CDTR - Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion

U6295: Democracy, the World’s Religions, and Problems of the ‘Twin Tolerations’ [SPRING 2009]

Instructor: Professor Alfred Stepan
as48@columbia.edu

CA: Neelanjan Sircar
ns2303@columbia.edu

Place: IAB 801
Time: Tuesday, 9:00 am – 10:50 am

Office Hours: Tuesday, 11:00am – 1:00pm or by appointment.
Office: IAB 833

Click here to download PDF.

Please note: Neelanjan 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.

I am the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government in SIPA and the Political Science Department. I am a comparativist with a specialization in the struggles between democratic and non-democratic movements. Since July 2006, I have been the Director of SIPA’s Luce-funded “Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion” (CDTR) (www.sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr)., and since July 2007 the Co- Director of the newly endowed Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life ( IRCPL)( website http://www.ircpl.org ). Get on their list-serves so you can keep up to date on the numerous activities and conferences we will have this Spring, all of which you are welcome to attend. This Spring we will have at least a dozen distinguished visitors and two major international conferences of direct relevance to this course. Both conferences will be held on the 15^th floor of IAB. 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. If you are writing your paper on either Turkey or Indonesia these conferences would be a great chance to get original interviews from top analysts and/or policy activists.

Purpose, Content and Goals of Course

In the first generation of democratization theory the two most neglected areas were nationalism and religion. From the mid-1990s, this vacant space has been dominated largely by a discourse generated by Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and by policy activists concerned with terrorism and intrigued by the possibility of the United States and some of the other large powers installing democracy from above.

Democratic theorists, comparativists and policy activists must attempt to re-examine the terms of this debate and to provide new conceptual and policy alternatives where appropriate. Unfortunately, though the role of religion in world affairs is one of the most important and difficult issue areas of our era, it has also been one of the least studied themes in political science. This is a major reason why we created CDTR at SIPA.

The course will be divided into four units, each devoted to a set of questions and problems that are now central to modern political debates about the role of religion in modern politics, especially to questions of democracy, and intolerance and tolerance within, and between, the major religions of the world. Unit 1 will feature Western Europe from the view-point of the core received theories about Christianity and democracy and actual practice. Unit 2 will test Huntington’s theories about the negative role of Confucianism and Orthodox Christianity. Unit 3 will explore and explain the very different patterns of religious conflict and tolerance in South Asia, with special attention to India’s “equal respect, equal distance” style of secularism. In Unit 4 we will integrate what we have learned so far to see if we can rethink some of the fundamental puzzles about Islam and politics.

Course Requirements and Grading Criteria

This course will work best if you do most of the required reading before the lectures, as each week I will devote at least half an hour to your questions to me and to my questions to you.

The class will be restricted to 27 students to enable me to work with you to develop a research paper that is tailored to your interests. The requirement for the course is a 25-page paper on a topic you and I have agreed upon. So that you get a good start on your paper a five page discussion of your proposed paper is due on Wednesday, March 25^th -- the first class after the Spring Break. The final version of your paper must be handed in by Friday at noon of the last week of regular classes, May 1st. Writing and constructive criticism are an essential part of the learning process. Therefore, I will personally grade, and write extensively on your papers, and then meet privately with you for at 45 minutes from May 6^th to 9^thto discuss your research paper, writing style ( I began my professional life as a special correspondent for The Economist so I learned the value of editing) , your future plans, and if necessary, your understandings of the readings. I will put the sign-up sheet outside my office.

Roughly 70 % of your grade will be based on your final paper; 30% will be based on the quality of the draft ideas you showed me for your paper immediately after the Spring Break, your class participation, and our meeting to be held between Wednesday, May 6^th to Saturday, May 9^th.

Availability of Materials

Because the major requirement of the course is a 25 page research paper, the syllabus is substantially longer than the norm so that I can indicate readings and possible topics that you may find of use when you select your research topic. In addition to this syllabus, I will also make some special collections of documents available as we produce them in the CDTR and IRCPL programs.

This syllabus will indicate where to find the required reading. All of the required readings (aside from the paperbacks I have ordered at Book Culture [formerly Labyrinth Book Store]) 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, especially my works in progress, are also available on my website www.columbia.edu/~as48. I have placed most, but not all, of the non-required readings on reserve. If you have problems accessing any of these resources, please contact Neelanjan.

Books Available for Purchase

I have ordered the following books at Book Culture, 536 West 112^th St (between Broadway and Amsterdam). All are in paperback.

José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics World Wide (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
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).
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996).
Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (Oxford University Press, 2001). Much cheaper, $10, if you order it via Amazon.
Rajeev Bhargava ed., Secularism and its Critics (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Larry Diamond et al, eds., World Religions and Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press: 2005).

January 20^th
Introduction to the main themes that will be addressed
in the course, as well as the reading and requirements.

Today is inauguration Day so the class, consistent with University policy, will not be held. However, I will be in the class room and in my office from 9-11 to discuss the course with any one who would like to talk. At 10:50 sharp I will run to watch the inauguration.

Unit 1

General Theories (Mainly based on Democratic Theory and General Understandings of Western Europe and the United States) Contrasted With the Actual Historical Experience and Contemporary Practice in these two Areas.

Four sessions, January 27, February 3, 10, and 17

Background questions to think about for this unit

Part of the class today will be an introduction to the course which many missed because of the inauguration. Since the course is on Democracy and Religion the first two sessions will be devoted to democratic theory and practice in general, and then to how it relates to religion in particular. Can we say there are minimal conditions that any democracy must meet? How much separation of Religion and State is necessary for a democracy to function well? In an earlier article, I developed an argument about what I called the “twin tolerations” that concluded with the assertion: “Within this broad framework of the minimal freedom for the democratic state, and the minimal religious freedoms of citizens, it would appear, from a purely theoretical perspective, that there can be an extraordinarily broad range of concrete patterns of religion-state relations in political systems that would meet our broad definition of a democracy.” Does empirical evidence from Western Europe and the United States support or qualify this assertion?

Do we need to rethink our concepts of secularism? Could the concept of “multiple secularisms” be of more use? Are their some secular systems that violate the requirements of the twin tolerations and are thus not compatible with democracy?

Is it true that every major religion is “multi vocal” in the sense that it contains some components that are compatible with democracy and some components that are incompatible with democracy? If so, what does this imply about the need for “public argument”? For example, the major liberal political philosopher, John Rawls, has famously argued that in order to reach an “overlapping consensus” many religious questions must be “taken off” the political agenda of public argument. Is this possible or prudent in a cultural or political context where religion is part of the most salient conflicts?

We will explore these questions by a fundamental re-reading of the history of democracy, toleration, and religion in Europe from the 15^th century to the present, with some references to the United States. Are there major “maps of mis-readings” that we need to be aware of? Can we construct new maps?

Unit 1 Readings and Questions

Required reading for January 27:

We will begin the course with a discussion of some of the basic concepts of democracy. For a classic statement of the eight necessary conditions for a “polyarchy,” or a political democracy, see Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, pp. 1-16 (Reserve at Lehman and Courseworks).

For a very brief attempt to compare the five necessary democratic arenas for a well functioning democracy see the discussion of the tasks of “civil society” and the very different tasks of the arenas of “political society,” “the state”, “rule of law” and “economic society”, in Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), chapter 1. For the discussion of multiple and complementary identities see chapter 2, and Chapters 3 and 4 for the analysis of the four major modern regime types. Does each of the three non-democratic types present somewhat different problems for the crafting of democracy? From Parts 2-4 select one country, normally a Chapter, and be prepared for me to ask you some questions about it.

February 3

Theories of the Nation States and Democracy

The combined influence of the French Revolution, and modern theories of Nationalism such as those of J. S. Mill and Ernest Gellner, produced a powerful tradition in support of the idea that democracy needed a nation state with all that implies about one culture, especially a dominant language, and often one predominant orientation towards religion. If we are to rethink the role of democracy and the world’s religious systems we probably have to rethink the idea of the nation state. This will help us understand some of the problems now on the intellectual and political agendas in countries such as Turkey, Sri Lanka, and even France today concerning immigration of Muslims.

Required Reading for Feb 3:

One of the most brilliant and influential theorists on nationalism is Ernest Gellner. He advances his famous functionalist theory of "one culture, one state" in Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), Chapter I. ( Courseworks).

In Gelner’s last great book Conditions of Liberty ( unfortunately this just went out of print so is not at Book Culture) he spells out a theory of why combining nationalism and democracy was relatively easy in what he calls Time Zone 1 and Time Zone 2 (Great Britain and Northeastern Europe) (see pp. 103-128). ( Courseworks).

Unfortunately, most of the countries we are interested in are in what Gellner calls Time Zones 3 or 4, where he argues conditions are vastly more difficult. He gives little attention to how multinationalism, or deep linguistic and religious diversity, and democracy, can be reconciled in these time zones. That will be our task.

A major argument relevant to our concerns is Jack Snyder’s, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict . He argues that new democracies are especially prone to nationalist conflict, see his opening Chapter, “Transitions to Democracy and the Rise of Ethnic Conflict”, pp.15-43, and his appendix where he lists his empirical examples.

I began a response to Gellner in my “Modern Multinational Democracies: Transcending a Gellnerian Oxymoron,” in Arguing Comparative Politics, pp. 181-199. (Amazon). Almost a decade later I proposed the following question,( and answered in the positive), 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.

Feburary 10 and 17: Theories and Practices in Western Europe and the US.

Not required reading but background information. For the history of intolerance during the religious wars in Europe, the classic work is by the Professor of the History of the Church (at Oxford), Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation (Viking 2004). Diarmaid argues that for hundreds of years before and after the reformation, Western Europe was the most religiously intolerant area of the world -- more intolerant at that time than the Ottoman Empire, the Indian sub-continent, or central and Eastern Europe. We should learn about the attitudes and mechanisms that contributed to this intolerance, and also try to learn something about how a region where intolerance had been the norm, eventually became a region where a reasonable degree of tolerance became the norm.

What role did state actions play in helping to control religious violence and contain the Wars of Religion? Do what extent did some states “impose” tolerance?

Required Readings for February 10:

What does democracy actually require, and not require, vis-à-vis secularism? For a thoughtful analysis of why the “secularization thesis,” as an empirical prediction and a normative prescription, was shared by almost all of the founders of modern sociology, see José Casanova’s chapter “Secularization, Enlightenment, and Modern Religion” in his Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 11-39. Casanova, is now in the process of developing an argument that in the fifteen years since the publication of this book three aspects about religion in 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.

I explore these types of questions, with empirical examples from democratization movements within most of the major religions in the world, in “The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the Twin Tolerations’”, in my Arguing Comparative Politics, pp. 213-254. For this unit only read pages 213-229, which concentrate on Western Europe. I recently extended my argument about Western Europe in “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).

An influential approach to religion and politics is found in John Rawls, Political Liberalism. In his desire for a liberal discourse that can arrive at an “overlapping consensus” he normatively favors the use of “free standing propositions”, and urges that many religious questions should be “off” the political agenda. See, in particular, the introduction, especially pp. xix, pp. 151-154, and pp. 220-230. (Reserve at Lehman and Courseworks). Through out this course I would like you to examine the following question: Empirically, to what extent, and how, have successful democratization movements been able to keep religious conflicts “off” the political agenda? If religion has almost never been completely off the agenda of democratic polities what are the theoretical implications? For democracy? For Rawls? Charles Taylor in his “Modes of Secularism” offers a political-philosophical alternative beyond Rawls in Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and its Critics (Book Culture).

Required Reading for February17: Aggressive Secularism in Europe: ( With Dr. Ahmet Kuru)

We will pay particular attention today to “religiously hostile,” or “assertive,” separatist forms of secularism. Variants of this secularism are found in France, and in an even more aggressive form, in Turkey. If you are thinking of writing a paper on Turkey be sure to attend, if at all possible, the major international conference Ahmet Kuru and I are organizing on “Turkey, Democracy and the Struggle between Competing Secularisms”, March 6-7, 15^th floor IAB. If there are any speakers you are particularly interested in having a private meeting with, or getting a copy of their paper ahead of time, let me or Ahmet Kuru know.

The United States also has a separatist pattern but it was designed to be more religiously friendly. What accounts for these three very different types of separatism in France, the USA, and Turkey?

See Ahmet Kuru, “Passive and Assertive Secularism: Historical Conditions, Ideological Struggles, and State Policies Toward Religion”, World Politics, Vol 59, No 4 (July 2007):568-594. For the origins and consequences of the French pattern see Ahmet Kuru’s “Secularism, State Policies, and Muslims in Europe: Analyzing French Exceptionalism,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2008), pp. 1-19. If he is free, Ahmet Kuru, will join us today.

Could the Islamist influenced democratic ruling party of Turkey, Justice and Democratic Party (AKP) , have an analogous evolution to that of the Christain Democratic Party so brilliantly analyzed by Stathis N. Kalyvas, “From Pulpit to Party: Party Formation and the Christian Democratic Phenomenon” Comparative Politics (April 1998), pp. 293-312? What factors are in favor? What factors against? Note: Kalyvas will participate in our international conference on Turkey and his paper will address this question. He will also give a special lecture on “Rethinking the Christian Democratic Experience: Concepts and Processes” in room 707 IAB, Wednesday March 4^th.

To go further and some possible papers in Unit One:

For a comparative survey based study of world attitudes and practices concerning religion see Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide ( Cambridge: 2004). Look at the tables carefully for this unit and the units to come. What countries seem to least conform with the secularist thesis? Why? Which most? Why? If the surveys are roughly accurate in which countries do state policies and religious practices seem in most tension, in least tension?

Until recently the major contemporary European political philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, has been silent about the role of religion and tolerance. He recently broke this silence with two important articles, ‘Religion in the Public Sphere,’ in European Journal of Philosophy, 14:1, 1–25, and ‘Religious Tolerance – The Pace Maker for Cultural Rights’, Philosophy, Vol. 79 (2004): 5-18.

For another work on the concept of Toleration , see Michael Walzer, On Toleration, Yale University Press, 1997.

For his most current project of studying secularism as the emancipation of the state, law, the sciences and administration from religious authority, see his “Rethinking Secularization. A Global Comparative Perspective,” in The Hedgehog Review, Special Issue on “After Secularization” Spring/Summer 2006. Also read the interview with Peter Berger, the most prominent early defendant of the Secularization Thesis, in the same issue of The Hedgehog Review. For a trenchant essay about the antidemocratic quality of some arguments that insist on secularism, see John Keane, “The Limits of Secularism,” Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 9, 1988, 12-13. For a valuable reader that brings together important new statements about secularism by Charles Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” Amartya Sen, “Secularism and its Discontents,” as well as articles by Michael J. Sandel, Jean Bauberot, (on secularism in France) and T.M. Scanlon, see Rajeev Bhargava (ed), Secularism and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

R. Stephen Warner sparked off a new academic debate about the status of secularism in the United States with his “Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 98 (Mar. 1993), 1044-93 (JSTOR).

For a useful annotated bibliography on secularism, see the bibliographic essay by Kevin Schultz, in The Hedgehog Review, Special Issue on “After Secularization” Spring/Summer 2006.

Many thinkers assume that the norm in West European and North American democracies is the separation of church and state. Others, the minority, argue that the 1905 French version of “secularism” is too extreme. Evaluate these two positions. A place to start would be a careful examination of the role of religion in modern constitutions. You will be surprised by what you will find.

Whatever the normative theories of secularism and democracy may be, empirically democracy seems to co-exist with a great variety of patterns of separation of religion and the state. This is important for us to be aware of when judging patterns in new democracies. For two articles based on a long-term project and an index on degrees of separation of Church and State which will give you data from 1973-2003 for all the European democracies see Jonathan Fox, “ World Separation of Church and State into the Twenty First Century,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 39, No 5 (June 2006):537-569, and Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, “ Separation of Religion and State in the Twenty-First Century”, Comparative Political Studies ,Vol. 37, No 3 (April 2005).

An interesting paper might be to analyze the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 passed by the US Congress. Which countries have been the major targets of sanctions? For what types of activities? Do some EU countries carry out state policies concerning religion that could in theory make them subject to US sanctions? A good place to start on this question would be the Act itself and the discussions revolving around the passage of the law. To begin see the article by a member of the Barnard Department of Religion, Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Praying for the Persecuted Church: US Christian Activism in the Global Arena”, Journal of Human Rights,4 (2005):321-351.

For many advocates of strict separation of church and state the existence now of an Islamic influenced governing party in Turkey is an argument against the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. But what would such critics say about ruling Christian Democratic parties in countries such as Germany, Holland, and Belgium? For how European Christian Democratic parties developed growing autonomy, vis-à-vis the Catholic hierarchy, and responded increasingly to democratic political incentives, see the excellent book by Stathis and “Democracy and Religious Politics: Evidence from Belgium,” Comparative Political Studies 31(3), (1998), pp. 292-321 (PROQUEST). An interesting paper might be to analyze whether this process is occurring now in Turkey. Did it partially occur for the Hindu neo-fundamentalist party, the BJP, in India? To the extent that it did not occur what, if any consequences did the BJP suffer (for readings see Unit 3).

Unit 2

A Brief Look at Huntington, Confucianism and Orthodox Christianity:
Questions of Resistance to Authoritarianism and Support for Democracy

Two sessions: February 24, and March 3

Questions and Required Readings:

Now that you have read something about the history of intolerance and tolerance in Europe, it is time to begin this unit with a close reading of Huntington’s entire book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. A major argument of Huntington’s is that only some of the world’s religions are compatible with democracy because they lack some of the key characteristics of Western civilization. “Western Christianity is historically the single most important characteristic of Western civilization”. For Huntington, Western culture’s key contribution has been the separation of church and state. “God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture”. Of some of the other major religions Huntington asserts “In Islam, God is Caesar, in [Confucianism] Caesar is God, in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner” (all quotes from p.70). Make your own assessment on how accurate an analysis of European history the above observation is. Let us now look at Confucianism and Orthodoxy in the context of Huntington’s argument and democratization experience.

Most great religious traditions are multi-vocal. One part of the Confucian tradition is quite hierarchical and places a positive value on discipline and submission to authority. But, in a strand of Confucian doctrine that until recently has been neglected (or repressed), Confucius also talks of the moral obligation of intellectuals to criticize the ruler if the ruler is abusing power. For an evaluation of the role of Confucianism in democratic transitions in Korea and Taiwan see the two articles in Larry Diamond et al., eds., World Religions and Democracy (Johns Hopkins, 2005), by Hahm Chaibong, “The Ironies of Confucianism”, and Francis Fukuyama, “Confucianism and Democracy” and my “ The Twin Tolerations”, pp. 229- 232.

A possible paper might be to compare the new East Asian Democracy Barometer with three or four other regional barometers. What, if any, identifiable “Asian values” do you find? How non-supportive, or supportive, of democracy, are respondents who score especially high on some answers you identify as strongly associated with Confucianism? See “to go further” for more references.

For the role of Orthodoxy concerning non-democratic and democratic regimes, see Elizabeth H. Prodromov, “The Ambivalent Orthodox”, in Diamond et al. World Religion and Democracy,pp. ,and my “Crafting the Twin Tolerations” article, pp. 247-250.

To go further on Confucianism and Orthodoxy:

The largest NGO against corruption in Korea utilizes the critical voice of the Confucian multi-vocal tradition. For a modern translation and a critical commentary on Confucius, read The Analects of Confucius, translated with notes by Simon Leys (Norton, 1997). For an important analysis of the contemporary uses and abuses of “Asian values” in the democracy debate, see Rosemary Foot, “Human Rights, Democracy and Development: The Debate in East Asia,” Democratization, Vol.4, No. 2 (Summer 1997), pp. 139-153.

Ukraine is a particularly interesting case, which we will discuss in greater detail. Read Jose Casanova, ‘Ethno-Linguistic and Religious Pluralism and Democratic Construction in Ukraine,’ in Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, eds. Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building. New York, NY: Routledge, 1998. Also, Alexander Agadjanian. ‘Breakthrough to Modernity, Apologia for Traditionalism: the Russian Orthodox View of Society and Culture in Comparative Perspective’ in Religion, State and Society, Vol. 31, No. 4, December 2003. And Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: Triumphalism and Defensiveness. St Antony’s Series. 1996. Also, the article by Serhii Plokhy, ‘Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephaly and Metropolital Filaret’ in Srhii Ploky and Frank Sysyn, Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian studies Press, Toronto 2003. For the Russian case, read John D. Basil, ‘Church-State Relations in Russia: Orthodoxy and Federation Law, 1990-2004,’ in Religion, State & Society, Vol. 33, No.2, June 2005.

Unit 3
Hinduism, Democracy, Religious Conflict, Tolerance and Intolerance in India and South Asia

Three sessions: March 10, 24, 31 ( No class March 17, Spring Break)

Questions and Required Reading for March 10:

The major theoretician of the role of religion in India is Rajeev Bhargava who argues that India developed a distinctive pattern of Secularism called “ Respect All, Support All, Principled Distance Secularism.”

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 US normative vision of strict separation of religion and state in Smith’s article in that volume. By Smith’s measure, India falls short of US style secularism. Was the US model appropriate or inappropriate for India? Was it ever the intended model?

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

To go further:

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

March 24, State Nation Theory and the Comparative Politics of the Indian Model of Secularism

Questions and 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 I will circulate in this class.

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………….

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.

March 24 Religion in Comparative Perspective in South Asia: India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal

Questions and Required Readings:

Sri Lanka and India are both multi- lingual, multi-religious, and multi-national polities. For a “matched pair” comparison of state nation policies conducive to tolerance and inclusion in Tamil Nadu in India, and nation state policies that contributed to civil war and exclusion in Sri Lanka, see Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 in Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, Democracy in Multinational Polities. All these Chapters will be posted on Courseworks.

Related to the above project is a survey conducted in the five countries of South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal) in 2005 called the State of Democracy in South Asia ( Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). I will put four copies of the survey on closed reserve. Each one of you come with a comparative table you constructed and discuss its implications. I will bring some too. The overall survey coordinator was Yogendra Yadav. Linz and I worked with Yadav on the design of a battery of questions on religion and politics, tolerance, multiple and complementary identities, and support for democracy. As in most surveys this rich data is somewhat under-analyzed. If a member of the class is interested in these issues, and has had sufficient methodological training in survey analysis (for example, with Professor Robert Shapiro), I could make this data set available to you to utilize in your research paper. One of the major counter-intuitive findings that has emerged from our analysis of the SDSA survey so far is that the greater the intensity of religious practice among Hindus and Muslims in India the greater the support for democracy. The survey also demonstrates the great contextuality of religion, eg., among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians in South Asia, the religious group in the five states with the lowest support for democracy were Muslims in Pakistan (36%), and the religious group with the highest support for democracy were Muslims in Sri Lanka (78%).

Unit 4

Islam, Tolerance, and Democracy

If you are thinking of writing on this subject, and particularly if you choose to focus on Indonesia, be sure to attend and participate in our international conference “Indonesia’s Democratic Transition: Comparative Perspectives” from 9-5, Thursday April 2 and Friday April 3, on the 15^th floor of IAB.

Four sessions: April 7, 14, 21 and 28.

Background questions and non-required readings:

Is Islam multivocal? Is there space in Islam for some form of modern democracy that would meet Robert Dahl’s requirements for a polyarchy? In my article on the “Twin Tolerations”, I cite a long list of writers who say no. However, also evaluate the work of some leading Islamic thinkers and activists who are attempting to integrate Islam and democracy. A leading liberal reformer in Iran is Abdolkarim Soroush. See his Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000). Also see Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) and Charles Kurzman, ed. Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 1998). If you are interested in the subject read, very carefully, the entire Koran. How multivocal is the Koran? Which specific sections create the most space for the evolution of democracy? Which create the most problems? On the poor treatment of women as a cause and effect of authoritarianism in many Muslim majority countries, see M. Steven Fish, “Islam and Authoritarianism”, World Politics (October 2002) pp. 4-37.

Most religions are multi-vocal, both in terms of ideology and in terms of democratic practices. However, in the current context, it might be useful for people interested in democracy to familiarize themselves with long historical periods where Islam was associated with tolerance. Two of the most interesting experiences of Muslim, Jewish and Christian co-existence were in medieval Spain and Thessaloniki, Greece. See respectively, Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World. How Muslims, Jews and Christina created a Culture of Toleration in medieval Spain. Boston, Little, Brown and Co. 2002; and Marc Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950. New York: Knopf 2004. See also for references to Religious Tolerance in 16^th century Moghul India under Akbar, Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny. Norton, 2006, and Karen Armstrong. Islam. A Short History. New York, Modern Library, 2000, pp.116-138.

April 7 The Puzzle of “Arab” more than “Muslim” Electoral Under-Achievement.

Required Readings and Possible Paper:

One of the major puzzles about Muslims and democracy is that on purely socio-economic grounds, non-Arab, Muslim majority countries (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, Turkey, Albania, etc.) are some of the world’s greatest “electoral overachievers”, 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. Anyone who is in the class who knows Arabic and French is in a particularly strong position to do important work on this puzzle. Ideally, someone in the class who has these interests and skills can deepen the debate with a paper to be discussed today. 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.

For Islam within the debate of the “Twin Tolerations” see Alfred Stepan, “The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the ‘Twin Tolerations’” in Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics, esp., pp. 233-246.

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? We will thus close our course by giving attention to this under–recognized, under-theorized and under analyzed reality of the modern world by looking closely at two democracies in Muslim –majority countries.

April 14 Islam and Democratic Transition in Indonesia

If you are thinking of writing on this subject be sure to attend and participate in our international conference “Indonesia’s Democratic Transition: Comparative Perspectives” from 9-5, Thursday April 2 and Friday April 3, on the 15^th floor of IAB.

Indonesia, of course, is multi-vocal and there are important proponents of non-democratic Islam in Indonesia, but about 70% of Indonesia’s population How and why have three of the most influential Islamic thinkers and political actors in Indonesia argued, by and large successfully, for democracy in the last fifteen years? Indonesia, of course, is multi-vocal and there are important proponents of non-democratic Islam in Indonesia, but in surveys about 65% of Indonesia’s population in surveys 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 diversity in Indonesia as a “sociological fact” and pluralism as a “political choice”, in general and in the speeches and actions of 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, 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. Course works or special copies will be distributed.

For an earlier profile of Abdurrahman Wahid, 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.

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 the 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.

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

Background Thoughts:

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 a recent version of Fox’s index of state control of majority and minority religions, 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. How did this happen? Why?

Is it a problem that in Senegal state laïcité authorities and Sufi religious leaders, have both played “policy cooperating roles” in anti-female genital mutilation policies, on anti-aids policies, and on educational reform that is very unlike French religion state-patterns , and much closer to Indonesian than to Pakistani patterns?

Required Readings:

The new director of the Institute for African Studies is the distinguished Senegalese historian and social scientist, Professor 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 that the Senegalese urban population in the four coastal communes is essence “won” from the French colonial authorities 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 one (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.

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 “pro- Muslim cultural power in West Africa.” Two excellent places to 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 Course works.

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).

We will end our course with questions about such key countries of concern for democratic theory and for public policy Iran and Iraq. There is no required reading for today because I will end with speculations about the past and future and your papers are due by Noon, Friday May 1.

April 28 Concluding Reflections and Questions on Crises of our Times:

Iraq and Iran

From the viewpoint of democratic theory and democratization theory, it might be useful to try to expand our imaginations by exploring three somewhat counterfactual questions relating to Iraq. First, Juan Linz and I, well before the Iraq invasion, considered the then widely used analogy between the successful US role in supporting democracy in Germany and Japan after WWII and an analogous role in Iraq deeply fallacious. Why? Second, far from Iraq being a “most likely” case for democratization, Iraq, from the perspective of democratization theory, was a “least likely” case among the non Gulf Arab countries. Why? Third, in late 2001, especially if the US and Iran had been experiencing a thawing of relations of the possible sort suggested below, would Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine and Lebanon have been better cases for internal democratization than Iraq, especially if the US, the EU, and some other major countries such as Japan, Indonesia, Egypt and Jordan participated with financial aid, trade, diplomatic support and with international peacekeepers for the process? If your answer to this hypothetical question is yes, what are your reasons?

For Iran our question is: Given the current nuclear threatening crisis between Iran and some countries such as the United States and Israel, was there a “missed opportunity” for peaceful and democratic developments in Iran between September and December 2001? In this September - December 2001 period, the non-fundamentalist, democratically elected president of Iran, President Khatami (supported by February 2000 parliamentary elections which gave pro-democratic reformers a clear parliamentary majority) made four different peaceful overtures to the United States. In my personal judgment, none of these overtures were sufficiently publicly recognized or creatively responded to, possibly due to US’ fears that fundamentalists still in charge of the security forces and the judiciary were the more powerful part of this unusual “diarchy”. Should a normal balance of power international political strategy, or a regime change from above strategy, have been followed? Are there still any peaceful and democratic opportunities for the new Obama administration in Iran? What might they be?

REMEMBER: Your papers are due at Noon Friday May 1. Sign upon the sheet posted outside my office for our private 45 minute meeting about your paper.

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