Popular Sovereignty, 

Islam, and Democracy 

Glenn E. Perry 

Abstract 

This article examines the idea that Islam's rejection of popular 

sovereignty makes it incompatible with democracy. l show 

instead that sovereignty ("absolute despotic power," popular or 

otherwise) is a sterile, pedantic, abstruse, formalistic, and legal­

istic concept, and that democracy should be seen as involving 

"popular control" rather than "popular sovereignty." Divine 

sovereignty would be inconsistent with democracy only if that 

meant - unlike in Islam - rule by persons claiming to be God 

or His infallible representatives. A body of divine law that 

humans cannot change would be incompatible with democracy 

only if it were so comprehensive as to leave no room for polit­

ical decisions. 

Various observers, mostly with little knowledge either of Islam or of 
Muslim countries, have jumped to the conclusion that the paucity of 

democracy in today's Islamic world is the result of Islam. Some of the 

most prominent examples of this include Samuel P. Huntington,' although 
the same author has been somewhat wishy-washy on this issue, demon­

strating an open mind in a later work2 and then reverting to blaming 

Islam.3 Actually, there are numerous cases of democratization to various 

degrees in the Islamic world. 
Nevertheless, the paucity arguably is real during the era to which 

Huntington4 gives the label "Third Wave" (starting in 1974) and particu­

larly since the end of the cold war, even in comparison with other parts of 

the Third World. One should keep in mind that the democratization taking 

Glenn E. Perry is a professor of political science at Ind iana State Un iversity and the author 
of numerous works on Middle Eastern politics and history.