Religion and Politics in Australia

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics in Australia has in the past been conditioned by the peculiarities of Australian history. Traditionally religion was related to issues of moral reformation and sectarianism. Changes in Australia over the past forty years have changed this relationship as the public role of religion has waned. In recent times there has been somewhat of a religious comeback in Australian public life. This has been related to a new style of Christian politics, the presence of two strong Church leaders, Cardinal George Pell and Archbishop Peter Jensen, the presence of Islam, the election of a committed Christian Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and the continuing importance of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) as a civil religion.     

Institutionalization of Islam in Secular Europe: The Influence of State–Religion Relations on Anti‐Muslim Attitudes

This study examines church–state relations in Europe, and analyzes their influence on anti‐immigrant attitudes. The literature explains this relationship primarily with religious demographics, or state privileges for the majority faith. Alternately, this study focuses on the status of the majority religion. It argues that, in countries with a national church, citizens are more likely to consider the institutionalization of a new religion to be occurring at the expense of the national heritage, and react negatively. To test that hypothesis, the study focuses on Muslim immigrants in Europe, and builds an index that gauges the extent to which European states institutionalize Islam. Then, employing multilevel regression analysis, it investigates how the institutionalization of Islam influences anti‐Muslim prejudice in different contexts of church–state regimes. Individual‐level data come from the latest wave of the European Values Study, and cover 31 countries. Findings indicate that, in European countries with a national church, institutionalization of Islam increases anti‐Muslim prejudice. In countries without a national church, however, institutionalization leads to tolerance. These results confirm the continuing relevance of religion on the national level in Europe, despite the decline in individual religiosity.     

Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States

In this paper, I apply Mettler's concept of the “submerged state” to aid for children at private schools in the United States, including education vouchers, in‐kind aid, and property tax exemptions. All aid policies are “submerged” in that they help private organizations take on state functions but some are more submerged than others. Theoretically, this paper distinguishes between subcategories of submergence. Using policy data from 50 states and an original database of court challenges between 1912 and 2015, I employ probit regression with sample selection to evaluate the effect of submergence on successful court challenge. I find that more submerged policies are less likely to be successfully challenged than less submerged policies. Submerged policy design enables supporters to avoid legal as well as political challenge.     

The transatlantic Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the nineteenth century

Since the 16th century, African Muslims figured prominently among the slave population of the Americas. While the number of Muslims pulled into the trade has always been a matter of speculation, lists of Africans rescued from slave ships provide us with some clues about the size and direction of the Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the 19th century. Based on an analysis of tens of thousands of names recorded in these lists, this essay argues that the majority of Muslim captives leaving Africa departed from Upper Guinea and suggests that Cuba was the center of the forced Muslim diaspora in the Americas. It traces the transatlantic links that connected particular regions of embarkation in Africa to their counterparts in Latin America and considers the implications of those connections for religious and cultural change within 19th-century slave populations. The essay challenges in important ways the colonial/postcolonial divide in Latin American history and uses Islam to pose important questions about the dynamics of social change across slave societies.     

In the Shade of the Oaks of Mamre: Hospitality as a Framework for Political Engagement between Christians and Muslims

Abstract

This essay is the initial sketch of a theological framework for political dialogue based on traditions of hospitality. This essay is intended to further a normative commitment to pluralism by creating a space for Christians and Muslims to engage in political dialogue on issues of governance. Using the story of Abraham and the three strangers, the essay analyzes hospitality as a possible model for interreligious political dialogue. The essay follows the narrative of the story recounted in Genesis 18 and Surah 51 of the Qur'an focusing on Abraham's greeting of the strangers as expressing a "duty of hospitality"; the "sharing of a meal" as an act of mutual vulnerability; and the gift of Isaac as exemplary of hospitality's possibility for grace and transformation. The goal is to show that a shared theological tradition could be the basis for political dialogue.     

Mann and Men in a Medieval State: The Geographies of Power in the Middle Ages

The state-making process represented a major institutional change, as societies moved from being organized according to notions of kinship to being ordered around the power exercised by kings over defined territories. The paper focuses on the medieval state-making process, primarily in a Welsh context; building on Michael Mann's notion of power networks, it is suggested that the mapping of the geographies of power within a society may offer a powerful tool for demonstrating the tentative and gradual nature of this process. Such a methodology also stresses the importance of geography in such a major change in human history.     

War and Diplomacy in the Middle East

Book reviewed in this article: The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992, James A. Baker, III, with Thomas M. DeFrank The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait: Saddam Hussein, his state and International Power Politics, Mussallam Ali Musallam     

Tracking democracies: Italy and Japan in historical perspective

Abstract

The Italian and Japanese roads toward democracy have been paved by external forces, by the timing of economic development, by ‘great’ leaders and by such factors as institutions, class structure, geography and even by accident. In finding a pair of countries where so much is similar, and yet where fundamental differences penist, comparativists have fertile ground in which to look for key factors in political (and democratic) change. This article, in short, takes aim at illuminating these factors by distinguishing between the structural and cultural conditions within which democratic tracks were laid in Japanese and Italian history. It concludes that a closer examination of leadership and agency is necessary to explain more fully democratic development in Italy and Japan.     

Power and Security Issues in the Middle East

Book reviewed in this article: Middle Eastern Security: Prospects for an Arms Control Regime, Efraim Inbar and Shmuel Sandler, editors The Quest for Hegemony in the Arab World: The Struggle over the Baghdad Pact, Elie Podeh     

Punctuated Equilibria and Budgets in the American States

In this article, we examine long-term state budget trends to find evidence of punctuated equilibrium. We use the American states as a broad set of institutional variation with which to examine the nature of policy change through the lens of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium theories of policymaking. The strength of this article is its sensitivity of variations in policy outcomes across time (18 years), across space (50 state institutions), and across issue space (10 budget categories). This research advances the characterization of policy outcomes by employing a quantitative measure that is both less sensitive to outliers and one that characterizes budget distributions on a simple numeric scale. Our general findings are: (i) state budget categories are interdependent; (ii) state budgets are generally punctuated; but (iii) to varying degrees: Thus, considerable stability (indicated by tall peaks) and punctuations (represented by fat tails) are a central feature of policy outcomes in the American states. This result confirms the logic of punctuated equilibrium theory, but raises future questions about the impact specific variations in institutional costs have on policymaking across the 50 states.     

抗战胜利前后中间党派对民主的诠释：以经济民主为中心

加世纪40年代,中间党派及自由知识分子为反对国民党垄断国家资源的一党专政体制,提出了融政治民主、经济民主、教育民主、国际民主于一炉的社会民主主义理论。这种民主观试图扩大民主的范围,其目标是社会方方面面皆民主化,以保障人权和实现社会正义,体现了超时代的理想主义色彩。中间党派对社会民主主义的颂扬,具有反抗国民党专制统治的进步意义,是近代中国民主宪政运动史留给后人的一笔精神财富。