CREES

Comparison
While geographic comparison of party politics is well-established in the field of Political Science, the benefits of diachronic comparisons are still less often realized. Our conference seeks to combine geographic and diachronic comparison by including case studies from the second and third wave of democratization (post-1945 and post-1974) as well as from recently democratized states.

Case Selection
To ensure that we consider political parties in democratic consolidation processes, and not in electoral processes in liberalized authoritarian regimes, only case studies of religious parties in countries that at the time of the investigation score 6 or higher on Polity IV index (and for the contemporary cases 6.0 or higher on the Bertelsmann Democracy Status Index) will be included.

Combination of Qualitative and Quantitative Data
We particular welcome submissions from scholars who combine ethnographic studies of religious political parties and deep historical knowledge of the respective societies in which these parties emanate, with quantitative analyses of public opinion and electoral data.

Questions of Inquiry
Ideology and behavior of religious actors are conditioned by the institutional setting under which they operate. Political competition can create strong incentives for religious political parties to pursue vote-maximization strategies. Under certain conditions, vote-maximization strategies entail developing moderate platforms and jettisoning the religious-motivated goal of restructuring society.

To take the already well-established literature on the inclusion-moderation debate forward, four interrelated questions shall guide the geographic and diachronic comparative inquiry at the conference:
1) how does the competition for votes with secular parties and other religious parties affect the policy positions and strategies of religious parties?
2) how does participation in electoral politics affect intra-factional struggles within religious parties?
3) how does participation in electoral politics affect the internal organization of the party, and vice versa, how does internal party organization affect strategies and policies of religious parties?
4) What types of moderation of religious parties contribute to democratic consolidation? In which policy realms is moderation more consequential for democratic consolidation processes than in others?

We invite experts on specific political parties to elucidate one or several of the questions raised above. While the evolution of religious party politics in Israel, Western Europe, Indonesia and Turkey provide particularly fruitful settings as these countries have undergone and are undergoing democratic consolidation processes, we call for abstracts on religious parties in all countries that meet the case selection criteria outlined above.

Please send an abstract of 500 words by September 31, 2009 to the two organizers. Abstracts should specifically mention the methodology the
paper will employ.

Professor Manfred Brocker
mbrocker@princeton.edu

Professor Mirjam Künkler
kuenkler@princeton.edu

Thanks to a grant by the German Science Foundation (DFG), we will be able to cover all travel and lodging expenses of invited participants.