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This article looks at the role of religion in politics. Northern Ireland provides not only a good case study for this issue but also an opportunity to see how the subject has been approached in academic literature over the last forty years. It is argued here that religion can be a modern day, independent factor of considerable influence in politics. This has been important not only in Northern Ireland but also elsewhere in Western Europe in the twentieth century. This reality has been largely ignored until recently, partly because the situation in Northern Ireland has often been studied in a limited comparative context, and partly because of restrictive intellectual assumptions about the role of religion in politics.

Introduction: the quiet revolution -- Big dreams, small schools: how entrepreneurial rebels built a movement in New York City -- Testing power: when is disruption just ... disruptive? -- State of reform: the not-so-quiet revolution in Massachusetts -- No lone stars: how trust and collaboration in one Texas school district have created lasting reform -- The hurricane and the charters: new schools unearth old ways in New Orleans -- Conclusion: a civic action: how schools -- and society -- benefit from real democracy -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index -- About the author.

The main goal of the second issue of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, devoted entirely to religion and politics, is precisely to question the sense of a reconstruction of the mutual and simultaneous relations between these two spheres of social life. What does this process mean and where is it taking us?

Any reflection on the relationship between religion and politics in the Catholic thought cannot do without reminding the Augustinian distinction between the civitas Dei and civitas terrena. The goal and foundation of any just political community should be the orientation to wards the common good. In the contemporary catholic thought, Johann Baptist Metz proposes a political theology revolving around the concepts of the value of the human person, the necessary refusal, on the part of the Church, of any mundane ideology and the necessary use of the socially critical potential of theological thought. Hans Küng criticizes any politicization of theology. He insists on the development of an internal pluralism within the Church and advocates a self-limitation of the magisterial intervention in the world in the name of a necessary "eschato logical reserve". Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict the XVIth , invested with the magisterial authority, relies heavily on official documents of the Catholic social doctrine. He emphasizes the necessity of founding the state on the central value of justice and its acting according to the principle of subsidiarity. In this context, the Christian faith and the Church in particular may have a pedagogical role, as it may guide reason to follow the right priorities. All three thinkers agree on the public significance of the Christian vision of society and on the fact that it may help society both by its critical and by its constructive dimension.

Decentralisation and federalism are often said to mitigate conflict by better meeting the preferences of a heterogeneous population and demands for limited autonomy. But it is argued in this thesis that this perspective does not sufficiently address the ways in which conflict-ridden relations entangle processes across different scales ‒ local, regional as well as national. The aim of this thesis is to explain how it is that while decentralisation may contribute to national stability, it may simultaneously generate local conflict. This problem is analysed through a conflict in Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria where there have been outbreaks of violence between Hausa-Fulani Muslims and Christians of different ethnicities since the 1980s. Christian ethnic groups claim to be excluded from state benefits, while Muslim groups claim that Christians have undue influence over the state bureaucracy. The conflict feeds off ethnic and religious mobilisation. Expanded local political space further fuelled the conflict following the decentralisation that came with the shift from military to civilian rule in 1999. Decentralisation in Nigeria implies that the authorities should be associated with the majority ethnicity or religion in a specific territory. A localisation of politics accordingly raises the stakes in identity-based conflicts, especially as control of local institutions is necessary for inclusion in wider political processes. In Kaduna, this has led to demands for separating the state on a religious and ethnic basis. Actors make use of "scalar politics" to conform to or challenge boundaries set by the state. Social relations are associated with different boundaries. Accordingly, decentralisation triggers conflicts on an identity basis, involving contestation over the hierarchy of scales. While national struggles between ethnic and religious groups may be subdued, conflicts play out locally as decentralisation in Nigeria makes religion and ethnicity a powerful tool for political mobilisation. ; At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript.

The paper will examine the dramatic rise of the right-wing Hindu organisations in India, especially since the 1990s. Most prominent among these organisations are RSS, BJP, VHP, Bajang Dal and Shiv Sena. However, they all work together under the philosophy of Hindutva (i.e. Hindu-ness) and are rabidly anti-minority in their stance. They appear to need an 'enemy' in the form of a religious minority to unite Hindus and consolidate their support. This study is important because RSS is too politically significant to be ignored. Since the BJP (BhartiyaJanta Party) came to power in May 2014, its ministers and senior party leaders have been coming out in support of Hindutva. Attacks against Muslims have risen sharply. Cultural issues such as cow slaughter and the building of the Ram temple at Ayodhya have been raised again by the RSS as a means of dividing communities and keeping Muslims in a state of constant fear and insecurity. This study argues that the failure of India's economic development to remove socio-economic constraints leading to slow and uneven development has intensified rivalry between castes and religious communities. Under such conditions, it became possible for extremist Hindu organisations to target people on the basis of religion.