It is no longer fair to bemoan the inattentiveness of scholars to the importance of religion for the sphere of politics. After a long period of actual and institutional neglect (Jevtić 2007), the literature on various aspects of the relation has been growing exponentially since the 1990s, due to both real-life processes (e.g. the surge of Islamic extremism) and intellectual developments, such as the renunciation of the secularization thesis (Gill 2001). This enhanced awareness of political significance of religion attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines within social sciences and humanities, including political science. But while political scientists have been at the forefront of this movement to bring religion back into the study of politics, they have largely failed to develop and articulate a comprehensive, uniquely political-scientific perspective on the relationship between politics and religion, even if many of them adopt such a perspective implicitly in their work.

This book is designed as a partial remedy for this deficit. It originates from the conviction that a consistently political-scientific approach to the study of the relationship between politics and religion, distinct from legal, sociological, theological or religious studies perspectives, is badly needed. The development of such a perspective has been impaired by the influence of paradigms which constrain us within an overly narrow legalistic view, or else dilute the study of the political role of religion into a methodologically incoherent collection of phenomena and cases. I refer to these existing frameworks as Church and State (or CS) and Religion and Politics (RP) paradigms. They are not flawed in themselves: they simply cannot stand on their own as independent explanations of the political role of religion. Instead, they need to be situated within a theoretical framework which incorporates religion into the existing modes of political analysis, rather than singling it out for a special treatment. This new framework—political science of religion—would treat religious organizations just as other political actors pursuing their goals within a political system, and religious doctrines similarly to other political ideologies, while retaining the ability to account for the important differences between religious and secular actors and ideas. Whether or not political science of religion will be somehow formalized into a subdiscipline of political science (which, admittedly, runs some danger of overspecialization and insularity; see Kettell 2016), it needs to be recognized as a proper field of study within this discipline. In this methodological sense, it is not interdisciplinary, even though it uses insights from sociology and psychology of religion, theology, comparative religion or legal studies.

The book consists of three parts. In Part I, I offer a critique of the existing approaches (Chap. 1) and introduce the theoretical framework of political science of religion (Chap. 2). The critique dwells primarily on the three issues spelled out above: the excessive importance attached to the legal-institutional dimension of the religion-politics relationship, the lack of political science identity amidst the potpourri of religion and politics studies, and their normative overloa d—approaching the subject of study with strong normative assumptions, something that plagues a lot of research in social science, but seems to be especially difficult to avoid when it comes to religion. The longer, constructive Chap. 2 starts with general principles (the “nine theses”) of political science of religion, then proceeds to the conceptualization of the main items of analysis within the discipline (religion, political system , political actor etc.) and concludes with a theoretical framework integrating macro, mezo and micro levels of the study of the political role of religion, with the discussion of approaches most appropriate to each level.

Parts II and III employ this framework to explore some of the main subjects of study within political science of religion. The structure reflects the fundamental shift in the relationship between religion and political power in the Western world which occurred in early modernity. Gradually, religion lost its function of ideologically upholding and justifying political authority and gave way to other legitimation formulas , notably the contractual formula of contemporary democracies . It did not, however, disappear entirely from the public sphere. Rather, religious actors took on other institutional forms and adopted different strategies, transforming from official churches at the centre of power structures to religion-motivated participants of a pluralistic political arena. In recognition of this, the book covers both theocratic political systems, where religion provides the central component of the system’s legitimation formula (Part II)¹ and non-theocratic systems, where it coexists with other ideologies within a pluralistic public sphere, while religious organizations engage in power relations with other political actors (Part III). Specifically, Chap. 3 discusses religious legitimation of power, develops a conception of theocracy derived from it, situates it within the existing typologies of political regimes and considers the role religious doctrines and practices play in sacralisation of political power. Chapter 4 focuses on the mechanisms of succession of power , its institutionalization and what I refer to as political control in theocracies . Importantly, the analysis is not restricted to theocratic states, but also covers non-state theocratic political systems, such as churches or religious communes. In defining theocracy as political power sanctioned by religion, but not necessarily held by religious functionaries , and thus applicable not only to ancient or medieval, but also to contemporary (mostly Muslim) political systems, I aim to re-establish the analytical significance of this relatively rarely used category.

Part III considers the political role of religion in non-theocratic political systems. In Chap. 5, I attempt to explain the survival of religion and religious actors in the face of secularization and the loss of formal positions of authority, as well as political strategies they use to navigate the field of secular democratic politics. Some of these strategies are uniquely religious, but others, perhaps most, emulate the behaviour of other political actors—one more reason to integrate religion and religious actors into general explanatory frameworks of political science. In the last section, I look briefly at the relationship between religion and political conflict . Finally, Chap. 6 combines various concepts discussed throughout the book into a model of religion-inspired political activity in democracies, which is then applied to the cases of post-1989 Poland and the United States. The difference between strong, effective political presence of the Polish Catholic Church and equally active but less effective political involvement of a multitude of American religious organizations is conceptualized by a veto player–stakeholder dichotomy, and explained by a number of factors pertaining to both the religious actors themselves and the political opportunity structure within which they operate.

I should, perhaps, begin with a disclaimer: clearly, this book does not offer a single, coherent theory for studying all instances of the religion’s influence on the sphere of politics. Political science of religion is too vast an area to be approached with a single method or model. I therefore merely demarcate the field, provide guidelines on how to approach it, identify the basic problems within it and propose some solutions, along with empirical illustrations to test their viability. I dwell on some issues extensively (religious legitimation of power, theocracy, religious actors in democratic politics), while only signalling others (religious extremism, civil religion etc.), largely because they are very well researched already and I would have little to add. So this certainly is not the political science of religion—the ultimate theory of political significance of religion—but a structured selection of conceptions, models and other theoretical tools potentially useful for the analysis of religion-related political phenomena, to be further developed and restructured. This selection, however, is by no means haphazard. It is integrated by a consistently political-scientific perspective: it approaches religion as a power resource and religious organizations as political actors pursuing their agendas within a political system.