Reformist Islam and the rise of a political third model in the Maldives: Elite discourses and societal viewpoints

This thesis examines Islam's relationship to democracy in the Maldives. In 2009, the country made a transition to an 'electoral democracy,' which institutionalised Islam and denied certain individual rights, including religious freedom. Using a discursive institutionalist approach, the thesis argues that the liberal and illiberal strains internal to modern nation-building projects since the 1930s by political actors with reformist Islamic (as opposed to Islamist) orientations were more decisive for this political 'third model'. Nevertheless, a Q study that maps societal viewpoints on Islam's relationship to democracy shows there is neither one fixed political model nor one fixed political language among ordinary people.