Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government
Director, Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion
International Affairs Building 833
Phone: 212-854-4644
as48@columbia.edu
www.columbia.edu/~as48  

Alfred C. Stepan (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1969). His publications include: Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (Oxford: 2001); Stepan, Juan Linz, and Yogendra Yadav, Democracies in Multinational Societies: India and Other Polities (Johns Hopkins: 2007); Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post Communist Europe (Johns Hopkins: 1996); and Linz and Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Johns Hopkins: 1978). His recent publications relating to religion and politics include “The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the “Twin Tolerations”, in his Arguing Comparative Politics (his major writing project in the next few years is to expand this article into a book) and “An ‘Arab’ More Than ‘Muslim’ Electoral Gap” Journal of Democracy (July 2003) and a Forum debating this in JoD (October 2004). Working with Yogendra Yadav and Juan Linz, Stepan helped prepare the questions on religion and politics for the 50,000 person survey of the five countries of South Asia in 2005-6 and Stepan and Linz cooperate with the PI, Amaney Jamal, in the design of a Pew-sponsored Arab Barometer study.

Stepan taught at Yale for thirteen years (1976-82), later was Dean of SIPA at Columbia (1983–1991, the first Rector of Central European University (1993-1996), the Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford University (1996-1999), and is now the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at SIPA. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the British Academy. He began his career as a foreign correspondent in Africa and Latin America for The Economist and now has an occasional syndicated column, often relating to religion, which has appeared in more than ninety countries.

Alfred C. Stepan is a Fellow at American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991- present and is a member of British Academy, 1997-present.

Component: Democracy and Religion in Research and Practice