Dave is the Paul Weber Chair in Politics, Science and Religion and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville, where he is Interim Director of the Center for Asian Democracy. He holds a PhD in Government from Georgetown University, and an M.A. in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied as a George C. Mitchell Scholar. He served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the State Department’s Office of Religion in Global Affairs in 2016-17.
Research Interests
Dave is a comparativist, with cross-regional research focused on the relationship between religion and democracy. His first book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia 2017) examined the endurance of secular democracy in cases of politically active religious majorities. He is currently working on two primary research projects. The first, under contract with Columbia University Press, examines the impact of the Trump Administration’s populism on the role of religion in U.S. foreign policy. The second draws on extensive, original quantitative and qualitative data from the Philippines to test the ability of local religious institutions to provide community protection from violence associated with President Duterte’s drug war. His other work touches on a range of related topics, from Christian nationalism and the Capitol insurrection to religion and environmental politics.
Selected Research
Armaly, Miles, David T. Buckley, Adam Enders, “Christian nationalism and political violence: victimhood, racial identity, conspiracy and support for the Capitol attacks,” Political Behavior, 44 (2022) pp. 937 – 960
Brooke, Steven, David T. Buckley, Clarissa David and Ronald Mendoza, “Religious Protection from Populist Violence: The Catholic Church and the Philippine Drug War,” American Journal of Political Science, 67.1 (2023) pp. 205-220.
Buckley, David T. Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal, and the Philippines. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2017.