Closing the Democracy Deficit: Lessons from the Islamic Democracies.

The democracy deficit in the Islamic world has long been recognized as a major challenge in present-day global politics. This paper assesses Muslim democracy, in terms of both its possibility and its sustainability. We evaluate the level of democracy in forty-six majority Muslim countries and find that five have sustained some level of democracy since 2000. We then look at two in particular - Mali and Senegal - to see if there are lessons that that we might glean from these two majority Muslim democracies in terms of encouraging and promoting democracy in other Muslim nations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]