The End of History and the Last Man

Anarchy, state, and utopia

It made it possible to improve people's lives. Now it prevents all forms of discrimination in the world. It helps to improve our world.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Corruption and Growth

This is the first comprehensive critical evaluation of the use of rational choice theory in political science. Writing in an accessible and nontechnical style, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro assess rational choice theory where it is reputed to be most successful: the study of collective action, the behavior of political parties and politicians, and such phenomena as voting cycles and Prisoner's Dilemmas. In their hard-hitting critique, Green and Shapiro demonstrate that the much heralded achievements of rational choice theory are in fact deeply suspect and that fundamental rethinking is needed if rational choice theorists are to contribute to the understanding of politics. In their final chapters, they anticipate and respond to a variety of possible rational choice responses to their arguments, thereby initiating a dialogue that is bound to continue for some time.

Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/141860/1/cesifo1_wp5883.pdf

Gender equality in Muslim-majority countries

Discrimination has been documented against women in Muslim-majority countries. Constitutions differ among Muslim-majority countries. By using women’s rights indicators and exploiting cross-country variation, we find that discrimination against women is more pronounced in countries where Islam is the source of legislation. Constitutions changed in only four Muslim-majority countries since 1980. We discuss anecdotal evidence to what extent women’s rights changed as a consequence of new constitutions. Empirical studies should thus distinguish between types of Muslim-majority countries.

Gender Equality in Muslim-Majority Countries

This study investigates the relationship between Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law. Al Azhar, one of the most respected Sunni religious institutions in the world, developed a model of an Islamic constitution. This study uses Al-Azhar’s constitution as a model of Islamic constitutionalism and examines its stance in regard to the rule of law. We find the Al-Azhar’s constitution to be incompatible with essential concepts of rule of law. For example, the powers vested in the head of the Islamic state are enormous, making the executive branch of government far superior to the legislative and judicial branches. Women and non-Muslims are explicitly discriminated against throughout the constitution. Moreover, laws stemming from this constitution are not stable since many differences exist among schools of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Consequently, we show that state-of-the-art Islamic constitutionalism lacks essential components needed in any constitution based on rule of law.

https://www.tpbin.com/Uploads/Subjects/a8a03ed6-ecff-4690-a815-236326afa035.pdf

Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law: a constitutional economics perspective

This study investigates the long-term relationship between slavery and violence in USA. Although considerable qualitative evidence suggests that slavery has been a key factor behind the prevalence of violence, especially in Southern USA, there has been no large-N study supporting this claim so far. Using county-level data for the USA, we find that the proportion of slaves in the population in 1860 is associated with significantly higher rates of violent crime in all census years for the period 1970-2000. This relationship is robust to including state fixed effects, controlling for numerous historical and contemporary factors, as well as to instrumenting for slavery using environmental conditions. We explore two potential channels of transmission: (1) slavery leading to higher levels of inequality, which in turn lead to higher levels of violent crime, and (2) slavery contributing to an ingrained culture of Southern violence. Our results show that only the proportion of slaves living on large slave holdings, as opposed to small slave holdings, is related to contemporary violent crime, supporting inequality as a channel of transmission. We find some tentative evidence supporting culture of violence between the white and black population as a second channel of transmission.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3052251_code1333791.pdf?abstractid=2358389&mirid=1&type=2

The Long-Term Effect of Slavery on Violent Crime: Evidence from US Counties

The military coup in Egypt and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan and Afghanistan have once again highlighted the high political stakes of incorporating Islam within a constitution Many constitutions in the Muslm world include clauses that recognize the Islamic character of the statell; yet, there is little scholarship empirically analyzing these clauses; indeed, while much has been written about the effects of incorporating a particular type of clause—the Islamic supremacy clause, to date, we know bery little about the comparative constitutional universe of Islamic clauses: How prevalent is Constitutional Islamization? Which countries have the most or least Ilamized Constitutions? Do secular countries in the Muslim world promise more human rights than Islamic countries? Does having * Dawood I Ahmed is a JSD Candidate at the University of Chicago and a Research Fellow at the Comparative Constitutions Project Moamen Gouda is an assistant professor of Middle East economics at the Graduate School for International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies He is also a research fellow at Marburg Center for Institutional Economics, Philipps University Marburg For helpful comments and discussions, the authors would like to thank Siobhan Airey, Helena Alviar, Andrea Ballestero, Markus Bockenforde, Lina Buchely, Nathan Brown, Tom Ginsburg, Aaron Glasserman, Marie Guimezanes, Marta Infantino, Mirjam Kunkler, David Mednicoff, Eric Posner, Maria Angelica Prada, Kerry Rittich, Michael Riegner, Yuksel Sezgin, Shylashri Shankar, Rene Uruena, Mila Versteeg, Stefan Voigt, Ramses Wessell, and participants at the “Balancing Religious Accommodation and Human Rights in Constitutional Frameworks” workshop held at Bielefeld University, Germany and the “Indicators: Law, Gaps and Democracy” help at the University of Los Andes, Colombia This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2014 The usual disclaimer applies DawoodFINAL MACRO 11/10/2014 2:24 PM 2 Hastings Int’l & Comp L Rev [Vol 38:1 more Islam in the constitution correlate with weaker political participation and gender equality? This Article tries to fills this gap Relying on an original dataset based on the coding of the constitutions of all Muslim majority countries globally, it introduces the Islamic Constitutions Index (ICI)—the first index to measure and rank constitutions according to their Islamicity Using this index as a proxy for Constitutional Islamization, we investigate the universe of Islamic constitutions Our analysis shows that roughly half of all Muslim majority countries in the world have Islamic features in their constitutions and geography and colonialism seem to have some some influence on Islamicity Further, in terms of Islamicity, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan lead the rankings of Constitutional Islamization while the Central Asian countries all have secular constitutions Further, we show that while Muslim countries’ constitutions generally promise a number of important human rights and none explicitly incorporate corporal punishments, constitutions that privilege secularism tend to, on average, promise more rights than constitutions that privilege Islam Indeed, of the top 10 countries in the Muslim world measured in terms of of de jure constitutional promise of rights, all but one—Maldives, are secular We also find that Islamicity of the constitution seems to correlate negatively with democracy, gender equality and political stability Although preliminary and not implying causation, our correlation analysis has considerable implications: not only can it provide some support to peacemaking efforts with Islamic militant groups doubting the Islamic character of the states they are fighting, it implies that the Muslim world may in fact chart its own version of “Islamic constitutional democracy” that may be different from Western paradigm of democracy Further, our work lays the foundation for a research agenda investigating of the relationship between political Islam and democracy On a normative level, if the pursuit of Constitutional Islamization is indeed shown to be in tension with liberal democracy, constitutional designers must focus on design options such as the structure of constitutional courts that will engage in interpretation of these constitutions so as to reconcile potential tensions between these two popular DawoodFINAL MACRO 11/10/2014 2:24 PM 2015] The Islamic Constitutions Index 3 strands of the constitution-making

/pdf/measuring-constitutional-islamization-the-islamic-2jzmkpy3te.pdf

Moamen Gouda

Papers

Gender equality in Muslim-majority countries

Gender Equality in Muslim-Majority Countries

Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law: a constitutional economics perspective

The Long-Term Effect of Slavery on Violent Crime: Evidence from US Counties

Measuring Constitutional Islamization: The Islamic Constitutions Index