Search results

1. Religious actors and conflict transformation: theory and practice. - 2. Situating religious actors in Irish history. - 3. Churches in 'troubles': leaders, institutions and political involvement. - 4. From diagnosis to treatment: devising an inclusive public theology of citizenship. - 5. Public theology of inclusive governance: peace deals and political agreements. - 6. Religious epistemic communities in a post-conflict setting. - 7. Beyond Northern Ireland: religious expertise and conflict transformation

Religion has been used by many scholars as an analytical category and an independent variable to account for the variances in governance and political violence. Very often, religion is decontextualized, resulting in confusions about the character of specific faith traditions. This article suggests an alternative framework by looking at the conceptualization and possible operationalization of the concept of public theology. In cases where "religion" might be conceptually ambivalent, a public theology framework with substantive, spiritual, spatial, and temporal dimensions can provide a sounder theorization of peaceful/violent or exclusive/inclusive strands of faith traditions and the relationship among them. Focusing on manifestations and public understandings instead of the religion itself, it also relieves political analysis from sensitive questions about what religious texts say and how traditions should be represented.

With the increasing influence of theocrats and other religious actors on policymakers and masses, recognising the agency of the clergy is crucial. This article uses the 'epistemic communities' framework to place the religious 'agents' in contemporary politics and it shows how hermeneutics can be treated as a form of 'episteme'. Until recently, this framework has been used to explain how scientific communities affect policymaking. Using the cases of South Africa and Northern Ireland, this article claims that religious actors, especially with their shared set of normative and principled beliefs as well as shared norms of validity, also meet the requirements of the epistemic community category. The employment of this established IR framework in theorising religious politics has the potential to shed light not only on peacebuilding and mediation, but also violent movements and terrorist organisations that use religion as justification. Adapted from the source document.

Authoritarian leaders try to create an environment conducive to the maintenance of their own ontological security. In this study, we advance a theory of tripartite securitization marked by critical junctures that shed light on how authoritarian actors establish a sense of security for themselves when they govern. Using elite interviews with actors from Turkey's different political parties, we argue that the three major steps towards authoritarianism in Turkey involved restructuring core institutions and 'cleansing' them of the perceived hostile elements; doubling down on securitising existing internal and external 'enemy' identities; and securitising rivals that cannot be co-opted in the political process. This tripartite securitization starts with what we call 'desecuritisation of the self' in cases where the party in power itself was once the target of securitising acts. We trace how tripartite securitisation has unfolded in Turkey under the AK Party government, and we identify three critical junctures associated with this securitisation process: The Ergenekon and Balyoz Trials, the KCK Trials and the 2016 Failed Coup Attempt.