What an Instrumentalist Perspective Adds to Cultural-Modernization Theory: Support for Democracy and Gender Equality in the Middle East

Abstract The comparative MENA literature on democratic support and the role of gender equality attitudes show mixed results despite the dominant cultural-modernization perspective predicting a positive interrelationship. Building on recent work, this paper derives and formulates the instrumentalist approach to democratic support as a supplement to the culturalist-modernization approach. It argues that people’s policy preferences and expectations of democracy are crucial to understand how democratic support is gendered, and part of these expectations are shaped by the political-institutional variations across the MENA region. Empirically, survey data from 47 AB and WVS surveys covering 13 MENA countries (2001–2014), are analysed. These data include information on support for gender equality, democracy, and the degree to which respondents link women’s rights to democracy. They are complemented with institutional information on the extent to which elections can form a threat to gender equality through empowering conservative Islamic forces via these elections. The multilevel regression models show initial support for cultural-modernization theory as the support for democracy and for gender equality correlate positively. This relationship is conditional to the risk elections pose to women’s position and whether people think democracy will bring gender equality thus illustrating the importance of adding an instrumentalist perspective. The support for democracy not only depends on the how much MENA citizens value democracy as a good in itself, it also depends on whether they expect democracy to be an instrument that helps further their other policy goals.