Worlds of welfare within the Muslim world : a system approach to the analysis of welfare arrangements in Muslim societies

Although there have been efforts to illustrate elements of a potential ‘Islamic welfare state’, there is no academic work dedicated to developing a typology of welfare regimes in Muslim majority countries. The present research is starting with identifying existing patterns of welfare provision among Muslim societies by using available global indicators with collected valid data as a starting point. The main purpose of the research is to explore if there is a unified and homogenous pattern of welfare system within the so-called Muslim World or there are multiple and diverse worlds of welfare provision. Hierarchical and k-means cluster analysis (KCA) were employed to work out a typology of welfare systems among the Muslim majority countries. A welfare system approach was used to select variables for data gathering and analysis. While input, process, output and outcome variables were used to develop a typology of welfare systems in countries under study, context variables were utilized to compare the policy environments which have impacts on the functioning of a welfare system. Findings of the present research showed that a vast diversity of experiences could be witnessed among Muslim majority countries with regard to various aspects of the welfare system. A combination of contextual features with input, output and outcome attributes forms seven types of welfare arrangements: The ‘Rentier social non-democracy system’, the ‘Equality-oriented proto-welfare system’, the ‘Less efficient Proto-welfare system’, the ‘Fragile informal welfare system’, the ‘Failing informal welfare system’, the ‘Failing informal materially-equal system’, and the ‘Failed ill-fare system’. The paper concludes with discussing the main features of these welfare systems and comparing them with existing typologies in the literature as well as some implications for future research in this field.