In the early days after the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, Islamist movements and parties appeared to be the winners of the political transformation. This opened new opportunities for activism and political participation for Islamist men and women. The political organizing of the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood and Ennahda women in Tunisia before, during, and after the Arab Spring provides a significant case for addressing the gap in the literature on Islamist women's political organizing and agency. Moreover, it addresses the lack of scholarly attention to the Muslim Sisterhood and Ennahda women and the agency they manifest in their sociopolitical activism. Relying on primary and secondary interviews with these activists, this article traces the framing strategies, activism, and roles of Islamist women in Egypt and Tunisia. In both cases, we argue that government repression and backlash against Islamist movements is a shared experience and a central topic of identification for Islamist women. Islamist women in Tunisia and Egypt became more visible in the aftermath of the uprisings and reached into decision-making bodies such as a parliament when their countries were on the path toward democracy. Women from the two groups highlight democracy, freedom, human rights, and women's rights to frame their activism.

This paper highlights the impact of religious oppositions in Muslim-majority states towards security cooperation with the U.S. Such cooperation provides security but is risky as the U.S. can coerce its weaker allies and push for regime change. To protect against this possibility, this paper suggests that incumbents in recipient states strategically extend or limit cooperation based on the strength of Islamist opposition parties. Weaker Islamist oppositions pose a threat to incumbents in recipient states as the U.S. can coerce and replace them without fear of bringing anti-U.S. elements to power, which results in lower cooperation. In case of a stronger Islamist opposition, the regime's replacement cannot offer better policy concessions to the U.S.; hence, a strong Islamist opposition leads to more extensive cooperation. This mechanism is demonstrated through U.S. military aid acceptance in 40 Muslim-majority states during 2002–2015, and a comparison of U.S. security relations with Algeria and Tunisia.

Studies have documented more negative attitudes and a higher level of social hostilities toward religious minorities in Muslim than in non-Muslim countries. I seek to explain what contributes to these poor interfaith relations. Diverging from the mainstream approaches that focus on cultural, institutional, or psychological explanations, I argue that the poorer interfaith relations in Muslim countries are driven by high levels of religious bonding or religiously homogeneous friendships among Muslims in these countries. Analyzing a global survey of more than 17,000 Muslims and a report documenting how religious groups in a country restrict or discriminate against each other, I show that religious bonding is related to more negative attitudes toward religious minorities, that a country's level of religious bonding is positively related to its level of social hostilities, and that religious bonding is indeed higher among Muslims in Muslim countries than among Catholics in Catholic-majority Latin American countries.

Does the ethnic dimension of violence—religious versus tribal—shape whether individuals perceive national versus local issues as central? Based on survey data collected in Jos, Nigeria—a site of recurring ethnic violence since 2001—this paper argues that attribution to local versus national causes varies depending on whether individuals perceive the violence as religious or tribal. We also show that this has implications for peacebuilding, as views of the ethnic dimensions of violence also distinctly shape attitudes regarding national- versus local-level solutions. Broadly, this paper demonstrates the importance of a more nuanced approach to the study of ethnic conflict—specifically, the need to interrogate how perceptions of identity, conflict, and the locus of conflict interrelate.

When the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) again took control after the 2012 general election, Japan's ruling party politicians increasingly associated themselves with Shinto Seiji Renmei, a political organization that is affiliated with Shinto, the country's native religion. What are the motivations for joining such a group, considering Japan has institutional regulations regarding the separation of politics and religion, in addition to there being no sign of rising religiosity among the Japanese population? I explain this puzzle by focusing on politicians' electoral incentives in a changing environment of Japan's party politics. As the opposition became fragmented after 2012, the ruling party's candidates found it electorally advantageous to appeal to the core supporters rather than the centrist floating voters. An empirical analysis of an original dataset supports my argument. The findings suggest the changes in Japan's political landscape might affect the future strategies of LDP politicians, particularly regarding the coalition with Komeito. Overall, this study proposes that there is a need to pay closer attention to politicians' strategic use of religion in politics.

In recent years, the welfare state literature has been witnessing a “religious turn,” (re)reminding us the pivotal role of religion in shaping the modern welfare state. Notwithstanding its theoretical importance, this turn has been largely confined to European, North American, and antipodean settings. By drawing upon the historical case of Israeli burial services, this study seeks to make a modest step in closing this theoretical and empirical gap. Specifically, its findings point to the historical role of the Judaism in establishing universal burial services, funded by the state and operated almost exclusively by religious burial societies. Moreover, this policy legacy, which already had its roots in the British Mandate rule, is still at work, even in an era of “permanent austerity.” These findings problematize mainstream historical observations, which view the Israeli welfare state as a secular project, by suggesting a more nuanced and progressive role for Judaism in its history.

Why do clergy talk with congregants about elections to a greater extent in Mozambique than Indonesia, or in the United States than Taiwan? Arguing that context shapes religious actors' micro-level incentives to discuss or avoid electoral politics, we seek to explain variation in religious politicking—religious leaders' and organizations' engagement in electoral campaigns. Our framework integrates individual-level and country-level approaches, as well as theories of modernization, secularism, and religious competition. Drawing on survey data from 24 elections in 18 democracies in the Comparative National Elections Project, we find that human development depresses religious politicking, while secularism and religious pluralism boost it. However, “civilizational” differences in levels of religious politicking are muted and inconsistent. Finally, at the individual level, across the globe, citizens with higher levels of education are consistently more likely to receive political messages. Our results suggest the insights obtained from an approach emphasizing individuals embedded in contexts.

Using two national general population and one clergy survey, we examined racial differences in the association between religious theology and health care policy attitudes. We find that controlling for religious faith, political partisanship, and social-demographic characteristics, religious theology more strongly associates with White health care policy attitudes than it is for Blacks and Hispanics. Whereas theologically liberal Whites are more likely than their conservative counterparts to support universal healthcare and/or Obamacare, we observed no such relationship among Blacks and Hispanics. This is true of both the general population and clergy.

Why are religious riots between Hindus and Muslims endemic in some states of India and not in others? Scholarship on the topic is divided between those arguing that electoral competition increases the occurrence of such riots and those arguing that electoral competition decreases the occurrence of such riots. Both types of explanations assume a relationship between political parties and religious violence, but they ignore voting behavior. This paper accounts for party system instability or change, measured in terms of electoral volatility, to argue that electoral volatility in the Indian party system is a key overlooked determinant of religious violence. Specifically, higher levels of electoral volatility, implying high switching of party allegiances by voters, may indicate the process of ethnic outbidding that causes violence.

How does social identity shape Protestant attitudes about guns in the United States? Numerous studies show that religion shapes attitudes about guns, but the role of Protestantism in forming those attitudes is undertheorized and undertested. We draw from the extensive literature on religion-as-identity and the burgeoning literature of gun-ownership-as-identity to test the theory about the role of Protestant religion in cultivating a gun identity. We argue that for many Protestants, gun ownership has taken on the characteristics of a distinctive social identity, but that there are clear differences between different types of Protestants—notably, evangelicals and mainliners—that render the expansive category of “Protestant” largely irrelevant as an explanatory variable. While that finding might seem straightforward to scholars of religion and politics, the broad categorical approach—that is, treating “Protestant” as explanatory—has proven surprisingly durable in studies of gun ownership and attitudes about gun control. The analysis uses a recent Pew survey with batteries of questions about gun identity, gun policy, and religion. While this research note does not fully test why this relationship between Protestantism and gun identity exists, we do show that the relationship not only exists but also affects gun policy attitudes.