Religion in International Relations Theory

Interactions and Possibilities

Nukhet Sandal, Jonathan Fox

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135045623
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

1 Religions, paradigms, and international relations

There is a growing realization among scholars of international relations that religion is an important factor in global politics. The numerous events that led to this realization include the Iranian Revolution, the September 11 attacks, widespread employment of religious discourse in politics worldwide, the rise of Al-Qaeda on the international scene, and the ethno-religious conflicts such as those in the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka and Iraq. The successes of religious political parties and groups across the world ranging from the Christian Democrats in Europe to the Bharatiya Janata Party in India similarly illustrate religion’s expanding international profile. There is also a growing recognition of the impact of religion on individual policy-makers and the influence of international religious figures such as the Pope and the Dalai Lama. While the Iranian Revolution was likely the earliest widely recognized event which showed religion’s influence on contemporary international relations, Toft et al. (2011) argue convincingly that religion’s international influence had been increasing since the 1960s.

Recently, there have been increasing efforts to grapple with understanding religion within a discipline which has been dominantly secular from its inception. Yet, only a few of the extant works have attempted to integrate religion into core international relations theories such as Classical Realism, Structural (Neo) Realism, (Neo)Liberalism, the English School, and Constructivism. The purpose of this book is to assess whether an understanding of religion can be systematically integrated into these theories without losing the core insights these theories already bring to international relations. Accordingly, in this chapter we discuss the current state of religion in international relations, why we believe there is a need to accommodate religion in the existing international relations paradigms, and our basic methodology for accomplishing this task including why we selected these five theories as our focus.

A brief overview of the current state of religion in international relations thought

The existing literature on religion and international relations theory may be divided into four categories. While individual treatments of religion in international relations may fall into more than one category, the categories themselves are distinct. The first is the simple realization that religion has been neglected in international relations theory. For example, Daniel Philpott (2002: 67) argues that “with few exceptions, international relations scholars have long assumed the absence of religion among the factors that influence states.” Katzenstein and Byrnes (2006: 680–681) similarly assert that:

In the analysis of Europe and its international relations, the rediscovery of religion is overdue. Specifically, scholars of Europe’s emerging polity have so far neglected this topic in their voluminous writings. This oversight is true, specifically, for analyses grounded self-consciously in secular liberal and cultural realist perspectives. Instead of multiplicity, these perspectives stress uniformity of outcomes: the absence of religion in either a progressive and cooperative secular politics for liberals or a divided and conflictual one for realists.

Scott Thomas (2005: 3) more broadly attributes this gap to academics, the media and the policy community:

Since the Iranian revolution religion has been marginalized in our understanding of international affairs. There is still the attempt by the media or by policy-makers to portray the reformist pressures in Iran only in a secular, liberal, democratic way – a Western way – rather than to recognize that they aim to form a political order that is representative, democratic, and still responsive to traditional values.

Interestingly, the writings in this category and nearly every other study which seriously addresses religion in international relations were published after September 11, 2001. Philpott (2002: 69), in an examination of major international relations journals between 1980 and 1999, found only six articles which considered religion to be a serious impact on international relations. Similarly, using a search in the Library of Congress online catalog, Hassner (2011: 38) reports that the average yearly output of books on religion and international affairs has sextupled, from about one book a year in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, to approximately six books a year since 2002.

The second type of treatment of religion has been through discussions of why religion has been neglected. There is little disagreement over the reasons for this lacuna in international relations theory. Most scholars who discuss the topic place much of the blame on secularization theory – the argument that religion will come to a demise in modern times¹ (Bellin, 2008; Fox and Sandler, 2004; Fox, 2013; Goldewijk, 2007; Hurd, 2004a; Philpott, 2009). Thomas (2005) calls this tendency a political myth based on normative aspirations rather than on reality. Another common argument is that political leaders exiled religion from international relations with the Treaty of Westphalia which declared religion a domestic matter in the seventeenth century (Farr, 2008; Hanson, 2006; Hurd, 2004a; Laustsen and Waever, 2000; Philpott, 2002). Finally, positivist international relations studies are accused of ignoring religion as religion has been difficult to operationalize (Fox and Sandler, 2004; Thomas, 2005; Philpott and Shah, 2012).

The third type of discussion includes the studies which identify influential religious factors in global politics but which make no attempts to integrate these factors into existing international relations theories. The next chapter is devoted to creating a comprehensive list of such factors and draws extensively on this literature.

The final, and perhaps the least common, type of discussion has been attempts to grapple with how religion can be addressed by international relations theory. While most such discussions of which we are aware are noted in more detail in the following chapters, a typology of such attempts is useful to illustrate the current state of affairs in the theoretical discussion.

One branch of the literature argues that contemporary theories and paradigms of international relations are incapable of dealing with religion and, therefore, it is necessary to build new theories. Some of these theorists identify and often describe in detail religious factors that are important in specific areas. Although their work undoubtedly contributes to our understanding of religion, these scholars do not actually construct comprehensive theories of international relations. Some of the factors identified in this literature include religious identity (Kubalkova, 2000; Katzenstein and Byrnes, 2006), religious motivations for behavior (Kubalkova, 2000), religious human rights (Richardson, 2007), religious non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other non-state actors (Katzenstein and Byrnes, 2006; Thomas, 2005), religion in global justice (Wilson, 2010), and religious violence (Thomas, 2005).

A few other scholars have developed models that integrate limited aspects of theory and religion. That is, they do not develop overarching paradigms but they have devised workable theories for understanding the role of religion. For example, Hassner (2009) uses the concepts of divisible and indivisible conflicts to understand conflicts over holy spaces such as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Hurd (2004a) develops a theory that describes two trends in Western secularism and how these two perspectives result in different foreign policies. Halliward (2008: 12) introduces a model stating that secular—religious boundaries can influence how “individuals and organizations negotiate the relationship between these rival sites of authority and the contexts in which they attribute (or withhold) legitimacy.” Lynch (2011: 405) adopts a Neo-eberian approach to religion in international politics that provides “conceptual tools to link ethical motivations and interpretations to both context and action” and notes that “this approach does not provide simple, parsimonious explanations of behavior derived from the religious beliefs of actors.” Jack Snyder (2011) brings insightful snapshots of international relations theory and religion in an edited book; the authors discuss how aspects of international relations—religion research agenda can benefit discussion of international relations theory. These are certainly illuminating exercises, and in this book we aim to systematize and considerably widen these debates on religion and international relations theory.

Other efforts to integrate religion into international relations theory, while falling short of building models, similarly focus on limited aspects of international relations and rarely directly address the major international relations paradigms. For example, several studies look at the role of religion in legitimizing specific foreign policies (Froese and Mencken, 2009: 103–104), civil wars (Rummel, 1997; Toft, 2007), or transnational issues such as human rights (Akbaba, 2009).

This brief discussion certainly does not do justice to a diverse literature, and in the following chapters we discuss much of this literature in more detail. However, this review is sufficient to demonstrate that the efforts to integrate religion into international relations theory are in their earlier stages. There is a realization that this gap needs to be addressed. Sandal and James (2011), in their survey of how the mutual links between religion and international relations theory can be established, point to the possibilities and the need for in-depth studies that explore these links. As they argue, systematic attempts at a comprehensive integration of an understanding of religion into existing international relations paradigms such as Classical Realism, Neoliberalism and Neorealism are noticeably lacking. Although there are some ad hoc efforts to account for certain aspects of religion in some aspects of the theory, many scholars specifically note that such integration is not the appropriate avenue for understanding religion within the context of international relations (Kubalkova, 2000; Thomas, 2005).

Approaches to integrating religion into international relations theory

There are three possible approaches to integrating religion into international relations theory. The first is to construct new theories. As noted above, a number of theorists advocate this option and have begun the process of using alternative approaches to accomplish this task. This approach has already provided important insights and it has the potential to provide new theories which may, eventually, evolve into a new paradigm of international relations. However, this approach has a major drawback. It effectively tosses out the decades, and in some cases centuries of research and insights into international relations accumulated within the context of existing paradigms.

Put differently, the approach of discarding existing theories to explain religion throws out the baby with the bath water. As discussed in Chapter 2, religion influences international relations in multiple significant ways. However, we make no claim that religion is the only influence. Military and economic power as well as the structure of the international system – the foci of the different branches of the Realist paradigm – remain important. Similarly, the dynamics of the international economy and non-state actors described in the Neoliberal paradigm have also the potential to interact with religion. Given these links, we posit that the option of scrapping existing theories is an option that should be considered only after efforts to find a way to understand religion within the context of existing international relations theories have utterly failed. We argue that we are not yet at that point. Barnett (2011), in his discussion of religion and world orders, makes a similar argument, expressing his belief that existing theoretical approaches provide a useful starting point for discussion on religion and politics.

The second approach is to examine an existing international relations theory to fit religion into it in as many ways as possible. This approach has the advantage of keeping the insights from existing international relations theories. However, we argue that it is also an inefficient methodology to accomplish the task at hand. This becomes most apparent when examining the final approach.

The final approach is to first develop a comprehensive list of ways in which religion can potentially influence international relations, then to take this list and examine whether and how each item can be integrated into an existing international relations paradigm. This approach has several advantages in comparison to the first two. Like the second approach, it maintains the insights contained in the existing paradigm. However, beginning with an examination of religion’s role in international relations and then examining how religion fits into the theory at hand results in a more comprehensive and comparable approach without preconceptions regarding the ability of each theory to accommodate religion.

Comprehensiveness: The second approach essentially looks for convenient places to integrate religion into a theory. One examines the theory and seeks places where religion will fit. In contrast, our approach (the third approach) begins with a comprehensive list of ways in which religion can potentially influence international relations and seeks to fit each item on this list into a theory. This approach significantly increases the likelihood that one will consider and hopefully find ways to integrate more aspects of religion into the theory. Put differently, using a checklist ensures that every item on the list will be examined, which is not necessarily the case with a less organized approach. Thus, this approach is more comprehensive.

Comparability: Similarly, the approach of beginning with a theory or paradigm and then integrating religion where it seems to fit is basically an ad-hoc approach. It can function well in the context of a single theory or paradigm. However, it will prove to be difficult to compare results between the theories. In contrast, the methodology of beginning with a list of potential influences and examining the compatibility of each one with each theory allows for a clear comparison across theories. That is, this approach allows us to compare the ability of each theory to accommodate each item on the list. It is well known that each international relations paradigm has its strengths and weaknesses – things which it explains better than others. As is demonstrated in this book, this is also true of how well these paradigms can accommodate religious factors. A standardized list of religious influences on international relations that is applied to multiple paradigms allows for a clear comparison of which aspects of religion can be better addressed by which paradigm as well as which paradigm can, overall, best deal with religious factors.

An open inquiry without preconceptions: This approach allows for an examination of several theories without any preconceptions. Taking advantage of the increased comparability among theories, it allows for a more objective evaluation of which theory, if any, is most suited to account for religion’s influence in international relations. Such an approach also brings different literatures and different cultures together to explore the role of religion in the existent frameworks, even filling an existent gap in political theory (Dallmayr, 2004). Furthermore, it allows for future efforts to use similar methods on theories not included in the initial analysis and to compare them to those previously analyzed. Thus, rather than providing a contained analysis of the five theories we examine here, this approach permits our analysis to be the starting point for an open discussion which can potentially include additional approaches to understanding international relations.

Goals, structure, and methodology

Our goal in this volume is to create a list of ways in which religion can influence, intersect or interact with international relations and to integrate an understanding of these issues into existing theories of international relations. This list of potentially significant religious phenomena, developed and explained in Chapter 2, is as follows:

• religious legitimacy
• religious worldviews
• religious states
• non- state religious actors
• transnational religious movements (including religious fundamentalist movements)
• transnational issues which intersect with religion including human rights, proselytizing, holy places, family planning and stem cell research
• religious identity.

In Chapters 3 through 7 we integrate all of these items into five major theories of international relations: Classical Realism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, the English School, and Constructivism. Each of these chapters is organized around the influences of religion we identify above, with each influence being evaluated in the context of each theory.

In order to accomplish our task of integrating religion into these theories, we rely on several literatures. First, we rely on the core literatures of the theories themselves. In many cases a close examination of these literatures reveals that the issue of religion is not as distant from these theories as many assume. For example, core Classical Realists such as Morgenthau, Machiavelli, and Hobbes directly addressed religion in their writings. Second, we rely on multiple methodological approaches to international relations. In addition to the aspects of this literature which directly addresses religion, we also examine the literature which focuses on integrating a wide variety of factors including culture and ethnicity into international relations theories. We then apply these methodological approaches to the investigation of religion and international relations. Third, we draw from the general political science literature on religion. Finally, we draw from the religious studies literature. We believe that building this bridge between religious studies scholarship and international relations is necessary.

In Chapter 8, we evaluate each of the ways in which religion influences international relations, this time comparing and contrasting how well each theory is able to account for each potential influence. All of the theories are found to be able to account for all of the potential religious influences on international relations. However, as one would expect, each theory has its strengths and weaknesses in that each handles some issues better than others.

Why Classical Realism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, the English School, and Constructivism?

An obvious question is: Why do we select these five theories of international relations to the exclusion of all other theories and approaches? We select them because they are among the most mainstream theories in international relations. As one of our aims is to find ways to theorize and understand religion in international relations without losing the insights provided by extant works and paradigms, using those theories which are among the most widely used has obvious advantages.

Our selection of these theories should not be taken as a statement that other theories and approaches such as Marxism, critical international relations, feminist and postmodernist theories, among others, are of no use and cannot contribute to a sophisticated understanding of religion in international relations. In fact, we believe that those theories that we do not address are most likely able to accommodate an understanding of religion and in doing...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Religions, paradigms, and international relations
• 2 Religion and its influence in the international arena
• 3 Religion and Classical Realism: interactions within power politics
• 4 Religion and Neorealism: interactions within the international system
• 5 Religion and (Neo)liberalism: interactions within the market of ideas
• 6 Religion and the English School: interactions within international society
• 7 Religion and Constructivism: interactions, ideas, and identities
• 8 Religion in international relations theory: interactions and prospects
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index