Religion and the Study of Political Institutions

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The panel focuses on how religious organizations, doctrines, and beliefs interact with political institutions. The papers on the panel focus on a variety of theoretically significant questions: a. the conditions under which parties with a secularizing agenda gain access to political power; b. the variation in the extent to which modern democratic states regulate religious attire and practises; c. the relationship between top-down state control of religion and de-secularization; and d. the impact of religious doctrine on how political scientists themselves approach religion and politics. The papers included in the panel approach these questions using a variety of methodological approaches including fieldwork, comparative case studies, interpretive methods, and statistical analysis. Empirically, the studies draw from geographical contexts ranging from Western Europe, the Middle East, and the US.

Collectively, the papers provide important insights into processes of institutional secularization (or de-secularization), modern state formation, the relationship between democracy and religious freedom, and the study of religion and politics in general. The findings of the papers are also highly relevant for our understanding of the nexus between religion and populism. The papers explore this theme by focusing on how conservative parties use religious institutions to recruit and maintain popular support (Sultan Tepe’s paper), by analysing the conditions under which secularizing parties effectively challenge the popular base of conservative/religious parties (Zeynep Bulutgil’s paper), and by studying when secular governments use restrictions on religion for populistic reasons (Emma Rosenberg and Mike Hoffman’s paper). Furthermore, Jeremy Menchik’s piece provides the historical and ideational context for the other papers by showing how popular assumptions about and approaches to the study of religion and politics are still under the influence of early 20th century Protestant-inspired theories.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 33: Religion and Politics

Individual Presentations

• When do Secularizing Parties Succeed? Cross-national and Historical Analysis - H. Zeynep Bulutgil, University College London

• Explaining Variation in European Veil Bans - Emma Rosenberg, University of Notre Dame; Michael Thomas Hoffman, University of Notre Dame

• The Spirit of/and Political Science - Jeremy Menchik, Boston University

• Contestant to Coercive Religious Groups: Transformation of Islam and Secularism - Sultan Tepe, University of Illinois at Chicago

Chair

• Giovanni Capoccia University of Oxford

Discussants

• Nathan J Brown George Washington University

• David Art Tufts University