G8434: Issues in Comparative Democracies and Secularisms [SPRING 2009]

Instructors:
Professor Alfred Stepan
as48@columbia.edu
Office 833 IAB
Office Hours: Wednesday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm immediately before our seminar. I also have office hours on Tuesdays, 11am to 1 pm but it is often quite busy.

Dr. Ahmet Kuru
ak2840@columbia.edu
Office 1314B IAB
Office Hours: Thursday 10.00am – 12.00pm

CA: Neelanjan Sircar
ns2303@columbia.edu

Seminar Place: IAB 711
Time: Wednesday, 4:10 – 6:00 pm

Click here to download PDF.

Empirical predictions and normative prescriptions about secularism once dominated many of the foundational works in social science, particularly in modernization theory. However, recently scholars as diverse as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in political theory, Peter Katzenstein in international relations,  and Stathis Kalyvas , Ronald Inglehart, and José Casanova in their comparative work, have been engaged in a fundamental rethinking of religion, secularism, and what some call “desecularization”.

Last Spring, in a lecture series that Jack Snyder and I organized five important younger scholars argued that some of the fundamental categories used in IR theory and in comparative politics make religion almost impossible to study. Are they right? If so, what new approaches might be called for? Can social science survey analysis help us explore issues of religion and politics? Most religions have been at times restrictive of full women’s rights. What can we learn from successful patterns of contestation in this area? Can we identify, from the perspective of democratic theory, what are the “twin tolerations,” eg., the minimal degree of freedom democracy needs from religion to function, and the minimal degree of freedom that religion in civil society and even political society that must be allowed if the polity is to meet Robert Dahl’s seven institutional guarantees for a polyarchy? 

 Finally, just as we now understand that there are “multiple modernities” does it make more analytic sense to speak of the “multiple secularisms of modern democracies and autocracies”?  We will explore this last question by examining at least four different patterns of state-society relations that actually exist in contemporary democracies;  “freedom of the state from religion” separatism  (France and Turkey), “freedom of religion from the state” separatism (USA), “ a state with an established religion” secularism (most of the Scandinavian countries, UK, and Greece), and the under-theorized  pattern that Rajeev Bhargava, and I  building on Bhargava, call the“ respect-all, support-all, principled distance” secular model for India. Are two of the more successful new democracies in Islamic majority states, Indonesia and Senegal, close to this model?  For any given polity can we say anything about what conditions are most, and least, supportive for each model if the goal is democracy and relative peace in a specific polity? Do Holland, Germany, and Switzerland have more in common with the Indian model than they do with “separatist” or “established religion” models?

Depending on student’s interests we can expand or shrink the time we spend on the subjects listed in the syllabus, we could also drop some subjects and add completely new ones to suit your research needs. Let me know as soon as possible, and we can discuss adjustments. If students want to try out major research projects on topics not listed below we can devote a special day or days to their topic toward the end of the semester and the student and I will construct a core set of readings on that theme for the other members of the seminar. If any members would like to develop their dissertation prospectus that can probably count as your written requirement for this seminar.

 In December 2008 the new Institute on Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) announced a research travel grant competition to help PhD candidates, who have passed their comprehensive examinations, to develop their dissertation prospectuses. If you are contemplating ever writing a prospectus in a related field consider applying in next years round.

The final paper of about 30 pages will count for half your grade. The other half of the grade will be based on the one or two small, and the one large, presentation you will make in the seminar, and your weekly contributions to our discussion.

Availability of Materials on Courseworks and your special access to two International Conferences

Almost all of the required readings (aside from the books available at Book Culture [formerly Labyrinth] are accessible in electronic form through the Courseworks online system at www.courseworks.columbia.edu.  Through the Courseworks website, you will find links to the specific journal article or section from a book you are required to read.  Most of the time, you will be taken to sites such as JSTOR, Proquest, MUSE or Lexis-Nexus—all useful research tools for scholarly journals which I discuss later.  Some of the readings are also available on my website www.columbia.edu/~as48 but you can access most of them through the Courseworks system. I am the director for the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR) and Ahmet Kuru is the Assistant Director. You may also find useful information on its website http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr/ .  I am the co-director of the newly created Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life. You may find useful information for the course on its website http://www.ircpl.org . Check these websites regularly because over the course of the semester. We will have at least a dozen distinguished visitors and two major international conferences of direct relevance to this course  which you might want to attend. The first International conference is “Democracy, Islam, and Secularism: Turkey in Comparative Perspective,” on Friday, March 6 and Saturday March 7, a week before the Spring Break. If you want to meet any of the participants Ahmet Kuru or I (the two conference co-organizers) will arrange a private meeting for you. The second conference, whose participants you also can meet, is on “Indonesia’s Democratic Transition: Comparative Perspectives” on Thursday April 2 and Friday April 3, two weeks after the Spring Break. Mirjam Künkler, a former member of this seminar and now a Professor at Princeton is co- chair with me and Azyumardi Azra of Indonesia of this conference.

Books Available for Purchase at Book Culture [formerly Labyrinth] at 536 West 112th St.

  1. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994).
  2. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics World Wide (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
  3. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
  4. Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (Oxford University Press, 2001). Much cheaper to order through Amazon.com.
  5. Rajeev Bhargava ed., Secularism and its Critics (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
  6. T.N. Srinivasan, ed., The Future of Secularism (Oxford University Press: 2007). If this is only available in hardback it may be too expensive to buy and I could lend you my second copy and/or make copies of the key articles.
  7. Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective  (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
  8. Stathis Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Cornell University Press,1996). (Read this early because he will participate in our seminar on March 4 and be a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in CDTR and IRCPL on March 3-7).
  9. Ahmet T. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies toward Religions: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in March 2009).

Special Datasets available to Members of the Seminar

Please note: Neelanjan Sircar will be responsible for making sure that students can access all materials required for the course. In addition, he will be available to help students procure research materials and datasets for analysis.

About the datasets: Students may use the Fox dataset (Separation of Religion and State [RAS], which measures the relationship between constitutional, legal, and administrative functions of the state as they relate to religious groups for virtually every country in the world from 1990 to 2002. This data is publicly available. You can order from Amazon a copy of his new book, Jonathan Fox, A World Survey of Religion and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) that draws on these surveys. Two other datasets may be of interest, the State of Democracy in South Asia 2005 (SDSA 2005) and the National Election Survey of India 2004 (NES 2004). I have four copies of the State of Democracy in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008) you can borrow from me. Both of these datasets are proprietary. SDSA 2005 compares the five South Asian countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, on a fixed set of survey questions. I worked, along with Juan Linz and Yogendra Yadav, to develop questions for this survey. The sample size of the study is 18,275 respondents. There are also booster surveys for India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. NES 2004 is a post-election poll for India in 2004. The sample size is 27,189 respondents.  Since SDSA 2005 and NES 2004 are proprietary, you may not access the actual dataset without proper permission. Neelanjan can run basic regressions and crosstabs on the data for you, but you will have to notify him of your intent to use either SDSA 2005 or NES 2004 no later than March 30th. You will also certainly want to look at the World Values Survey (WVS) run by Ronald Inglehart out of Michigan. You will find an overview of these results in the Norris and Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics World Wide. The data is publicly available until 2004. The WVS asks a battery of fixed questions to representative national samples of the publics of approximately 81 societies (covering 60 countries) that contain 85 percent of the world's population. If you are taking a course with Professor Robert Shapiro this semester he is always extremely helpful with students who are doing a paper in this class (with his permission you may possibly combine his assignment with your paper for this class).

Seminar Sessions

Block One: Introduction to Problems of Analyzing Democracy, Politics, Religion,

and Secularism in Modern Social Science

January 21, 2009 Introduction to the Course

January 28, 2009 Key Concepts from Democratic Theory and the Democratization Literature Particularly Relevant to the Study of Religion and Politics

Last year was the first time I taught this seminar and I skipped this session which I believe turned out to be a mistake. I will open this seminar with a quick overview of some key concepts then we will have an hour of discussion. Some of the questions I will raise are the following. Democracies can, and do, vary greatly in their secondary characteristics, but can we argue that some primary characteristics, such as what Linz and Stepan call a “useable state”, and what Robert Dahl calls “ the seven institutional guarantees” are , in any society, universal necessary requirements (but of course not sufficient requirements), for a democracy? In a very different direction, many scholars such as Ernest Gellner , influenced by the French Revolution and/or modernization or nationalism theory, explicitly or implicitly argue that a common culture such as a “Nation State” with a common language are a necessary condition for a modern democracy. But can there be a “State Nation” with many linguistic and religious cultures that could never be a French-like nation state but could still have a common political culture supportive of a democracy? (Background knowledge of these debates will help you understand what is at stake when we discuss laïcité in France and Turkey and the extremely different secularism in India).  Finally, some important scholars such as my friend and close colleague, Jack Snyder, see democratization as often contributing to violence. Democratization scholars, such as Linz and Stepan, make a sharp distinction between “liberalization” and “democratization” and do not see much violence in many cases we would qualify as “democratization” (as opposed to “liberalization).”

Required Readings:

For Robert Dahl’s argument about the “seven institutional guarantees” for a polyarchy (close to what Linz and Stepan call a democracy), see Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, pp.1-16.

For arguments about what democracy is, and is not, read Part One and the chapter on Spain in Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe.

Is Snyder’s definition of “democratization” quite different than that of Linz and Stepan in his  From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict, Chapter 1, “Transitions to Democracy and the Rise of Nationalist Conflict”, pp.15-43, and the Appendix of his  49 “Ethnic Wars”, pp.357-362. If so what are the analytic and possible policy consequences?

For two contrasting arguments about the need for a “common nation state culture” see Ernest Gellner,  Conditions of Liberty, esp. pp, 103-128  and Alfred Stepan, “ Modern Multinational Democracies: Transcending a Gellnerian Oxymoron” in Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics, pp.181-199. 

For the development of the “state nation” argument beyond the initial debate with Gellner see Alfred Stepan “Comparative Theory and Political Practice: Do We Need a ‘State Nation’ Model as Well as a ‘Nation State’ Model? Government and Opposition (Winter 2008), pp.1-30.

Feb 4 The Current Debate about Varieties of Secularism in Democracies

Required Readings:

I began to write about varieties of secularism within democracy in “The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the ‘Twin Tolerations’”, in my Arguing Comparative Politics, 213-254. I extend this further in my “The Multiple Secularisms of Modern Democracies and Autocracies” which is available on my web site. A revised version of this will be published in Craig Calhoun and Mark Juergensmeyer, eds., Rethinking Secularism (Columbia University Press and Social Science Research Council Press, forthcoming 2010). I will give an initial presentation which will be followed by a discussion before we go on to discuss José Casanova.

An influential analysis of the secularism debate and the role of “public religions,” is José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, pp. 3-66.  Casanova is now in the process of arguing that in the fifteen years since the publication of his book three aspects about religion in the world have changed that require a re-conceptualization. See his “Rethinking Public Religion” available on my web cite. Someone might choose to make a brief presentation on what is gained by Casanova’s re-conceptualization and why.

Daniel Philpot, “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 101, No. 3 (August 2007), pp. 505-525.

Suggested Readings and Possible Papers:

This is not required reading but someone might want to write a paper on Berger and Norris/ Inglehart. If you do, tell me the week before and argue today, with some key tables, how you see the strengths and weaknesses of the debate. The classic late 1960s summary argument about why secularism would dominate the modern world is Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, esp. 105-174. The classic late 1990s summary argument about why secularism has not dominated the modern world is by Peter Berger, ed., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, esp. the article by Peter Berger, pp.1-18. A major attempt by comparativists who use survey analysis to evaluate the secularism debate (and who argue against Berger’s desecularization thesis) is Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge University Press, 2004). A member of the seminar might open our discussion by asking whether Berger was wrong both times, and if so how and why. And also, what dimensions of the “secularism” debate do Norris/Inglehart illuminate most? Least? Why?

Another possible paper would be on Rawls, Habermas, and Taylor. Religion was discussed more in Political Theory than in International Relations or in Comparative Politics, but John Rawls, the most influential political philosopher in English in the last half of the 20th century, famously urged his famous liberal injunction to take “religion off the political agenda” of public discourse, argument, and political decision making in his Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 251. Jürgen Habermas opened the room for religion a bit more (but enough?) in two important articles, “Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights,” Philosophy, Vol. 79 ( 2004), pp. 5-18, and “Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 14, No. 1, (2006). In my “Twin Tolerations” I criticize John Rawls for arguing that one could, or should, take religion “off the agenda.” For an effort to reformulate the problem of religion in public discourse so that it can be put on the “public agenda” see Charles Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” in Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and its Critics, pp. 31-53.  For Charles Taylor’s “secularism 1, 2, and 3” see Chapter One in his award winning and controversial The Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007). If there is a political theorist in the seminar you might want to make a presentation on Taylor versus Rawls (and implicitly Habermas); let me know the week before.

Also of interest are Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003), esp. pp.1-20, and 159-180, and

José Casanova, “Secularization Revisted: A Reply to Talal Asad”, in David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, eds., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and his Interlocutors (Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 12-30.

On multiple modernities with an important new theoretical approach with special reference for India see Sudipta Kaviraj, “An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity”, Journal of European Sociology, Vol. xlvi, No. 3 (2005), pp. 497-526.

Feb 11 (With Jack Snyder) Does International Relations Theory (and even Comparative Politics and Political Theory) Make it Difficult to Study the Role of Religion in Politics?

Required Reading:

For background, see two review of the literature articles that document the almost complete neglect of religion as an explanatory variable in political science. The first one is Kenneth D. Wald and Clyde Wilcox, “Getting Religion: Has Political Science Rediscovered the Faith Factor?” in the 100th Anniversary Year Issue of the  American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No 4, (November 2006):523-529. This article asserts that “prior to 1960 only a single APSR article sought to use religion as a variable to explain empirical phenomena,” and that in the APSR “from 1980 on, just one article in American Government put religious factors at the center of analysis; and just two in Comparative Politics” (p.525). A similar neglect marked the International Relations literature, Daniel Philpott in his “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics, Vol. 55 (October 2002) asserts that in his survey of articles in the leading journals of International Relations from 1980--99 “only six or so out of a total of about sixteen hundred featured religion as an important influence” (p.69).

Last Spring Jack Snyder and I ran a semester long speaker-series with younger, well placed political scientists. Jack will publish their five papers as Jack Snyder, ed., Religion and International Relations Theory. The final versions of the Chapters by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Northwestern) “   “, Monica Toft (Harvard) “     “, Daniel Philpot, (Notre Dame) “When God Means War, When God Means Peace: Explaining the Wide Variation in Religious Politics,” Michael Barnett (Minnesota) “Religion, Humanitarianism, and International Relations”, and the Introduction to the volume by Jack Snyder will be on my website by late January 2009. I would like everyone to read the entire volume and for two members of the seminar to select a paper and to make a critical analysis for the seminar. A general conversation about what has, or has not, been accomplished by the volume, and suggestions for feasible and high priority research agendas will then ensue.

To go Further:

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd,The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton University Press, 2008).

Block Two: The Separatist Pattern of Secularism: France and Turkey

(and contrasts with the US Pattern of Secularism)

February 18 Separationist Pattern of Secularism: The French Exceptionalism

The next two classes will be led primarily by Dr. Ahmet Kuru who has a forthcoming Cambridge University Press book on the subject as well as related article in World Politics and a recent lead article in Comparative Politics. If you are considering writing your seminar paper on France or Turkey see him early for discussion and references.

Although constitutional secularism has become a widely used concept in academia, it is generally confused with different but related words, such as philosophical secularism and sociological secularization. What are alternative ways of defining constitutional secularism?  How does the separationist pattern of secularism differ from other types of secularism?

Three countries appear to be examples of separationist pattern of secularism: France, Turkey, and the United States. Despite their similar categorization, these three have reflected two opposite policy orientations regarding religion’s role in the public sphere. Where does this difference come from?  Do the concepts of “assertive” and “passive” secularism help explaining this puzzle? What are the historical, societal, and ideological causes for the emergence and persistence of “assertive secularism” in the French public policy making process?

France has been regarded as one of the founders of liberal institutions. Yet it sometimes pursues illiberal policies that do not exist in other Western European countries. What makes France exceptional in Europe with its exclusionary policies toward public religions? 

Required readings:

Many of these questions are discussed in Ahmet Kuru, Secularism and State Policies toward Religions: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press, March 2009) (If the book has not been released two weeks before we meet Kuru will provide page proofs)

Chapter 1: “Analyzing Secularism: History, Ideology, and Policy”

Chapter 4: “France: Assertive Secularism and the Multiculturalist Challenge

(1989-2008)”

Chapter 5: “France: The War of Two Frances and the Rise of Assertive Secularism (1789-1989)”

The following book compares France with two other Western European democracies—Britain and Germany—regarding state policies toward the Muslim minority:

Joel Fetzer and Christopher Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Read Chapters 1, 3, and 6.

To go further:

Ahmet Kuru’s two articles analyze several aspects of secularism: “Passive and Assertive Secularism: Historical Conditions, Ideological Struggles, and State Policies toward Religion,” World Politics, Vol. 59, No.4 (2007), pp. 568-594, and “Secularism, State Policies, and Muslims in Europe: Analyzing French Exceptionalism,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2008), pp. 1-19.

Stephen Monsma and Christopher Soper’s The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies (1997) is a comparative analysis and a critique of secularism in the United States. Chapters 1, 2, and 7 are particularly worth reading to contextualize the separationist pattern of secularism in the United States in comparison to four other Western democracies.

Liberals and conservatives have different interpretations of secularism in the United States. Chapter 2 and 3 in Ahmet Kuru’s Secularism and State Policies toward Religions examine this debate. Liberals largely cite books like Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State (2005), while conservatives generally refer to Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (2004).

An insightful comparison of secularism in the United States and France is Jeremy Gunn, "Religious Freedom and Laïcité: A Comparison of the United States and France." Brigham Young University Law Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2004), pp. 419-506.

For secularism in France, Jean Bauberot is the most well-known expert. He combines historical and contemporary analyses in his “Two Thresholds of Laicization,” in Secularism and Its Critics, edited by Rajeev Bhargava (1999).

A classic on French history of secularism is Maurice Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The Separation Issue in France (1973).

Two recent books analyze the headscarf debate in France. One is John Bowen’s Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public State (2006). The other, Joan Scott’s, The Politics of the Veil (2007), is more critical of French perception of Islam and policies toward Muslims. Another recent book with a broader and comparative approach to Islam in France is Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse, Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (2006).

In French:

The Stasi Commission appointed by French President Jacques Chirac provided a detailed examination of secularism and its problems in contemporary France: Stasi Commission, 2003, “Rapport au président de la République,” December 11, http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/brp/034000725/0000.pdf

Another report was written by the French National Assembly: Jean-Louis Debré, La laïcité à l’école: Un principe républicain à réaffirmer. Rapport de la mission d’information de l’Assemblée nationale. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004.

Also recommended are Jean Bauberot’s Histoire de la laïcité en France (2004) and Mona Ozouf’s L'Ecole, l'Eglise et la République: 1871-1914 (1982) on the history of secularism in France.

February 25 Separatist Secularism from Above and the Military: Turkey from the Ottomans to Atatürk

With luck Karen Barkey, the author of a recent book on the Ottomans, will join us today. Turkey was the first secular state in the Muslim world. Its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, recognized both state law and religious law. Islamic law was influential at the center while Christian and Jewish communities had their own legal systems. How did this Empire, where religious law was crucial, give birth to a secular republic? Furthermore, the new Turkish Republic established assertive secularism as the dominant ideology aiming to exclude Islam and other religions from the public sphere. Why did Turkey embrace assertive, rather than passive, secularism? Many observers imply the French and Turkish laïcité are very similar. Are they? If not, in what way and why not? Can you attempt to explain the variation, if you believe there is a variation, between French and Turkish laïcité?

Required readings:

Ahmet Kuru’s “Turkey: Westernization and the Development of Assertive Secularism” in his Secularism and State Policies toward Religions discusses these questions.

Karen Barkey’s Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (2008) examines the millet system in the Ottoman Empire, where Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities had certain level of local autonomies based on their distinct personal and family laws.

Nur Yalman examines the Kemalist reforms in his “Some Observations on Secularism in Islam: The Cultural Revolution in Turkey,” Daedalus, Vol. 102, No. 1(1973), pp. 139-68.

Alfred Stepan and Ahmet Kuru’s “Variations of Laïcité: Comparing Turkey, France, and Senegal” explores variations of laïcité, in general, and differences between Turkey and France, in particular (it will be available two weeks before this session on Prof. Stepan’s website).

To go further:

M. Şükrü Hanioğlu’s A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (2008) is a fine introduction to political history of the late Ottoman era.

Niyazi Berkes’ The Development of Secularism in Turkey is a comprehensive analysis of the history of Westernization and secularism in the late Ottoman and early Republican eras (1998 [1964]).

Şerif Mardin’s Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1989) is a landmark analysis of the Nur movement regarding the socio-political conditions of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods.

Nilüfer Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (1996) is the first social scientific study of Islamic visibility in the Turkish public sphere, particularly through headscarves, in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In Turkish:

A classic analysis of secularism in Turkey is Ali Fuat Başgil’s Din ve Laiklik (1977 [1954]).

Ziya Gökalp’s Türkleşmek, İslâmlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (1976) is important to understand the relationship between Westernization, Turkish nationalism, and Islam.

March 4 Contemporary Debates and Conflicts over Contested Versions of Secularism and Democracy in Turkey

Although many states with Muslim majority population are secular today, Turkey is still exceptional with its exclusionary policies toward religion in the public sphere. The headscarf ban, for example, exclude women wearing headscarves from all educational institutions, civil service, and elected political offices. Yet 63 percent of all women in Turkey wear some sorts of headscarves. How can we explain the gap between state policies and characteristics of society in a democratic country? Who are the proponents and opponents of assertive secularist policies in Turkey? What are the relations between secularism and democracy in Turkey?

A major question for us to consider is whether the Islamic influenced, but democratic, ruling party in Turkey, the Justice and Democratic Party (AKP), will be able, like the Christian Democratic Party in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, to “self-secularize” itself and be able to play an important role in the European Union. Why and how did the “fundamentalist secular” forces almost win their effort to have the constitutional court ban the AKP party in the fall of 2008?

Required readings:

Ahmet Kuru’s “Turkey: Assertive Secularism and the Islamic Challenge (1997-2008),” in his Secularism and State Policies toward Religions discusses these questions.

Stathis Kalyvas from Yale will join our discussion today. Therefore, we urge you to attend his lecture right before the seminar in the comparative politics seminar in room 707 IAB on “Revisiting Christian Democracy: Concepts and Political Processes” and to read his The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (1996). At our March 6-7 conference he will give a talk on “Can the European Christian Democratic Experience Travel to the Non- Christian World?” If his and other conference papers, especially by those by the best Turkish specialist on the military, Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu, and two specialists on the politics of constitution making, Ergun Ozbuden and Andrew Arato, are available, they will be placed on Stepan’s website. You might want to read them before our seminar today.

To go further:

Stathis Kalyvas, “From Pulpit to Party: Party Formation and the Christian Democratic Phenomenon,” Comparative Politics (April 1998), pp. 293-312. For a good historical study of the evolution of religion and democracy, relevant to the above discussion, see Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘Democracy and Religious Politics: Evidence from Belgium,’ Comparative Political Studies 31(3), 1998, pp. 292-321.

Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu analyzes institutional autonomy of Turkish military in her “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military's Political Autonomy,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 29 (1997), pp. 151-66. She will participate in our Turkey conference.

Ergun Ozbudun, a Turkish constitutional lawyer also may join us today. He wrote the draft constitution in 2008. He discusses the recent constitutional crisis in his paper for the conference which I hope can be distributed before we meet.  He will be a Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the CDTR and IRCPL from Feburary 26 to March 8 and available for discussion with you throughout this period.

M. Hakan Yavuz’s edited volume focuses on the ruling Justice and Democracy Party: The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti (2006).

Helpful survey data is provided by Ali Çarkoğlu, “Religiosity, Support for Şeriat and Evaluations of Secularist Public Policies in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2004), pp. 111–136.

For the Gulen movement, the most influential Islamic movement in Turkey, see M. Hakan Yavuz and John Esposito, Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gulen Movement (2002). For a comparison of the Gulen movement with two other Islamic movements in Turkey, see Ahmet T. Kuru, “Globalization and Diversification of Islamic Movements: Three Turkish Cases,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 120, No. 2 (2005), pp. 253-274.

In Turkish:

Ali Çarkoğlu and Binnaz Toprak, Değişen Türkiye’de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset (2006) provides the best survey data on issues related to religion and politics in Turkey.

You can read the decisions of the Turkish Constitutional Court from its Web site: http://www.anayasa.gov.tr/general/kararbilgibank.asp

International Conference entitled “Democracy, Islam, and Secularism: Turkey in Comparative Perspective” will take place on March 6-7, 2009, 15th Floor, International Affairs Building, Columbia University.

You are invited to attend and to join in the discussions that will follow every session. There will be a Reception on Friday after the last session. Speakers include: Richard Bulliet, Karen Barkey, Şükrü Hanioğlu, Nur Yalman, Mirjam Kunkler, Stathis Kalyvas, Alfred Stepan, Ümit Cizre, Ahmet Kuru, Joan Scott, Joost Lagendijk, Andrew Arato, and Ergun Özbudun.

March 11 Student Presentations on Major Papers that Relate to Blocks One and Two

March 18 Spring Break; No Seminar

 Block Three: The “Respect All, Support All, Principled Distance” Model of Democratic Secularism: India, Indonesia and Senegal

This block will pay particular attention to countries that are Muslim majority and are democracies (especially Indonesia and Senegal) and a democratic country that does not have a Muslim majority, but has the world’s second largest Muslim population, (India).

March 25 The Classic Case: India from the Perspective of Political Theory

Required Readings:

The major theoretician of this model is Rajeev Bhargava. He has written three key papers, somewhat overlapping but each one adding to the analysis.

See Rajeev Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism” in T.N. Srinivasan, ed., The Future of Secularism (Oxford and Dehli: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 20-53.  For the moral and political theory behind India’s secularism, see Bhargava’s “Political Secularism” in John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig and Anne Phillips, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.636-655. Also see the volume Bhargava edited, Secularism and its Critics (Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), especially the articles by Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, and Amartya Sen. Also study the wrong headed, completely US normative vision of strict separation of religion and state, in Smith’s article in that volume. By this inappropriate measure India falls short of US style secularism. Smith misses the point that this US model was inappropriate for India, and in fact, was never the intended model.

To go further:

Gary Jeffrey Jacobsohn, The Wheel of Law, India’s Secularism in Comparative Constitutional Context (Princeton University Press: 2003).

Possible research paper. Bhargava and I agree that there does not exist a serious scholarly study of the Constituent Assembly and the crafting of this model in the context of Indian history and society. Columbia has all 22 volumes of the Constituent Assembly.

(April 15 India: The Comparative Politics of the Model-- ‘Useable Pasts’, Context, and  Consequences) 

Note: Intellectually this unit should be the next seminar. However, in order for you to take full benefit of the major International Conference we will have on Indonesia April 2-3 we will have seminars on Indonesia before and after the Indonesia conference.

Required readings:

Amartya Sen occasionally writes as if India has always had a tolerant history. There are of course episodes and periods of great conflict and intolerance in India’s history. However, can a case be made that if there were periods of tolerance, as under Ashoka, or under Akbar, these precedents, at a later time, can become a “useable past” for the construction of a more tolerant future? Read carefully the inscriptions on Ashoka’s pillars, or consider Akbar’s reforms.

We probably should also enrich our conceptual framework to include “silent and un-negotiated accommodations,” or shared practices and spaces that contribute to relative religious peace, without necessarily entering the realm of explicit public discourse. See the reflections by the great Indian ancient historian Romala Tharpa in the previously cited Srinivasen volume. Also read the Chapters on Akbar in………….

For Gandhi’s mobilization of satyagraha and other religious symbols for modern democratic purposes, see Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph, (a recent president of APSA) “The New Courage: An Essay on Gandhi’s Psychology,” World Politics (Oct. 1963), 98-117, (JSTOR). Did Gandhi violate Rawls?

I think that India’s model of secularism is actually close to the “state nation” model. I wrote about in the Government and Opposition article you read in the second week. For some of the context and probable consequences of this model for a society that is linguistically and religiously deeply diverse, see Chapter Two, “India: Great Cultural Diversity, Shared Democratic Political Community” in the book by Alfred Stepan, Juan Linz, and Yogendra Yadav, Democracy in Multinational Polities: India and Other Polities (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming). Get the chapter from my website. 

Yadav asked Linz and I to help design questions on religion and politics, a fraction of which is in this chapter. Our questions were also asked for Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. If there is time today, I will discuss some of the comparative results which demonstrate the “great political contextuality of religion.” Our results are particularly suggestive concerning Islam. For example, Muslims in India support democracy twice as much as Muslims in Pakistan, despite the fact that for 1600 hundred years most of their populations shared very similar religious, socio-economic and geo-political conditions and less than 50 years of separate independence. Or, the fact that the highest, and the lowest, support for democracy, by any religion, in any country in our set, is from the same religion, Islam. If any of you would like to use this data for your own research tell Neelan. Much of the descriptive data is available in the SDSA Team, State of Democracy in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007) but much more secondary analysis can be done, especially if you have taken Shapiro’s class. I will put one of my extra copies on closed reserve.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: “DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN INDONESIA: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES”. All day Thursday April 2 and Friday April 3 in 1501 IAB. Reception follows Thursday afternoon session.

April 1 A Variant of the Model in Indonesia? (With a prologue on the puzzle of the “Arab” not “Muslim” Electoral Gap)

By way of background to our discussion of Indonesia and Senegal let me pose a puzzle that ideally someone might address today or later in the seminar. One of the major puzzles about Muslims and democracy is that on purely socio-economic grounds, some non-Arab, Muslim majority countries (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, Turkey, Albania, etc.) are among the world’s greatest “electoral overachievers”, (as is the country with the second largest Muslim population, India) whereas Arab-Muslim majority countries, as a set, are the world’s greatest “electoral underachievers.” A major variable that two sets of countries share in common – Islam – can not, by itself, explain this strong variation. What does? I helped start this discussion with two recent articles, but the comparative analysis must be carried much further, and deeper, especially by Arab specialists familiar with the general literature on democratization. Ideally, someone in the class who has these interests and skills can deepen the debate with a paper.

For the puzzle of electoral underachievement, and overachievement, within Muslim majority countries see Alfred Stepan with Graeme Robertson: “An Arab more than a Muslim Democracy Gap”, Journal of Democracy, July 2003, pp. 30-44 (Project MUSE). For a forum which has two articles criticizing Stepan/Robertson, and our response, see Journal of Democracy Vol. 15, No. 4 (October 2004): 126-146. Before my articles a special issue of Comparative Politics (Vol. 36, No. 2, January 2004) had been devoted to the persistence of authoritarianism in Arab countries. Is it comparative enough? Non-Arab enough?

An interesting paper would be to explore how Islam is managed -- by many believers and politicians of many stripes alike -- so as to be compatible with democracy in a country such as Indonesia, India, Senegal, Mali, or Bangladesh. What is the role of public discourse? Is religion “on” or “off” the agenda in the country you choose to write about?

A particularly  important analytic opportunity might be to select some “matched pairs” of Islamic majority countries such as Algeria and Senegal, both of which had French colonial rule, and major Sufi populations, and where much of the academic literature is accessible in French, and one country is a democracy (Senegal) and one authoritarian (Algeria). A less tight matched pair might be Egypt and Indonesia. If there is an Arab specialist who would like to discuss this they might discuss it today or sometime else in the seminar. If no one wants to take up this task today we will go directly into Indonesia.

Required Readings:

Many papers will be written for our international conference next week, “The Democratic Transition in Indonesia: Comparative Perspectives”, April 2-3, but as of this writing (January 2, 2009) I do not have them. However, I should have many of them two weeks before this session and will put the most relevant of them for our seminar on my website. I certainly will have a paper by Mirjam Künkler, who is co-organizing the conference with me. She completed her dissertation at Columbia in Spring 2008 and is now an Assistant Professor at Princeton. If she is not too tied up with our visitors from Indonesia she may join us.

In addition to the conference papers, read the following articles by or about three of the most important Islamic leaders of the democratic transition in Indonesia, so you can analyze what type of public arguments they made for how democracy and Islam should be integrated. Indonesia, of course, is multi-vocal and there are important proponents of non-democratic Islam in Indonesia, but about 70% of Indonesia’s population say they are sympathetic with the ideas and organizations of either NU or Muhammadiyah, the two organizations to which all three of the following leaders were strongly associated.

For a profile of Abdurrahman Wahid, the country’s most influential pro-democratic Islamic thinker and reformer in the lead up to the transition, chairman of the largest-- 30 million member plus-- Islamic Organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) from 1985-1995 and the country’s first post-Suharto democratic president, read John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, “Abdurrahman Wahid: Scholar—President”, in Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.199-216. Abdurrahman Wahid of NU in particular, would reject any Rawlsian idea of “keeping religion off the agenda”because he is acutely aware that in multi-vocal Indonesia there are religious advocates of an exclusionary approach to religion and politics, and that for the sake of a just Islam, in a peaceful and democratic Indonesia, he must articulate alternative public discourses. Before a series of strokes he was a constant participant in public arguments making the case why Indonesia, given its great social and religious diversity, which he sees as an empirical fact, should make the normative political choice for a pluralist polity- a tolerant inclusive Islam, in a tolerant inclusive Indonesia. He also works to create religious schools and organizations that advance these religious and democratic goals not only inside religious spaces, but in civil society, and in political society. He could not carry out these agendas in a context of Turkish, or in John Bowen’s judgment, even of French, secularism. For diversity as a “sociological fact” and pluralism as a “political choice”, in general and in the speeches and actions of Wahid, see the chapter by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‘im, “Indonesia: Realities of Diversity and Prospects of Pluralism” in his Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari´a (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 223-266.

The former chairman of Indonesia’s largest modernist Islamic Organization Muhammadiyah (also around 30 million members), former Speaker of the People’s

Consultative Assembly, during which he was instrumental in defeating some proposals for a Sharia state, and major leader of the democratic, especially student, opposition against President Suharto in the mid-1990s, argues why on religious and political grounds he is against a Sharia state in Indonesia in “An Interview with Amien Rais,” with Alfred Stepan and Mirjam Künkler, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Fall/Winter 2007), pp. 205-216. If you want to go further try to get his “Islam and Politics in Contemporary Indonesia,” in Geoff Forrester, ed., Post-Suharto Indonesia: Renewal or Chaos? (Singapore: ISEAS, 1999), and “There Is No Islamic State” in Panji Masyarakat No. 376/1982.

    For an historically influential argument by Nurcholish Madjid as to why Indonesian Muslims should participate in secular democratic politics and not create a Muslim Party see his, “The Necessity of Renewing Islamic Thought and Reinvigorating Religious Understanding,” in Charles Kurzman, ed., Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook  (Oxford University Press: 1998), pp. 284-294 or in his “Democracy and the Universalism of Islam,” in Farish Noor, New Voices of Islam. ISIM, Leiden. Available at http://www.isim.nl/files/paper_noor.pdf

The above ideas play a major role in NU and Muhammadiyah schools and increasingly in  Indonesian state schools. Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Zaman have recently edited an invaluable book that reviews madrasas in eight different countries, see their Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). One of the most the inclusive and tolerant systems described in the volume, and the one that now works most cooperatively with a democratic state, is in Indonesia. The chapter shows how NU and Muhammadiyah, and the negotiations required by Pacasila, have made substantial contributions to this outcome. See the chapter by Azyumardi Azra, Dina Afrianty, and Robert W. Hefner, “Pesantren and Madrassa: Muslim Schools and National Ideals in Indonesia”, pp. 172-198. A key reformer both within Muslim Schools, and within the Ministry of Education, is Azyumardi Azra, who is the co-author of the above article and who will participate in our Indonesia conference and possibly in our seminar. The three co-chairs of the conference and eventual editors of the volume are Azyumardi Azra, Mirjam Künkler, and myself.

To go further:

If any of you are thinking of writing on Indonesia read a very solid introduction to the democratization efforts in Indonesia, and its relationship to various democratic and non-democratic currents in Islam, Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). Read this book in its entirety so that you have a solid grounding in the overall political context of the world’s most populous Islamic majority country. The rest of you should at least skim and get what you need.

April 15 See page 16 in this syllabus for the second week on India which we will have today. Remember this is out of order because I felt we should at least start Indonesia before the International Conference on Indonesia.

April 22 Senegal: The Self-Transformation from French-style Secularism to the “Respect All, Support All” Model?

Prof Diouf and Prof Diagne, major scholars from Senegal who have recently joined the Columbia faculty, may join us today. Both are quite interested in today’s questions.

Whereas Turkey is the most controlling form of the French 1905 secular model, Senegal has the least controlling, and most religiously friendly, form of the French secular model. Indeed it transformed itself, and to some extent even the French colonial power, into a “Respect All, Support All, Principled Distance” model. For example, in the Fox index of control of religion, Senegal is the least controlling, zero, France receives a six, and Turkey receives a thirteen, more controlling than Tunisia or Morocco which both receive a score of eleven.

Required Reading:

The new director of the Institute for African Studies is the distinguished Senegalese historian and social scientist, Mahmadou Diouf. Senegal and India have the two earliest and most continuous encounters with democratic elections of any colonial country in Africa or Asia. For a pioneering analysis of the social emergence of interesting forms of mutual respect and accommodation between the French and the Senegalese urban population in the four coastal communes see his “The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project,” in Development and Change, Vol. 29, 1998, pp. 671-696.

The important Senegalese philosopher, who is an authority both in French modern philosophy and in Sufism, and who is a Sufi preacher as well as a former Cultural Adviser to the President of Senegal, is Souleymane Bachir Diagne. He joined the Columbia Philosophy and French Departments as a Professor in the Fall of 2008. I will put at least two (just about finished) articles by him on Senegalese Sufi theological and political traditions of toleration and respect on Courseworks by late February 2009, possibly earlier. I hope Prof Diagne will  be able to join us today.

A fascinating discussion for a “matched pair” research paper in which you could explore, with the expert help of Diouf and Diagne, why the French adopted a repressive colonial policy towards Islam and  the Sufis in Algeria at roughly the same time that they were accommodating Islam and the Sufis in Senegal; and indeed, far from imposing a religiously hostile version of 1905 laïcité,  struggled to present themselves as a religiously friendly version of a “pro- Muslim cultural power in West Africa.” Two excellent places to start are start, but which are more interested in Senegal than in Algeria , are  David Robinson, “ France as a Muslim Power”, Chapter 4 in his amazingly well researched opus, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1980-1920 ( Ohio University Press, 2000), pp. 75-96, and Donal Cruise O’Brien, “Towards an ‘Islamic Policy’ in French West Africa”, Journal of African History, 8, 1967, pp. 303-316.

Alfred Stepan, “Rituals of Respect: Sufis and Secularists in Senegal,” in Thomas Banchoff and Robert Wurthnow, eds., Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming, late 2009). You may view a copy of it on the CDTR website mentioned earlier in the syllabus.

To go further:

Prof Diouf is preparing for publication the conference papers stemming from his March 7-8, 2008 International Conference on “Sufism, Toleration, and Democracy in Senegal”. As they become available I will put them on my website.

You may want to take a look at Leonardo Villalon’s Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

If you are interested in the early voting history of Senegal read Wesley Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes 1990-1920 (Stanford University Press, 1971). Also, 1990). Janet Vaillant, Black, French, and African: A life of Leopold Sedar Senghor (Harvard University Press

The historian Andrew Clark argues that there is a Senegalese tradition of pragmatism characterizing the relationship between religious authorities (predominantly Sufi orders) and the state, see his, “Imperialism, Independence and Islam in Senegal and Mali,” in Africa Today (1999), Vol. 46, No. 3-4, pp. 149-167. Furthermore, on Sufism and its implications for political stability, read Villalon’s manuscript on “Sufi Modernities” placed on Courseworks.

There is a literature on Sufi leaders and their complex relationship to what originated as the French-style secular state. See especially Donal Cruise O’Brian, Symbolic Confrontations: Muslims Imagining the State in Africa (Palgrave, 2003), ch. 1 “Supping with the Devil: The Mouride Brotherhood and the Senegalese State”, ch. 2 “Sufi Symbolism and the State in Senegal, 1975-1981”, ch. 3 “Taking on the Town: Mourid Urbanization, 1945-2001” and ch. 9 “Renegotiating the Senegalese social Contact”.

On the question of the slow transition to democracy in Senegal, which begins to put Senegal into the context of democratization theory, see S. Mozaffar and R. Vengroff, “A Whole System Approach to the Choice of Electoral Rules in Democratizing Countries: Senegal in Comparative Perspective,” in Electoral Studies 21, 2002, 601-616. On the role of religious authorities during the transition and consolidation processes, read Richard Vengroff, Lucy Creevey and Abdou Ndoye, Islamic Leaders’ Values and the Transition to Democracy: The Case of Senegal (manuscript available from me). Also see, Richard Vengroff, Lucy Creevey and Abdou Ndoye, “Party Politics and Different Paths to Democratic Transitions: A Comparison of Benin and Senegal,” in Party Politics, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 471-493. 

There are, of course, still some problems for political rights and civil liberties, especially with regard to women. Penda Mbow is the former minister of culture and a major public intellectual. Read her ‘Démocratie, Droits Humains et castes au Sénégal’, Journal des Africanistes, 70 (1-2), 2000, pp. 71-91. On women’s political role, both as a force for, and a hindrance to, democratic consolidation, see for the former, Penda Mbow, ‘L’Islam et la Femme Sénégalaise,’ in Ethiopiques: Revue négro-africaine de littérature et de philosophie, No. 66-67, 2001; and for the latter, Erin Augis, ‘Dakar’s Sunnite Women: The Politics of Person’, in Muriel Gomez-Perez (ed.), L'Islam Politique Au Sud Du Sahara: Identités, Discours et Enjeux, 2005, Paris, Karthala, pp. 309-326 (library reserves).

April 29  Final Session 

This will involve presentations of student papers in a double session. Depending on your schedules, we could have half the papers in our normal seminar room, and then meet at my apartment at an agreed upon hour for the other half of the papers and a Zabars style dinner or we could skip the 2-4 session and meet from 6-10 at my apartment. You will a dinner in both options.  My address is 210 Riverside Drive, Apt 9A, (Nearest cross street is 93rd).

Final Paper Due Date is on May 8. Our Subsequent Private Hour–long Discussion of Your Paper and Research Plans Will be Between May 12-16.

I need your papers delivered to my office by 3 PM Friday May 8. I then can read them carefully and schedule an individual meeting with each paper writer for about an hour between May 12-16. I leave for research and Institute business in India, Turkey, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile and England on May 16. I discourage incompletes. Better to do your most intense writing and thinking when Ahmet and I, and all your colleagues, are around, and then to free up your time for summer projects.


Back