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[This is an entry to the Adversarial Collaboration Contest by John Buridan and Christian Flanery.]

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Matter: To what extent does liberalism and democracy obtain in Islamic countries. Whether Islam consistently poses political opposition to liberalism and democracy.

Two simple narratives have split the western world’s perspective on Islam.

These two narratives do not exhaust the spectrum of opinion, but they do function well enough to establish the basic controversy around Islamic countries and Liberal Democracy.

The first narrative opines that Islam is an ideology inimical to “western values,” such as classical liberalism and liberal egalitarianism, and a rival to the Judeo-Christian social mores. It constitutes an ideological rival, inherently aggressive, both unable and unwilling to sustain non-partisan legal systems, democratic norms, fair treatment for opposition parties, protection of dissidents, or the basic rights and freedoms which Western European and Anglophone countries enjoy. And that Islam sustains this undesirable state of affairs.

The second is that Islam is not qualitatively different from any other religion. Islam has contributed to civilization in a significant way, and ordinary Muslims share our own values of family, peace, and justice. In contrast to the first narrative which stresses Islam as an ideology, the second narrative emphasizes that Muslims are normal people. There is no problem with Islam eo ipso; the perceived “problems” of Islam are actually some combination of the fairly normal problems of traditional societies, poor socio-economic conditions, and legacy problems from colonialism.

In order to avoid a point-scoring debate between these two narratives, our approach is to provide a descriptive examination of the performance of liberal democracy within Islamic environments. We take as granted for this paper that one cannot look at a religion on paper and predict what it will look like in a polity. Religious practice and theological doctrine inform every aspect of the pious person’s outlook and life, but the way in which it informs that outlook is not deterministic and cannot be gleaned merely by looking at the source texts, nor by the impossible task of a quantitative comparison of which religion has produced more violence across regions and millenia. Although we believe original texts are not deterministic, that does not mean Islam is totally amorphous. Religious culture is a powerful force within society. It unifies people, allows them to feel part of something bigger and better, it provides solace in their troubles, and can mobilize political action. How that mobilization of power occurs remains largely up to the needs of the moment, but it’s that mobilization of power which we are interested in.

A community’s interpretation of a religious text can be unpredictable, and our study does not hold such texts as a reliable source for predicting political outcomes. Nor will we attempt to determine the nature of Islam by enumerating the good and bad works it has produced. We hold that investigating the politics of a particular community over time more adequately casts light on the possibilities for the future than the foundational texts of the culture.

Our methodology is to investigate the recent political history of Islamic countries as they relate to democratic forms of government and the package of rights we call ‘liberalism.’ We survey the national history, constitutions, and current political environments to determine the extent to which democracy and liberalism have obtained in these countries, and we predict the conditions under which more democratic and liberal policies could emerge. Islam is a useful study since certain well-known expressions of Islam are decidedly neither democratic nor liberal. The “Islamic world” is one of the largest populations groups in the world, and so each Islamic country’s relationship and experimentation with democratic forms of government and human rights is important for the future.

First, we will define our basic terms.

Democracy – A system of government which rejects the rule of a single interest (dictator or oligarchs) through the participation of citizens and some separation of powers.

Liberalism – In an effort to avoid taking sides between classical and egalitarian forms of liberalism, we are just emphasizing the basic liberalism of texts like “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen”, “The Declaration of the Rights of Women”, and a generally consistent protection of these rights by the police and judiciary.

Islamic country – for us any country with a Muslim population of 70% or higher. We use the phrase Islamic country even when the country in question is officially nonsectarian. The six countries we study are United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Lebanon (see the section on Lebanon for more on our reasons for choosing this country). We chose these countries for their geographic range, cultural diversity, and relative stability. These countries can act as a representative sample for future inquiry on politics in Islamic countries.

In each case we examine the history, constitution, and current political environment, focusing on democratic mechanisms and human rights records.

We stress constitutions because they are useful, tangible indicators for political outcomes. However, constitutions can be misleading, and so reviewing the context and results of implementation is essential in making sure our moorings are in the political world and not hypothetical jurisprudence.

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a sovereign nation state founded in 1971, and composed of the lands of seven Emirates. An Emirate, is the rank, land, or reign of an Emir. Emir is the patriarch of a tribe and the leader of an Emirate. Emir’s are also referred to as Sheikhs at times, which simply means leader of a tribe. The Emirs and their family rule each Emirate and power is passed through male successors. The 1971 unification was the first time the Emirates were united into a formal state. Despite the constraints of the constitution, each Emirate still enjoys a degree of autonomy within the confines of the union.

History

In 1971, the seven gulf emirates unified themselves into one sovereign state known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This was in response to the withdrawal of the British Protectorate over their provinces in 1968. The UAE adheres to a long standing cultural tradition rooted in ancient tribal systems. This tribal tradition, and a 500 year old geopolitical strategy of precarious orientation between the Islamic world and western power are the determinants of the UAE’s place in the contemporary international order.

In order to be a citizen of the UAE, one must prove a direct ancestry dating at least as far back as 1930. This dictate resulted from fear in the 1940s that tribal relations would be diluted in the wake of increasing immigration caused by oil discovery. The tribes that compose the UAE are Arab. Some tribes have occupied the strait of Hormuz and Persian gulf coasts since the days of Alexander the Great’s conquests. Others migrated out of the Arabic desert in the 1700s and settled parts of the coast.

Arabic tribal arrangements served the needs of a people in a desolate landscape where living on one’s own meant death. Because resources were scarce, tribes hoarded them jealously and placed a premium on tribal solidarity. This meant discouraging inclusion of outsiders and prohibiting membership in the tribe other than through birth. This mentality has played a role in discouraging the promotion of democratic norms. Citizenship is denied even other Arabs who do not have direct tribal links, and a patriarchal kinship system orders politics, not democracy nor kingship.

The tribes were never formally unified until 1971. Historically, when security concerns arose, they often operated in loose confederation with one another in order to protect mutual interests. In the 16th and 17th centuries the emirates entered agreements with Portugal to protect their trade routes stretching from Swahili in East Africa to India and beyond. These were especially lucrative on account of demand for pearls in Europe. This system was renewed under the British protectorates of the 19th and 20th century. In 1968 the British withdrew their protectorate, prompting the Emirates to form a unified state. The newly created UAE then established security agreements with the U.S. similar to the client relationships they had with the Portuguese and the British.

Today, longstanding squabbles between the Emirates still influence relations. Even at the inception of the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar were originally destined to join the union. On account of old territorial disputes between the emirates, the two decided to establish their own independent states. These long standing conflicts continue to assert themselves as we have seen in the 2017 severing of ties between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Qatar.

In addition to tribal disputes, the UAE fear a continually more bold and expansionist Iran. The Emirate’s historical relationships with western powers remain the primary means of securing themselves in an often volatile and unfriendly region. Consequently, the UAE’s close ties with the U.S. constitute a critical security lynchpin if they are to remain autonomous and unharrassed. This necessitates paying some degree of lip service to American values, as we will see below.

Constitution

The UAE constitution was ratified in 1971. It represents a middle of the road effort by the ruling Emirs to cater to western democratic liberalism while retaining as much of their central power as possible under the traditional patriarchal kinship system. As shown in the history section, the UAE clings to its tribal systems and asserts them against efforts to dilute tribal ties. Democratic instruments such as universal suffrage and the power of collective, popularly elected legislative bodies threaten these modes of rule.

In 2004, a number of amendments were made to the constitution. The preamble in this version, stakes out a commitment to a Westphalian¹ conception of the state and a commitment to democratic principles and process.

Desiring to create closer links between the Arab Emirates in the form of an independent, sovereign, federal state, capable of protecting its existence and the existence of its members, in cooperation with the sister Arab states and with all other friendly states which are members of the United Nations Organization and members of the family of nations in general; on a basis of mutual respect and reciprocal interests and advantage;…[and] preparing the people of the Union at the same time for a noble and free constitutional life, progressing by steps towards a comprehensive, representative, democratic regime in an Islamic and Arab society free from fear and anxiety;

In the latter half of the 20th century, it became critical that a nation obtain for itself a seat within international institutions. The most common avenue to prosperity and security for emerging states today is through the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Institutions. Access to these international institutions require formal statehood and are not bilateral in nature. Therefore, membership comes with a greater set of demands and requirements. The U.N., World Bank, and IMF are institutions largely oriented at the discretion of western nations and insist on democratic liberalism. The commitments to liberal democracy instantiated in the UAE constitution, as quoted above, serve to keep the UAE in good standing within the international community, maintain access to key international financial and monetary instruments, and facilitate security relationships. There is little substantiating evidence that the Emirates intended to adhere to these commitments to liberal democracy lest their international ties are threatened. This strategy is protected in the constitutional preamble where it states that movement towards a democratic order is, “progressing by steps.” It is not democratic yet but the implication is that it will be eventually. By stating that the UAE will move incrementally towards democracy, the Emirs can justify perpetuating oligarchical rule.

The constitution does contain a number of liberal protections and commitments. It contains non-discrimination clauses regarding race, nationality, religious belief, and social position, but there are no clauses for gender or sexual orientation. It also guarantees free speech, but as we will see below governmental protection of free speech has been dubious according to U.S. reporting agencies.

The arrangement and structure of government bodies provide minimal checks on arbitrary decision making on the part of the Supreme Council which is the highest authoritative body, composed of the seven Emirs. The Supreme Council selects judges and does not require confirmation of its picks by the legislative branch. They unilaterally select the president from their own ranks. The Council of Ministers and its chairman are selected from the population by the Supreme Council. No confirmation is required. The only semblance of popular election based self rule lies in the Union National Council, an advisoral legislative body which is composed of 40 legislators. 20 of them are popularly elected, and 20 are chosen directly by the Supreme Council.

The Cabinet of Ministers submit draft legislation which passes through the Union National Council and then to the Supreme Council for ratification. The legislative power of the Union National council is advisoral only. The Supreme Council can ratify any draft legislation without the approval of any other body or individual. Only the seven Emirs may challenge the constitutionality of laws, which is then determined by judges who the Supreme Council selects. Only the Emirs may submit amendments to the constitution, which require two thirds (30 out of 40, 20 of whom are chosen by the emirates) support in the Union National Council.

Frequently, the constitution reiterates that all bodies and individuals must be beholden to the constitution as the ultimate authority. Shariah is mentioned only once but does exercise considerable authority over the primarily Muslim population.

The preamble commits to democratic rule and the constitution as the foundational binding document, but in effect, it is only a reformulation of pre-existing tribal systems. It masquerades as an effort to create a fair and balanced system of governance, but in reality, it enshrines almost all executive, legislative, and judicial power in the hands of the seven Emirs. This document cannot be considered democratic because it establishes almost no democratic mechanisms, and it lacks important key guarantees, such as gender discrimination and due process, in order to be considered liberal.

Democratic Institutions and Human Rights

Citizenship and Voting

The Emirs select who is allowed to vote and the criteria for selections is not clear or published. It seems a very small number of citizens are allowed to vote. Perhaps 10% of the population of 5 million. In 2015 voter turnout was 35.29% of those eligible to vote. Roughly 11% of the resident population are citizens and 85% of these are Sunni Muslims. In 2010, Pew Research estimated that 76.95 of the total population were Muslim. Obtaining citizenship, and thereby voting rights, requires proving direct tribal lineage prior to 1930. Thus, democratic participation is accessible to a narrow sliver of society. Citizens who do vote, can only vote for a consultative counsel that is not vested with any real legislative power. Some of the Emirates have at times created parliaments with real legislative power but still retain the right to dissolve these at will, which they have.

Constitutional Adherence

The U.S. State Department has reported on the UAE’s many unconstitutional activities. For further reading on these, see the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and International Religious Freedom Reports.

Article 26 of the constitution forbids torture. Article 30 ensures freedom of expression. Article 28 lays out juridical procedures to ensure defendants receive a public and fair trial.

In the State Department Human Rights Report for 2017, it notes that U.N. human rights experts working with former detainees in the UAE have repeatedly reported the use of torture techniques such as forced standing, threats to rape or kill, and electrocution. Shariah courts also impose flogging for pre-marital sex, defamation, and consuming alcohol.

Activists have alleged that authorities detained citizen Ghanem Abdullah Matar after he posted a series of videos on social media in June that expressed sympathy with Qatar, with whom the UAE are in a bitter dispute over an email hacking scandal. Ghanem, in the video here, criticises the UAE for it’s hard stance on Qatar and for not remembering Qatar’s aid in the conflict in Yemen.

Fair public trials have also been withheld from individuals considered to be potential terrorists or who criticize government policy. The location and status of political activist Nassir bin Ghaith remains unknown from the time of his arrest in August 2015 until April 2016,

“when prosecutors formally announced charges of defaming a foreign country (Egypt), criticizing the UAE’s decision to grant land for a Hindu temple, and having ties to Islamist group al-Islah. In December 2016 bin Ghaith’s case was transferred from the State Security chamber of the Federal Supreme Court to the Federal Court of Appeal. In March authorities sentenced bin Ghaith to 10 years in prison for promoting “false information in order to harm the reputation and stature of the state and one of its institutions.” Bin Ghaith called into question the fairness of his trial, noting an Egyptian judge was assigned to adjudicate a case that involved charges of bin Ghaith defaming Egyptian figures.”

Nassir bin Ghaith did not receive a fair, public trial. The State Department a number of other such cases which strongly indicate that public criticism of the government is likely to result in arbitrary imprisonment.

These are just three areas where the unconstitutionality of acts are disregarded in the name of expediency, national security concerns, or as a relinquishing of authority to shariah courts. The Emirs, despite the existence of binding constitutional law, can still act unilaterally and arbitrarily, regardless of the rights of their citizens or of foreign nationals in the country.

UAE’s Future

Change in the UAE looks highly unlikely in the near future. It was untouched by the Arab Spring, and long standing patriarchal systems are firmly in place. I should note, that while the “incremental” approach to democracy that the Emirs articulate is certainly suspect, (See Cleveland and Bunton’s A History of the Modern Middle East in suggested reading for a good examination of Britain;s use of the same method of maintaining unilateral rule and suppressing democracy in its colonial holdings in Egypt) conditions have improved for religious freedom and female freedom in the UAE over the last 50 years relative to before the unification.

Until the Emirs are stripped of some of their religious and political power it is unlikely things will change any faster than the current snail speed. The UAE is wealthy and its stability is of critical geo-strategic importance to U.S. and western regional concerns who are loathe to demand too much of the Emirs in regards to political change.

In order for the patriarchal system to be supplanted, citizenship would have to be radically expanded, and real legislative power delegated to the Union National Council. As it stands, the Union National Council can tentatively maintain current conditions from worsening, but it is unlikely that it can alter the existing governmental mechanisms in any significant way.

Tunisia

History

After the fall of Rome, the region of modern day Tunisia was sporadically conquered and settled by European tribes until the Muslim conquest of the 7th century transformed the culture and population of the region. It become a province of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century

In 1881, Tunisia was wrested from the hands of the declining Ottoman Turkish empire and became a French protectorate. In 1956, Tunisia declared independence, adopting a constitution akin to France’s highly centralized presidential system.

This planted the seeds for Tunisia’s becoming one of the few Arab Spring successes in 2011. Tunisian presidents previously could extend their time in office indefinitely. Between 1956 and 2011 there were two presidents. Thus, in the intervening years between independence and the 2011 Arab Spring, Tunisia was an authoritarian presidential system with few functioning democratic mechanisms. Opposition parties were banned until 1981 and even then had little or no influence over the reigning party.

Despite this, Tunisia was relatively progressive under its two presidents, Bourguiba and Ben Ali. Bourguiba focused on the status of women and social and economic development and education. Ben Ali continued this and made some constitutional changes (something separation of powers should prohibit, but on the other hand he did it in the name of fomenting greater democratic participation) that included allowing opposition political parties, and presidential term limits.

Consequently, Tunisia entered the 21st century with greater literacy rates and social safety nets than its neighbors, Algeria and Libya, and many of its peers in the post colonial, Muslim world. While it was socially egalitarian, it was still not democratic. Ben Ali later re-imposed the ban on opposition parties and in conjunction with secret police forces, suppressed political dissent whenever his party became threatened. Cue the Arab Spring, which in Tunisia was known as the Jasmine Revolution, or as The Revolution for Freedom and Dignity. Political corruption, media and internet censorship, and high unemployment continued to mount in the 21st century and precipitated a waning of public faith in Ben Ali, that turned into protests in 2011 which the government suppressed violently. Eventually, Ben Ali was forced out and a new struggle emerged between secular and Islamist groups. A moderate Islamist group, Nahdah, functioned as the moderator between secular minded groups demanding a democratic and liberal regime like Ben Ali’s and hardline Islamists pushing for a government founded on Sharia principles.

After a series of negotiated compromises, a new constitution was drafted in 2014 that intended to resolve and balance liberal concerns, and the role of Islamic Shariah within the newly established Tunisian state.

The 2014 elections were a resounding victory for the secular Nidaa Tounes coalition who won 85 of 217 seats compared to the moderate Islamist Nahda party who won 69. This was a critical consolidating juncture for Tunisia’s nascent democracy. The world held its breath waiting to see if the Islamists would concede and legitimize the elections. When Nahda conceded and no challenge came against the results, Tunisia’s democracy became consolidated. This is critical sign of how robust the democratic regime is as Nahda still has significant sway and influence and continues to cooperate and work within a democratic framework and does not challenge mechanical pillars like election results, and universal suffrage. It is a powerful nod to Islam’s potential to interface with liberal democratic systems. Since 2014, Nidaa Tounes has consolidated more control over parliament and this correlates with increased radicalization amongst Tunisian citizens as the government appears more and more to be unfaithful to the country’s Islamic heritage.

As we saw with the UAE, Tunisia’s leaders, before and after the Jasmine Revolution, saw close relations with Western partners, in this case France and the U.S., as critical for their continued independence and success. Unlike the UAE, the commitments to liberal democracy promulgated in the constitution are manifested faithfully and are reflected in the 2014 election results. As we will see next, the Tunisian constitution commits to the American constitutional model and even corrects what many political scientists see as deficient in the American model.

Constitution

Tunisia’s 2014 constitution is strongly nationalist and Muslim. It asserts Tunisia’s independence as a sovereign national state, and also as an integral member of the Arab Maghreb of North West Africa. It’s religion is Islam, as stated in article one, and the people see themselves as part of the Islamic world.

The preamble lays out quite clearly the intent and values of the new government:

“With a view to building a republican, democratic and participatory system, in the framework of a civil state founded on the sovereignty of the people, exercised through the peaceful alternation of power through free elections, and on the principle of the separation and balance of powers, which guarantees the freedom of association in conformity with the principles of pluralism, an impartial administration, and good governance, which are the foundations of political competition, where the state guarantees the supremacy of the law and the respect for freedoms and human rights, the independence of the judiciary, the equality of rights and duties between all citizens, male and female, and equality between all regions,”

Here is a link to a pdf of the Tunisian constitution. We recommend reading the entire preamble. It is quite beautiful, and we wish we had space to include it.

This paragraph alone includes almost everything a high functioning constitutional democracy requires in order to accomplish egalitarian, pluralistic, self rule. Participation, unbloody alternation of power, free elections, separation of powers, pluralism, fair political competition, human rights, independent judiciary, and female suffrage and freedom enshrined in a political document: the bedrock of western democracy. Having a document that is worded in a manner that leaves little legal wiggle room, is a key ingredient for continued success after a revolution that overturned 60 years of presidential authoritarianism, but this does not guarantee perfect adherence to the norms established in the constitution nor does it mitigate the strong backlash Tunisia has seen from radical Islamists who have significant influence over large portions of the population.

Within this new constitution, Tunisia addresses several issues that have been a thorn in the side of the American democracy. The constitution establishes term limits for legislative representatives as well as for judges. It also imbues a dedicated constitutional court of 12 judges with the power to resolve budgetary and other constitutional problems that arise between the legislative and executive branches. Each government branch selects four constitutional court judges, ensuring the balance of powers over constitutional issues. Protected from corruption and elite capture, this democratic mechanism facilitates smooth government operation and resolves gridlock between the legislative and executive branches. Something that would be a much appreciated sight in the U.S., instead of watching legislators filibuster on the senate floor for days on CSPAN about their favorite ice cream, all because Republicans and Democrats are unwilling to cooperate. Tunisia does not know the joy of watching a filibuster on CSPAN.

Democratic Mechanisms

Of the Muslim countries that experienced rapid revolutionary change in the wake of the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011, Tunisia was the only one to establish high functioning democratic mechanisms. Tunisia quickly did away with the autocratic power of the President and his unilateral control over security forces and the secret police. They managed to implement a new government without state collapse.

Tunisia has successfully passed Huntington’s two-turnover test with successful alternations of power between 2011 and 2018 from president Fouad Mebazaa of the Neo Destour party, to president Moncef Marzouki of the Congress for the Republic party, and finally with the incumbent president Beji Caid Essebsi of the Nidaa Tounes party. This is something easier said than done, especially in a country deeply divided between secular and Islamic traditionalist legacies. In the U.S., political participants understand that, through many iterations of power turnover, it is necessary that the output of the democratic process not be challenged. We saw how robust this is in the U.S. when the Supreme Court settled the crisis that arose over electoral recounts in Bush v. Gore (2000) as well as the brute fact of nearly 250 years of unbloody power transfers. In many parts of the world this sort of crisis results in the losing party not conceding. Then the tanks roll, and democracy dissipates. It is a highly illusive collective mobilization problem, but Tunisia transcended it.

For Tunisia this indicates widespread agreement and assent to the rules of democratic process, regardless of the outcome that the freedom machine spits out, and such agreement and trust is always fragile after revolutions. Security dilemmas often arise after a revolution because groups do not trust one another to not hijack elections and consolidate their own power over the ensuing government. For all groups to simultaneously relinquish the right to challenge results ex post facto posed incredible collective coordination and communication problems for the emerging Tunisian government between hardline secularist and hardline Islamist Salafist groups. This was achieved by the moderate Islamist party Nahdah successfully balancing the security concerns of Salafist Muslims and the secular Nida Tounes party before the 2014 elections. They maintained this role even after losing in the elections.

The judiciary seems to function independently of the executive and legislative branches and the constitutional court continues to perform its functions over disputes unharassed.

The U.S. State Department reports that Tunisia has also taken significant strides against government corruption.

Human Rights

As Tunisia consolidated and refined democratic processes, it incurred more resistance from the extreme religious right. Secularists continue to increase their seats in Tunisia’s unicameral legislative chamber. As this has occurred, government crackdowns on extremist activity have grown more and more willing to favor national security concerns at the cost of human rights and judicial process. Many perceive this as a liberal takeover intent on stamping out Tunisia’s cultural heritage and Islamic legacy.

Tunisia is currently one of 70 countries where homosexuality is illegal. Efforts from the Tunisian human rights commission are moving forward to revoke this and other Shariah based laws, such as female inheritance laws and the death penalty.

As these political shifts occur, they conversely produce an increase in Islamic radicalization. Thus, Tunisia, in its efforts to stomp out extremism and facilitate a pluralist society as stated in its constitution, has resorted to various methods of indiscriminate arrests, censorship, and unfair trials.

The U.S. State department reported that, “In May [2017] a court in Tozeur sentenced two journalists – a brother and sister – to six months in prison for “insulting a public servant” after they criticized security forces for regularly raiding their home, allegedly on suspicion their sibling was affiliated with extremist religious groups.” This is one amongst a number of indiscriminate, unilateral government action against suspected, but unproven, Islamist sympathisers. See the State Department report for more such instances.

“The government may initiate administrative and legal procedures to remove imams whom authorities determine to be preaching “divisive” theology.” and , “The penal code criminalizes speech likely “to cause harm to the public order or morality,” as well as acts undermining public morals in a way that “intentionally violates modesty.” These stipulations constitute a powerful scepter in the hand of the Tunisian government to dictate public discourse. It is difficult to say what the next administration might interpret as “divisive theology”.

There are numerous reports of religious profiling of Salafist Muslims on account of their traditional dress and beards and restriction of movement for Salafists within the country, “Since 2014 more than 500 individuals filed complaints with the Tunisian Observatory for Rights and Freedoms, saying the government prevented them from traveling due to suspicion of extremism, and in some cases apparently based on their religious attire. The media also reported police and security forces harassed some women who wore the niqab.

Tunisia’s Future

Currently, Tunisia is a liberal and democratic government that, out of fear of radicalization of its citizens and for its security, has marginalized and isolated a large portion of the religious right through extrajudicial means. Tunisia boasts of thwarting some 12,000 ISIS recruits from leaving the country since 2013. This is not reassuring.

It is not hard to understand why Tunisia’s rationale for these miscarriages of justice, considering that Tunisian born individuals are overwhelmingly represented in recent terrorist attacks, including the Charlie Hebdo and Nice France attacks, and among ISIS recruits. Radicalism is the greatest threat to an emerging democracy in an Islamic country aiming to prove to the West that Islam is compatible with western modes of governance. It is incumbent on the leadership of Nidaa Tounes and its current Tunisian President, Beji Caid Essebsi, to find a way to avoid using human rights violating and unconstitutional means in order to maintain national security. If the religious right is more isolated on the margins, it will undoubtedly be the unraveling of the democratic project in Tunisia.

As things stand at the time of this writing, the problem of resolving the dichotomy between liberal democracy and traditional Islam has not been so much resolved in Tunisia as it has been shunted aside, and therefore, thrives underground, providing an ever replenishing pool of candidates for radicalization.

Indonesia

Indonesia has a strong democratic constitutional platform but is deadlocked by corruption. The two political visions offers solutions to this “moral decay”: military-based nationalism and more explicit Islamic rules. Although Islamic political parties field candidates and do well electorally, Pancasila remains an important governing ideology for the archipelago, and no party can escape paying some lip-service to it.

History

Indonesian nationalism which began in the earliest years of the 20th century did not have a strong religious component. Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism had majorities in certain provinces of the archipelago, but Islam was the most dominant religion in terms of numbers. However, the Islam of Indonesia did not coalesce into a credible political force until recently. You will see why shortly.

Indonesian independence activists in the early 20th century had their sights set against the Dutch colonizers, who kept the Indonesian governments under their mercantile thumb, employing a race-based caste system. After 1900 early nationalists took up the term ‘Indonesia’, originally an ethnographic term coined by northern Europeans, and used it to raise awareness about the possibility of a unified nation. Through the 1920s groups formed using the name Indonesia and other groups incorporated ‘Indonesia’ into their title. Additionally, youth movements, socialist and communist parties, and Islamic financial solidarity groups formed to resist colonial exploitation. Into this caldron of budding nationalism, socialism, communism, Islamic consciousness, anti-colonialism, and national consciousness stepped the imperial Japanese occupying force.

The Japanese occupation did not maintain a light touch. The abuse of islanders in many different principalities impressed the need for a strong independent Indonesia upon the above groups; religious leaders, scholars, and activists mourned the occupation and abuse. During the end days of Japanese power, communist, Islamic, and nationalist resistance organized. Two days after Japan’s surrender to the United States on September 2, 1945, Indonesia declared independence.

The years following the declaration of Independence were fraught with guerilla warfare between the nationalist government, European colonizers, communist resistance groups, and (by the 1950s) Islamist resistance groups. The resulting political ideology of the state was called Pancasila.

Constitution

Pancasila (or “The Five Principles”) run as such:

1. Belief in the One and Only God
2. A just and civilized humanity
3. A unified Indonesia
4. Democracy, led by the wisdom of the representatives of the People
5. Social justice for all Indonesians

What Pancasila means in practice for liberalism is that public atheism, agnosticism, and animism are illegal, and that outspoken criticism of the government can be considered and offense against the 3rd principle – a unified Indonesia. The leaders of Indonesia safeguard the country’s unity by force of arms and sometimes violent suppression. The central government goes to some lengths to maintain independence from “Great Powers,” so that their military forces can be concentrated on combating problems within the archipelago. Additionally, free market economics ought to be tempered by social welfare programs, and programs for mutual aid (these programs for mutual aid are very important in contemporary Indonesia, since in the present day explicitly Islamic institutions have created nearly all social safety nets).

The Indonesian constitution looks and reads like a liberal democratic constitution with some important idiosyncrasies. The strong centralized executive branch takes the lead over other branches and acts as balance against against the forces of decentralization and democratic impotency. We call this authoritarianism. While arguments about decentralization and federalism were at the heart of American politics in the early days of the U.S.A, for Indonesia the constitution provides the executive all the powers needed to ensure unity through force, which occurs regularly. Apparently archipelagos tend to resist centralization.

Articles 27 through 34 guarantee a cornucopia of human rights. The list is impressive and beautiful and a distant ideal. For our purposes I will draw your attention to Article 29:

Chapter XI Religion Article 29

(1) The State shall be based upon the belief in the One and Only God.

(2) The State guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to his/her own religion or belief.

After the death of Suharto in 1998, a new debate emerged to define the role of Islam in the nonsectarian constitution. The options on the table for the revision of Article 29 of the constitution tell the story of the interests of political actors involved.

• The state is based on Belief in One Almighty God
• The state is based on Belief in One Almighty God with the obligation upon the followers of Islam to carry out Islamic law
• The state is based on Belief in One Almighty God with the obligation upon the followers of each religion to carry out its religious teachings
• The state is based on Belief in One Almighty God, Just and Civilised Humanitarianism, the Unity of Indonesia, Democracy Guided by the Wisdom of Representative Deliberation, and Social Justice for all Indonesians

The first option, original to the constitution, stuck.

The third option could lead to religious courts for all religious believers. In Indonesia there are only six officially recognized religions (Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Confucianism); ID cards state religious identity on them. A system of personal status courts would require courts for each sect and would diminish the power of civil courts, leaving them to decide family cases outside the ken of the religion in question. Opening the door to a justice system with 6 different legal codes would not, we reckon, foster stability.

The fourth option reiterates the principles of Pancasila signaling recommitment to the Indonesia’s ideological roots.

The second option, of course, is the Islamic one which would enshrine in the constitution the role of Islam for believers and allow sharia law to be a basis for future lawmaking. The government in that case would obtain the potential to legislate away some of the autonomy and rights of non-Muslims and non-Muslim communities which are protected by Pancasila. Furthermore, the need for this law is suspect. In 1998 Law No. 7 gave Muslims the right to have personal status cases heard in Islamic courts if they wish. The push for the change to federal law revealed a possible future for Indonesia that would step decidedly away from the nonsectarian values of the state.

Although no textual change came of this constitutional debate, the lack of change affirmed the same non-secular, nonsectarian Indonesia which preceded the debate. This is good. Perhaps it even strengthened Indonesia’s political system. Nonetheless for us the disagreements illuminated schools of thought among the politically active in Indonesia.

Democratic Institutions

In the past 8 months over 300 elected officials have been implicated in corruption scandals. Corruption in the judiciary, civil service, and police force runs rampant. Efforts to crackdown on corruption are ongoing, as are counterterrorism efforts within the country. Between terrorism and corruption of elected officials, little faith remains in the power of democracy and liberalism to solve the problems of security and prosperity for Indonesia.

Businesses in Indonesia frequently have to grease the wheels of bureaucracy with bribery, and the cost of doing business is highly variable. During Suharto’s regime corruption was centralized and predictable. Decentralized corruption on the other hand makes transaction costs unpredictable, thus business has a more difficult time now than in authoritarian times. Additionally, corruption among the police and judiciary exacerbate costs, since the justice department can’t always be relied on to prosecute crimes efficiently or effectively.

Islam

Up to 2,000 Indonesian citizens have fought for ISIS. As these fighters return home, some seek rehabilitation, some carry out terrorist attacks, some promote Islamic State political visions. The government’s antiterrorism task force releases commercials trying to debunk the glorious Islamic State. Some returnees had to be threatened before they would swear allegiance to Pancasila; according to C-SAVE director Maria Kusumini, 90% of returnees want to live under an Islamic caliphate. While that is not an enormous percent for a country of 261 million, it’s still enough to cause problems for society.

Suharto brooked no opposition in his ~50 years of power. He restricted freedom of speech and reacted with military force against both Islamic and communist separatists. Debate about shari’ah in Indonesia was not permitted until 1998 with Suharto’s death. The many years that political Islamic expression sat impotent allowed the energies of Islamic organizations to flow into local communities of financial aid, health, and support. These organizations make Indonesia a strong country, but in the future their renewed political character might repeal and replace Indonesia’s founding principles.

Kazakhstan

The Republic of Kazakhstan is not an Arab country. Kazakhs are Turkic people, and their conversion to Islam did not come until well after the Mongol invasion (13th c.). Islam came late to Kazakhstan (15th c.) and conversion was a slow and inconsistent process for the traditionally nomadic people.

Eventually, Islam did spread to the itinerant people overtaking their traditional beliefs. The Hanafi school of jurisprudence remains the dominant school of Islam in Kazakhstan largely, some Kazakh scholars say, because it allows friendly relations with non-Muslims. Also note that Arabic Islamic traditions never became widespread among the tribes. The nomadism and lack of education ensured that the expression of Islam would be less tied to written interpretations, and more adapted for life on the road, while incorporating some syncretic elements from the traditional paganism of the region.

As happens on the steppe, slowly over the course of the 19th c. the great bear to the north, Russia, absorbed its unwilling southern neighbor, and thus Kazakhstan became part of the Russian Empire’s geopolitical strategy . Then came the Bolshevik revolution which first suppressed religion, then used some elements of the Islamic governance structure. The effect was a decimation of Islamic culture, traditional culture, and nomadism, balanced by Russification, secularization, and various other Moscow initiatives for economic modernisation. Results over the 20th c. were… mixed.

Independence came in 1990 and with it a resurgence of Kazakh population, decrease in Russian population and influence, return to various cultural expressions, namely Islam, and a new capital, Astana.

Post-Soviet Political Expression

Kazakhstan has many trappings of a Soviet state. The President holds power as an autocrat, not merely one actor among others in government. In fact, Kazakhstan has had the same president since 1990. The nation is officially secular, allows authentic freedoms, guarantees protection of citizen rights, but betrays such constitutional promises through corruption in law enforcement and the judiciary and suppression of political dissidents and “nontraditional” religious groups. The Constitutional Court has failed to rein in latitudinous interpretations of the constitution such as Article 5.3:

Formation and functioning of public associations pursuing the goals or actions directed toward a violent change of the constitutional system, violation of the integrity of the Republic, undermining the security of the state, inciting social, racial, national, religious, and tribal enmity, as well as formation of unauthorized paramilitary units shall be prohibited.

Or Article 20.3

Propaganda or agitation for the forcible change of the constitutional system, violation of the integrity of the Republic, undermining of state security, and advocating war, social, racial, national, religious, and clannish superiority as well as the cult of cruelty and violence, shall not be allowed.

The result of these statues is the heavy monitoring of all assemblies, especially religious assemblies. “Nontraditional religions” are censored. Missionaries and religious groups need state approval in order to operate. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to always be finding themselves on the wrong side of the law, as do Baptists, and Muslims which do not subscribe to Hanafi Sunni Islam, or who read or are found in possession of “dissident” materials. At times Baptists have had difficulty operating in the country without being accused of unlicensed evangelism. Private religious reading is carefully watched by the state and is considered a national security issue overriding the “right to confidentiality.”

For political opposition, this spells doom. Opposition leaders, activists, and journalists find themselves fined, imprisoned, and exiled. Even academics, according to the U.S. State Department (see link above), self-censor for fear of “infringing on the dignity and honor of the president and his family.”

There are few prospects for Kazakhstan to become a more liberal and democratic society any time soon. Instead, by the example and logic of its neighbors (the other four -Stans, China, and Russia), authoritarian power and pervasive opportunism preserve the government of Kazakhstan.

Islam in Modern Kazakhstan

The suppression and control of Islam during Soviet rule further isolated the country’s culture and reduced the transfer of Islam to the next generation. As glasnost gave some wiggle room for religion in Kazakhstan, Islam and Russian Orthodoxy reestablished themselves. The Christian population (mostly Russian Orthodox) declined from 46% in 1994 to 26% in 2018 due mostly to Russian and other Slavic emigration. Islam gained momentum in the 90s going from 44% of the population in 1994 to 70.2% in 2018. Only around 5% percent of this change is from Islamic population growth.

As Islam has grown, government initiatives to control Islamic expression have grown too. One of the reasons for this is education. Better educated Muslims are more informed about the rest of the Islamic world and thus more uncomfortable with Kazakh Islamic idiosyncrasies and syncretisms. Social movements inspired by the more politically charged Islam of Afghanistan, Iran, and Indonesia has led to government crackdown. Islamic cultural symbols such as the hijab are banned in schools, dressing in an Arabic Islamic way can be punished, and many Islamic organizations are banned, especially Salafist adjacent movements. Meanwhile the government is also taking positive steps to use the muftiate of Kazakhstan to define a specifically Kazakh Islam. Whether Kazakhstan can create an effective state-sponsored Islam, the way a country like China has created a state-sponsored Catholicism, remains to be seen.

Sadly, human rights seem to be an afterthought in Nazabayev’s government, as political dissidents are shut-down, both in the streets and online, thanks to China-esque internet surveillance. While Islam is treated as part of the national heritage, any expression, or suspected expression of Islam deemed too extreme gets the accused convicted of political dissidence. And similarly, political dissidents can be labelled extremist Muslims and thus convicted. While some see in this repression a potential for backfire against the government, more likely, the coercive binding of the Overton Window will serve its purpose and reduce dissent and the public sphere, so long as Kazakhstan’s government can merely cite national security concerns to work its will.

Islam is not a political force in the country. You would think that a Muslim majority country would have a more “Islamic character,” but Kazakhstan’s political history puts religious expression in a context of post-Soviet authoritarian secularism. The Islam of Kazakhstan is young and develops along government initiative; public political religion is just not possible. Kazakhstan is secular, just not in a way that a human rights activist would celebrate.

Iran

History

Iran experienced a number of conquests and periods of cultural enrichment and decline between the conquest of Alexander the Great (330 B.C.) and the Safavid Empire (1501-1732), which ruled roughly the same geographical parameters as modern day Iran.

The 7th century Islamic conquests altered Persian society dramatically, and permeated Persian culture deeply, competing with longstanding Zoroastrian and Byzantine Christian cultures. Not long after Islam established itself in Iran, the Shiite and Sunni schism occurred over the prophet Mohammed’s heirs. This would prove to be the proverbial line in the sand, setting the stage for a millenia long regional split between the two Islamic schools. This dynamic fundamentally informs many of today’s conflicts in the Middle East. See the conflict in Yemen and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).

We saw in Tunisia that postcolonial, secular authoritarian leaders were able to successfully implement industrial and political modernization over the latter half of the 20th century without inciting backlash from Islamist traditionals. A similar effort began in Iran in the early 20th century with the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907, Iran’s first efforts with democratic norms of popularly derived rule and self identification as a sovereign nation state, something ever illusive in Iranian history. It collapsed quickly into chaos. After Russian intervention in Northern Iran threatened the stability of the country, Britain switched support from the Constitutionalists to the Shahs, who were the ruling monarchy before the revolution. Reza Shah seized power in 1921, reestablishing monarchical rule with significant control over parliamentary systems.

Reza Shah embarked on a modernization campaign with ambitions to make Iran a regional power and globally competitive economic entity, free from foreign interference by Russia and Britain. Reza Shah also dramatically increased the centralization of the state and strengthened the military.

This process came to a head with the 1951-1953 oil crisis, known as the Abadan crisis, when Iran nationalized the Anglo-Iranian-Oil Company (AIOC) assets. While this did prompt a British and U.S. supported coup d’etat which ousted democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favor of consolidating the monarchical rule of Mohammad Shah, Iran had vast undercurrents of political disaffection as economic modernization efforts dating back to 1925 continued to leave behind rural Islamic communities. Known as Operation Ajax, the CIA fomented support for Mohammad Shah and organized guerilla forces to discredit Mosaddegh’s government. Iran was primed for this operation to work, as Mossaddegh’s socialist rhetoric alienated Iran’s conservative Islamic population.

In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini executed a successful Islamic revolution that ousted the American backed government in favor of a new theocratic government which is still in power today and is of rising importance in Middle Eastern affairs.

Radical Islamic Ideology

Ernest Gellner’s theory of Folk-Islam and High culture-Islam provide a compelling explanation for the causal sources of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in addition to the coercive effects of interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

Gellner distinguishes between High-Islam and Folk-Islam. High Islam is deeply austere, literate, and connected to a fundamentalist reading of sacred texts. It is often associated with more elite society in urban areas. Folk-Islam on the other hand, is grounded more in community and local tradition within the illiterate rural population. Folk-Islam is analogous to the nomadic and moderate Islam that we discussed as the prevailing style of Islam in Kazakhstan. In Iran, Gellner asserts, the influx of Folk-Islamic peoples into urban areas as a result of rapid industrialization in the mid-20th century, where High-Islam predominated, in conjunction with aggressive interventionist foreign policy of the U.S. and Britain in the 1950s, produced perfect storm conditions in 1979 for Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a coalition of conservative clerics to incite a popular uprising and seize control of an unstable country that had been abused by foreign powers and had a deeply dissatisfied lower class.

The ensuing Islamic Republic of Iran identifies less as a sovereign nation state, and more as an ideological cause whose purpose is to expand the umma (the community of all Muslim believers), to all corners of the world, eventually absorbing all the lands of the infidels. This obviously has posed serious problems to the international order. Iran does not play by Westphalian rules of statehood and self determination. It sees itself as the vanguard of the divinely ordained mission to establish the reign of God on earth.

Hassan Abbasi, head of the Iranian think tank, associated with the Revolutionary Guard (which is under the personal command of the current leading Ayatollah), Center For Borderless Doctrinal Analysis, argued that the Islamic Republic could not be safe unless it persuaded other Muslim nations to take the same path. “If we remain alone, we will always be in danger,” he said. “Our system will also be in danger if most Muslim nations take the path of Western-style democracy.” Abbasi also asserted that Iran’s mission overrides borders and state sovereignty which are, in his estimation, “colonial inventions”. Khomeini spoke often of the need to export the revolution to other Muslim countries and to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem. These notions are fundamental in Iranian foreign policy today.

Constitution

The introduction and preamble to Iran’s constitution reads more like propaganda than a legally binding document. There is much talk of saints and martyrs’ blood, as well as the imposition of deity-like characteristics to the Ayatolla,

The honorable source of emulation, the great leader of the global Islamic Revolution, and the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the venerated Grand Ayatollah, Imam Khomaini, may his noble character be sanctified, who was acknowledged and accepted by the undisputed majority of the people as the marja’and the leader. Iranian Constitution Article 107

The Ayatollah holds the final decision over all jurisprudential matters, is commander of the military and security forces, as well as the Islamic Pasdaran Revolutionary Corps. He is the only individual who may amend the constitution with a two thirds confirmation from the Islamic Consultative Assembly. The assembly does wield limited legislative powers, but not on anything that, “Contradict[s] the canons and principles of the official religion of the country or the constitution. The Guardian Council is responsible for the evaluation of this matter.” Article 72. The Ayatollah heads the Guardian Council. Thus, the delegating of any executive, legislative, or judicial power to anyone but the Ayatollah is always qualified in a manner that allows the Ayatolla to frame any issue as, “Contradicting the canons and principles of the official religion” in fact, give him unassailable and arbitrary control over government.

Some democratic principles are enshrined in the constitution, such as popular secret elections of legislatures and of the president. Political parties are allowed to exist on the same basis as legislation, so long as it does not contradict the religious canon. Again, they are flimsy.

The constitution also benevolently condescends to return women to their true dignity in replacing them upon the resplendent and exalted pedestal of true womanhood, in their calling to motherhood.

Women are emancipated from the state of being an “object” or a “tool” in the service of disseminating consumerism and exploitation, while reclaiming the crucial and revered responsibility of motherhood and raising ideological vanguards. Women shall walk alongside men in the active arenas of existence. As a result, women will be the recipients of a more critical responsibility and enjoy a more exalted and prized estimation in view of Islam.

Iran Constitution, page 6.

Why is it acceptable for men to be “tools” and “objects” of exploitation and consumerism, but not women? The consequence of this is that women are relegated to child bearing and home-managing responsibilities only.

These points indicate a constitution that is neither democratic nor liberal.

Democratic Mechanisms

Political parties are allowed to exist so long as they do not challenge religio-political dogma. Roughly 11 parties exist that command any significant following including a reformist party, but this does not mean that a wide window of public discourse exists. The spectrum of political opinion is severely limited by the broad terminology in the constitution as to what is acceptable in public debate, and the Ayatollah’s power is arbitrary as to determining what is religiously or politically admissible. Thus, the democratic nature of party politics and free elections is misleading at first take. In reality, political opinion is dictated almost entirely by the Ayatolla and the clerics.

Reformists?

Iran’s best hope for change, since we are assuming it would be a toss up over which would be worse between maintaining the status quo and a regime change operation carried out via a U.S. led coalition, is The Council For Coordinating the Reforms Front organization. Led by former president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), who instigated intense internal debate during his presidency between his administration, and the conservative clerical elites and the Ayatolla. Khatami led reform efforts during his presidency with two government reform bills intended to limit the power of the Guardian Council to select candidates for political office as well as limit other constitutional powers of the judiciary. The Guardian Council is selected by the Ayatolla and is responsible for investigating infractions against religious and political doctrine. Every time a reformist minded candidate arises, the Guardian Council hammers them with claims of kafir and they are banned from running. Khatami’s two bills would retract the power of the Guardians to ban candidates as well as allow the executive to reprimand constitutional bodies like the Guardian Council and the Experts (a judicial body body charged with selecting the Ayatolla) for arbitrary decisions. Both bills failed under the pretext that this was a power grab by the executive, instead of an intended balancing of power between government branches. They were also deemed unconstitutional by the Guardian Council. After 2005, the Reform effort was deemed dead by reform theorists like Saeed Hajjarian.

Clerics have continued to win most political battles since the early 2000s as they have a firm grip on the lower class poor, but with a rising middle class, some reformists maintain optimism of pushing reforms through in the near future. In 2017, 28% of Iranians identified as leaning Reformist. In comparison, 15% identified as leaning Principlist. Despite this, a large number of reform activists wrote an open letter to Khatami demanding a “Reform of the reform”. After the demonstrations earlier this year yielded no apparent results, younger Iranians are beginning to see the reformists as merely a political party that has been assimilated into the Iranian clerical authoritarian structure.

Conclusion/Future Considerations

The only possible imminent change to the government in Iran would be via external imposed regime change. Reform efforts are easily suppressed through the legitimate mechanisms instantiated in the constitution. The Ayatolla is unlikely to be pushed to a point that might force him to do something unconstitutional, because he has all of the tools he needs in the constitution already. He is able to maintain this control while still allowing for regular assembly elections. It’s the holy grail of authoritarian control. The constitution allows the unitary leader various avenues of venting and mitigating efforts for change, while still refreshing the active participation of civil society in government decisions and keeping them engaged in the revolutionary cause.

Lots of think tanks like the Atlantic Council and other western publications love to talk about how much simmering discontent there is lying beneath the surface in Iran, but I do not buy this. This form of radical Islam has co-opted democratic mechanisms in such a manner that a less than pareto-optimal equilibrium has formed such that the democrat instruments themselves are used to prevent improvement in democratic norms and human rights.

Lebanon

The big story in Lebanese political society is the multiconfessional state. By law the President is always a Maronite Catholic, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite Muslim, the Deputy Speaker and Deputy Prime Minister are Greek Orthodox. The ratio of Christians to Muslims in Parliament until this past election was – by law – 1:1.

This internal sectarian balance of power system is described everywhere as ‘fragile.’ The evidence for this fragility is the protracted 15 year civil war which tore Lebanon apart until 1990 and sears into Lebanese political consciousness today, and the brute fact that a proper census has not been conducted since 1932. The prospect of a census sends horror down the spines of every religious and political leader, for whatever the outcome of such a census, it could throw open the floodgates of renewed sectarian demands followed by violence.

The Sectarian System

Although this does not sound like a promising start for a democracy, the state certainly functions within the basic scope of a democracy: elite capture and tyranny are not a concern. In fact, the sectarian balance-of-powers structure maintains basic democracy through its quotas and coalitions. Government power comes from the consent of the sectarian leaders who can work to come together, address the latest crisis, and ultimately, play fast and loose with the constitution to solve the needs of the moment.

France created Lebanon out of Greater Syria in 1926; from this original constitution the confessional balance-of-power system was born. However, the French ensured that western leaning Christian groups had more power in the government, since they would be more likely to favor French interests. The civil courts were based on a Napoleonic variant, and the government included a French high-commissioner who could suspend the constitution and establish direct rule.

When the Lebanese declared independence in 1943, norms needed to be established for the balance of power. These new norms were called The National Pact. The National Pact reaffirmed the sectarian status of offices: President (Maronite), Prime Minister (Sunni), Speaker of the Parliament (Shia), Deputies (Greek Orthodox), Commander of the Armed Forces (Maronite), Army Chief of Staff (Druze). It also reaffirmed the 6:5 representation of Christians to Muslims in Parliament based on the possibly manipulated, already out-of-date 1932 census. What’s important to add here, though, is that National Pact required Maronites to express their identity as non-Western Arabic, and that Muslims not seek incorporation into Syria. This Christian promise of an Arab identity for the country is crucially important for its international relations to this day, while the Muslim promise helps guarantee the spirit of Lebanese independence in the region.

The Civil War 1975 – 1990 was long and we will not get into the weeds of it. However there are some important lessons about Lebanon from the civil war. The coalitions of the civil war shifted around fast, and the political situation deteriorated from political ideology to confessional lines. The “leftist” opposition was made up of a coalition of pan-Arabs, Greater Syrians, socialists, and Islamists, while the ruling right was made of nationalists, fascists, and hard-line Christians. These coalitions broke apart fairly quickly and soon all that mattered was regional control and serving the needs/prejudices of those constituents. Since regions were fairly homogenous in their religious make-up, these regions assumed sectarian agendas and biases. This led to provocations everywhere followed by Israeli invasion, Syrian invasion, and UN Military Action, Iranian supplies to Shia militias, and ubiquitous atrocities. Although commanders of the varying forces were often of the same religion, the soldiers hailed from any sect. For example, the Shiite leadership of the Amal and Hezbollah militias were often fighting their coreligionists who were under Maronite leadership.

To bring the Lebanese Civil War to a close Saudi Arabia hosted the 1989 Taif Agreement. The agreement was brokered behind the scenes by the survivors of the 1972 parliament and its Speaker Hussein El-Husseini. The purpose of the agreement was to end the civil war, bring back rule of law, and reestablish an independent Lebanon. Additionally, the agreement changed some legacy problems from the French days. Once the French high-commissioner became a non-existent position, his powers were rolled up into the presidency. This gave the Maronite president a lot of power. He could, for example, dismiss the Prime Minister if he did not get along with him, giving the Christians a lot of power. This power was revoked in the agreement and the Christian – Muslim representation in Parliament was changed to 1:1.

Over the next years, Hezbollah, with the tacit consent of the central government, tried to reclaim the south from Israeli occupation. Since Taif (up to the present) the government has tried to diminish Hezbollah’s extra-governmental military operations, and lastly the country began extracting itself from rule/occupation/influence of Syria. However, since Palestinian-aligned militias controlled south Lebanon, and Syria controlled the north and east, the central government was still fairly weak and peace was uncertain. The Cedar Revolution (2005) pushed the Syrians out, and in 2018 Lebanon made credible strides into an independent future by means of its first parliamentary election since 2009.

The June 2017 electoral reforms divided Lebanon into 15 districts, lowered the voting age to 18, and allowed oversees Lebanese to vote. Here’s how it worked, and by the way, this is the most complicated voting system I have ever seen:

1. Each district had a set number of seats per sectarian group.
2. Political parties field a candidate for each of those seats in a registered candidate list.
3. Citizens of the district get one vote per seat.
4. Then the candidate with the most votes fills the respective seat.

Let us give an example. In the region “Beirut II” there were 6 Sunni seats, 2 Shia seats, 1 Druze seat, 1 Greek Orthodox seat, and 1 Evangelical seat, 11 seats total.

9 political parties formed to create a list of candidates for each seat. Citizens then cast 11 votes divided by sectarian confession. In theory there could have been 99 candidates up for election in Beirut II; however dropouts reduced the number of candidates to a still staggering (by U.S. standards) 82. While Beirut II is an outlier with its glut of nine political coalitions, the national average was still 5 – 6 lists per district.

The new system requires political parties to become interreligious coalitions which support a political platform, and since it relies on citizens casting votes for people outside their sect, the principle of consensus governance is preserved while decreasing sectarian tensions. Additionally, political interest groups are incentivized to work together to create consolidated candidate lists to reduce unwanted competition.

The big news item in the 2018 election was that the majority Future Movement party got smashed and Amal-Hezbollah won big. (Amal-Hezbollah is so named because the parent group, Amal, reunited with the splinter group Hezbollah.) Looking deeper Amal-Hezbollah made coalition lists with Free Patriotic Movement (mainly Christian center-right), Al-Ahbash (Sufi activists, because you can never have enough Rubaiyat), and Syrian Socialist Nationalists (yes, founded in 1932…). The triple decimation of the Future Movement and double rise of Free Patriotic Movement along with Amal-Hezbollah is a big move towards friendliness with Syria. At first blush this makes no sense. Isn’t Syria in shambles? Why be their ally? It is important to note though that these groups which won big in the most recent election were not part of the Cedar Revolution which pushed Syria out of Lebanon. Allowing Hezbollah militias freedom to actively support Assad may be the quickest path to relieving the pressures of 1.4+ million Syrian refugees in terrible camp conditions. (Furthermore, the Greater Syria ideology or a new Nasserism might find itself back on the table.)

In the Syrian Civil, Iran supports Assad’s government. They have set up forward military bases in Syria. We should not expect those to go anywhere anytime soon. While Iranian forces shuffle through Iraq to get to Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah fighters aid Assad from the east. Hezbollah’s military arm is funded in part by Iran, and the Iranian interest is to create an effective anti-Israel alliance. The Israeli response to Iranian troop in Syria has been frequent rocket strikes.

The political leaders see the 2017 reforms as the first step in a series to fix the sectarian system to create a more unified country. More reforms will be on their way. The next parliamentary election should occur in 2022. If it is a success, Lebanon may take one more step into security, prosperity, and, we hope, a nonsectarian future. As it is, Lebanon has to try to preserve its internal peace in a dangerous and high variance political environment.

Rights: The Cedar Package

“Lebanon has an Arab identity and belonging. It is a founding active member of the Arab League, committed to its Charter; as it is a founding active member of the United Nations Organization, committed to its Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The State embodies these principles in all sectors and scopes without exception.

Lebanon is a democratic parliamentary republic based upon the respect of public freedoms, freedom of opinion and freedom of belief; and of social justice and equality in rights and duties among all citizens, without distinction or preference.”

• Preamble to the Constitution B – C

Lebanon has not lived up to these UN notions of Human Rights. As often happens in the Lebanese constitution what is said in one part is qualified or contradicted in another. Articles 9 and 12 add important qualifiers to freedom of speech:

Article 9 “Freedom of conscience is absolute. In assuming the obligations of glorifying God, the Most High, the State respects all religions and creeds and safeguards the freedom of exercising the religious rites under its protection, without disturbing the public order. It also guarantees the respect of the system of personal status and religious interests of the people, regardless of their different creeds.”

Article 12 “The freedom of opinion, expression through speech and writing, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of association, are all guaranteed within the scope of the law.”

“Without disturbing the public order”, “guarantees the respect of the system”, and “within the scope of the law” provide the judicial framework for blasphemy laws and prosecution for opinions outside the Overton Window. But the Overton Window of Lebanon is extremely wide, from Communists to National Socialists, from conservative Shiites to Gay Pride promoting Sunnis.

While freedom of worship is guaranteed, freedom from religious institutions is not. Lebanon has a civil judiciary for general property rights, prosecution, and so on, but what we call family law is the province of religious courts. Marriage, inheritance, child custody, annulment, divorce are all controlled by 15 or so religious courts. Most everyone is labelled a member of a sect, even if not practicing, for the purposes of family law. These laws are the strongest legal force entrenching sectarianism in Lebanon. And, unfortunately, they often relegate women to second class status.

The Right to Rock and Roll

The current picture of Lebanon would not be complete without a few words about Lebanese culture. Lebanon is one of the most culturally productive and free Arab countries. It maintains itself as a regional media capital. Rock music, cinema, and books are produced in Lebanon and exported all over the Arab world.

Seriously, the music is great!

More about Islam

Recently, interfaith marriage has become possible, and from that marriage has issued a sectless baby. The marriage required the signature of the Minister of the Interior. Small demonstrations have called for civil marriage as a civil right. Despite these developments, Lebanon is not necessarily on the way to becoming a country which accepts secularism into its internal balance.

Sunnis and Shiites are equal in number – both being about 27% of the total citizen population. Druze make up 5%, and they are grouped as Muslim for political purposes. We don’t know that they would call themselves Muslim, since they consider the Dialogues of Plato an inspired text, and look to their own sacred texts and precepts. Political battle lines in Lebanon concern Palestine and the Palestinians in Lebanon, Israel, the role of Hezbollah in society, the role of Syria in Lebanon, preservation of identity, and some type of identity politics based on the struggles of the last 30 years. The major political parties have a narrative and some vision for Lebanon, but at the same time contain members from many religious confessions.

Problems, Predictions, and Possibilities

So given all the instability in Lebanon’s history, why include it in the study? It does seem to break our rule of inclusion since its Muslim citizen population is only ~60%. However, it is an example of diversity, dynamism, political balancing, and cultural production in the midst of a weak state apparatus.

Currently, Lebanon has a citizen population of ~5 million. An additional 400,000 Palestinians and 1.5 million Syrian refugees are also within the borders with little prospects for the future. Most of these people are Muslim, and so will probably not become naturalized citizens any time soon. Currently Lebanon’s government sees hope for the return of Syrians to their home country, even as the Palestinians hang in a hopeless limbo.

For Lebanon to extend its civil rights, greater control of the border must be secured. The first requirement is the cessation of the civil war in Syria. The second requirement is a second parliamentary election which further diffuses sectarianism and entrenches democratic norms. At the local level, interfaith marriage and conversions would assist the project of desectarianism by creating more demand for civil courts to handle some family law.

Conclusions

The intersection of Islam and liberal democracy is a recent phenomenon that began with decolonization in the early 20th century. These countries ratified their constitutions between 4 and 75 years ago; thus we should expect generalizations to be error prone. This data set, while chosen with the goal of being as representative a sample of the population as possible, is still small and requires further investigation. Our study and synthesis, we believe, provides a good starting point for subsequent work in an area that we found to be thin on academic literature.

We also saw that this method, to our knowledge, has not been implemented before. Most of the work we found on Islam and liberal democracy, expressed itself primarily in the realms of abstract political theory, philosophy, and theology. By examining a diverse segment of the Islamic world’s history, constitutions, and political institutions, we hope to make more confident claims about its relationship with liberal democracy than other methods have been able to as of yet.

These cases gave us some easy takeaways:

1. Tunisia is an Islamic country which established a robust and inclusive democratic apparatus.
2. Extreme political Islam, in the example of Iran, is still a functioning and powerful opposing force to liberal democracy.
3. UAE, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia exemplify the wide political variability in the Islamic world between the two poles of Tunisia and Iran.
4. All but Iran have reacted to Islamist movements within the Islamic community and suppress radicals.
5. All have Overton Windows of different sizes. The most liberal and most illiberal opinions permitted in each society vary wildly, and the range of opinions tenable for the politically successful varies similarly.
6. Consequently, all have freedom of speech, expression, and assembly issues.
7. All have some large minority groups, except Tunisia which is 99% Sunni Muslim.

Despite the fact the Tunisia and Iran are the two ends of the spectrum in our study, neither is a fixed star. Over the course of Tunisia’s liberalization elements of the traditional community have reacted violently. With Tunisia traditional Islam has merely been sidelined, rather than incorporated into the political process.

For Iran, despite the existence of a deeply entrenched totalitarian clerical regime, demands for reform in the realms of rights and democratic institutions continue to surface and assert themselves in the form of political parties and activism, often at great peril to those involved.

Of the other four cases, some consistencies revealed themselves. They all make strong efforts to mitigate extremist activity within their borders. The UAE monitors and controls the content of sermons in mosques. Lebanon requires proportional representation in government across confessional lines. Indonesia and Kazakhstan employ security forces to quell radical activities. All of these countries see the rise of radical political Islam as an existential threat, and suppress it, often through methods that would be less than ideal in a democratic liberal state.

Each protects some human rights, while other rights are withheld entirely, or are superseded by higher order national concerns such as security and economic prosperity. In these four countries, democratic mechanisms like independent judiciaries, anti-corruption, free elections, separation of powers, free speech, free assembly, and female political participation enjoy different levels of protection and functionality.

We agreed that Lebanon and Indonesia had at least functioning democracies and therefore, operational avenues for improvement exist in the above mentioned areas. The UAE and Kazakhstan are oligarchic and authoritarian, respectively. It is more likely that Lebanon and Indonesia will see meaningful movement in the coming years towards liberal democratic regimes than the UAE or Kazakhstan.

Can we put some numbers on this? There are two ways of calculating the probabilities here. [Warning: we are neither mathematicians nor statisticians]

1. A ½ chance of being democratic times a ⅓ chance of protecting human rights gives Muslim majority countries a ⅙ chance of being liberal democracies.
2. Given that a country is democratic, there is a ~40% chance it has basic human rights protected. Given that a country has human rights protected there is a 50% chance that it democratic.

Obviously, this is not how political probability works, but that doesn’t make ⅙ probability a useless consideration.

Adding more nuance, we look at more variables: independent judiciary, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, low levels of police and administrative corruption, female participation, democratic consolidation, state monopoly on force, and free elections.

No country has all of these factors, but as common sense and probability distributions tell us, these factors are interrelated.

Concerning Islam, the exact question determines the answer. In our initial proposal for the collaboration we framed our topic as “A dominantly Muslim group could form a liberal democratic ruling party within the confines of contemporary Islamic Political Thought.” What is a fitting response to this initial declaration? We think the statement is true, because clearly there are Muslims throughout the Islamic world, who want to form a liberal democratic polity. However it leaves unanswered the question behind the question. Does current Islamic belief and practice act as an obstacle to liberal democracy more often than not? Each of our country studies seem to generate a different answer to that question.

As for liberal democratic Muslims whether they constitute a viable cultural force, to what extent they have clerical and intellectual support, to what extent other Muslims see them as heretics or apostates, these are different questions that we cannot answer here.

Democracy and liberalism require that a society lower or greatly shift expectations for what types of society can be achieved in this world. Democracy assumes that the state should reflect the will of the citizens to be free from tyranny. This means seeing political participation as a laudatory activity. Citizens then cannot submit to the state, in the same way they submit to the will of God, but must come to see the state as a human apparatus for protecting and promoting the interests of the citizens.

Liberalism requires further that the role of the state is to protect merely the material interests of citizens and to allow individuals the freedom to choose their own good, even if they choose wrong. Freedom of conscience, association, and speech each increase opportunities for people to choose wrong and lead others down with them. A strong traditional morality sees this risk as unacceptable. The goal of the liberal state cannot be “helping the people conform to the will of God, which is the highest good for man.” Rather the role of the state is safeguarding the citizen’s freedom to conform to the will of God or not.

An Islam which accepts both of these visions for government would have to allow that the state does not need to reflect the authority of God and God’s revealed word and that ideological purity is not necessarily desirable. Lastly, democracy and liberalism must support security, prosperity, and justice, rather than undermine them. The most frequent objection to democracy and liberalism in these countries is that they are destabilizing to society.

Many Muslim countries have travelled some portion of the path to liberal democracy in the brief period during which these forces have interacted. When liberal and democratic policies correlate with economic prosperity and security, an Islamic majority state is more likely to continue adopting such policies. For most states so far the steps taken remain small, and the results of their experiments uncertain.

Our predictions:

About UAE

The UAE will establish an independent judiciary by 2023: 5%
The UAE will establish an independent judiciary in the next 2028: 10%
The UAE will invest the Union National Council with authoritative legislative power by 2023: 10%
The UAE will invest the Union National Council with authoritative legislative power by 2028: 20%
The UAE will be invaded by Iran by 2023: 10%
The UAE will experience proxy war instigated by Iran by 2023: 15%

About Tunisia

Tunisia’s next transfer of power will be unbloody: 65%
Non-state terrorist actors will instigate guerilla warfare in Tunisia by 2023: 30%
Non-state terrorist actors will instigate guerilla warfare in Tunisia by 2028: 15%
Tunisia will experience regime change before 2023: 45%
Tunisia will experience regime change after 2023: 30%

About Indonesia

Indonesia will pass a law allowing for harsher prosecution of terrorists by 2020: 75%
Indonesia will not pass new laws promoting Islam at the federal level by 2020: 70%
Indonesia will not be involved in any wars with a foreign power by 2020: 80%
Indonesia will pass more than one piece of legislation reducing the autonomy of different regions by 2020/ by 2025: 40% / 60%

About Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan’s president will resign by 2020: 10%
Kazakhstan’s president will die of natural causes while in office: 60%
There will be a flurry of talks about democratization after Nazarbayev’s death, but very little will come of it within the first 5 years: 65%
By the 6th year after his death real political opposition parties will develop: 44%

About Iran

Iran will experience regime change before 2023: 15%
Iran will experience regime change by 2028: 30%
The Reform Party will have a major win in the next elections: 15%
Iran will invade Israel by 2023: 35%
Iran will obtain nuclear capability by 2023: 25%
Iran will obtain nuclear capability by 2028: 40%

About Lebanon

The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon drops to below 1 million by 2020: 70%
The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon drops to below 500,000 by 2020: 20%
Lebanon passes some law which allows civil marriage by 2020, 2025: 30%, 45%
Lebanon holds a census by 2020: 20%
Lebanon holds a census by 2026: 40%
Lebanon holds a census without recording religious denomination by 2020/ by 2026: 5%/ 8%
Lebanon has a newsworthy border conflict >1 week with Israel or Syria by 2022: 80%
Lebanon descends into civil/proxy wars by 2020/ by 2026: 5%/ 10%
If Iran’s government is replaced, Amal-Hezbollah loses >3 of their seats in parliament in the 2022 election: 60%

Suggestions For Further Reading

For a detailed Pew Report on Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa see http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Islam_and_Christianity.pdf

For a philosophical analysis read Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy. We especially recommend pages 103 – 123, 144 – 165. The book takes into account secularism, which our paper essentially ignores.

For an engaging view into ISIS, listen to Rukmini Callimachi’s Caliphate which is fantastic.

We haven’t read it, but we want to read this humanizing book about the people one meets while hitchhiking in the Middle East by Juan Villarino.

The movie A Jihad For Love is a documentary about Muslims and homosexuality. It is not a particularly good movie, but it was fun.

Also, it’s always fun to read the YouTube comments on Arabic and Islamic music.

The Question of Orientalism by Bernard Lewis. Bernard Lewis was one of the foremost historians on Islam and the Middle East. This essay is a great expose on western misgivings about Islam and the Middle East.

From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East by Bernard Lewis.

Contains an excellent essay on Islam and Secularism called, “Can Islam be secularized?”

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present by Michael B. Oren

Oren is an American born Israel historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. This book is an invaluable overview of the history of American involvement in the Middle East and its relationship with Islam.

Counting Islam: Religion, Class and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press) by Tarek Masoud. To understand the less savory side of the Arab Spring, see the converse of what happened in Tunisia in this Tarek Masoud’s examination of how Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood utilized democratic processes to gain power and then used it to deconstruct a liberal democratic program in favor of a hardline Islamist one.

A History of the Modern Middle East by William Cleveland and Martin Bunton. A sober and detailed history of the contemporary Middle East. A must read for understanding what produced the conditions across the Middle East that we see today.

CONTACTS

littlejohnburidan[at]gmail

christianflanery11[at]gmail

Notes

[This is an entry to the Adversarial Collaboration Contest by TracingWoodgrains and Michael Pershan (a k-12 math teacher), on advanced students in the education system]

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“What do America’s brightest students hear? Every year, across the nation, students who should be moved ahead at their natural pace of learning are told to stay put. Thousands of students are told to lower their expectations, and put their dreams on hold. Whatever they want to do, their teachers say, it can wait.” – A Nation Deceived, p.3

“There is an apparent preference among donors for studying the needs and supporting the welfare of the weak, the vicious, and the incompetent, and a negative disregard of the highly intelligent, leaving them to “shift for themselves.” Hollingworth, 1926

1. Eager to Learn and Underachieving

Pretend you’re a teacher. With 25 students, who gets your attention during class?

There’s the kid who ask for it, whose hand is constantly up. There’s also the quiet kid in the corner who never says a word, but has been lost in math since October, who will fail if you don’t do something. There’s the student in the middle of the pack, flowing along. Finally, there’s the kid who finishes everything quickly. She’s looking around and wondering, what am I supposed to do now?

In a survey of teachers from 2008, just 23% reported that advanced students were a top priority for them, while 63% reported giving struggling students in their classes the most attention. A 2005 study found the same trend in middle schools, where struggling students receive the bulk of instructional modification and special arrangements. This was true even while 73% agreed that advanced students were too often bored and under-challenged in school. While teachers, it seems, are sympathetic to the smart bored kid, that’s just not a priority for them.

This isn’t to blame teachers who are under all sorts of pressure to carry low-performing students over the threshold and who, in any event, are only trying to do what’s best for their kids. Which is the most urgent concern? If you don’t equip a kid with the skills they need, next year’s class might be a disaster for them. Or maybe they’ll fail out of school. And behavior problems? Often those begin with academic struggles. Gifted children, on the other hand — they’re on the way to becoming gifted adults. They can take care of themselves, for a minute, the logic goes. More often than not, the teacher will encourage the early finisher to go read a book, or start homework, or do anything at all while the teacher works to help the quiet, lost kid in the corner.

If the kids are just a little bored, that’s nothing strange. It’s hard to find someone who wasn’t bored in school sometimes. For many top students, already poised for achievement, this turns out just fine. And yet, there are persistent stories of how the lack of challenge can turn into something more serious.

One version of the story goes like this: from a young age, a student finds the work in school easy. It doesn’t take long for them to expect school to be easy for them — it becomes a point of pride. Over years of floating through school, an identity takes hold. Then, one day, maybe after years of schooling, something finally becomes challenging for the student… but there’s nothing nice about this challenge. The challenge is now a threat. The student begins to find school challenging, and their world falls apart. They feel isolated and misunderstood at school. They lash out. They hate it, and they can’t wait to get out.

When we asked Reddit users and blog readers to describe their experience of school, we heard versions of this story:

• Miserable waste of time, was almost never offered opportunities to learn. Largely ignored teachers and read books during class. I felt like it was a profound injustice that I was punished for doing so. I now have kids of my own and will be home-schooling them.
• I was bored. The pace was too slow and work was not interesting. Being forced by law to get up early and go somewhere to learn things I already know means permanent and firm dislike.
• I went to local public schools for kindergarten through high school, and the experience wasn’t good. Academically, the classes were slow and poorly taught. Even the AP classes were taught at the speed of the slowest student, which made the experience excruciating. The honors and regular classes were even worse: I was consistently one or more grades ahead of the rest of the class in every non-AP class except honors math. I learned not to bother studying or doing homework even in the AP classes which probably wasn’t great for my work ethic.

The stories of student pain and underachievement in school get more intense as we consider cases of extremely precocious children. The pressures on the student increase, and without help a student often experiences isolation from their peers and a whole other host of difficult feelings. Miraca Gross studied students like these in Australia and found that precocious students were often suffering in silence. Speaking particularly about precocious students who underachieve, she writes:

The majority of the extremely gifted young people in my study state frankly that for substantial periods in their school careers they have deliberately concealed their abilities or significantly moderate their scholastic achievement in an attempt to reduce their classmates’ and teachers’ resentment of them. In almost every case, the parents of children retained in the regular classroom with age peers report that the drive to achieve, the delight in intellectual exploration, and the joyful seeking after new knowledge, which characterized their children in the early years, has seriously diminished or disappeared completely. These children display disturbingly low levels of motivation and social self-esteem. They are also more likely to report social rejection by their classmates and state that they frequently underachieve in attempts to gain acceptance by age peers and teachers. Unfortunately, rather than investigating the cause of this, the schools attended by these children have tended to view their decreased motivation, with the attendant drop in academic attainment, as indicators that the child has “leveled out” and is no longer gifted.

What do we make of these stories? How common are such experiences?

From the literature on “gifted underachievement” we get partial confirmation — underachievement is a real phenomenon, supported by numerous case studies. According to a survey of various school practitioners, underachievement is the top concern when it comes to gifted students. By definition, advanced students are only a small percent of each student body, so few are affected in any given place, but on a national scale it becomes a more serious problem.

This is not just a problem for the affluent. It has persistent impacts on Black students, poor students, and students who are learning English, who are less often recommended for gifted programs or special accommodations. Here’s one way this manifests itself: in one study, 44% of poor students identified as gifted in reading in 1st Grade were no longer academically exceptional by 5th Grade. For higher-income families, only 31% of 1st Graders experience this slide.

The lack of attention to this group extends to the research. It’s difficult to pin down the number of students impacted. While underachievement is a real phenomenon, current research doesn’t tell us very much about the factors contributing to gifted underachievement. What studies have been done tend to focus almost entirely on things like whether students with ADHD or unsupportive families underachieve, rather than looking at controllable factors like the sort of teaching students experience in school.

Schools are the institutions in charge of educating kids. Those who rush into school, eager to learn, should not walk out feeling rebuffed and ignored. This is doubly true for talented kids from at-risk populations, who may not have the support structure outside of school to ensure their success if school has no time for them. It’s clear, though, that we cannot degrade the experience of other students to help those who already have an academic leg up. Is there a feasible approach to address this problem without making things worse?

We have good reason to think that personalized attention makes a huge difference to a student’s learning. Research suggests that tutoring that supplements a student’s coursework is a very effective educational intervention. Benjamin Bloom caught people’s attention with the idea of a 2 standard deviation effect in the 1980s. More recent research has lowered that sky-high estimate to more realistic numbers, and a meta-analysis found an effect size of 0.36, still a powerful impact, enough to take a student from the 50th percentile of achievement to the 64th.

If supplemental tutoring works, the dream goes, what if we replaced classroom work entirely with tutoring? Can’t we just do that for gifted underachievers and precocious students? We have tantalizing success stories of this kind in the education for precocious children. In a famous case, John Stuart Mill‘s father decided that the philosophy of utilitarianism needed an advocate, and planned a demanding course for him. Mill didn’t underachieve: he learned Greek at age 3, Latin at age 8, and flourished as a philosopher. László Polgár declared he had discovered the secret of raising “geniuses” and went about showing it by tutoring his daughters in chess from the age of 3. It’s hard to argue with his results: two grandmasters and an international master, one of whom became the 8th ranked chess player in the world and the only woman ever to take a game off the reigning world champion.

Though this sort of tutoring seems like a dream come true for underachieving gifted students, in practice it’s a non-starter in schools. (It lives on in homeschooling, to an extent). In a world where schools are struggling to help every kid learn to read, the ethics of only assigning tutors to gifted students is dubious and almost certainly a political impossibility. The cost of assigning a tutor to every child, meanwhile, would do something special to property taxes. This simple answer, then, can lead to a clearer understanding of the complexity of educational questions: It’s possible to focus on simple practices that work while disregarding nonacademic concerns and political feasibility.

To be useful, educational ideas should be effective, politically feasible, and economical. If tutoring for gifted underachievers isn’t workable, might there be some other way to approximate the benefits of personal, human attention? Here are three of the most common tools that advocates for gifted education propose:

• Grouping students of the same age in classes according to their abilities, i.e. tracking (National Association for Gifted Children)
• Accelerating students through the curriculum according to their readiness, ignoring age or grade level (A Nation Deceived)
• Using personalization software to replace a human tutor (How Khan Academy Will Help Find The Next Einstein)

What follows is an evaluation of how promising each of these tools is, both in theory and in practice.

Our favorite one-stop reading on gifted education research: this.

Our favorite one-stop reading on tutoring: this.

2. Ability Grouping (a.k.a Tracking)

The case for placing students of similar abilities together in a classroom seems like it ought to be as simple as the case for tutoring. Teachers will be more effective if their students have similar pacing needs. So, group kids who need more time in one class and those who need less time in another. It’s not tutoring, but it should be the next best thing.

Things in education research are rarely that simple, though.

Bob Slavin, a psychologist who studies education, is one of the most-cited education researchers around. He seems like a compulsively busy fellow. He writes, he runs research centers, he designs programs for schools. (He blogs.) A journalist from The Guardian once asked Slavin for his likes and dislikes, and in case you were wondering he likes work and dislikes complacency.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Slavin performed a series of meta-analyses of the existing literature on tracking and between-class ability grouping. Overall, he found no significant benefits from ability grouping, even for “top track” students across elementary, middle, and high schools.

But the other surprising finding of Slavin’s was that nobody was academically hurt by ability grouping — not even the lowest track students. Slavin argued that when you consider all the non-academic concerns, the scales weigh in favor of detracking, i.e. avoiding ability grouping.

What are those non-academic concerns? In the conclusion of his review of the evidence from elementary schools, he writes:

“Ability grouping plans in all forms are repugnant to many educators, who feel uncomfortable making decisions about elementary-aged students that could have long-term effects on their self-esteem and life chances. In desegregated schools, the possibility that ability grouping may create racially identifiable groups or classes is of great concern.” (p.327)

That’s Slavin’s view. So, where is the debate?

One thing that is decidedly not up for debate in the literature is that Slavin’s non-academic concerns are real. Opponents and defenders of tracking alike agree that low-track classes are often chaotic, poorly taught environments where bad behavior is endemic, and that this is a major problem. Tom Loveless is a contemporary defender of tracking, and writes that “even under the best of conditions, low tracks are difficult classrooms. The low tracks that focus on academics often try to remediate through dull, repetitious seatwork.” Jeannie Oakes made a name for herself by carefully documenting the lousiness of a lot of low track classes.

Some tracked schools seem to have done better with their low tracks. Gamoran, an opponent of tracking, speaks highly of how some Catholic schools handle lower tracks. Gutierrez identifies several tracked schools with strong commitments to helping students across the school advance in mathematics, and concludes that “tracking is not the pivotal policy on which student advancement in mathematics depends.” Making these experiences better is an important goal. These difficult dynamics are a genuine and widespread issue, though, and educators are rightly concerned about them.

Slavin’s concerns about exacerbating racism in schools are relatively uncontroversial as well. It’s not so much that race is a factor in track placement. Using a large nationally representative sample and controlling for prior achievement, Lucas and Gamoran found that race wasn’t a factor in track placement. (Though Dauber et al, found that race was a factor in track placement in Baltimore schools, so maybe sometimes racism is a factor in placement.)

But because of existing achievement gaps between e.g. Black and white students, there’s the potential in a racially mixed school that ability groups will effectively sort Black students into the lowest track and expose them to a lot of dynamics that are difficult to quantitatively measure but frequently discussed in education. A school where being Black is associated with poor performance and misbehavior will, according to many educators and researchers, lead to lower expectations and academic self-esteem for all Black students.

(Good news for people who like bad news: school segregation is getting worse, so the interaction between tracking and race is getting better.)

The main controversy surrounds Slavin’s claims about the academic impact of ability grouping. His meta-analyses were part of an extended back-and-forth with Chen-Lin & James Kulik, who wrote several competing analyses on the ability grouping literature. Slavin and the Kuliks each criticized the other’s methodology, but the core point the Kuliks made was that ability grouping did have positive effects on gifted students as long as curriculum was enhanced or accelerated to match, and that this typically did happen in dedicated gifted and talented programs. The Kuliks pointed out that both they and Slavin largely agreed on the data both analyzed, but that Slavin excluded studies of gifted programs from his research while the Kuliks made those studies a focus.

Tom Loveless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, summarized one important aspect of their dispute, which is that their debate centers more on values than their read of the extant evidence:

Slavin and Kulik are more sharply opposed on the tracking issue than their other points of agreement would imply. Slavin states that he is philosophically opposed to tracking, regarding it as inegalitarian and anti-democratic. Unless schools can demonstrate that tracking helps someone, Slavin reasons, they should quit using it. Kulik’s position is that since tracking benefits high achieving students and harms no one, its abolition would be a mistake (p.17)

Betts notes the studies the Kuliks and Slavin reviewed in their meta-analyses had some flaws, with relatively small N and non–nationally representative data. Using more nationally representative samples, a number of researchers (Hoffer, Gamoran and Mare, Betts and Shkolnik raise questions about the results of these papers. And there was also a recent big meta-meta-analysis that found no benefits for between-class grouping, echoing Slavin, but that did find benefits for special grouping for gifted students, echoing the Kuliks.

Just to mess with everybody, Figlio and Page argue that by attracting stronger students to the school (because parents seek tracking) students in low-tracks benefit, secondarily.

So, in summary, what should we make of all this? Betts, an economist, says in a review of the literature that when it comes to the average impact of tracking or the distribution of achievement “this literature does not provide compelling evidence.” Loveless doesn’t disagree, but notes that for high achievers, the situation is clearer:

“The evidence does not support the charge that tracking is inherently harmful, and there is no clear evidence that abandoning tracking for heterogeneously grouped classes would provide a better education for any student. This being said, tracking’s ardent defenders cannot call on a wealth of research to support their position either. The evidence does not support the claim that tracking benefits most students or that heterogeneous grouping depresses achievement. High achieving students are the exception. For them, tracked classes with an accelerated or enriched curriculum are superior to heterogeneously grouped classes.” (p.22)

At the end of the day, all academic impacts of tracking are mediated by teaching and the curriculum. If a teacher doesn’t change what they teach or how they teach it, no grouping decision will help or hurt a student academically in a significant way. Tracking only could benefit gifted students if it came with some sort of curricular modification.

This is a conclusion with wide-reaching support. Even Slavin, who so staunchly opposed conventional ability grouping, was extremely impressed by something called the Joplin Plan, which involves three core features:

• Grouping students based on reading ability, regardless of grade level
• Regular testing and regrouping of students on the basis of the tests
• A different curriculum for each group of students

Slavin, the Kuliks, and everyone else seemed to agree that students in the plan — at all ability levels — tended to get 2-3 months ahead of students in typical programs over a year of instruction. The Joplin plan involves ability grouping — the good kind of ability grouping.

So in 1986, when the Baltimore School Superintendent turned to Bob Slavin to design a program that would improve the city’s most dysfunctional schools, guess how Slavin grouped students?

Slavin worked with research scientist Nancy Madden (they’re married) to design Success for All for Baltimore, and it’s a prominent program in the school improvement world, implemented in thousands of schools and spreading. Those three features of the Joplin plan — assessment, regrouping along the lines of ability and targeted teaching — are core features of their program.

Success for All isn’t the only example of a successful curriculum implementing these ideas. Direct Instruction was created by Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley Becker in the 1960s, and it also groups students according to their current levels in reading and math while frequently reassessing and regrouping. DI has a strong body of research supporting its efficacy (for one, it was the winner of the famous-in-education Follow Through experiment), but fell largely out of favor outside of remedial classrooms. In early 2018, a new meta-analysis spanning 50 years of research reinvigorated conversation around Direct Instruction. It found an average effect size of 0.51 to 0.66 in English and math over 328 studies (p<0.001), — strong evidence that the program works.

While its effect on student performance is rarely disputed, the program remains controversial. Historian of education Jack Schneider writes: “Direct Instruction works, and I’d never send my kids to a school that uses it. The program narrows the aims of education and leaves little room for creativity, spontaneity and play in the classroom. Although test scores may go up, the improvement is not without a cost.” Ed Realist worries that its pedagogy is unsavory, has not been shown to work for older students, that wealthier parents are voting with their feet against the curriculum, and that DI could exacerbate gaps between students. Supporters, by contrast, paint the picture of a robust, effective system that has been ignored and disregarded.

Success for All and Direct Instruction are not simple programs for schools to adopt. Implementing them amounts to a major organizational change, and pushes at the extremely resilient notion that children in school should be grouped by their ages. Comprehensive ability grouping programs such as these seem to work, but in practice they are rarely used.

Our favorite one-stop source for reading on ability grouping: here, or maybe here to get a broader picture of the controversy.

3. Acceleration

Forget the comprehensive approach, then. Does it work to simply move an individual student (e.g. an underchallenged and frustrated student) through the curriculum at whatever pace seems to make sense?

There are a few different ways schools can help some students access the curriculum more quickly. A kid can skip a full grade, or several grades in extreme cases. They can stay in their grade for some classes, but join higher grade levels for some parts of the day. They might be assigned to two classes in one year (e.g. Algebra 1 and Geometry). Or, in some cases, a young student might start school at an even younger age than is typical.

If a child is ready for a higher level within a subject and studies it instead of the lower level, it’s almost a given that they’ll learn more. The real research questions are (a) from an academic standpoint whether accelerated children do tend to be ready, or if they do poorly in classes post-acceleration) and (b) whether acceleration exposes students to non-academic harm (e.g. stress, demotivation, loss of love for subject, poor self-esteem).

The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) is an ongoing longitudinal study examining thousands of mathematically gifted students. In one SMPY study, researchers compared the professional STEM accomplishments of mathematically gifted students who skipped a grade to those who remained at grade level. They found that, controlling for a student’s academic profile in a pretty sophisticated way, students who skipped a grade tended to be ahead of the non-skippers in terms of degrees earned, publications, citations accrued, and patents received. From this work it seems skipping a grade in the SMPY cohort did nothing to hurt a kid’s learning or enthusiasm for their passions.

Acceleration has been one of the focuses of SMPY studies. A 1993 piece about SMPY findings reported “there is no evidence that acceleration harms willing students either academically or psychosocially.” This is supported by various meta-analyses, going back to the 1984 Kulik & Kulik paper and confirmed by more recent work such as a 2011 analysis of existing studies. Beyond the “does no harm” findings, these meta-analyses also report academic benefits to students.

It can be confusing, when reading these studies, to keep track of just how gifted the students happen to be. For example, SMPY has studied five cohorts so far, ranging from students who assessed in the top 3% to those who assessed in the top 0.01%. As we consider students farther away from the mean of achievement, the need for acceleration becomes more acute.

Lots of teachers encounter “1 in 100” students every year, but the education of “off the charts” students is necessarily more a matter of feel than policy. Still, there are success stories to learn from, and they show a remarkable sensitivity to both the academic and social well-being of the student.

Terence Tao is a famous success story of this kind. He surprised his parents by discovering how to read before turning two, and as a child he started climbing through math at a blistering rate. He was identified as profoundly gifted from a young age, and his education was carefully tracked by Miraca Gross as part of her longitudinal study of profoundly gifted children:

His parents investigated a number of local schools, seeking one with a principal who would have the necessary flexibility and open-mindedness to accept Terry within the program structure they had in mind. …

This set the pattern for the ‘integrated,’ multi-grade acceleration program which his parents had envisaged and which was adopted, after much thought and discussion, by the school. By early 1982, when Terry was 6 years 6 months old, he was attending grades 3, 4, 6 and 7 for different subjects. On his way through school, he was able to work and socialize with children at each grade level and, because he was progressing at his own pace in each subject, without formal “grade-skipping,” gaps in his subject knowledge were avoided.“

His education continued in much the same fashion, culminating in a Ph.D. by the age of 21 and a remarkable and balanced life since. He has since given his own advice on gifted education.

Given the success of acceleration, are we accelerating enough? On the one hand, it appears that acceleration is a widely used tool for giving gifted students what they need. When looking at the top 1 in 10000 students in terms of mathematical ability as identified by the SMPY, nearly half of the group skipped grades, and almost all of them had some form of acceleration, whether that meant advanced classes, early college placement, or other tools. About two-thirds reported being satisfied with their acceleration, rating it favorably across many categories:

[Source: SMPY]

The dissatisfied third of those 1 in 10000 students, for the most part, reported wishing they had been offered more acceleration. And advocates for gifted education strongly endorse the notion that acceleration is under-used. A Nation Deceived is premised on this idea — though besides for “more” the report doesn’t get specific concerning how many students ought to be accelerated, and the report mostly makes a cultural argument in favor of acceleration, citing stories like Martin Luther King Jr. graduating high school at 15.

We wanted to know more about how educators think about acceleration, so we surveyed (via twitter) twenty-one teachers, academic coaches, tutors and administrators. The survey prompted educators to respond to the following scenario:

In your school there is currently a 1st Grader who does math above grade level, e.g. he performs long division in his head. His parents initiated contact with the teacher after hearing their child complain that math at school was boring. They’re concerned that he isn’t being challenged. The classroom teacher knows that he is above grade-level in math, and is trying to meet his needs in class. The parents, however, do not think the current situation is working. The teacher reports that the student is difficult to engage during math class, and that sometimes he misbehaves during math.

From their responses, it certainly seems that acceleration was on the table, but almost always the last option after a number of in-class or non-classroom options (e.g. after school clubs) were explored. That acceleration in math should be a “break in case of emergency” response is also the line offered by the National Council of Teachers in Math: tracking is morally indefensible, acceleration should be viewed with suspicion but can sometimes be appropriate.

In many ways, mainstream education is living in Bob Slavin’s world. He was a leading opponent of tracking, but was impressed by certain forms of ability grouping. He took the research on ability grouping that actually works (through assessment, frequent regrouping, and curricular modification) and used it to create a program for failing schools. He expresses suspicion about acceleration of gifted students in general, but agrees that at times it is a useful and necessary tool. If you broach the conversation about acceleration with your child’s teachers, you might hear some version of Bob Slavin’s take.

There is more to say about where this skepticism comes from. But it’s important to note that just because a student could be accelerated doesn’t always mean that they should. While some gifted students fit the profile we sketched above — frustrated with school, bored and underchallenged, and finding it hard to connect to peers — many equally capable students are happy in their school lives. (We heard some, but not many, happy stories from online commenters.) If a child is happy and successful without acceleration, they are likely to remain happy and successful regardless of whether they are accelerated, and if they don’t want to accelerate, it should not be forced on them. At least some of the suspicion towards acceleration comes from parents who inappropriately push schools to accelerate their happy, satisfied children.

Acceleration is also not the only option. There is much more to learn than is taught in regular courses. Even in a normal class, a well-designed curriculum or an experienced teacher can create “extensions” to the main activity, so that students who are ready for more have something valuable to engage with. Enhancement or exposure to new, similar topics can serve students as well. A student who has jumped ahead in arithmetic may be entranced by a glance at Pascal’s triangle and number theory. One who is fascinated by English might find similar joy in learning Spanish or Chinese. Both of these, alongside acceleration, follow a simple principle: if a child wants to learn more and is able to do so, let them learn more. Overall, the balance of evidence suggests that acceleration is a practical and resource-effective way to help gifted, underchallenged students flourish in schools.

Our favorite one-stop source for reading on acceleration: here.

4. Educational Goals in Conflict

Through acceleration, tutoring, or ability grouping, some kids could learn more. Why aren’t schools aggressively pursuing that? Shouldn’t they be working to teach kids as much as possible? Isn’t that what a school supposed to do? That educators are skeptical of ability grouping or acceleration can be maddening from the perspective of learning maximization: Why are schools leaving learning on the table?

Here’s something we don’t talk about nearly enough: schools are simply not in the learning-maximization business. It turns out that parents, taxpayers and politicians call on schools to perform many jobs. At times, there are trade-offs between the educational goals schools are asked to pursue, and educators are forced to make tough choices.

Historian David Labaree has one way of thinking about these conflicting educational goals, which he expands on at length in Someone Has to Fail. For Labaree, there are three competing educational goals that are responsible for creating system-wide tensions:

• democratic equality (“education as a mechanism for producing capable citizens”)
• social efficiency (“education as a mechanism for developing productive workers”)
• social mobility (“education as a way for individuals to reinforce or improve their social position”)

As Labaree tells it, these goals end up in tension all the time. A lot of things that seem like gross ineptitude or organizational dysfunction are really the result of the mutual exclusivity of these goals:

These educational goals represent the contradictions embedded in any liberal democracy, contradictions that cannot be resolved without removing either the society’s liberalism or its democracy … We ask it to promote social equality, but we want it to do so in a way that doesn’t threaten individual liberty or private interests. We ask it to promote individual opportunity, but we want it to do so in a way that doesn’t threaten the integrity of the nation or the inefficiency of the economy. As a result, the educational system is an abject failure in achieving any one of its primary social goals … The apparent dysfunctional outcomes of the school system, therefore, are not necessarily the result of bad planning, bad administration, or bad teaching; they are an expression of the contradictions in the liberal democratic mind.

Ability grouping and acceleration fit nicely within the tensions Labaree exposes. These learning-maximizing approaches could find support from those who see education as a national investment in our defense or economy. Of course, the strongest demand for acceleration in schools can come from parents, who want schools to give their children every possible opportunity to be upwardly mobile. (“We want to make sure they can go to a good college.”)

Those act as forces in favor of ability grouping and acceleration. But schools also know that they are held responsible for producing equitable outcomes for a citizenry that sees each other as equals. A program that raises achievement for top students without harming others has an appeal an economist could love, but within schools this can count as a problem.

The way this plays out in practice is that many schools are inundated with requests to accelerate a kid. Parents — especially financially well-off, well-connected parents — can typically find ways to apply pressure to schools in hopes of helping their children reach some level of distinction. They’ll sometimes do this even when it wouldn’t benefit a child’s education (it would be educationally inefficient), or when it would exacerbate inequality (by e.g. letting anyone with a rich, pushy parent take Algebra 1 early).

In short, from a school’s standpoint those are two problems with acceleration. First, parents will push for it even when it’s not academically or socially appropriate. Second, it can exacerbate inequalities. That could explain where the culture of skepticism within education comes from.

This is meant entirely in terms of explaining the dynamic. The way this plays out can be incredibly painful. Systems designed to moderate parental demand can keep a kid in a depressing and frustrating situation:

My older son wanted to move up to a more advanced math course for next year. He took two final exams for next year’s course in February and answered all but 1/2 of one question on each. So roughly 90% on both and his request to skip the course was denied. (source)

Districts sometimes have extensive policies that can be incredibly painful to navigate when trying to get a student who truly needs acceleration out of a bad classroom situation. We heard from one educator who had a very young student expressing suicidal ideations. It was all getting exacerbated by the classroom situation — the kid said he felt his teachers and peers hated him because he loved math. The parents and the educator tried to find a better classroom for the child, and were met with all the Labaree-ian layers of resistance. Off the record, the educator advised the parents to get out of dodge and into a local private school that would be more responsive to his needs.

A happy ending: the 4th Grader moved to a private school where he was placed in an 8th Grade Honors class. He likes math class now. He seems happier, he’s growing interested in street art and social justice work.

But without a doubt, there are some unhappy endings out there.

5. Personalization Software

[source: Larry Cuban]

“Ours is an age of science fiction,” Bryan Caplan writes in The Case Against Education. “Almost everyone in rich countries — and about half of the earth’s population — can access machines that answer virtually any question and teach virtually any subject … The Internet provides not just stream-of-consciousness enlightenment, but outstanding formal coursework.”

The dream of using the Internet to replace brick-and-mortar classrooms is a dream that is entirely in sync with the times. This is reflected in the enormous enthusiasm directed towards online learning and personalization software. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg have all invested heavily in personalization and teaching software. And the industry as a whole is flush with funding, raising some 8 billion dollars of venture capital in 2017, while reaching 17.7 billion in revenue.

Finally — a way out of the school system and its knot of compromises! If schools are institutions whose goals are in tension with learning-maximization… then let’s stay away from schools and their tensions and give the children the unfettered learning they want. Let’s create the ideal tutor as a piece of software.

This dream isn’t just in sync with our times — it has a long history. This history is particularly well-documented by historian Larry Cuban (author of Teachers and Machines and Tinkering Toward Utopia) and by Audrey Watters (she’s writing a book about it). Watters’ talk “The History of The Future of Education” is as good a representative as any of the major thesis: that the dream is larger than any particular piece of technology. Motion pictures, radio, television, each of these was at times promoted as an educational innovation, able one day to free students from lockstep movement through school and into a personalized education. From Thomas Edison to B.F. Skinner, tech advocates have long envisioned the future that (at least according to Caplan) we’re living in now.

Then again, tech advocates in the past also thought they were living in the age of personalized learning. In 1965, a classroom that used a program called Individually Prescribed Instruction was described this way:

Each pupil sets his own pace. He is listening to records and completing workbooks. When he has completed a unit of work, he is tested, the test is corrected immediately, and if he gets a grade of 85% or better he moves on. If not, the teacher offers a series of alternative activities to correct the weakness, including individual tutoring.

For comparison, here is the NYTimes in 2017, and the headline is A New Kind of Classroom:

Students work at their own pace through worksheets, online lessons and in small group discussions with teachers. They get frequent updates on skills they have learned and those they need to acquire.

The similarity between modern day and historical personalization rhetoric doesn’t settle the matter — in a lot of ways, clearly the Internet is different — but personalization software seems to have arrived at a lot of familiar, very human frustrations.

Anyone who has gone online to learn has, at some point, come face to face with this dilemma: On the internet, you can study almost all human knowledge, but usually you don’t. In a world with virtually every MIT course fully online for free, a world with Khan Academy and Coursera and countless other tools to aid learning, why has the heralded learning revolution not yet arrived?

In a way, the revolution has arrived — it just hasn’t improved things much. Rocketship Schools, a California charter using online learning for about half of its instruction, has had solid results. Lately, though, they’ve moved away from some of their bigger bets on personalization and rediscovered teachers, saying “We’ve seen success with models that get online learning into classrooms where the best teachers are.” School of One was a widely hyped high school model in NYC that was preparing to scale up its offerings… until a fuller picture of the results came in and it was pilloried. Online charter schools, meanwhile, seem to actively depress learning.

Part of the problem is that it’s hard to get solid research on the efficacy of various ed tech products. Many tools, particularly those sold directly to schools or used by online charters, are proprietary and stuck behind paywalls, selectively presenting their best data and limited demos. The ed tech sector in general seems to deliver mixed results to students.

Why is it so hard to make effective teaching software?

For one, teaching is complex. A good human teacher does a lot of complicated things — gets to know their students, responds to the class’ moods and needs, asks “just right” questions, monitors progress, clarifies in real time as a look of confusion dawns on the class, etc., etc. — and it’s simply hard to get a computer to do that.

Maybe, theoretically, a piece of software could be designed that does these things. But in practice, many software designers don’t even try. It’s easier and cheaper to make pedagogical compromises, such as providing instruction entirely through videos. Yes, there are some thoughtful tools made by groups like those at Explorable Explanations, such as this lesson on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. But building high-quality tools well-adapted for a digital environment is difficult and time-consuming, and for prospective designers, destinations like Google or Blizzard tend to be more glamorous than working with schools. In practice, humans currently have a lot of advantages over computers in teaching.

Even if we overcame all the design issues, though, would students be motivated to stick with the program? Studies of online charters point to student engagement as the core challenge. When you put a kid in front of a computer screen, they jump to game websites, YouTube, SlateStarCodex, Google Images — anything other than their assigned learning. Many educational games that try to fix this resort to the “chocolate covered broccoli” tactic, trying to put gamelike mechanics that have nothing to do with learning around increasingly elaborate worksheets.

To be fair, student engagement is also the core challenge of conventional schools. But that’s precisely what the much-maligned structures of school are attempting to confront. The intensely social environment helps children identify as students and internalize a set of social expectations that are supportive of learning. The law compels school attendance, and schools compel class attendance. .And, once a child is in the classroom, their interactions with actual, live human instructors can set high academic expectations that a child will genuinely strive to meet.

The conventional story is that school is incredibly demotivating, but compared to their online counterparts schools are shockingly good at motivation. MOOCs like those on Coursera have an average completion rate of 15 percent — public schools do much better than this. Popular language app Duolingo’s self-reported numbers from 2013 would put their language completion rate at somewhere around 1%. If all a user has to rely on is their daily whim to continue a course, the most focused and conscientious may succeed, but those are the ones who already do well in schools. That’s a big part of why people lock themselves into multi-year commitments full of careful carrots and sticks to get through the learning process. Writers such as Caplan think that people are revealing their true interests when they skip learning to fart around on the web, but we might as well see a commitment to attend school as equally revealing. People need social institutions to help do things we’d truly like to do. As such, even as computers become better teachers, the motivational advantage of schools seems likely to persist.

How might tech-based learning tools address these factors, so they might stand a chance at holding students’ attention long enough to teach them? Art of Problem Solving, an organization promoting advanced math opportunities to children, makes a good case study. It’s found a balance worth examining. First, it provides accessible gamelike online tools that center on a careful sequence of thought-provoking problems. Second, it offers scheduled online classes with the promise of a fast pace, challenging content, and a peer group of similarly passionate students taught by subject matter experts. The online classes are more expensive offerings, but they preserve the human touch.

What does that balance mean for students? If they’re in the conscientious, self-motivated crowd that wants to learn everything yesterday, they can gorge themselves on software designed to be compelling. No barriers keep them from progressing. Software can always point to a next step, a harder problem. On the other hand, if they want to lock a motivational structure around themselves and keep the social benefits of school in a more challenging setting, they can.

Not every successful tool need look identical, but that core idea is worth repeating: software should enable the passion and self-pacing of eager kids, but should not rely on that to replace the power of social, human motivational structures. Yes, sometimes even the same structures used in “regular” schools.

Online learning, then, fits squarely within the history of attempts to automate teaching. Over and again we make the same mistakes and forget the lessons of history: that teaching is more complex than our machines have ever been, that motivation is largely social, and that schools will have a hard time distinguishing between altrustic designers and opportunistic profit-seekers.

For those in the market for online learning there are a lot of mediocre tools available, and many truly bad ones. Right now, there’s nothing that seems ready to serve as a full-on replacement for school without consistent, careful human guidance.

That said, depending on your passions, there are some excellent resources for learning out there. Especially if a student has a caring mentor or a passionate peer group, they can learn a lot online. As educators and designers create more tools that respect both the power and limitations of machines, that potential can grow. But it’s not quite science fiction.

Our algorithm has determined that you should watch the following two videos: here and here to balance realism and idealism

6. Practical Advice

Education is complex and resists easy generalizations. That said, here are some generalizations.

On navigating school for your child:

• The brightest students do not thrive equally in every setting. Even the best students achieve more with teachers than on their own. Unless tutoring or some other private arrangement is possible, this means that a school is the best place to be for learning.
• But school right now doesn’t work for all kids. One fix: if a child wants to be accelerated and seems academically prepared for it, acceleration will usually help them.
• Most schools aren’t in the business of maximizing learning for every student, and in particular they tend to be skeptical of acceleration.
• Therefore: If your kid needs more than what school is offering, be prepared to be a nudge.
• But if you think your kid needs to be challenged more and your kid is perfectly happy in school, try really hard not to be a nudge.
• Don’t fight to move your child to a class that covers the exact same material at the exact same pace but has the word “Honors” next to it. That sort of ability grouping makes no educational difference.
• Prioritize free, open online tools. Don’t expect online tools to do the work for you or your child. Expect more distraction and less progress if online learning time is unstructured or unsupervised.

For educators:

• If you are an elementary teacher or administrator and your school is looking to try new things, consider cross-grade ability grouping by subject, especially in math and reading.
• Gifted kids are usually not equally talented in all fields. Consider options to accelerate to different levels in each subject based on demonstrated skill in that subject.
• A lot comes easily to smart kids, and sometimes they never get the chance to learn to struggle. Find something they think is hard, academic or not, so they are able to handle more important challenges later.
• If a child is bored in your class and knows the material, they probably shouldn’t be in your class.

For tech designers and users:

• If you’re making online tools, make the learning the most interesting part of them. Don’t rely on chocolate-covered broccoli or assume that just presenting the material is enough. Take the problem of motivation seriously.
• Look for passionate groups with robust communities, whether online or offline. Don’t overlook the social aspect of learning.

And for advocates of educational reform, in general:

• People almost only talk about educational efficacy. But don’t be fooled — educational debates are only sometimes about what works, and frequently about what we value.

One last thing: if you’re an educator or a parent or just somebody who spends time around children, take their feelings seriously, OK? If a kid is miserable, that’s absolutely a problem that has to be solved, no matter what district policy happens to be.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to /u/Reddit4Play from reddit, JohnBuridan from the SSC community, blogger Education Realist, and many others who read drafts and offered ideas along the way.