Political Islam

Political Islam and Militancy: a Political Economy Approach

Given inevitable constraints of the fiscal year framework for development planning, not to mention the day to day rush of project design and implementation, development policymakers and practitioners often simply lack the time to engage in longer term strategic planning. While there is usually a general sense of what they want to see happen 10 years down the line, there is still a need to think...

Islam ’ s Bloody Innards ? Religion and Political Terror , 1980 – 2000

Culturalists claim that political outcomes, such as respect for human rights, are deeply rooted in culture. Some have singled out Islam as particularly problematic. We assess whether Muslim societies suffer higher levels of political terror compared with others. Our results show that countries containing larger shares of Catholics, and those dominated by Catholics, fare the worst. The share of ...

The Political Economy of Women’s Support for Fundamentalist Islam

Why do some women in Muslim countries adopt fundamentalist Islamic value systems that promote gender-based inequalities while others do not? This article considers the economic determinants of fundamentalist beliefs in the Muslim world, as women look either to marriage or employment to achieve financial security. Using cross-national public opinion data from eighteen countries with significant ...

Studying Oil, Islam, and Women as if Political Institutions Mattered

Islam, religiosity, and immigrant political action in Western Europe.

The issues of migration and immigrant political integration in western democracies have become increasingly intertwined with debates on religion, particularly Islam. To date, however, we have surprisingly little systematic research on how religious beliefs are related to immigrants' political engagement. In this study, we argue that religion has a capacity to mobilize immigrants politically but...