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Hello Iza:

I'm a member of the R&P organized section with APSA and I'll be attending the Midwest this weekend. I have assembled what I think it an interesting panel/roundtable on the impact of religion in the 2012 elections.

I was hoping maybe to publicize our roundtable, which features data used by the Public Religion Research Institute as well as the president of PRRI, to folks in the religion and politics world in hopes of boosting audience participation. Is there a list serv of some sort that I could have access to do to this?

Thanks!

Melissa

Dr. Melissa Deckman
Chair and Professor of Political Science
Louis L. Goldstein Professor of Public Affairs
Washington College

The WPSA is planning its 2013 Annual Meeting scheduled for March 28-30, 2013, at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, California.

Information regarding the program and additional WPSA news is found here. Please note that the deadline for submission of participation forms is September 17, 2012. The forms will be available in early June for submission.

Of possible interest to Religion & Politics Section members:

Section 15: Politics and History

Section Chairs:

Daniel HoSang
University of Oregon
dhosang@uoregon.edu

and

Joe Lowndes
University of Oregon
jlowndes@uoregon.edu‎

The section welcomes proposals for papers or panels covering the broad scope of the study of politics, policy and institutions using historical perspectives to address issue areas of contemporary concern. In particular, the section encourages submissions from scholars whose work focuses on developmental themes related to major political processes including institutional reform and policy change and concepts, such as democratization, citizenship, political representation, and political parties. We especially encourage research that locates American political development in comparative and historical frameworks and that addresses the intersection of major group identities, such as race, class, gender, and religion.

Review of International Studies, April 2012, Vol. 38, Issue 02

by MONA KANWAL SHEIKH

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing subfield of research on religion and International Relations (IR) by discussing ways to take substantial and sui generis aspects of religion into account. It is argued that IR scholars need more critical methodological and conceptual reflection on how to integrate religion in order to navigate between two typical analytical positions: either focusing on the instrumental relevance of religion only or treating religion as an unchangeable meta-category and delinking it from its practitioners or context. The article first discusses why there is a need to be attentive to distinctive aspects of religion and then moves on to scrutinise three IR-relevant pathways to include these aspects of religion in analysis, namely religion as belief community, religion as power, and religion as speech act. It appears that future research along these lines can contribute significantly to the way IR scholars habitually think about key issues such as parameters of behaviour, standards of legitimacy, and the dynamics of conflicts.

See Journal page here.

Escape From Machiavellianism? Thomist Themes in Twentieth Century Political Realism,
by Daniel Edward Young

Abstract

Political realism is often seen as vulnerable to the “Machiavellian temptation,” that is, to the bracketing out of moral principles in the conduct of statecraft. In this article, I explore the use of Thomist themes in the writings of Martin Wight (1913–1972), a seminal figure of the so-called English School of international relations theory. Scholars have commented on the Christian realist roots of the English School, but it is little noted that Wight's most famous essay, “Western Values in International Relations,” uses the language of Thomism. By exploring the use of Thomist concepts in Wight's thought and the parallels to be found in the thought of his contemporary, Thomist political philosopher Jacques Maritain, I show how he seeks to escape the realist temptation to Machiavellianism. I then go on to sketch out the possible shortcomings of this approach.