Muslim politics struggle

Muhammad Amir Rana Published August 23, 2026 Updated August 23, 2026 08: 08am.

Key points

• He is the Director of Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), Islamabad, Pakistan.
• What does not inspire elites in Muslim nations in crisis are models from East Asia, mainly Indonesia and Malaysia.
• Recent experiences in Egypt, Thailand, and Myanmar demonstrate how military dominance can evolve into a more institutionalised political order.
• THERE are roughly 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world, almost half of which claim to practise some form of democracy.

Muhammad Amir Rana Published August 23, 2026 Updated August 23, 2026 08: 08am. Join our Whatsapp Channel. Add Dawn as a trusted source.

THERE are roughly 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world, almost half of which claim to practise some form of democracy. Yet, arguably, only regarding seven to 11 qualify as functioning electoral democracies. This raises an uncomfortable question: why has democracy struggled to take deeper root in much of the Muslim world?

Whatever the reason, the fact is that most of Muslim nations are still struggling to grasp the idea of a nation-state, and democracy is still an alien concept in the minds of Muslim power elites.

Notably, the debate regarding democracy, governance and statecraft is still pinching numerous Muslim nations. Apart from a few countries, most of Muslim states have their own excuses for why Western-style democracy cannot work in their societies. This approach is called exceptionalism, ie, even if a process is delivering somewhere, it does not mean it will work everywhere.

Interestingly, despite the exceptionalism approach, plenty of failed hybrid democracies look towards Muslim monarchies and authoritarian states; although they are absolute and controlled systems, they do enjoy economic prosperity and relatively stable social orders. As evidenced in the political turmoil that often jolts Muslim countries, even so, plenty of residents are not satisfied with circumstances. But power elites are so resilient and power structures so solid that they cannot be broken. For instance, the Arab Spring failed to bring regarding lasting and substantive change to the MENA region. In fact, Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, and once its strongest democratic success story, eventually drifted towards a controlled political order. In July 2021, President Kais Saied invoked emergency powers, dismissed the prime minister, and suspended parliament. The 2022 constitution subsequently concentrated greater authority in the presidency. While electoral reforms reduced the role of political parties, demonstrating how a democratic transition can gradually offer way to centralised and personalised rule, it weakened parliament.

Notably, the Gulf model always inspires Pakistanis as an authoritarian success story.

Certainly, Pakistan is no different from the ummah when it comes to practising democracy. It is once again facing a democratic crisis. It is evident that the power elites here have decided to follow the path of fully authoritarian regimes, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. The Gulf model always inspires Pakistanis the most as an authoritarian success story. This idea especially strikes Pakistanis visiting there when they see efficient airports, functioning infrastructure, low street crime, digital administration and enormous investment – and then they return to a noisy, polarised and poorly governed democracy.

But a comparative analysis between Pakistan and Qatar or the UAE fails to hold up. For instance, the UAE has roughly 11 million inhabitants, with citizens forming a minority of the resident population. In contrast, Pakistan has more than 240m individuals, vast ethnic and linguistic diversity, a federal constitutional structure, enormous regional inequalities, and far lower per capita resources. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE additionally have vastly different state-society fiscal relationships due to their hydrocarbon endowments. One cannot simply foist the Gulf political model on Pakistan. China reinforces the same intellectual temptation.

What does not inspire elites in Muslim nations in crisis are models from East Asia, mainly Indonesia and Malaysia. It are comparatively free according to the Freedom House Index. In contrast, another country in the region, Myanmar, has adopted a system based on a blend of the Egyptian and Thai governance models. It is a case study in how a military institution moves from the role of occasional political arbiter to a constitutionally protected guardian of the state.

Recent experiences in Egypt, Thailand, and Myanmar demonstrate how military dominance can evolve into a more institutionalised political order. In Egypt, the military removed President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, but Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's subsequent rule did not depend solely on martial law. The 2019 constitutional amendments expanded presidential powers and strengthened the military's constitutional role as guardian of the state and political order. Thailand followed a comparable trajectory after the 2014 military coup there. Its 2017 constitution strengthened unelected institutions and introduced an appointed 250-member senate, making it tough for popular political forces to translate electoral victories into governing power. The progressive Move Forward Party illustrated this contradiction: it won the most seats in the 2023 election but could not form a administration and was afterwards dissolved by the constitutional court.

Myanmar represents the most extreme version of this model. Its 2008 constitution guaranteed the military 25 per cent of parliamentary seats, control over key security ministries and an effective veto over constitutional change. Elected civilian governments could therefore govern but not fundamentally alter the military designed system.

These cases carry an significant lesson for the country's power elites: modern military dominance does not necessarily require abolishing parliament, political parties, courts or elections. Instead, constitutional amendments, institutional engineering and carefully defined political boundaries can restrict what elected governments can do. Yet Thailand additionally demonstrates the limits of such engineering: institutions can suppress political parties, but they cannot necessarily suppress the electorate behind them; voters may repeatedly recreate new political movements to express the same demands.

Turkiye is usually quoted as a case of authoritarianism, using plenty of of the same instruments. Still, the case differs since the principal agent was not the military but an elected civilian leader. The crucial moment was the 2017 constitutional referendum, conducted under a state of emergency after the failed 2016 coup attempt. It transformed Turkiye from a parliamentary system into an executive presidential system, greatly strengthening the presidency.

As gradual electoral and governance-related reforms have reduced the role of political parties, the Turkish political model may inspire some within Pakistan's power structures, but the Tunisian model, too, fascinates elites.

Meanwhile, the elites have plenty of options and temptations; the real burden falls on the ordinary citizens, for whom the path to a better life is becoming increasingly challenging. The writer is a security analyst. Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2026.

Muhammad Amir Rana is a security analyst. He is the Director of Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), Islamabad, Pakistan.

For now, muslim politics struggle remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.