This study explores the prospects for the emergence of democratic regimes in developing countries in general and in Muslim countries in particular. This question has both intellectual and policy relevance for the 1990s and beyond. The optimistic view about the future of democracy has been challenged by Samuel Huntington who sees the status of democracy in the world in 1984 as not very different from what it was about ten years earlier. Huntington further claims that among the Islamic countries, "particularly those in the Middles East, the prospects for democratic development seem low." Huntington attributes this to the recent Islamic revivalism, particularly Shi'ah fundamentalism, and the poverty of many of the Muslim countries. This study will test and reject the thesis that Islam is directly responsible for the absence of democracy in the Muslim countries. A model to measure the society-state power index is proposed, with a control for Islam, to observe whether Islam plays a neutral role in the process of democratization or it is a force hindering the inauguration of democracy in Muslim countries. Support for a structural explanation of democratization is found. The failure by the developing countries to inaugurate democracy is due to the uneven distribution of socioeconomic and political power resources. The cultural explanations, e.g. the role of religion, are thus rejected. A total of 87 countries are included in a cross national regression analysis, consisting of 31 Muslim countries, 17 newly inaugurated democracies, and 39 other developing countries. The period under investigation covers 1970 through 1988. This study also has implications for the U.S. and other developed Western countries that are concerned with the persistence of authoritarianism in the developing countries. Some policy proposals are offered as to help establish democracy in developing countries.

Existing literature on foreign aid does not indicate what type of political regime is best to achieve human development outcomes or use aid funds more efficiently. I contend that political leaders of different regime types have personal incentives that motivate them to utilize foreign aid to reflect their interests in providing more or less basic social services for their citizens. Using a data set of 126 aid-recipient countries between the years of 1990 and 2007, I employ fixed effects estimation to test the model. The overall results of this research indicate that foreign aid and democratic institutionalization have a positive effect on total enrollment in primary education, while political regime types show little difference from one another in providing public health and education for their citizens.