Mediating Religion And Government

Features

Description

The empirical study of religion and politics emerged as a strongly behavioral sub-discipline within political science within the late 20th Century. Particularly in the American context, scholars have placed tremendous emphasis on religion's influence on political attitudes and behaviors. As a result, we have a much better understanding of the potency of religion in shaping voting patterns, party affiliation, and views of public policy, among other behavioral aspects of American politics.

In the context of a democracy, however, political institutions mediate the effect of religion on political attitudes and the policy process. In a Madisonian sense, institutions are at the fulcrum of mass politics and policy outputs. This volume investigates the influence of religion on and within political institutions.

Each chapter provides a synthesis of the literature with respect to a particular institution and makes an original research contribution to the literature. By addressing the historical, contemporary, constitutional, and policy-based elements of religious interactions within politics, the volume creates a wide-ranging assessment of the sometimes contentious relationship between these two pillars of American culture.

Review: This important new volume injects a much-needed institutionalist perspective into the study of religion and politics, pushing the boundaries of how we study the intersection beyond the usual focus on mass-level political attitudes and behaviors. The book is accessibly written while also having the potential to generate many new and exciting research questions for scholars. - Laura R.

Olson, Centennial Professor, Clemson University, USA This volume addresses an important and under-explored question in the field of religion and politics: how religion shapes the governing institutions that ultimately determine whether and how religiously-derived preferences are reflected in public policy.

Its contributions are diverse but thematically unified, shedding light on the role of religion in all three branches of government along with interest groups, political parties, and the states. The den Dulk and Oldmixon collection is an invaluable companion to the manifold studies of religion and political behavior that have emerged over the last twenty years. - Matthew Wilson, Associate Professor, Southern Methodist University, USA