries: i. Non-Muslim, developing countries, ii. Muslim, non-Arab conquest countries and iii. countries that were conquered by Arab armies. The results show the tremendous increases in average education in the countries conquered by Arab armies over the past 60 years. They also show that while dierences in education do not seem to explain the democratic decit from a statistical standpoint in these countries (see the appendix for these results), educational attainment in countries conquered by Arab armies has largely converged to the non-Arab-conquest Muslim average.17 What do such structural changes imply for the future of democracy in the Arab world? Unfortunately, data limitations have prevented a systematic investigation of the channels through which history continues to aect democratic outcomes today. Consequently, it is hard to know the extent to which structural changes have helped
16

See Acemoglu et al. (2005) for an overview of this literature and Glaeser et al. (2007) for one

causal mechanism through which higher levels of education may lead to more democratic outcomes. 17 In a recent working paper Campante and Chor (2011) argue that such structural changes have made political protests more likely and pressures for democratization more acute.

18

to remove the historical impediments to democratic change. However, if the literature stressing the importance of education for democratization is correct, the large increases in education in the Arab conquest countries over the last 60 years suggest that the prospects for democracy in the region are brighter today than at any time in its history.

3.2

A Democratic Dawn?

At some level it is obvious that the structural changes the region has undergone over the past 60 years have made the Arab world more fertile ground for sustained democratic change today than at any time in the past. For example, the widespread protests that swept across the region in 2011 have no precedent in the region history. s However, the political equilibrium in many states in the Arab League resembles the equilibrium that has accompanied autocratic institutions for centuries. Namely, political power appears to be concentrated in the hands of military and religious leaders in many areas. The region institutional history suggests that democratic change is less likely s where political power remains concentrated in such a manner. Although I do not observe the extent to which political power is concentrated in the hands of military and religious leaders, I do observe popular support for Sharia implementation. To the extent that religious leaders derive political power from popular support, support for Sharia implementation may be a good proxy for the relative power of religious leaders across countries. Thus, I use popular support for the Sharia as a measure of the extent to which political power remains concentrated in the hands of religious leaders across the Arab world today.18 Average support for Sharia implementation over the years 2005-2010 in the mem18

The use of this metric is supported by recent election results in Tunisia and Egypt. Although

Islamist parties won majorities in both countries, these groups seem on the whole less moderate and to wield more political power in Egypt than in Tunisia. This is consistent with the results from surveys presented in table 6 showing that a larger share of the populace support Sharia implementation in Egypt than in Tunisia.

19

ber states of the Arab League is presented in column (1) of table 6. In table 6, countries that experienced unrest in 2011 are marked in bold. The results show that in countries such as Egypt and Yemen popular support for Sharia implementation is high. In countries such as Syria and Tunisia it is much lower. However, with the exception of Lebanon nowhere in the Arab League does popular support for Sharia implementation approach the low levels of Turkey which is widely seen as a democratic model for the region. These results suggest that religious leaders will wield greater political power in countries such as Yemen and Egypt than in others such as Tunisia. History suggests that the emergence of stable democratic institutions is less likely in areas where religious leaders face fewer political rivals.

3.3

Measuring the Propensity for Unrest

One prominent model of democratic change links economic downturns and popular discontent with democratizations (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006).19 To both investigate and quantify the extent to which popular discontent helped drive the Arab spring, in columns (2)-(4) of table 6, I detail the evolution of self-reported well-being in the Arab world in 2009, 2010 and 2011 using Gallup World Poll data. In each s column, I provide the mean number of respondents who were self-reportedly thrivingby countries. The level of self-reported well-being in 2010 is the only variable I have found that robustly predicts unrest in 2011 from a statistical standpoint. This result suggests that the level of subjective well-being in 2011 may help predict the propensity for further unrest across the Arab League. To the extent that this is the case, oil-rich gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates seem unlikely to experience widespread unrest in the near future. It should be noted, however, that the sharp drop in well-being in Bahrain between 2009 and 2011 from a relatively high base suggests that even countries with high levels of self-reported well-being may be more susceptible to unrest than the results in table 6 suggest. While the region history reminds us that democratizations might prove s eeting
19

For a recent empirical investigation of this hypothesis, see Brckner and Ciccone (2011).

20

in the absence of competing interest groups, the results also show that popular discontent with the status quo helped drive the protests. This result suggests both that the Arab Spring seems to share important characteristics with other successful democratizations and that such discontent seems to have helped to unify protestors in pursuit of change.

Conclusion

In this paper I have provided evidence suggesting that the Arab League democratic s decit on the eve of the Arab Spring has deep historical roots. These results cast doubt on claims that Muslim theology, Arab culture, the Arab-Israeli con or oil ict wealth are systematic obstacles to democratic change. Instead, the available evidence suggests that the region democratic decit is a product of the long-run in s uence of control structures developed under Islamic empires in the pre-modern era. Will the Arab Spring end the region long history of autocratic rule and usher in s long-lasting democratic change? Unfortunately, data limitations prohibit a detailed investigation of the channels through which the region historical institutional equis librium continues to aect outcomes today. Consequently, I am unable to measure the extent to which these channels continue to aect political developments. Despite these limitations, at some level the structural changes the region has undergone over the past 60 years have made the Arab world more fertile ground for sustained democratic change today than at any time in the past. Indeed, the widespread protests that swept across the region in 2011 have no precedent in the region history. That having been said, in some countries of the Arab world (e.g. s Egypt or Yemen) the present-day political equilibrium seems more similar to the historical equilibrium that has accompanied autocratic institutions than in others (e.g. Tunisia). In this sense, history suggests that democracy is less likely to emerge in the former group of countries than in the latter. What, then, are the implications of the preceding analysis for the current policy environment? Although the results suggest that the Arab League democratic decit s

21

on the eve of the Arab Spring has deep historical roots, this decit does not appear to be rooted in religious beliefs. However, the region institutional history shows s that overwhelming popular support for Islamists may undermine democratic eorts by concentrating political power in the hands of these groups. Indeed, the recent past shows that Islamists are just as likely to establish autocratic rule as other groups in the absence of checks on their power. Thus, unless other interest groups -such as labor unions or commercial interests- check their power, Islamists may replace secular rulers and usher in a new wave of autocracy in some Arab countries. In closing, it should be stressed that these conclusions are largely based on an implicit model of the region institutional history. While this conceptual framework s might be consistent with the available data and may help explain the past, if there has been a regime shift (statistically speaking) predictions based on this framework will be poor. Thus, there are many reasons to be cautious about using the evidence we have regarding democratic change in the Arab world as a guide for future policy decisions.

References
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Blaydes, L. and E. Chaney. 2011. The Feudal Revolution and Europe Rise: Ins stitutional Divergence in the Christian and Muslim Worlds before 1500 CE.Mimeo. Brckner, M. and A. Ciccone. 2011. Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity.Econometrica, 79(3): 923-947. Campante, F. and D. Chor. 2011. The People Want the Fall of the Regime : Schooling, Political Protest, and the Economy.Mimeo. Chaney, E. 2011. Revolt on the Nile: Economic Shocks, Religion and Political Power.Mimeo. Chaney, E. 2012. Separation of Powers and the Medieval Roots of Institutional Divergence between Europe and the Islamic Middle East.Mimeo. Dell, M. 2010. The Persistent Eects of Peru Mining Mita.Econometrica, 78(6): s 1863-1903. Diamond, L. 2010. Why are there no Arab Democracies.Journal of Democracy, 21 (1): 93-104. Fish, M. S. 2002. Islam and Authoritarianism.World Politics, 55: 4-37. Glaeser, E., G. Ponzetto and A. Shleifer. 2007. Why does Democracy need Education?.The Journal of Economic Growth, 12: 77-99. Haber, S. and V. Menaldo 2010. Rainfall and Democracy.Mimeo. Hill, D. R. 1975. The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests. in V.J. Parry and M.E. Yapp (eds.) War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, 32(1): 32-43. Hourani, A. 1962. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. New York: Oxford University Press. Huntington, S. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Issawi, I. 1956. Economic and Social Foundations of Democracy in the Middle East.International Aairs, 32(1): 27-42. Jamal, A. and M. Tessler. 2008. Attitudes in the Arab World. Journal of Democracy, 19(1): 97-110. Kedourie, E. 1994. Democracy and Arab Political Culture. Portland: Frank Cass & Co. LTD. 23

Kennedy, H. 2007. The Great Arab Conquests. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Khashan, H. 1998. The Arab World Travails: History Burden. Middle East s s Quarterly, March: 41-48. Kuran, T. 2011. The Long Divergence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lako, S. 2004. The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism. Journal of Democracy, 15(4): 133-139. Lapidus, I. 1984. Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lapidus, I. 1988. A History of Islamic Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, B. 1993a. The Arabs in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, B. 1993b. Islam and Liberal Democracy. The Atlantic Monthly, 271(2): 89-98. Malik, A. and B. Awadallah. 2011. The Economics of the Arab Spring. Mimeo. Michalopoulos, S., A. Naghavi and G. Prarolo. 2010. Trade and Geography in the Economic Origins of Islam: Theory and Evidence.Mimeo. Montesquieu, C. 1989 [1748]. The Spirit of the Laws. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Noland, M. 2008. Explaining Middle Eastern Political Authoritarianism I: The Level of Democracy.Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, 4(1): 1-30. Nunn, N. 2008. The Long-Term Eects of Africa Slave Trades.Quarterly Jours nal of Economics, 123(1): 139-176. Nunn, N. 2009. The Importance of History for Economic Development. Annual Review of Economics, 1: 65-92. Nunn, N. and D. Puga. 2012. Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa.The Review of Economics and Statistics, 94(1): 20-36. Pamuk, S. 2004. Institutional Change and the Longevity of the Ottoman Empire. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35(2): 225-247. Rauch, J. and S. Kostyshak. 2009. The Three Arab Worlds. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(2): 165-188. 24

Ross, M. 2001. Does Oil Hinder Democracy?World Politics, 53: 325-361. Sharabi, H. 1988. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. New York: Oxford University Press. Stepan, A. and F. Robertson. 2003. An Arabmore than MuslimElectoral Gap.Journal of Democracy, 14(3): 30-44. Al-Sayyid Marsot, A. 1984. Religion or Opposition? Urban Protest Movements in Egypt.International Journal of Middle East Studies, 16(4): 541-552. Sonbol, A. 2000. The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

25

Figure 1: Arab Conquest and Democracy in 2010 More democratic countries are shaded grey and the persistent boundaries of the Islamic world in 1100 CE (i.e. Arab conquest) are outlined in black. Democracy data for 2010 are missing for cross-hatched countries.

2010 1990 NonMuslim Muslim, NonArab Conquest Arab Conquest

Figure 2: Arab Conquest, Muslim Countries, Developing nonMuslim Countries and Democracy since 1960

1960 0 .2 Standardized Polity Score .4 .6 .8

1970

1980

2000

AUS CHL ZAF BWA MEX ARG KEN LBN KGZ NPL MLI PAK NAM

MNG

ISR

NER ETH SOM SDN TJK TUN KAZ CHN UZB ERI MAR IRN SYR TKM TCD

IRQ DZA DJI

MRT JOR EGY

.2

Normalized Polity Score .4 .6 .8

JPN CPV DNK SWE FINTWN NOR CRI TTO MUS CAN USA LTU SVN SVK NLD IRL GBR URY HUN POL DEU PRT ITA GRC AUT CHE NZL CYP ESP IND NIC JAM PAN COM EST ROM BGR MON HRV MKD ALB FRA PER LSO GHA KOR SLV GTM DOM LVA MDA SRB CZE PRY BEL BRA SLB IDN PHL ZMB BEN TUR SEN SLE HND COL BOL MWI LBR GNB BDI GEO MYS GUY UKR MOZ ARM GINECU ZAR BGD NGA LKA THA RUS PNG BTN GAB KHM ZWE MDG CIV BFA HTI CAF TZA UGA AGO TGO SGP VEN CMR COG RWA FJI GMB GNQ MMR AZE LAO VNM CUB BLR

YEM

KWT LBY OMN ARE BHR QAT SAU

SWZ PRK

0 Percent Desert

.2

.4

.6

.8

[N=160; b=0.51; se=0.06]

AUS CHL ZAF BWA MEX ARG KEN KGZ NPL

MNG

ISR

NAM

DJI ETH

.2

Normalized Polity Score .4 .6 .8

SDN

KAZ CHN ERI

JPN CPV DNK SWE FINTWN NOR CRI TTO MUS CAN USA LTU SVN SVK NLD IRL GBR URY HUN POL DEU PRT ITA GRC AUT CHE NZL CYP ESP IND NIC JAM PAN COM EST ROM BGR MON HRV MKD ALB FRA PER LSO KOR GHA SLV GTM DOM SLB IDN PHL LVA MDA SRB CZE BEL PRY BRA ZMB BEN SEN SLE HND COL BOL MWI BDI LBR GNB GEO MYS GUY UKR MOZ ARM ZAR BGD GINECU LKA THA NGA RUS PNG BTN GAB KHM ZWE MDG CIV BFA HTI CAF TZA UGA AGO TGO SGP VEN RWA CMR COG FJI GMB GNQ MMR LAO VNM CUB BLR

SWZ PRK

Figure 3: Democracy, Arab Conquest and Desert Countries conquered by Arab armies are denoted with grey boxes. The top graph includes the entire sample whereas the bottom graph omits countries conquered by Arab armies.
.2 .4 Percent Desert .6 .8 1

[N=132; b=0.14; se=0.17]

2020 NonMuslim Muslim, NonArab Conquest Arab Conquest

Figure 4: The Evolution of Years of Education since 1950 Average years of education in Arab Conquest, Muslim and developing non-Muslim countries since 1950.

1940 0 2 4 6 8

1960

1980

2000

Table 1: Country Codes, the Arab League, Arab Conquest and Muslim Majority
Code LAO LBN LBR LBY LKA LSO LTU LVA MAR MDA MDG MEX MKD MLI MMR MNG MON MOZ MRT MUS MWI MYS NAM NER NGA NIC NLD NOR NPL NZL OMN PAK PAN PER PHL PNG POL PRK PRT PRY ROM RUS RWA SAU SDN SEN SGP SLB SLE SLV SOM SRB SVK SVN SWE SWZ SYR TCD TGO THA TJK TKM TTO TUN TUR TWN TZA UGA UKR URY USA UZB VEN VNM YEM ZAF ZAR ZMB ZWE ECU EGY ERI ESP EST ETH FIN FJI FRA GAB GBR GEO GHA GIN GMB GNB GNQ GRC GTM GUY HND HRV HTI HUN IDN IND IRL IRN IRQ ISR ITA JAM JOR JPN KAZ KEN KGZ KHM KOR KWT Ecuador Egypt Eritrea Spain Estonia Ethiopia Finland Fiji France Gabon United Kingdom Georgia Ghana Guinea Gambia, The Guinea-Bissau Equatorial Guinea Greece Guatemala Guyana Honduras Croatia Haiti Hungary Indonesia India Ireland Iran Iraq Israel Italy Jamaica Jordan Japan Kazakhstan Kenya Kyrgyzstan Cambodia South Korea Kuwait Laos Lebanon Liberia Libya Sri Lanka Lesotho Lithuania Latvia Morocco Moldova Madagascar Mexico Macedonia Mali Myanmar (Burma) Mongolia Montenegro Mozambique Mauritania Mauritius Malawi Malaysia Namibia Niger Nigeria Nicaragua Netherlands Norway Nepal New Zealand Oman Pakistan Panama Peru Philippines Papua New Guinea Poland North Korea Portugal Paraguay QAT Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saudi Arabia Sudan Senegal Singapore Solomon Islands Sierra Leone El Salvador Somalia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Sweden Swaziland Syria Chad Togo Thailand Tajikistan Turkmenistan Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Taiwan Tanzania, United Republic of Uganda Ukraine Uruguay United States Uzbekistan Venezuela Vietnam Yemen South Africa Zaire Zambia Zimbabwe Country Code Country Code Country

Code

Country

AGO ALB ARE ARG ARM AUS AUT AZE BDI BEL BEN BFA BGD BGR BHR BLR BOL BRA BTN BWA CAF CAN CHE CHL CHN CIV CMR COG COL COM CPV CRI CUB CYP CZE DEU DJI DNK DOM DZA

Angola Albania United Arab Emirates Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Burundi Belgium Benin Burkina Faso Bangladesh Bulgaria Bahrain Byelarus Bolivia Brazil Bhutan Botswana Central African Republic Canada Switzerland Chile China Ivory Coast Cameroon Congo Colombia Comoros Cape Verde Costa Rica Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Germany Djibouti Denmark Dominican Republic Algeria

Notes: Countries marked in bold were members of the Arab League in 2010. Countries marked with the symbol had at least half of their landmass conquered by Arab armies, while those with Muslim majorities are denoted by . Underlined countries are non Arab League members that had at least half of their landmass conquered by Arab armies. Countries that have Muslim majorities but were not conquered by Arab armies and are not members of the Arab League in 2010 are in italics. See text for details.

Muslim
(0.05) [0.10] [0.10] [0.07] [0.07] (0.07) (0.07) (0.07)

Table 2: Democracy, Islam and Arab Conquest Dependent Variable: Normalized Polity Score in 2010 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) -0.31 -0.20 -0.06 0.05

Arab League
(0.09) [0.10] [0.10] [0.11] [0.11] [0.10] (0.10) (0.10) (0.09) (0.10) (0.10) [0.10]

-0.21

-0.04

-0.01

-0.23

-0.05

-0.02

-0.05
(0.10) [0.08]

Arab Conquest
(0.11) [0.11] [0.11] (0.12) (0.11) [0.11]

-0.39

-0.32

-0.38

-0.28
(0.12) [0.12]

-0.40
(0.13) [0.18]

N Controls? Sample

160 No World

160 No World

160 No World

160 Yes World

43 No Muslim

43 No Muslim

43 Yes Muslim

32 Yes 80%

Notes: The dependent variable is the polity score in 2010 normalized to lie on the interval [0,1] (higher values indicate more democratic institutions). Muslim is an indicator variable equal to one if at least half of the countrys population is Muslim. Arab League is an indicator variable equal to one if the country was a member of the Arab League in 2010. Arab Conquest is the percentage of a countrys landmass that was persistently controlled by Islamic Empires since at least 1100 CE. Controls include continent dummies and a dummy variable equal to one if the country was a fuel-endowed economy as dened in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009). The sample labeled 80% limits the sample to countries whose Muslim population shares are greater than 80%. Robust standard errors are given in parentheses whereas standard errors clustered by region are given in brackets. See text for details.

Arab Conquest
(0.09) (0.15) (0.09) (0.10) (0.10) (0.15) (0.14) (0.14)

Table 3: Possible Explanations: Culture, Conict, Oil and Desert Normalized Polity Score in 2010 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) -0.32 -0.33 -0.35 -0.34 -0.31 -0.29 -0.29 (9) -0.30 0.05
(0.07)

Muslim
(0.07) (0.11) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.10) (0.07)

0.05 -0.07
(0.02)

0.05

0.03

0.05

0.05

0.09

0.05

ln(Alcohol Consumption) -0.05

(0.15)

%Desert

ln(Rain)

2.02
(1.97)

0.01
(0.04)

[ln(Rain)]2

-0.31
(0.34)

[ln(Rain)]3 160 Yes World 139 Yes NonArab 132 Yes NonConquest 43 Yes Muslim 155 Yes NonConict 147 Yes NonOil 160 Yes World

0.02
(0.02)

N Controls? Sample

158 Yes World

158 Yes World

Notes: Arab Conquest is the percentage of a countrys landmass that was persistently controlled by Islamic Empires since at least 1100 CE. Muslim is an indicator variable equal to one if at least half of the countrys population is Muslim. ln(Alcohol Consumption) is the logarithm of average per-capita alcohol consumption. %Desert is the percentage of a countrys landmass that is covered by desert terrain. ln(Rain) is the logarithm of a countrys average rainfall. Controls include continent dummies and a dummy variable equal to one if the country was a fuel-endowed economy as dened in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009). The Non-Arab sample omits members of the Arab League, the Non-Conquest sample omits Arab-conquest countries, the Muslim sample restricts the analysis to countries with at least 50% Muslim population shares, the Non-Conict sample omits Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and the Non-Oil sample omits the countries dened as fuel-endowed in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009).

Table 4: IV Regressions: The Impact of Arab Conquest on Democratic Outcomes in 2010 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Panel A: Two-Stage Least Squares Arab Conquest -0.56 -0.36 -0.35 -0.51 -0.47 -0.59
(0.30) (0.14) (0.14) (0.16) (0.12) (0.10)

Muslim

0.16
(0.15)

0.07
(0.09)

0.07
(0.09)

Panel B: First-Stage for Arab Conquest Mecca -0.46 -1.13

(0.12) (0.28)

%Desert ln(Rainfall)

0.67
(0.11)

0.85
(0.15)

-0.17
(0.02)

-0.29
(0.03)

Panel C: Ordinary Least Squares Arab Conquest -0.32 -0.32 -0.32

(0.09) (0.07) ((0.07))

-0.29
(0.10)

-0.29
(0.10)

-0.29
(0.10)

Muslim

0.05
(0.07)

0.05
(0.07)

0.05
(0.07)

Panel D: Overidentication Tests [p-value] [0.50] [0.63] N 160 160 158 Sample World World World

43 Muslim

[0.82] 43 Muslim

[0.65] 43 Muslim

Notes: The dependent variable in panels A and C is the polity score in 2010 normalized to lie on the interval [0,1] (higher values indicate more democratic institutions). The dependent variable in panel B is Arab Conquest: the percentage of a countrys landmass that was persistently controlled by Islamic Empires since at least 1100 CE. Muslim is an indicator variable equal to one if at least half of the countrys population is Muslim. Mecca is the distance of the countrys centroid to Mecca measured in tens of thousands of kilometers. %Desert is the percent of a countrys landmass that is covered by desert terrain. Arab League is an indicator variable equal to one if the country was a member of the Arab League in 2010. ln(Rainfall) is the logarithm of average annual rainfall in the country. Controls include country dummies and an indicator equal to one if the country was a fuel-endowed economy as dened in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009). Robust standard errors are presented in parentheses.

Table 5: Governments Share of GDP, Access to Credit, Trade Unions and Arab Conquest (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) Govt. Share of GDP Access to Credit Trade Unions Arab Conquest 7.37 9.26 4.53 -0.29 -0.21 -0.24 -0.29 -0.28 -0.35
(2.73) (3.29) (3.68) (0.10) (0.09) (0.10) (0.13) (0.12) (0.18)

Muslim Fuel-Endowed Democracy Arab League N

-5.20
(2.55)

-5.46
(2.58)

-5.89
(2.47)

-0.02
(0.08)

-0.03
(0.08)

-0.00
(0.08)

0.21
(0.11)

0.21
(0.11)

0.20
(0.10)

7.42
(3.50)

8.28
(3.93)

6.16
(3.24)

0.02
(0.07)

0.07
(0.07)

0.04
(0.08)

0.00
(0.04)

0.01
(0.05)

-0.02
(0.05)

5.83
(5.56)

0.28
(0.08)

0.03
(0.07)

5.48
(3.50)

-0.09
(0.07)

0.12
(0.16)

158

158

158

152

152

152

160

160

160

Notes: The dependent variable in columns (1)-(3) is 100 times the governments share of GDP in 2011. In columns (4)-(6) the dependent variable is the World Banks strength of legal rights index normalized to lie on the interval [0,1] (higher values indicate legal systems that greater facilitate access to credit). In columns (7)-(9) the dependent variable is the number of trade unions normalized by GDP measured in billions of dollars. Arab Conquest is the percentage of a countrys landmass that was persistently controlled by Islamic Empires since at least 1100 CE. Muslim is an indicator variable equal to one if at least half of the countrys population is Muslim. Fuel-Endowed is an indicator variable equal to one if the country is a fuel-endowed economy as dened in Rauch and Kostyshak (2009). Democracy is the countrys polity score normalized to lie on the interval [0,1]. Arab League is an indicator variable equal to one if the country was a member of the Arab League in 2010. All regressions include continent dummies. Robust standard errors are presented in parentheses.

Table 6: Support for the Sharia, Well-Being and the Arab Spring
Somalia Saudi Arabia Egypt Qatar Yemen Jordan U AE P alestine Djibouti Kuwait Comoros Libya Algeria M auritania Iraq M orocco Syria Tunisia Sudan Lebanon Bahrain Oman T urkey 10.05 (0.55) 13.27 (1.13) 16.57 (1.25) 20.00 (1.31) 18.11 (1.28) 14.15 (1.21) 16.52 (1.23) 2.98 (0.56) 17.12 (1.24) 10.53 (1.01) 18.63 (1.33) 8.19 (0.97) 52.17 (1.67) (1) Sharia 75.37 (1.41) 71.62 (1.38) 71.15 (0.77) 69.87 (1.51) 66.07 (1.12) 64.10 (0.93) 56.79 (1.63) 51.27 (0.74) 47.37 (1.64) 45.99 (1.64) 42.13 (1.63) 41.93 (1.25) 37.51 (1.10) 36.19 (1.12) 34.98 (1.60) 32.58 (1.54) 29.49 (1.14) 25.51 (1.01) 21.00 (1.36) 13.94 (0.58) (2) Well-Being(2009) 18.25 (0.89) 37.73 (1.15) 13.80 (0.80) 48.87 (1.25) 17.81 (0.90) 34.50 (1.11) 52.30 (1.18) 13.90 (0.82) 11.59 (0.74) 46.29 (1.17) 3.19 (0.41) 24.11 (1.62) 21.97 (0.96) 6.99 (0.63) 9.80 (0.73) 13.80 (0.80) 22.64 (1.02) 16.32 (0.87) 10.46 (0.71) 24.39 (1.05) 38.67 (1.14) (3) Well-Being(2010) 12.47 (0.76) 44.56 (1.19) 11.64 (0.80) 55.70 (1.77) 13.04 (0.81) 30.43 (1.11) 56.27 (1.18) 16.25 (0.88) 18.97 (1.31) 47.03 (1.15) 4.32 (0.48) 14.17 (1.18) 20.99 (0.94) 13.35 (0.79) 13.70 (0.84) 11.99 (0.75) 6.27 (0.61) 14.23 (0.80) 11.05 (0.73) 22.76 (1.02) 28.69 (1.06) (4) Well-Being(2011) 6.51 (0.81) 51.57 (1.67) 9.13 (0.73) 51.35 (1.68) 10.22 (1.09) 27.12 (1.50) 60.94 (1.64) 16.26 (1.26) 14.56 (1.19) 50.70 (1.64) 4.46 (0.68)

Notes: Column (1) provide the average proportion of individuals between 2005 and 2011 answering that Sharia must be the only source of legislation in response to the question Sharia is an Arabic word which means Islams religious principles. In general, which of these statements comes closest to your own point of view? In columns (2)-(4) I present the proportion of individuals who were self-reportedly thriving (i.e. doing well) in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively. Countries marked in bold witnessed uprisings in 2011. Robust standard errors are presented in parentheses.