Category Archives: Section Journal: Politics and Religion

Religious Regulation as Foreign Policy: Morocco’s Islamic Diplomacy in West Africa

Section Journal | Volume 11, Issue 1 | March 2018 , pp. 1-26

Religious Regulation as Foreign Policy: Morocco’s Islamic Diplomacy in West Africa
Ann Marie Wainscott

Abstract
Studies of religious regulation tend to examine how states manage the domestic religious market. This article extends this research program by analyzing a state that regulates the religious markets of foreign countries. The Moroccan case demonstrates the circumstances under which a religious bureaucracy designed to manage domestic religion can be turned outward, and employed to achieve foreign policy goals. Unlike other cases of foreign religious regulation, however, Morocco’s efforts have been welcomed at the same time that the policy advanced Morocco’s interests. What explains the success of Morocco’s religious foreign policy? Building on interviews with religious elites from a recipient country, this article argues that Moroccan religious foreign policy has been successful because it was perceived as having historical and cultural legitimacy, it built on pre-existing institutions, and it was paired with renewed economic collaboration, three factors that have broader theoretical relevance to the study of religious foreign policies.

Section Journal – November 20, 2017

Book Reviews

A Matter of Discretion: The Politics of Catholic Priests in the United States and Ireland.

By Brian R. Calfano, Melissa R. Michelson , and Elizabeth A. Oldmixon. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Laura S. Hussey


Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal, and the Philippines.

By David T. Buckley. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Nukhet A. Sandal

Press Release – Section Journal – Incoming Editors, New Plans

Incoming Editors for Politics and Religion Share New Plans for Journal

The APSA and the Organized Section on Religion and Politics announced new editors for the journal, Politics and Religion.

Elizabeth A. Oldmixon, University of North Texas, will serve as lead editor.

Mehmet Gurses, Florida Atlantic University, and Nicholas Tampio, Fordham University, will serve as editors.

Their five-year editorial term commenced January 2017.

“To raise the profile of religion and politics scholarship in the discipline, we encourage the timely publication of accessible yet rigorous scholarship,” explains Oldmixon. “In particular, the journal will now accept the submission of shorter, problem-driven manuscripts of approximately 4,500 words, in addition to the longer form pieces currently published in the journal. These would not be research notes, per se, as we would have an expectation of theoretically informed work, but a premium would be placed on strong, parsimonious writing.”

The editors also plan to develop special issues on timely topics such as the religion and the carceral state or religion and human rights."

Read much more here.

Ted Jelen Award

Ted Jelen Award 2016

This prize is awarded to the best article published in the section’s journal Politics and Religion. The winner of the award is selected by the journal’s editors.

Committee:

Prof Paul A. Djupe
Denison University, USA

Prof Angelia R. Wilson
University of Manchester, UK

Section Journal: Letter from the New Editorial team

E_oldmixon
January 1, 2017
Elizabeth Oldmixon

Dear colleagues,

Happy New Year! We are excited to start our editorial term at Politics and Religion, and we thank you for entrusting us with this responsibility. Over the next few days, the journal’s Cambridge homepage will reflect several new developments. We would like to bring a few of these to your attention.

First, you can reach us at PandRJournal@unt.edu.

Second, in addition to articles, Politics and Religion will now accept notes. These are meant to be problem-driven research manuscripts that address timely political issues, replicate existing research, and/or report null findings. Notes should be about 4,500 words in length, including notes and references, but not tables and figures.

Third, we have opted not to sign the JETS statement on Data Access & Research Transparency (DA-RT) at this time. This is something we will continue to weigh moving forward. We have, however, adopted the following policy in this area:

“The Editors affirm the importance of data transparency in evidence-based political science research. Authors are required to clearly specify their analytical techniques and outside sources of funding and encouraged to make their data publically available at the time of publication. The Editors understand, however, that the latter may not be possible or ethical, to the degree that data are proprietary, sensitive, or newly collected. Authors using publically available data should provide a DOI citation where possible.”

Fourth, the journal has a new Editorial Board. We are delighted and grateful that these fine scholars agreed to serve. They are as follows.

Bethany Albertson, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Victor Asal, University at Albany, SUNY, USA
Tongdong Bai, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
David Bosworth, Catholic University of America, USA
R. Khari Brown, Wayne State University, USA
David Campbell, University of Notre Dame, USA
Jocelyne Cesari, University of Birmingham, UK
Michael Correa-Jones, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Daniel Dreisbach, American University, USA
Michael D. Driessen, John Cabot University, Italy
Amanda Friesen, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
Farah Godrej, University of California-Riverside, USA
Cengiz Gunes, The Open University, UK
Ekrem Karakoc, Binghamton University, SUNY, USA
Katherine Knutson, Gustavus Adolphus College, USA
Geoffrey C. Layman, University of Notre Dame, USA
Andrew F. March, Yale University, USA
Ani Sarkissian, Michigan State University, USA
Amy Erica Smith, Iowa State University, USA
Anand Edward Sokhey, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Lavinia Stan, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada
Isak Svensson, Uppsala University, Sweden
Sultan Tepe, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Lars Tønder, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Finally, we thank Angie and Paul for their service as editors. We will try to live up to the high bar they set over the last five years—no easy task!

Best wishes for the New Year.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth A. Oldmixon, Editor-in-Chief
Mehmet Gurses and Nicholas Tampio, Editors

Politics and Religion
——————————
Elizabeth A. Oldmixon
University of North Texas
Denton TX