Includes bibliographical references and index.

Democracy -- Democracy and Its Evolution -- Democracy and Its Prerequisites -- Economic Development and Democracy -- Democracy and Economic Inequality -- Culture and Democracy -- Sociopolitical Variables and Democracy -- Religion and Democracy -- The Role of Ideology -- Islam and Democracy: Some Misconceptions -- Theories and Measures of Democractization -- Society-State Relations and Democratization -- External Factors -- Measures for the Explanatory Variables in This Study -- Democracy and The Quality of Human Development -- Democracy and the Human Development Index (HDI) -- Democracy and Economic Inequality or Poverty (AP) -- Quality of Development and Poverty -- Organizational Unity of Labor (OUL) -- State-Society Power Resources -- State Power -- State-Society Relations -- Measures of State Power -- Measures of Society-State Power Relations -- Measures of Democratization in this Study -- Islam, Civil Society, and Democracy -- Current Studies of Islam in Politics: A Critique -- Why Resurgent Islam? -- Ideological Currents in Islam -- Islam in Power -- Current Ideological Struggle Within Islam -- Islam and the Debate on Civil Society -- The Imperative of Institutionalized Participation for Democracy -- Islam in Electoral Politics -- Conclusion: Prospects for Democratization -- Policy Implications for Islamic Leaders -- Empirical Analysis and Alternative Explanations of Democratization -- Islam and Empirical Findings of Previous Studies -- Alternative Hypotheses: GNP Per Capita, and Knowledge Distribution -- The Variables and Their Correlations -- Should-Be Democracies (Predicted Scores Between 2.3 and 2.9) -- The Near-Democracies in Less-Developed Countries -- More-Plausible Near-Democracies (Predicted Scores Between 3.0 and 3.9) -- Less-Plausible Potential Near-Democracies (Predicted Scores Between 4.1 and 4.7) -- Least-Plausible Potential-Democracies (Predicted Scores Between 5.1 and 5.8) -- Measures of Organizational Unity of Labor in Selected Less-Developed Countries, Circa 1987 -- Measures of Organizational Unity of Labor in Selected Less-Developed Countries, Circa 1992 -- Central Government Expenditures as Percentage of GNP for Selected Years (Average) -- Selected Less-Developed Countries' Vital Statistics.