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Liberal Democratic Values and Militancy

Via Scoblete, I came across two interesting working papers on the relationship between Pakistani support for “liberal democratic values” and militancy (.PDF) and the relationship between poverty and militancy (.PDF). Here I’ll be looking at the first paper. The authors of the papers found that support for “liberal democratic values” and militancy were related: Using […]

Via Scoblete, I came across two interesting working papers on the relationship between Pakistani support for “liberal democratic values” and militancy (.PDF) and the relationship between poverty and militancy (.PDF). Here I’ll be looking at the first paper. The authors of the papers found that support for “liberal democratic values” and militancy were related:

Using this approach, we find that support for a set of liberal democratic values–property rights, free speech, independent courts, the ability of citizens to elect representatives, a separation of civilian and military power, and freedom of assembly–increases support for militancy….Consistent with the principle of azadi (freedom or self-determination in Urdu), this result is driven by those who believe Muslim rights and sovereignty are being violated in Kashmir and Afghanistan. In other words, supporters of democratic rights are more likely to favor militant groups if they believe those militants are fighting against forces that are denying Muslims their rights.

These findings are interesting, but they aren’t as remarkable as some of the responses to the papers would indicate. There is no reason why attachment to liberal democratic values should weaken support for militancy when that militancy is perceived as a liberation struggle for one’s co-religionists or people from the same ethnic group. These findings might be strange to some Westerners, but that is mainly because these Westerners have convinced themselves that occupation and political grievances have little to do with causing jihadist militancy and terrorism. As the researchers mention in the paper, some Westerners may also assume that liberal democratic politics is an antidote to support for any and all forms of militancy, but that just reminds us that they have seriously mistaken assumptions about liberal democracy, including the major assumption that liberal democratic values and support for political violence are incompatible. Supporting liberal democratic values certainly does not guarantee support for perceived “freedom fighters” elsewhere, but it is hardly shocking that people with those values are more likely to support such militants.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that support for liberal democratic politics at home translates into sympathy with those groups that are perceived as advancing the cause of self-determination in other lands, especially if they are neighboring lands where people of the same religion or ethnicity are fighting against a government that they perceive as illegitimate, foreign, or imposed from the outside. Had researchers been investigating the extent of support for anti-Ottoman Greek insurgents in Crete among Greek Liberals in the late nineteenth century, they probably would have found a similar relationship between political liberalism and support for Greek nationalist militancy. For much of the last century, one presumably could have found a similar relationship between Irish supporters of liberal democratic values and those who sympathized with the IRA. Obviously, there have been many Americans, and not only Irish-Americans, who supported liberal democratic values and have sympathized with IRB and IRA goals since nineteenth century. That sympathy more recently translated into American political pressure on Britain that led to the settlement of the Good Friday Agreement.

Illiberal militant groups will also readily adopt liberal democratic rhetoric or frame their conflict in terms of self-determination and rights in the hopes that it will win greater sympathy. There will probably be a legitimate political grievance that they are exploiting, which makes it easier for their claims to be taken more seriously, especially if no one looks very closely at the nature of the group itself. In any case, such groups take it for granted that people in the West who support liberal democratic values are suckers for this sort of talk. The KLA pulled this off very successfully twelve years ago.

The findings in the working paper on liberal democratic values and militancy shouldn’t simply be an occasion to say, “Oh, look, Pakistani democrats are more likely to support certain groups of militants,” but to revisit assumptions about liberal democratic values, their relationship to sympathy with certain kinds of political violence, and the role of occupation in causing armed resistance and terrorism.

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