The empirical finding that some of the regimes of the third wave of democratisation got “stuck” in the transition process challenged the transition paradigm as established by early transitology. In particular, it was criticized for its teleology, assuming a straight path from autocracy to liberal democracy – the allegedly only possible (and desirable) outcome of successful transition.
As a consequence, much attention was paid to capturing the phenomenon of democratic “grey zones” on a conceptual and empirical level. The critique of liberal democracy as a normative telos of transition processes, however, has not been adequately dealt with yet. Transitology, it seems, still relies on the idea that “full” democracies can only be called so if they are liberal and therefore secular. This narrow view has both weakened the analytical strength of transitology and hampered the search for alternatives to both the liberal and the postsecular model of democracy. The “Arab Spring” has revived anxieties that successful democratisation is threatened by religion. This assessment, however, is based on the assumption that successful democratisation equals the establishment of a liberal and therefore secular democracy.
I will argue as follows in the proposed paper: (1) Transition processes do not necessarily end up in liberal democracies. In order to understand political change in the Arab world, the terms “liberal” and “democratic” should be decoupled. (2) This allows for a critical assessment of the current democratisation processes in Egypt. I will discuss Islamist ideas of democracy and religion, and why neither liberal nor postsecular models are adequate for them. I will sketch a model of what an "Islamic" democracy might look like. (3) Finally, I will address the question of what we “lose” from a liberal perspective if we accept “Islamic” democracy as an alternative and why it is regarded as a threat to liberalism.
