Protocols of systematic reviews and meta-analyses allow for planning and documentation of review methods, act as a guard against arbitrary decision making during review conduct, enable readers to assess for the presence of selective reporting against completed reviews, and, when made publicly available, reduce duplication of efforts and potentially prompt collaboration. Evidence documenting the existence of selective reporting and excessive duplication of reviews on the same or similar topics is accumulating and many calls have been made in support of the documentation and public availability of review protocols. Several efforts have emerged in recent years to rectify these problems, including development of an international register for prospective reviews (PROSPERO) and launch of the first open access journal dedicated to the exclusive publication of systematic review products, including protocols (BioMed Central's Systematic Reviews). Furthering these efforts and building on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines, an international group of experts has created a guideline to improve the transparency, accuracy, completeness, and frequency of documented systematic review and meta-analysis protocols--PRISMA-P (for protocols) 2015. The PRISMA-P checklist contains 17 items considered to be essential and minimum components of a systematic review or meta-analysis protocol.This PRISMA-P 2015 Explanation and Elaboration paper provides readers with a full understanding of and evidence about the necessity of each item as well as a model example from an existing published protocol. This paper should be read together with the PRISMA-P 2015 statement. Systematic review authors and assessors are strongly encouraged to make use of PRISMA-P when drafting and appraising review protocols.

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Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015: elaboration and explanation.

Part I. Understanding Secularization: 1. The secularization debate 2. Measuring secularization 3. Comparing secularization worldwide Part II. Case Studies of Religion and Politics: 4. The puzzle of secularization in the United States and Western Europe 5. A religious revival in post-communist Europe? 6. Religion and politics in the Muslim world Part III. The Consequences of Secularization: 7. Religion, the Protestant ethic, and moral values 8. Religious organizations and social capital 9. Religious parties and electoral behavior Part IV. Conclusions: 10. Secularization and its consequences 11. Re-examining the theory of existential security 12. Re-examining evidence for the security thesis.

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Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

Lacking an appropriate theoretical framework, economists and economic historians have paid little attention to the relations between culture and institutional structure. This limits the ability to address a question that seems to be at the heart of developmental failures: Why do societies fail to adopt the institutional structure of more economically successful ones? This paper integrates game-theoretical and sociological concepts to conduct a comparative historical analysis of the relations between culture and institutional structure. It examines cultural factors that have led two premodern societies--one from the Muslim world and the other from the Latin world--to evolve along distinct trajectories of institutional structure. It indicates the theoretical importance of culture in determining institutional structures, in leading to their path dependence, and in forestalling successful intersociety adoption of institutions. Since the distinct institutional structures found in the late medieval period resem...

Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies

The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant to restore civic life to that ravaged country. "Suppose the election was declared free and fair," he said, and those elected are "racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and r?int?gration]. That is the dilemma." Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philip pines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life? illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize this problem because for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy?a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms?what might be termed constitu tional liberalism?is theoretically different and historically distinct

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The Rise of Illiberal Democracy

It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. They also fail to explain why institutions are influenced by the past, why it is that they can sometimes change, why they differ so much from society to society, and why it is hard to study them empirically and devise a policy aimed at altering them. This 2006 book seeks to overcome these problems, which have exercised economists, sociologists, political scientists, and a host of other researchers who use the social sciences to study history, law, and business administration. It presents a multi-disciplinary perspective to study endogenous institutions and their dynamics.

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Institutions and the path to the modern economy

Written by renowned scholar Bernard Lewis, this book has long established itself as the preferred one-volume history of modern Turkey. Now in its third edition, this book has been updated to include the most recent information on Turkey and addresses such issues as Turkey's emergence as a Western-oriented power; its inclusion in the European Union; its continued involvement with the politics of the Middle East as well as the politics of the Iraq-UN conflict; and the politically divisive issue of Kurdich violence and ethnic nationalism.

The Emergence of Modern Turkey

The great scholar of Islam directly confronts the events of September 11th and the reasons behind Islamic terrorism in the modern world - a Sunday Times bestseller. President Bush has made it clear that we are engaged in a war against terrorism. But for Osama bin Laden and his followers this is religious war, a war for Islam against infidels, especially the United States, the greatest power in the world of the infidels. In this book Bernard Lewis shows us where the anger and frustration have come from, and the extent to which almost the entire Muslim world is affected by poverty and tyranny. He looks at the influence of extreme Wahhabist doctrines in the Saudi kingdom, where custodianship of Islam's holy places and the revenues of oil have given worldwide impact to what would otherwise have been an extremist fringe in a marginal country. He looks at American double standards, which have long caused Muslim anger, and tells us the real meaning of 'Islamic fundamentalism', 'jihad' and 'fatwa', and why the peoples of the Middle East are conscious of history in a way most Americans find difficult to understand.

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The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror

MISCELLANEOUSBernard LewisOxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, xii, 180pp, US$23.00, ISBN 0-19-514420-1Ninety per cent of this book consists of a study of interactions between Europe and the Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. After briefly describing the Ottoman expansion through southern Europe and the Balkans 'to the gates of Vienna,' Bernard Lewis discusses the difficulties the Turks subsequently experienced in coming to grips with new intellectual and other currents emanating from Europe. In one sphere after another the creativity and dynamism of Europe challenged the Turks - commerce and enterprise, science and technology, military organization and equipment, the measurement of time and space. Even more daunting was the dissemination of European thinking on political freedom, human rights, gender equality, a free press, and above all secularism. In the end, the challenges proved insurmountable, an increasingly moribund Ottoman empire shrank and then collapsed, and a triumphant Europe reasserted or asserted its control over most of the lands once ruled by the Sultan.So far, so good. Lewis brings to his task the scholarship and talents that have distinguished his work as a historian of the Middle East for over 50 years. (One of his early works, The Arabs in History, first published in 1950, is still widely read today, and deservedly so.) He demonstrates an impressive command of Turkish sources, illustrating his points with a judicious selection of extracts from Ottoman documents, memoirs, and letters. The writing is clear, elegant, and persuasive. While his judgements of Ottoman failings are often severe, they are neither unfounded nor unfair. Indeed, if this were all there was to this book, it could readily be saluted and recommended as a fine piece of historical writing.Unfortunately, Lewis has chosen to draw from his study a series of lessons and conclusions of supposedly contemporary relevance about what he calls 'the long struggle between Islam and Christendom.' In so doing, he manages to avoid neither of the twin pitfalls of oversimplification and overgeneralization.To portray the expansion of the Ottoman empire simply as a civilizational or ideological contest between the worlds of Christianity and Islam is at best misleading. As their empire spread, the Ottomans conquered as many Muslim Arab lands (from Baghdad to Mecca to Algiers) as they did Christian European lands. …

What Went Wrong? - Western Impact And Middle Eastern Response

What does "jihad" really mean? What is the Muslim conception of law? What is Islam's stance toward unbelievers? Probing literary and historical sources, Bernard Lewis traces the development of Islamic political language from the time of the Prophet to the present. His analysis of documents written in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish illuminates differences between Muslim political thinking and Western political theory, and clarifies the perception, discussion, and practices of politics in the Islamic world. "Lewis's own style, combining erudition with a simple elegance and subtle humor, continues to inspire. In an era of specialization and narrowing academic vision, he stands alone as one who deserves, without qualification, the title of historian of Islam." Martin Kramer, "Middle East Review" "A superb effort at synthesis that presents all the relevant facts of Middle Eastern history in an eminently lucid form. . . . It is a book that should prove both rewarding and congenial to the Muslim reader." S. Parvez Manzor, "Muslim World Book Review" "By bringing his thoughts together in this clear, concise and readable account, [Lewis] has placed in his debt scholars and all who seek to understand the Muslim world." Ann K. S. Lambton, "Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies" "[Lewis] constructs a fascinating account of the ways in which Muslims have conceived of the relations between ruler and ruled, rights and duties, legitimacy and illegitimacy, obedience and rebellion, justice and oppression. And he shows how changes in political attitudes and concepts can be traced through changes in the political vocabulary." Shaul Bakhash, "New York Review of Books""

The political language of Islam

Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture-an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan" In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction-in war and peace, in commerce and culture-between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language) And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world

Bernard Lewis

Papers

The Emergence of Modern Turkey

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror

What Went Wrong? - Western Impact And Middle Eastern Response

The political language of Islam

Islam and the West