Forty Years of Change: Religion and the Third Wave of Democracy

Abstract

The question of how religious actors affect democratisation has been a controversial issue for decades. Scholars have long stressed the importance of political culture in explaining success or failure of democratisation, for example, after World War II in West Germany, Italy and Japan. In addition, over the last few decades, various religious traditions – for example, Roman Catholicism in Italy and Christian Democracy in West Germany – were said to be important components in the (re)making of a country’s political culture after totalitarian regimes. During the ‘third wave of democracy’ (mid-1970s–late-1990s), much scholarly attention was paid to the role of religion in democratisation. Add to this widespread growth of Islamist movements throughout the Muslim world, electoral successes for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in India, and substantial political influence over time for various ‘Jewish fundamentalist’ political parties in Israel, and we have clear and sustained evidence of religion’s recent democratic importance in the context of the 'third wave of democracy'. This panel welcomes papers that seek to assess the impact on democratisation of religious actors during and after the third wave of democracy. The panel would usefully comprise both theoretical papers addressing this issue, as well as single-country and comparative case studies. The overall intention is to shed light on the following question: To what extent is 'religion' a pro- or anti-democratic force in the modern world?

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