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The seminar module offers a more extensive and more thorough analysis of a topic from within political science. To this end, the seminar module provides an overview and a critical discussion of the literature and the issues relevant for the topic of the seminar.
The objectives for this module are:
Among the competences to be achieved for the student in this module are:
This seminar is relevant for those students who wish to understand why and how religion is such an important factor in politics in some countries, but less so in others and why, in spite of secularization, the religious factor is not disappearing, but, on the contrary, regaining political significance.
How does religion determine political attitudes? Does religion foster or hamper democratization? Do different religions influence public policies differently? Why are in some countries abortion and euthanasia such hot issues? Is Islam compatible with democracy? Why do political parties form on the basis of religion? Why does religious fanaticism so often lead to political violence and terrorism? Are you intrigued and/or bothered by such questions? Then this seminar is for you.
The idea that religion in politics is a thing of the past is nowadays difficult to maintain, if it ever was. And political science has rediscovered religion as an important factor in politics. One major reason is obviously that in recent times religious politics has manifested itself again clearly, loudly, and spectacularly in many domestic and international contexts. This poses a great puzzle, particularly to those mainstream approaches that are premised on the conviction that the progressive secularization of politics and society is eroding if not completely eradicating any role for religion in politics. Why did this not happen? And what is happening with religion in politics? These are the two overarching questions of the seminar.
Religion is capable of inspiring radical and extremist politics, all the way up to political violence and horrifying terrorism. Although it has always been impossible to deny how prominent a role religion plays in American politics, the increasing political influence of Christian fundamentalism under Bush and the conspicuous reference to the Christian faith under Obama has redirected attention again to the religious factor in American politics.
In the West-European context, too, attention for faith and political power is an analytical necessity. Christian democracy continues to be relevant in many countries on the Continent. Religion continues to be relevant for political attitudes and institutions. The new religious pluralism, due to among other things the growing presence and importance of Islam in Western Europe, poses serious challenges to the working of democracy and tolerance. New religious parties have emerged since the 1970s and gained strength since then. There are an increasing number of conflicts of high intensity around issues that trigger religious sentiments and that have the propensity to unbalance extant state-church settlements. And last but not least, there is the recent arrival of populist parties that fiercely promote an explicitly anti-Islam agenda. These parties question the freedom of religion, upset various other accommodating accords between religion and politics, and seem to be contributing to a more general re-politicization of religion in society.
In the meantime, political scientists are uncovering (or remembering again) various other facts: the ‘great separation' between political philosophy and theology, which characterizes the West and underpins our understanding of politics as exclusively dealing with human rather than divine affairs, has not been so absolute after all; the ‘twin tolerations', where democratically elected governments are free from interference by religious authorities, and religious organizations in civil and political society are free from state intrusion, may have been a crucial condition for democracy, but have never been implemented to the full; and the separation of church and state has been more an aspiration than a practice in many a constitutional reality.
This seminar starts from the contention that the secularization paradigm, although not entirely irrelevant, has underestimated the vitality of the religious factor in politics, has promoted a one-sided view of the process that failed to appreciate the continuing impact of religion in secular politics, and miscalculated the potential for religious revivals and for what sociologists of religion have come to term the ‘desecularization' of the world.
Comparative Politics/Sociology
Of the nine seminars the student has to pass as part of the MA degree, at least six seminar modules have to be in political science.
Kees van Kersbergen
The assessment method is home assignment.
External examiner/Graded marking.
The seminar module requires active participation of students. At the beginning of the seminar module the lecturer and the students agree on specific "activity requirements" that the students have to fulfill.
This is a seminar with (inter-)active participation (student presentations, discussion).
The module compendium consists of about 1,200 pages.
Concerning the home assignment the student agrees with the lecturer the reading which is relevant for the research question of the home assignment. The reading forms part of the 1,200 pages which students have to read for each seminar module.
(Preliminary list only, to be adjusted)
Altinordu, A. 2008 ‘The Politicization of Religion: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparison.' Presented at the American Sociological Association annual conference.
Anderson, J. 2004. ‘Does God Matter, and If So whose God? Religion and Democratization.' Democratization 11(4): 192-217.
Banchoff, T. 2007. Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism . New York: Oxford University Press.
Berger, P. 1999. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Brooks, C. and J. Manza 2004. ‘A Great Divide? Religion and Political Change in U.S. National Elections, 1972-2000.' The Sociological Quarterly 45(3): 421-50.
Bruce, S. 2004. ‘Did Protestantism Create Democracy?' Democratization 11 (4): 3-20.
Bruce, S. 2011 (if it appears in time). Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Casanova, J. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Causey, C., D. Koski-Karell and S. Pfaff 2010. ‘Religion and Comparative Political Sociology'. Sociology Compass 4 (6): 365-80.
Ertman, T. 2009. ‘Western European Party Systems and the Religious Cleavage.' In Religion, Class Coalitions and Welfare State Regimes , ed. K. van Kersbergen and P. Manow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 39-55.
Fish, M. S. 2002. ‘Islam and Authoritarianism.' World Politics 55 (1): 4-37.
Gill, A. 2001. ‘Religion in Comparative Politics.' Annual Review of Political Science 4: 117-38.
Juergensmeyer, M. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God . Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press.
Kalyvas, S.N. and K. van Kersbergen 2010. ‘Christian Democracy.' Annual Review of Political Science 13: 183-209.
Norris, P. and R. Inglehart 2002. ‘Islamic Culture and Democracy: Testing the ‘Clash of Civilizations' Thesis.' Comparative Sociology 1(34): 235-63.
Norris, P. and R. Inglehart 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pfaff, S. and A. Gill 2006. ‘Will a Million Muslims March? Muslim Interest Organizations and Political Integration in Europe.' Comparative Political Studies 39 (7): 803-28.
Van Kersbergen, K. and P. Manow. 2009. Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wuthnow, R. 2004. ‘The Religious Factor Revisited.' Sociological Theory 22 (2): 203-18.
