The Masks of the Political God: A New Appreciation of the Role of Religiously Oriented Parties in Democratic Systems

This paper is based on the conclusions of the book The Masks of the Political God. Religion and Political Parties in Contemporary Democracies, forthcoming with ECPR Press/Rowman & Littlefield. The book is based on the theoretical points already put forward in Ozzano and Cavatorta (2013) and Ozzano (2013). Particularly, it rejects the binary notion of religious vs. secular party to adopt the more nuanced concept of “religiously oriented party”, and singles out five different types of religiously oriented parties (with different ideological and organizational features): the conservative, the progressive, the nationalist, the fundamentalist, and the camp types. Carrying out an in depth analysis of five cases (India, Israel, Italy, Turkey, and the US) over the span of forty years (1980-2019), the book leads to some significant theoretical conclusions about the role of religiously oriented parties in contemporary democracies. In relation to the relation between religion and democratization, it disproves any essentialist interpretation of the role of faiths, by showing that the same religious tradition is associated, in multi-vocal perspective (Stepan 2000) to different types of political parties, with very diverse attitudes towards democracy and pluralism. In relation to processes of party change, it puts into question the “moderation by inclusion” thesis, by showing that inclusion of extremist parties in democratic systems, especially when they show a nationalist orientation, is rarely conducive to moderation. On the contrary, their inclusion can favour processes of polarization of the whole political system they are included in. Finally, more broadly, the book highlight the increasing association of religion to right-wing and nationalist political positions, as an identity marker in civilizational perspective (a process connected to the politicization of a new cleavage between libertarian-universalistic and traditionalist-communitarian worldviews [Bornschier 2010], rather than the “traditional” religious cleavage), which has become quite evident with the recent global upsurge of right-wing populist parties and leaders. Nevertheless, the relation between this process and secularization is not clear, since in some cases right-wing parties – despite their obvious religious orientation – seem to have a secularizing effect, at least in terms of detachment from religious institution and loss of importance of religious practice in people’s daily life.