Democracy Concepts of the Fundamentalist Parties of Algeria and Tunisia – Claim and Reality

This article discusses democratic elements in early Islamic sources and in the programs of the Algerian FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) and ANNAHDA in Tunesia. According to historic writings, Islam includes the principles of democratic consensus, consultation, and freedom of opinion, and an understanding that the sources of Islamic jurisdiction are subject to interpretation, that the sharia can be changed, and that religious authorities’ power to issue instructions on worldly matters is limited. These are the type of expectations that fundamentalist parties arouse when they speak of an Islamic caliphate as a state system. Against this background, an examination of the political system proposed until 1992 by the Algerian FIS shows that this system would have resulted in a very restrictive form of Islam. An investigation of the political system of the Tunisian fundamentalist leader Rached al-Ghannouchi reveals that the system he proposes may be designated as an Islamic democracy, since it takes into account separation of powers and pluralism of political parties. The head of state would be subject to the law in the same manner as the people. However, it is no liberal democracy, as he categorically rejects secularism, intends to punish apostates, and is only willing to allow political parties that are based on the religion of Islam. His state would only be a state of those citizens who follow Islam, completely neglecting secularist groups. Social conflicts and unrest are thus predetermined.

Governing the Local: Sovereignty, Social Governance and Community Safety

There has been much commentary about the re-ordering of the relations between nation state government, geographical territory, and populations in the advanced liberal democracies. This is seen as a product of: increasing demographic and cultural diversity due to legal and illegal migration; economic, cultural, and political global interdependence; footloose mobility of capital and the outsourcing of jobs to poorer countries; the growing power of international corporations and financial markets; and the growth of supra-national bodies like the European Union and The North Atlantic Free Trade Association, the World Trade Organisation, and (debatably), the UN. These developments are held to be associated with the gradual demise of the model of the increasingly secular nation state first crystallised by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This conception provided a mutual, guarantee of states’ jurisdiction over territory and populations through their legitimated attempts to monopolise the use of force. Though, the relations between these states have always been asymmetrical and often challenged (Hunter 1998).