In the nineteenth century, one of the essential conditions for obtaining recognition of the sovereignty of a state by the international community was the ability to maintain internal order and guarantee the lives and property of foreign nationals. Justice then becomes a major political element and the case of Spanish-Mexican relations is particularly significant. For Mexico, the aim is to preserve national independence, avoid military intervention and integrate into the international system. For Spain, it seeks to assert its status as a major power with the capacity to intervene in defence of its citizens and to obtain the necessary reparations. This work is then structured around three issues: the debt and financial claims of the Spaniards, the punishment of those guilty of the murders of Spaniards and the negotiation of an extradition treaty for offenders and deserters. ; International audience In the nineteenth century one of the key conditions for recognition of sovereignity of a state by the international community was the ability to maintain order and ensure the lives and properties of nationals abroad. Justice, then, becomes a political element of the first order and the case of Spanish-Mexican relations is particularly significant. For Mexico, it is to preserve national independence, to avoid a military intervention and to integrate into the international system. For Spain, it is asserting its status as a great power with the ability to speak in defense of its citizens and to obtain the necessary repairs. This work is structured so on three issues: debt and financial claims of the Spaniards, the punishment of those guilty of the murders of Spaniards and the negotiation of a treaty on extradition of criminals and deserters. ; In the nineteenth century, one of the essential conditions for obtaining recognition of the sovereignty of a state by the international community was the ability to maintain internal order and guarantee the lives and property of foreign nationals. Justice then becomes a major ...
This paper focuses on the protection of religious freedom in the workplace by looking at the exceptions in current legislation governing the prohibition of discrimination on religious grounds, in line with European Directive 2000/78. Although it has not been transposed into Spanish law, this paper also addresses the right of religious denominations and ethos-based organizations to discriminate against workers on religious grounds and to require allegiance to their doctrine or ethos. ; En este trabajo se analiza la protección de la libertad religiosa del trabajador en el ámbito laboral, a través de las excepciones que se reconocen en la normativa vigente a la prohibición de discriminación por razón de religión, que vienen condicionadas por la Directiva Europea 2000/78, de 27 de noviembre. A pesar de su falta de transposición al Derecho español, se aborda también el derecho de las confesiones religiosas y empresas de tendencia a discriminar a sus trabajadores por razón de religión y a someterles a obligaciones de lealtad frente a su doctrina o ideario.
El artículo plantea en primer lugar un acercamiento a la problemática global de las migraciones a nivel mundial y su relevancia en la coyuntura actual, para poder centrarse en la segunda parte al caso de África. Debido a la complejidad de la cuestión, el trabajo se limita solamente al análisis de la migración laboral. El continente africano azotado por la pobreza, la sequía, las hambrunas y los conflictos políticos conoce una ola sin precedente de movimientos migratorios. En nuestro estudio analizamos en primer lugar el factor económico, como la Inversión Extranjera Directa, como un elemento central para detener el flujo migratorio. Sin embargo, la inestabilidad continental, no permite atraer las inversiones necesarias. La tendencia migratoria en África, como también en el caso de América latina, se ha incrementado drásticamente en la última década y podemos prever un incremento aún más fuerte en los próximos decenios. Los fenómenos socio-políticos ponen de manifiesto que el continente Africano presenta muchos cambios en los patrones que se habían estado viviendo por años. Por mencionar algunos, destacan transformaciones que van desde el cambio de destinos clásicos para la migración, hasta la nueva dinámica de inserción al mercado laboral de los países receptores. El VIH también marca nuevos patrones modificando el estilo de vida de la sociedad. Desgraciadamente la mayoría de ellas presenta un panorama negativo, por lo que se pone de realce que el continente tiene una infinidad de retos que afrontar en pro de un desarrollo que permita mejorar las condiciones de vida de sus habitantes. ; The article first proposes to analyse the global theme of world migrations and their relevance within the present world situation in order to focus in the second part on the African case. Due to the complexity of the question, the paper only deals with work migration. The African continent, hit by poverty, draughts, famine and political conflicts, presents an unprecedented migration. In our paper we seek to analyse first the economic factor, such ad Direct Foreign Investment, as a central element in order to stop migration flux. However, continental lack of stability does not make it possible to attract the necessary investments. The African migratory trend, as well as the Latin American case, has drastically increased over the last decade and we can foresee an even grater increase in the coming years. Socio-political phenomena show us that the African continent shows many changes in the patterns which had been commonplace in the previous years. Just to mention a few, there are transformations that range from the typical migration destinations to the new dynamics of labour market insertion in the receiving countries. HIV also shows new patters by modifying social lifestyles. Unfortunately, most of them present a negative pattern, and this is why it is highlighted that the continent faces a number of challenges in order to develop and improve its inhabitants standard of living. ; Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales
Society is presently living an interesting event: laicity and democracy are permeating its deepest roots. Each continent is facing it in different ways but all of them present the same common denominator. For many people, religion has been outdated within the context of laicity and democracy, No place for a word in its favour should come from families or new generations. For some scholars, the undersigned included, the described situation could be a good stage to establish a constructive dialogue between families, education, State, politics, laicity and democracy… Such an environment has shades and lights but we can´t deny that it is a challenge to generate formative, dynamic and creative processus. ; La sociedad enfrenta actualmente un evento interesante: la democracia y la laicidad van permeando sus raíces más profundas. En cada continente existen matices más o menos diversos, pero en el fondo el asunto tiene ese denominador común. En un contexto de democracia y laicidad, la religión para muchos ha pasado de moda, ni las familias, ni los padres de las nuevas generaciones deben pronunciarse. Para otros estudiosos, como el autor del presente artículo, la situación enunciada representa un escenario propicio para entablar un diálogo constructivo entre familia, educación, estado, política, laicidad, democracia. Un entorno así posee muchas luces y sombras, pero a su vez se erige como un reto capaz de generar procesos formativos dinámicos y creativos.
1-. International relations (IR) theory has suffered a restructuring among several lines over the past two decades. The gradual but uninterrupted decline of systemic theories - primus inter pares in the discipline since the 1970s- is one of those. (1) This decline was accompanied by a rise of those approaches that privilege domestic politics as the place to look for answers. For reasons I will develop below, such an intellectual step was logical, expected, and partially appropriate. (2) While the current state of affairs should not be seen as immutable and a systemic comeback is plausible, the truth is that domestic politics, and non-systemic approaches in general, are well entrenched in a semi-hegemonic position. In this essay I will explain the reasons behind the aforementioned shift, assess its consequences, and advance some hypotheses on the future of systemic theories of IR.2-. Born between the interwar period and the dawn the Cold War world, IR was created with the explicit objective of explaining the causes of war –particularly great wars, understood under the lenses of the two devastating conflicts of the first half of the 20th century. Since then, IR scholars have struggled to respond to the main challenges –or what they perceive as the main challenges- in world politics. (3) This "duty" to explain the world drives theory to follow the patterns of change in international politics, which, as they develop, suggest new problématiques and novel ways to approach them. In important ways then –although, as discussed later, this is not the whole picture- (4) a sociology of inquiry is needed to better understand some of the key transformations in IR theory -e.g. the shift from systemic to domestic theories. Systemic approaches (5) made their meteoric rise under the shelter of K. Waltz's Neorealism. (6) They were created as a tool for a particular time with particular problems. (7) This was a world in which the primary preoccupation was how to manage the bilateral relationship between the United States and the USSR so that it would not en up in World War III. There were certainly other interests in the discipline, but this one outweighed all the rest. A Cold War context made systemic theories very appropriate. Needless to say, the bipolar conflict had been in place a long time before Waltz's path-breaking Theory of International Politics. (8) The essential point is, however, that Neorealism proved to be very successful in explaining the basic patterns of interest in this particular period of the history of IR –i.e. dynamics of polarity, relevance of nuclear weapons, consequences of anarchy and its relationship with war and cooperation, inter alia- in a more parsimonious and convincing way than the discipline had ever been able to do.The IR community recognized this "Copernican turn", as Waltz defined it, as progress and systemic approaches were established as mainstream, maybe even as "normal science." Anyone trying to explain something in international politics had to reckon with the system. This was true for realists (see the work of Gilpin, Walt, and Grieco) but also for scholars with a line of inquiry that differed substantially from Waltz's (see Keohane's Cooperation after Hegemony for a good example). 3-. A dramatic event that shakes the bases of an academic discipline is sometimes needed to motivate scholars to devise new lines of inquiry and surpass research programs that appear to be losing heuristic power. This is what the fall of the Soviet Union did with Neorealism, and systemic approaches in general. (9) Structural realism was in many ways, and problematically so, a theory for the Cold War. Its discussion on nuclear weapons, bipolarity, uncertainty, and superpower dynamics seemed to be too tied to a specific historical context. (10) The inability of neorealism, or any other systemic theory for that matter, to foresee –or even explain- the disappearance of the bipolar world –a systemic change par excellence-supposed a hard blow to its appeal. (11) Both the fall of the USSR and the subsequent appearance (or uncovering, once the Cold War veil was lifted) of new "themes" in international politics -IPE, civil wars, the role of leaders, the democratic peace, inter alia- opened a fertile camp over which to argue for the need to "go beyond systemic theory." (12) I argued supra that this was an appropriate move (or partially appropriate). But the reasons implicitly inferred up to know -failure in predicting events and a crisis in the IR community (in a Kuhnian sense)- cannot support this claim. The other face of the coin is that the thorough self-examination of the 1990s also responded to internal problems of systemic theories as research programs. For example, in the 1980s the discipline was stuck in the mud of absolute vs. relative gains debate, a degenerative discussion from a Lakatosian perspective. (13) Visible problems of heuristic power were calling for a partial move beyond the system. This was the real cause for the shift, and the best argument to characterize it as "appropriate". The exogenous shock (fall of the USSR) had the role, not at all minor, of opening a window of opportunity for dissenting scholars. Helen Milner was one of the most eloquent advocates for this turn. Her argument, in short, was that "systemic theory simply cannot take us far enough" (Milner, 1992). The assumption that anarchy was the principal variable defining states preferences and the primacy of a straight causal line from the system to the state and then to policy-making was excessively simplistic, Milner argued. How could the discipline solve this quagmire? By studying domestic politics to understand states' preferences and, consequently, the differing patterns of conflict and cooperation in international politics. (14) As Milner contended: "…cooperation may be unattainable because of domestic intransigence, and not because of the international system." (15) A reaction against systemic theories was not exclusive to the liberal trenches. Following this turn toward domestic politics, some realist scholars directed their efforts at the incorporation of domestic variables as a way to add complexity to systemic models that they saw as too crude. In his From Wealth to Power, F. Zakaria argued that anarchy and the distribution of power were not enough to explain the behavior of rising powers. After observing that at the end of the 19th century the US was not as assertive as a structural approach would have predicted, he hypothesized that this was because it did not have the governmental capacity to do so. To solve this puzzle he argued for the incorporation of models of resource extraction and governmental capability to try to get through the Neorealist corset. This was an important intra-realist challenge to a somewhat ossified systemic realism. (16)The rise of domestic approaches represented a generalized discontentment with the excessive importance given to parsimony and the inflexibility that came with it. Parsimony, which should be no more than a tool in theory building, was placed as a goal in itself, restricting research in a way that went against the discipline's own progress. Those boundaries had to be overcome if we wanted to say something about some of the important issues left unstudied by a focus on the system. Once again, the Cold War world with its apparently clear strategic problems may have seemed more propitious to a highly parsimonious approach to theory building. In a post Cold War world, the costs of parsimony were too heavy. Domestic theories certainly lost in parsimony, but they gained in a more real approach to IR problématiques. This was the primary rationale behind the turn here discussed, and in this limited sense, the shift was appropriate. (17)4-. It would be nice to unambiguously assert that the fall of systemic theories made IR a coherent and progressive discipline. This, unfortunately, is not the case. The past two decades have seen the formation of a different ethos of theory building and discipline development that may end up doing more harm than good to our broader understanding of international politics. Something not mentioned up to now is the ascent of quantitative and strategic-choice approaches in the discipline. Quantitative approaches gained prominence by the same time that, and related to, domestic theories were supplanting systemic theories. (18) Strategic choice and game theory, following developments in other academic areas -especially economics-, also gained importance in the 1990s under the idea of formalizing theories and going beyond the "isms." There is nothing wrong with these approaches per se. Quantitative work has been very important in the empirical development of IR -maybe too neglected in the past. Formal theory, on the other hand, is a powerful and clear tool to build and evaluate theories while avoiding problems of underspecification all too common in the discipline –though, this is only true if one can get through its assumptions. (19)The problems of this new "methodological bets" are to be found in the costs for the general development of the discipline. The most pressing are the ones related to the idea that theory construction should be a bottom to top affair, and the implicit notion that by building the parts individually we will eventually end up in a progressive accumulation of theoretical knowledge. However, this epistemological decision may well result in the proliferation of particularistic theories of problems ever more sophisticatedly studied, increasingly particular and micro, and in crescendo uninteresting. (20) By depending on a kind of magical automatic accumulation of theoretical knowledge we are risking to end up with an even more chaotic and incoherent discipline (more on this in the conclusion). 5-. As said in the introduction, the fall of grace of systemic theories cannot be taken as an irreversible given; it is possible to devise some scenarios in which systemic approaches could make a comeback.The first one is linked to the relationship between theory and History discussed earlier. The post Cold War world, particularly the 1990s, was a strange period for the discipline. The study of IR has historically dealt with great power politics as its core. The "curious" 1990s came with a certain absence of great power politics, especially due to the overwhelming power position of the US. This goes a long way in explaining the growing emphasis on domestic politics, civil wars, international organizations, inter alia, during those years. A partial return of classical great power politics (or the perception of it) -for example under the banner of the rise of China and some other middle powers- might motivate a recasting of systemic theories -particularly for those wanting to study polarity (a passé topic in the unipolar 1990s), (21) systemic change and its consequences, etc. (22)Another plausible scenario would be the success of some of the ongoing projects to make systemic theories more sophisticated and comprehensive by, for example, incorporating domestic variables. A good example is "Neo-classical Realism" (see fn. 16). This research project proceeds from a systemic assumption of the influences of the system (that is, a neorealist basis) but incorporates domestic politics as an intervening variable between systemic pressures and decision-making. Though a rather interesting proto-school, Neoclassical Realism is still in its infant stages and has yet to produce work of remarkable characteristics. Lastly, domestic politics, as should have been expected, were not the panacea for the development of IR theory. There might well be a social exhaustion with the results of domestic and micro-theory –a Kuhnian crisis analogous to the one that discredited systemic theories. This may eventually take IR on unexpected paths. Nevertheless, if measured by academic output and Geist, predicting a comeback of systemic approaches seems a risky bet. The discipline appears to be quite comfortable with increasing its empirical production, formalizing theories towards an Icarian "scientism", and avoiding, at its own peril, a "wholist" view of international politics. 6-. Going beyond systemic theories –not in the sense of vanishing them, but of relaxing some of their strictures, increasing their sophistication, and trying new approaches- was the necessary thing to do for a methodology that was unable to cope with many of the relevant problems in IR. The turn to domestic and particularistic perspectives brought much needed renovation, indeed. However, the excesses incurred by systemic theorists as a result of an obsession with parsimony and structural effects may now seem analogous (although for the opposite reasons) to a fixation with the particular and micro-level studies in contemporary IR theory. A blind push to obtain ever more data of increasingly micro phenomena puts at risk what we can say about international relations in general. We may, for example, be more much prepared to sophisticatedly answer why a specific insurgent group responded in a specific way to the level of aggression of a specific state, (23) but we may also be losing our interest and capacity to think about the nature of conflict in its most elemental condition. The stakes are too high for the IR community to avoid an honest discussion on how far we are willing to continue on this path. (1) This essay works with the assumption of a relative decline of systemic apporaches. To argue that they have vanished would be utterly incorrect. For a convincing argument on the inevitability of structural constraints see Jervis'sSystem Effects.(2) Although a change may be welcomed, the results are not always as encouraging as expected (more on this qualification of "appropriate" later).(3) This does not mean, of course, that there is an exclusive focus on policy or immediacy, It means that in its most basic essence, the idea of the discipline is to be able to provide some answers to the pressing problems in the international system. To give an example, few people would be interested in studying the prospects of war between France and Germany in the 21st century per se –though it surely is studied as a historical case that can shed light on other issues-, while this was one of the main topics in the nascent IR discipline.(4) Social science does not progress only by exogenous shocks, but also for endogenous reasons that cannot be explained by what happens outside theoretical disscusions.(5) Understood simply as those that privilege the influence of the structure over the behavior of the units.(6) This type of theories certainly were not born with Waltz; systemic is a much broader category than Neorealism. The important point is that Waltz devised the more convincing type of systemic theory. For simplicity, Waltz' Neorelism will be used here as the epitome and a kind of proxy for systemic theory. (7) It must be said that the rise of systemic theories also responded to changes in the social sciences in general; for example, the influence of structuralist anthorpoligist Levi-Strauss' work, which Waltz knew well.(8) Theories of IR before Waltz hosted a diverse group of analysts: Classical realism from the hand of a Hans Morgenthau, Geroge Kennan and Raymond Aron; liberal approaches from a Stanley Hoffman, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye; Bureacratic Organization and foreign policy from a Graham Allison; and a long et cetera.(9) See R. N. Lebow, "The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War and the Failure of Realism."(10) See I. Oren's Our Enemies and US: America´s Rivalries and the Making of Political Science.(11) As with its rise the decline of systemic theories was also linked to broader transformations in the world of ideas, to which IR seems to always be a latecomer. From a broad perspective, this phenomenon had started in the 1960s with the work of Foucault, Derrida, Geertz and others.(12) The end of the immediate preoccupation with bipolarity also gave the opportunity to rethink some long-term historical problems of Neorealism (see Schroeder 1994).(13) Some of the scholars engaged in this deabate were: Keohane, Grieco, Axelrod, and Mastanduno; cf. Milner (1992).(14) In another article in International Organization (1987) she argues that to understand the way in which states make decisions in the international economy it is not enough to look at anarchy. Her model studies the type of economic links between countries (high or low interdependence) and the influence of interests groups that may pressure the state to make particular decisions; these policy outcomes would have been incomprehensible from a systemic/anarchic stance. According to Milner, there is an important dynamic of preference construction and strategies adopted that are to be found in domestic politics.(15) See also Putnam (1988) for an interesting effort to move beyond lists of domestic factors and towards a coherent two level theory.(16) This line of research has been given the title of Neoclassical Realism (see G. Rose 1998). See the work of R. Schweller, J. Taliaferro, A. Friedberg, and T. Christensen.(17) Systemic theories were also attached to what has been discussed as the "paradigm wars" between realism, liberalism, constructivism, etc. The turn away from them can also be given credit for helping to discredit this unproductive way of theorizing.(18) This trend was tied to the notoriety of the "democratic peace" project that was, and still is, an empirical enterprise at its core. See Russett and Oneal (1999); cf. Gartzke (2007).(19) See Wagner, War and the State, and Lake and Powell Strategic Choice and International Relations.(20) This is not the nature of all the work in this approach, of course, but just a possible trend of the school as a whole. See Walt's "Rigor or Rigor Mortis" for a sharp, but not always convincing, critique.(21) For an exception see the work by N. Monteiro on unipolarity. This does not mean that polarity disappeared from the IR map, but it was certainly shrinked as a research question.(22) Some young scholars on this line of research are: P. MacDonald, J. Parent, D. Kliman and M. Beckley.(23) See Jason Lyall's "Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya" To be fair, Lyall's work attempts to generalize from this specific case –how convincing he is not very clear, however. *Ph.D. StudentDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Pennsylvania.E-mail: gcastro@sas.upenn.edu
Reseña de: Baiasu, S., Loriaux, S., (ed.), Sincerity in Politics and International Relations, Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics, London & New York, Routledge, 2017, 210 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-70417-5. ; Laura Herrero Olivera, Profesora Asociada de la Facultad de Filosofía de la Universidad Complutense
Reseña de: Baiasu, S., Loriaux, S., (ed.), Sincerity in Politics and International Relations, Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics, London & New York, Routledge, 2017, 210 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-70417-5. ; Laura Herrero Olivera, Profesora Asociada de la Facultad de Filosofía de la Universidad Complutense
According to the nature of the Westphalian system, the independent state is the central actor in international relations. However, the discipline has not developed theoretical approaches regarding the independence process, which is considered more a concern of the international law and the political interests of state actors. Then, in this article, the issue of independence is analyzed as a basic step for political entities to access statehood, becoming a basisfor understanding the role of the independent state in the Westphalian order. It is necessary to observe the variations in the conception of independence, especially regarding self-determination and recognition principle, acknowledging the existence of deep changes in the international system. This principle has had greater relevance since the 1990s due to the disintegration processes of some countries, particularly the case of Kosovo. Taiwan is also a relevant experience. Another key point is the weakening process of the state, with the appearance of variants that question the status and existence of the state actor. At the end of this paper, a brief reference is made to the Latin and Central Americanexperience, which shows particularities since the 19th century. ; El actor central en las relaciones internacionales es el Estado soberano independiente, según la naturaleza del sistema westfaliano; sin embargo, en la disciplina no se han desarrollado enfoques teóricos sobre el proceso de independencia. Se considera más un asunto del derecho internacional y de los intereses políticos de los actores estatales. Por ello, se analiza en este trabajo, la cuestión de la independencia como un paso básico para que las entidades políticas accedan a la categoría de Estado, lo que sirve de fundamento para entender el papel del Estado independiente en el orden westfaliano. Al reconocer que hay cambios profundos en el sistema internacional, es necesario observar las variaciones en la concepción de independencia, sobre todo en relación con el principio de autodeterminación y el reconocimiento.Esto tiene mayor relevancia a partir de la década de 1990, por los procesos de desintegración de algunos países, en particular, el caso de Kosovo; otra experiencia relevante es Taiwán. A lo anterior, se suma el debilitamiento del Estado, con la aparición de variantes que cuestionan la estatidad y la existencia del actor estatal. Al final,se hace una breve referencia a la experiencia latinoamericana y centroamericana, que muestran particularidades desde el siglo XIX.
Globalization is an economic, political and ideological form assumed by contemporary society as a whole. In this article, these three dimensions are analyzed in a critical way, weighing various judgments about the phenomenon, and seeking to evidence its religious and inhuman substratum. Finally, it seeks to indicate some alternative references for the construction of a more just society. ; La globalización es una forma económica, política e ideológica que asume la sociedad contemporánea en conjunto. Aquí se analizan estas tres dimensiones de manera crítica, sopesando diversos juicios en torno del fenómeno y buscando evidenciar su sustrato religioso e inhumano. Se busca, por último, indicar algunos referentes alternativos para la construcción de una sociedad más justa.
The paper examines the compatibility problems between democracy and religion. Problems of special importance when a strict idea of religion arises, with a strong sense of good and a strategy of particular foundation, when democracy is understood as deliberative democracy associated to an ideal of standard correction, an idea sometimes called republican democracy. If religion is understood as a private club its problems are diminished, away from an idea of good claiming its validity, or when democracy is strictly meant in a liberal sense, as a selection system of political elites. ; En este trabajo se examinan los problemas de compatibilidad entre democracia y religión. Los problemas son especialmente importantes cuando la idea de religión es exigente, esto es, cuando contempla una idea fuerte de bien y una estrategia de fundamentación particular, y cuando la democracia se entiende como democracia deliberativa, asociada a un ideal de corrección normativa, una idea de democracia que algunos califican como democracia republicana. Los problemas disminuyen cuando la religión se entiende como un club privado, alejada de una idea de bien con pretensiones de validez, o cuando la democracia se entiende en sentido austeramente liberal, como un sistema de selección de élites políticas.
En este trabajo se examinan los problemas de compatibilidad entre democracia y religión. Los problemas son especialmente importantes cuando la idea de religión es exigente, esto es, cuando contempla una idea fuerte de bien y una estrategia de fundamentación particular, y cuando la democracia se entiende como democracia deliberativa, asociada a un ideal de corrección normativa, una idea de democracia que algunos califican como democracia republicana. Los problemas disminuyen cuando la religión se entiende como un club privado, alejada de una idea de bien con pretensiones de validez, o cuando la democracia se entiende en sentido austeramente liberal, como un sistema de selección de élites políticas. ; The paper examines the compatibility problems between democracy and religion. Problems of special importance when a strict idea of religion arises, with a strong sense of good and a strategy of particular foundation, when democracy is understood as deliberative democracy associated to an ideal of standard correction, an idea sometimes called republican democracy. If religion is understood as a private club its problems are diminished, away from an idea of good claiming its validity, or when democracy is strictly meant in a liberal sense, as a selection system of political elites. ; La investigación para este trabajo se ha beneficiado de una ayuda del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad al Proyecto de investigación: «La calidad de la democracia: una perspectiva normativa» (SO2008-06525-C02-02).
The great monotheistic religions –Judaism, Christianity, and Islam– agree in announcing God's love for men, while demanding men's love for God and for their neighbors. However, a brief look at these religions' praxis leads to doubt whether this love is not a mere statement, while in history and at present were and are still imposed exclusive truth claims exercising violence against the adepts of the own religion ("internally") and, in especial, against the followers of other religions ("externally") in order to attain political power. Now, a distinction between the just sovereign power of God and detrimental violence should be made, asides from the fact that God's sovereign power and God's concept is not the same in the three great monotheistic religions. In Judaism God governs with love and as king, in Christianity with love and as servant, in Islam with love and majesty. Nevertheless, sovereign power is exclusive of God and detrimental violence is never desired among men. Only thus is power constitutive of religion's inner nature, but not of the relation between religions or of religions with the world: "There is no coercion in religion". ; Las grandes religiones monoteístas –Judaísmo, Cristianismo e Islam– coinciden en anunciar el amor de Dios a los hombres, y reclaman el amor de los hombres a Dios y al prójimo. Sin embargo, una breve mirada a la praxis de estas religiones hace dudar de si este amor no es una mera afirmación, mientras que en la historia y en el presente se impusieron y se imponen las pretensiones exclusivas de verdad mediante el ejercicio de la violencia en contra de los adeptos de la propia religión ("internamente") y, en especial, en contra de los seguidores de otras religiones ("externamente") para así alcanzar el poder político. Ahora bien, hay que distinguir entre el justo poder soberano de Dios y la violencia lesiva, además de que el poder soberano de Dios, al igual que el concepto de Dios, no es el mismo en las tres grandes religiones monoteístas. En el Judaísmo domina Dios con amor y como rey; en el Cristianismo, con amor y como servidor; en el Islam, con amor y majestad. Aunque siempre el poder soberano es exclusivo de Dios y nunca se desea la violencia lesiva entre los hombres. Solo así el poder es constitutivo de la naturaleza interna de la religión, mas no de la relación entre las religiones o de las religiones con el mundo: "No hay coacción en la religión".
Se busca confrontar el llamado que hiciera Alwin Plantiga a los filósofos cristianos para que asuman los intereses de la comunidad a la que pertenecen, con el análisis que realiza Iván Garzón sobre el lugar de la religión en el ejercicio de la razón pública, con el propósito de examinar los cambios que se han producido, dentro del pensamiento político liberal, en lo que concierne al lugar de la religión en la organización de la sociedad. Esto le plantea a los creyentes nuevos retos para lograr, desde sus convicciones religiosas, participar activamente en la organización de sociedadesque logren establecer formas de convivencia pacífica que respeten la creciente diversidad cultural de los ciudadanos. ; This article seeks to confront Alvin Plantinga's call to Christian philosophers to assume the interests of the community to which they belong with Iván Garzón's analysis of the place of religion in the exercise of public reason. The purpose is to examine the changes that have taken place, within liberal political thought, in relation to the place of religion in the organization of society. This raises new challenges for believers to achieve, from their religious convictions, their active participation in the organization of societies that accomplish the establishment of forms of peaceful coexistence that respect the growing cultural diversity of citizens.
Se busca confrontar el llamado que hiciera Alwin Plantiga a los filósofos cristianos para que asuman los intereses de la comunidad a la que pertenecen, con el análisis que realiza Iván Garzón sobre el lugar de la religión en el ejercicio de la razón pública, con el propósito de examinar los cambios que se han producido, dentro del pensamiento político liberal, en lo que concierne al lugar de la religión en la organización de la sociedad. Esto le plantea a los creyentes nuevos retos para lograr, desde sus convicciones religiosas, participar activamente en la organización de sociedadesque logren establecer formas de convivencia pacífica que respeten la creciente diversidad cultural de los ciudadanos. ; This article seeks to confront Alvin Plantinga's call to Christian philosophers to assume the interests of the community to which they belong with Iván Garzón's analysis of the place of religion in the exercise of public reason. The purpose is to examine the changes that have taken place, within liberal political thought, in relation to the place of religion in the organization of society. This raises new challenges for believers to achieve, from their religious convictions, their active participation in the organization of societies that accomplish the establishment of forms of peaceful coexistence that respect the growing cultural diversity of citizens.
