Tag: Political islam
Political Islam and Women’s Rights – Evidence from Turkey
In this policy brief, I discuss how state-of-the-art econometric techniques can be used to shed light on the causal effects of Islamic rule on women’s rights. A central empirical challenge is that the identity of a politician is endogenous to voter characteristics, which in the case of Islamic political participation is particularly important due to the prevalence of banning such parties in many Muslim countries. Using a research design called Regression Discontinuity, I show that despite a negative association between Islamic rule and female participation in education in Turkey, the causal effect of an Islamic party on women’s rights is positive. In the case of Turkey, this represents the Islamic political movement’s advantage over secular alternatives in overcoming barriers to female participation in voluntary education institutions among the poor and pious.