Why do some countries adopt secular institutions while others do not? In The Origins of Secular Institutions, Zeynep Bulutgil develops a theory that combines ideational and organizational mechanisms to explain how institutional secularization occurs. She first focuses on why political groups with a secularizing agenda emerge. Her argument is that the circulation of Enlightenment literature among the elite and associations through which the elite could exchange ideas were the main factors that influenced the early emergence of secularizing political movements. She then turns to the conditions under which these movements succeed. Secularizing political groups are at a comparative disadvantage when it comes to recruiting grassroots support because, unlike religious actors, they cannot rely on a pre-existing institutional structure. They become likely to overcome this obstacle if they have time to build a robust organization before religious political movements emerge. Bulutgil supports these arguments by combining statistical analysis of original historical data with comparative analysis of countries in Europe (France, Spain, United Kingdom) and the Middle East/North Africa (Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia). An authoritative explanation of why political secularization occurred in some countries but not others, this book will reshape our understanding of an issue of unsurpassed importance for over two centuries: the effects of modernity on politics.
Author:
H. Zeynep Bulutgil is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at University College London. Her research interests focus on the relationship between religious and political institutions, political violence, and inequality and ethnic politics. Her first book, The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2016; 2018) explored the conditions that lead to (or prevent) ethnic cleansing and was the Winner of the 2017 Best Book Award in the European Politics and Society Section of APSA. She has also published articles on ethnic cleansing, political violence, social cleavages, and political mobilization in leading journals.
She was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2019-2020), which allowed her to complete The Origins of Secular Institutions. Her previous research has been supported by grants or fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, and the National Science Foundation. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is also an Associate Editor at Nationalities Papers.
Discussants:
Ahmet T. Kuru is Porteous Professor of Political Science and the director of Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State University. He is the author of two award award-winning books: Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge UP, 2009) and Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge UP, 2019), which have been translated into Arabic, Bosnian, Indonesian, Malay, Persian, and Turkish.
Tomila Lankina is Professor of International Relations at the LSE’s International Relations Department. Her research focuses on comparative democracy and authoritarianism, protests and historical patterns of human capital and democratic reproduction in Russia and other states. She has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, The Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, World Politics, Demokratizatsiya, Europe-Asia Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism and other journals. Her latest and third book is The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class (Cambridge University Press 2022).
Moderator:
Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers. He is a the author of the award-winning The Politics of Nation-Building (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and co-editor of Enemies Within: Fifth Column Politics in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2022; w/ Scott Radnitz) and The Microfoundations of Diasporan Politics (Routledge, 2022; w/ Alexandra Délano Alonso).