Call for paper: Partecipazione e Conflitto
Special issue:
Religion and Political Participation
Editors:
Emanuele Polizzi (Università di Milano-Bicocca) emanuele.polizzi@???
Alberta Giorgi (Centro de Estudos Sociais - Coimbra) albertagiorgi@???
In the latest decades, European societies have been characterized by
major changes, that affected also the practices of religious and
political engagement. Such developments have been widely investigated
by both sociology and political science, by focusing on topics such as
electoral behavior and associative practices of religiously-oriented
people, Church-State relations, role of religious soft power and
transnational religious organizations in foreign policy and
international relations.
The relationship between religious identity and political
participation, as well as between religious and political
participation are also well-established fields of studies, in both
sociology and political science. On the one hand, in the last decades
of the 20th Century religiously-inspired movements flourished all over
the world (the Christian Right in the US, Islamist movements such as
the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah in the Middle-East, the
nationalist religious movements in Israel and India, Communion and
Liberation in Italy and abroad, etc.), as well as religious parties
(the Christian democratic parties in Europe and Latin America, the
Hindu parties in India, the Muslim parties in the Middle East, such as
the Turkish AKP, etc.). On the other hand, the political role of
religious organizations has been increasing, with a growing influence
on peace-keeping processes, Arab Spring and European political
movements against austerity, within-countries political participation,
welfare systems, and the decision-making processes.
More broadly, religion is an important element for political identity
and organization. It appears to be the case in Italy, for instance,
where a religiously inspired political area is gathering consensus
after the end of Berlusconi hegemony, and local religious leaders and
organizations have a high political weight and influence in local
political arenas, such as in Lombardia and in Rome. It appears to be
the case in several other countries too, such as for US religious
lobbies, Church-related movements in Spain and Portugal, and the issue
about the recognition of religions in nowadays Hungary.
Religiously inspired movements appear to have an increasingly
important role in political campaigns. This happened, for instance, in
Arab Spring movements - which resulted in a wide consensus for Islamic
political actors, but also in the Italian context, where religious
associations have been involved in the ‘Public Water’, ‘Migration’,
and ‘Anti-nuclear’ movements.
This special issue aims at collecting contributions exploring and
explaining the relations between religious and political
participation. Comparative studies are welcome, as well as single-case
studies and theoretical analyses.
Suggested paper topics include (but are not limited to):
- Religious parties
- Forms of political activism and participation of religious movements
and organizations.
- Relations between local government and religious actors in the field
of civic engagement
- Relations between political and religious identity of local activists
- Political and religious identities interplay in electoral behavior
Papers can be submitted either in Italian or in English, and should
not exceed 55.000 characters.
Please, refer to:
http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/NR/Paco-norme.pdf
Deadline for submission: 30 April 2013
Date of expected publication: 2014
