From Religious Empires to Secular States (Conceptualising Comparative Politics) - Hardcover

Baskan, Birol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415743516 ISBN 13: 9780415743518

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

In the 1920s and the 1930s, Turkey, Iran and Russia vehemently pursued state-secularizing reforms, but adopted different strategies in doing so. But why do states follow different secularizing strategies? The literature has already shattered the illusion that secularization of the state has been a unilinear, homogeneous and universal process, and has convincingly shown that secularization of the state has unfolded along different paths. Much, however, remains to be uncovered.

This book provides an in-depth comparative historical analysis of state secularization in three major Eurasian countries: Turkey, Iran and Russia. To capture the aforementioned variation in state secularization across three countries that have been hitherto analyzed as separate studies, Birol Başkan adopts three modes of state secularization: accommodationism, separationism and eradicationism. Focusing thematically on the changing relations between the state and religious institutions, Başkan brings together a host of factors, historical, strategic and structural, to account for why Turkey adopted accommodationism, Iran separationism and Russia eradicationism. In doing so, he expertly demonstrates that each secularization strategy was a rational response to the strategic context the reformers found themselves in.

About this title

About the Author

Birol Başkan is an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He holds a PhD in political science from Northwestern University. His research looks at state-regime-religion relations in the Middle East.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415743516
• ISBN 13: 9780415743518
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 218