Ethnic Groups in Conflict

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence

Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1

국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics

There are a growing number of scholars and institutions that have come to recognize organized religion as a major factor in contemporary international conflicts. But this recognition has yielded very little in the way of in-depth analysis of the nature of religion’s role in conflict, and it has yielded even fewer results in analyzing the ways in which religion has played an equally important function in human patterns of reconciliation in these same conflicts.

The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation

With the increasing influence of theocrats and other religious actors on policymakers and masses, recognising the agency of the clergy is crucial. This article uses the ‘epistemic communities’ framework to place the religious ‘agents’ in contemporary politics and it shows how hermeneutics can be treated as a form of ‘episteme’. Until recently, this framework has been used to explain how scientific communities affect policymaking. Using the cases of South Africa and Northern Ireland, this article claims that religious actors, especially with their shared set of normative and principled beliefs as well as shared norms of validity, also meet the requirements of the epistemic community category. The employment of this established IR framework in theorising religious politics has the potential to shed light not only on peacebuilding and mediation, but also violent movements and terrorist organisations that use religion as justification.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0260210510001592

Religious actors as epistemic communities in conflict transformation: the cases of South Africa and Northern Ireland

Until the end of the Cold War, it is not an exaggeration to say that only a few theorists of International Relations (IR) or policy-makers engaged in either substantial investigation or articulation of the links between cultural variables like religion and ethnicity on one hand and international affairs on the other. In our article, we argue that this pattern does not do justice to the nature of mainstream IR theories. Although studies are accumulating, how (or whether) religion as a variable can be integrated into mainstream IR thinking still remains in question. We look at three main traditions in IR theory — classical realism, structural realism and neoliberalism — to see how religion can contribute to our understanding of international affairs within those frameworks. We claim that, without stretching the limits of theories or disturbing their intellectual coherence, possibilities for two-way interactions between the frameworks and identity-related variables like religion can be identified.

Religion and international relations theory: Towards a mutual understanding

There is a growing realization among international relations scholars and practitioners that religion is a critical factor in global politics The Iranian Revolution, the September 11 attacks, the ethno-religious conflicts such as the ones in the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka are among the many reasons for this increased focus on religion in international affairs The rise of religious political parties across the world ranging from the Christian Democrats in Europe to Bharatiya Janata Party in India similarly illustrated religion's heightened international profile 
Despite all this attention, it is challenging to situate religion within a discipline which has been dominantly secular from its inception Only a few existent works have ventured to integrate religion into core international relations theories such as Classical Realism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, Constructivism and the English school This work is the first systematic attempt to comparatively assess the place of religion in the aforementioned theoretical strands of international relations with contemporary examples from around the world
Written in an accessible and systematic fashion, this book will be an important addition to the fields of both religion and international relations 
Nukhet A Sandal is Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Ohio University

Jonathan Fox is Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel

Religion in International Relations Theory: Interactions and Possibilities

Religion has been used by many scholars as an analytical category and an independent variable to account for the variances in governance and political violence. Very often, religion is decontextual...

The Clash of Public Theologies?: Rethinking the Concept of Religion in Global Politics

In the middle power literature, states are blackboxed and their behavior is analyzed independently of electoral or regional politics This article fills a gap in this literature by tying the foreign policies of new middle powers to their political trajectories Using the case studies of Brazil and Turkey, I argue that the assertive foreign policy behavior of these developing states is a legitimation strategy in response both to the international and domestic audience I revise the definition of middle powers and enumerate the factors that contribute to their emergence in order to better clarify the dynamics of policymaking by the ‘second-generation middle powers’

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fip.2014.33.pdf

Nukhet A. Sandal

Papers

Religious actors as epistemic communities in conflict transformation: the cases of South Africa and Northern Ireland

Religion and international relations theory: Towards a mutual understanding

Religion in International Relations Theory: Interactions and Possibilities

The Clash of Public Theologies?: Rethinking the Concept of Religion in Global Politics

Middle powerhood as a legitimation strategy in the developing world: The cases of Brazil and Turkey