Religion and Political Parties in Contemporary Democracies I

Abstract

The role of religion in contemporary democracies has been for decades neglected by mainstream political science. Although in the 2000s and 2010s many authoritative works have started to cast light on this field, the state of the art of specific studies on the role of religion in political parties is however still not satisfactory. This is mainly because works on this subject have often focused on the category of religious party, which does not fully account for the role of the religious factor in parties which cannot be labelled as ‘religious’ as a whole. This paper aims at going beyond this deadlock by looking at the role of religion not only in ‘religious’ parties, but also in officially secular parties (e.g.: conservative, nationalist, progressive, etc.) which however have some kind of religious orientation, in terms of values, connections to religious institutions and movements, and/or religious orientation of sizeable sectors of their social base. This orientation of the panel also meets the broader aims of the conference section on “Revisiting Religion and Politics Research”, in terms of questioning the state of the art of the literature on religion and parties, too focused on the concept of ‘religious party’, and proposing alternative paths and methodologies for research on this sub-field. Both theoretical contributions, as well as comparative works and in-depth single case studies (on a single political party or a national case) are welcome.