Events > Archive > Spring 2008 International Relations Theory and Religion Speaker Series

“Hypotheses on Religion and War”

A talk by
Monica Toft
Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University

Chaired by
Jack Snyder
Robert & Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations

Alfred Stepan
Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR)
Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government

This talk is based on the papers “Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War” and “Issue Indivisibility and Time Horizons as Rationalist Explanations for War.”

Monica Duffy Toft is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Science and Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Toft was a research intern at the RAND Corporation and served in the U.S. Army in southern Germany as a Russian voice interceptor. She was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies from 1999-2006. Her research interests include international relations, religion, nationalism and ethnic conflict, civil and interstate wars, the relationship between demography and national security, and military and strategic planning. Professor Toft is the author of The Geography of Ethnic Conflict: Identity, Interests, and Territory (Princeton, 2003) and co-editor of The Fog of Peace: Strategic and Military Planning under Uncertainty (Routledge, 2006). Her second monograph on civil war termination, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars, is currently under review for publication. She is finishing a co-authored book on religion in global politics, God's Century, (Norton, forthcoming 2009) and beginning a monograph on religion and violence, tentatively titled Faith as Reason: The Role of Religion in Civil Wars. Professor Toft is director of the Belfer Center's Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, which was established with a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The Carnegie Foundation of New York recently named her a Carnegie Scholar for her research on religion, Islam and civil war.

Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Time: 4:30 – 6:30pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Saltzman Institute Seminar Room, 13th Floor

A reception will follow the talk.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department; the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies; the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR); and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL)

“Religion and International Relations: No Leap of Faith Required”

A talk by
Daniel Nexon
Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University

Chaired by
Jack Snyder
Robert & Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations

Alfred Stepan
Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR)
Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government

Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Time: 4:30 – 6:30pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Lindsay Rodgers Room (7th Floor)

Description:
Daniel Nexon, in his talk, challenges claims that "getting religion" requires major changes in the way we approach international-relations theory. Drawing on his previous work on the political impact of the Protestant Reformations, he demonstrates that religious phenomena are neither sui generis with respect to existing analytic categories in the field of international relations nor, in of themselves, a reason for fundamentally rethinking our conception of the international systems. He argues, however, that certain aspects of the nexus between international relations and religion point to enduring problems with how a number of traditions handle cultural phenomena, such as norms and identities. These aspects of religion may best be approached through a selective appropriation of post-structuralist understandings of discursive contexts and representational politics.

Bio:
Daniel H. Nexon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His main interests include the dynamics of empires and other forms of hierarchical control, religion, power politics, and international-relations theory. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, Dialogue-IO, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Perspectives, Review of International Political Economy, and the Review of International Studies, as well as a number of edited volumes. He also co-edited Harry Potter and International Relations, and his first monograph, currently entitled Religious Conflict, International Change, and the Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe, will be published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. He has held fellowships at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Stanford University and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University. In 2009-2010, he will be a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He received his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 2004.

A reception will follow the talk.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department, the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL).

“When God Means War, When God Means Peace: Explaining the Wide Variations in Religious Politics”

A talk by
Daniel Philpott

Associate Professor at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Chaired by
Jack Snyder
Robert & Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations

Alfred Stepan
Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR)
Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government

Confounding theorists of secularization, religion?s political influence has increased in every region of the globe over the past
generation. But this influence varies wildly in form. Religion has destroyed both dictatorships and New York skyscrapers and has created truth commissions and peace agreements as well as civil wars. What explains the diverse political pursuits of religious leaders and communities? Daniel Philpott proposes an explanation rooted in their relationship with the state and their theologically rooted beliefs about politics. His argument contains important implications for American foreign policy and international cooperation.

This talk is based on the published article “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion.”

Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Time: 4:30 - 6:30pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Lindsay Rodgers Room, 7th Floor

A reception will follow the talk.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department; the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies; the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR); and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL).

“Religion, Humanitarianism and International Relations”

A talk by

Michael Barnett

Herold Stassen Chair of International Relations at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota

This talk is based on the working paper “Another Great Awakening? International Relations Theory and Religion.”

In his talk, Michael Barnett asks whether scholars of international relations theory should find religion. If so, how should they find it and what will it discover?

Date: Thursday, February 14, 2008
Location: IAB, Lindsay Rogers Room, 7th Floor
Time: 4:30 pm

Reception will follow.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), the Political Science Department, the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL).

“Secularism and IR Theory”

A talk by
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University

Chaired by
Jack Snyder
Robert & Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations

Alfred Stepan
Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR)
Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government

This talk is based on the working paper “Secularism and IR Theory.”

How might we begin to think about secularism, and eventually, secularisms in the plural, as significant forms of political authority in contemporary international relations? What would this shift mean for IR theory, and what would it mean for understanding the global resurgence of religion? What kinds of regional and global politics follow from different secular commitments, traditions, habits, and beliefs? Drawing on her recent book, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, 2008), Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularist divisions between religion and politics are not fixed but socially and historically constructed. The failure to recognize this helps to explain why IR—both theoretically speaking and in terms of actual practice—has been unable to come to terms with the political authority of secularism and religion in world politics. Overcoming this problem allows a better understanding of crucial empirical puzzles in international relations involving the politics of religion, including the conflict between the United States and Iran, controversy over the enlargement of the European Union to include Turkey, the rise of political Islam, and global religious resurgence.

Recent articles by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd include “Political Islam and foreign policy in Europe and the United States,” Foreign Policy Analysis (2007), “Theorizing religious resurgence,” International Politics (2007); and “Negotiating Europe: The politics of religion and the prospects for Turkish accession to the EU,” Review of International Studies (2006).

Date: Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Time: 4:30 – 6:30pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Lindsay Rodgers Room (7th Floor)

A reception will follow the talk.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department, the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL).

“Civilizational States, Secularisms, and Religions”

A talk by
Peter Katzenstein
Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Cornell University
President-Elect of the American Political Science Association (2008-2009)

Chaired by
Jack Snyder
Robert & Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations

Alfred Stepan
Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR)
Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government

This talk is based on the working paper “Civilizational States, Secularisms and Religions.”

Disciplined social science research has yielded one important result: States, capitalisms, and democracies are variegated and complex and must be understood in their multiple manifestations. If three core components of secular politics are not well conceptualized in the singular, why should secular politics in the international system?

Peter Katzenstein’s talk does not start with the assumption that, by privatizing religion, the Peace of Westphalia left international politics fully secular. Furthermore, the speaker does not assume that secularism should be conceived of in the singular. Secularism, in the singular, is central to substantively different arguments about international relations: realist power politics, liberal cosmopolitanism, and Marxist class struggle. All three view religious conflicts as relics of a bygone era, a sideshow to the struggle over primacy, the coordination of conflicting objectives, and the dynamics of class conflict. There is something appealing and implausible about this view. Appealing is the search for simplification and a parsimonious understanding of international politics. Implausible are the denial of the continued relevance of religion for world politics and a view of secularism in the singular despite the fact that many aspects of secular politics -- state, capitalism and democracy -- are so variegated empirically.

Katzenstein first explains why scholars of international relations focus on secularism in the singular and all but disregard religion in their analyses. Seeking to show the intermingling of secularisms and religions in world politics, he then develops the concept of the “civilizational state” as an alternative to the “rational state.” Informed by the writings of Yasusuke Murakami, Katzenstein inquires into the topic of cultural commensurabilities in world politics.

Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Time: 4:30 – 6:30pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Lindsay Rodgers Room (7th Floor)

A reception will follow the talk.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department, the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL).