Letter from Paul Djupe, Co-editor, Politics & Religion (Section Journal)

Dear APSA Religion & Politics section members,

This is a brief update with some great news about our section’s journal, Politics & Religion.

First, we are excited to announce that beginning Friday, April 6th, Politics & Religion will be run through Editorial Manager which is used by the other leading APSA journals. All submissions, reviews, and other journal correspondence will be conducted through this online system. This will make the publication process more transparent for all those involved and enable a more efficient review process. We, as co-editors, will have access to contact information of APSA members and their corresponding research interests which will facilitate the location of appropriate reviewers. If you are not registered with the editorial manager system already or you wish to submit a manuscript, please do so by following this link:

www.editorialmanager.com/prj

Second, we can report that the journal is healthy:

Submissions are up from this period last year (24 through March, compared to 16 in 2011) and response times on new submissions reflect the standards set by leading political science journals.

As you may be aware, the journal is now published three times per year (with 7 articles per issue), but in 2013 this will increase to four times per year (with 8 articles per issue). Moving to a quarterly publication will expedite publication of articles and ensure that the journal reflects the most current research.

In addition, from July 2012, articles accepted for publication will appear online at the Politics & Religion Cambridge website. This early online access before publication should encourage authors to place work with the journal. Moreover, Cambridge generously granted us 4 additional articles across the last two issues of volume 5 this year to help publish accepted articles faster.

We are very excited about the new developments for Politics & Religion and hope you are too. Please continue to evangelize about Politics & Religion as an outlet for research and send us your best work on religion and politics.

Sincerely,
Angelia Wilson and Paul Djupe, coeditors
Politics & Religion

Article: How does religion matter? Pathways to religion in International Relations

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.

Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan (2012)

image from www-rohan.sdsu.eduColumbia University Press is pleased to announce the publication of Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet T. Kuru Chair, Religion & Politics Organized Section]  and Alfred Stepan.

"Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey contains some of the best essays on contradictory signs and ambivalence in contemporary Turkish politics. Its chapters, by the most prominent experts on their respective topics, are well written. Reading them together provides a very good sense of the content and the terms of the struggles and conflicts over the soul of Turkish democracy and its international mission."
-Cemil Aydin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought

While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several choices in policy have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing historical, social, and religious context for this behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion to its involvement with the European Union.

Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the toleration of diversity during the Ottoman Empire's classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious heterogeneity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. The essays also offer a cross-Continental comparison of "multiple secularisms," as well as political parties, considering especially Turkey's Justice and Development Party in relation to Europe's Christian Democratic parties. Contributors tackle critical research questions, such as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire's ethno-religious plurality and the way in which Turkey's assertive secularism can be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military's "guardian" role in Turkey's secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism's presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey's contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.

Ahmet T. Kuru,  is associate professor of political science at San Diego State University and chair of the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. He is the author of Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey.

Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University and a former Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford University. His most recent book, with Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, is Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies, and another book with Linz, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.

This book is part of the esteemed series Religion, Culture, and Public Life, series editors: Alfred Stepan and Mark C. Taylor.

To read an excerpt or find out more about this work go to:
http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15932-6/democracy-islam-and-secularism-in-turkey

amazon | barnes&noble

PS Article – Has Political Science Ignored Religion?

by Steven Kettell

Abstract

A common complaint from political scientists involved in the study of religion is that religious issues have been largely overlooked by political science. Through a content analysis of leading political science and sociology journals from 2000 to 2010, this article considers the extent of this claim. The results show that political science publications involving religious topics have been significantly fewer than those engaging with subjects typically regarded as being more central to the discipline, and markedly less numerous than religious articles in leading sociology publications. Where political science publications have engaged with religious issues, these articles have also focused on a limited number of subject areas and been concentrated in specific disciplinary subfields. The proportion of articles covering religion has shown no real increase since the turn of the century. These findings underpin calls for political scientists to take religious issues more seriously.

Cambridge Journal Page

{Section members may have a different perspective.}