In this article, we discuss the relation between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and its jurisprudence and social mobilizations around the place of religion in the society. We focus on the struggles to define the intersection of religion and public education in Romania after the fall of communism. We show that secularist and counter-secularist civil society activists contending for the place of religion in public education in this country have made strategic use of the ECtHR and its case law, both in legal battles and in debates within the national public sphere. We argue that, since references to the ECtHR and its jurisprudence can be used in discursive battles as a form of symbolic “capital”, the strategies of mobilizing actors are at times more important than the strict doctrinal content of the ECtHR's judgments for understanding if and how the ECtHR's “shadow” is cast over religion-related mobilizations.

This article presents a symposium on the “indirect effects” of the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence on the place of religion in the educational sphere. The symposium showcases empirical research providing critical insight into how the Court's decisions may influence related domestic debates, raise public consciousness, and change how social actors perceive their rights and articulate their right claims in the area of religion and education. The research underpinning this symposium represents a clear departure from existing scholarship in this domain: it examines the impact of the Court not from the top-down (Court impact on states and their legislative frameworks) but from grassroots level upwards, in seeking to understand whether, how and to what extent Court decisions influence grassroots level actors' conceptions of their rights in the domain of religion and education and their efforts to secure new rights vis-à-vis their states.

As of yet, Islamization by secular ruling parties has hardly been investigated in depth. To bridge this gap, the present article reviews the existing literature on Islamization, synthesizes the scattered existing theoretical insights on Islamization by secular actors and applies them to the case of Bangladesh. It argues that, especially when they act in conjunction, three main conditions can drive secular rulers to Islamize public policy: first, the rise of Islamist social movements; second, fierce political competition; and third, (semi-)authoritarian rule. Focusing on the current Awami League (AL) government, the article shows how these three factors have interacted to produce a top-down process of state-led Islamization in Bangladesh.

A growing non-legal scholarship explores the domestic implementation of international court judgments in national law and policy. Yet little attention has been paid to the indirect effects of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law: namely, the ways in which its judgments may raise public consciousness, change how social actors articulate their claims, and/or prompt mobilization among civil society actors. This paper conceptualizes the significance of the indirect effects of ECtHR judgments in the domain of religion and education. Drawing on a constitutive approach to the law it explains the potential impact of such indirect effects. Second, it presents analytical concepts such as legal mobilization, which underpin the country-based case studies included in this symposium. Third, it provides an overview of the ECtHR religion and education-related case law which sets the stage for examining the nature and effects of the shadow of that case law in different country contexts.

This paper examines the impact of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decisions on the field of religion and education in Greece around the issues of the content and objectives of religious education, the exemption thereof, and religious symbols in school. The findings indicate that despite the relevance of ECtHR case law with the specific field in Greece, the Court's role in influencing such national debates is minimal. Drawing on empirical research and discourse analysis, the paper argues that this is due to the doctrine of the margin of appreciation, apparently linked to strategic references to and varying interpretations of the Court's judgments; the unwillingness of actors to litigate in a potentially sensitive, lengthy, and costly procedure; and to a shared belief in the perceived primacy of constitutional provisions on religion and education that precludes the formation of structured mobilizations.

This paper analyzes comparatively the indirect effects of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments related to religion and education in four countries: Greece, Italy, Romania, and Turkey. It examines whether and how ECtHR jurisprudence on religion and education influences the views and the strategies deployed by various categories of actors. Do religious, secularist, minority, and other actors invoke these judgments and their normative principles in their discourse and mobilization strategies to promote religious pluralism or conversely religious values, in education? How are the norms that are enunciated in these judgments perceived by a diverse array of nationally situated actors who mobilize in this domain?

The issues related to the role of religion in the public education system have been a public topic for a long time, and related debates have been cyclically revived by specific events. In this contribution, we explore the reasons why Italian grassroots actors do not tend to size up the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence and the plurality of juridical regimes dealing with religion and education as windows of opportunity. First, we analyze the intertwinement of different juridical regimes dealing with religion and education, and the national case law on the topic. Then, drawing on original semi-structured interviews, we analyze the indirect effects of the ECtHR case law on the mobilizations and advocacy strategies at the grassroots level around religion and education. Finally, we discuss the research outcomes, outlining how the non-interference of the Court in state-religions regimes may result in the limited impact and effectiveness of the Court's protection of religious freedoms.

This article aims at explaining religious actors' influence on democratic transition in Mali (1987–1992). It argues that it takes more than political theology to effectively influence democratization processes. Although Muslim actors used their political theology during democratization, they had neither the organizational means nor the legitimization to convince others of their preferences for a post-authoritarian institutional set-up. They had very limited influence on the institutions that today are supposed to regulate the relations between religion and the state under democratic rule. In fact, this high path-dependency of institutional factors since the colonial era led to an informalization of non-liberal Muslim politics in the 2000s. It is likely that accepting Muslim actors' demands for institutionalized cooperation between the state and religion during democratic transition would have caused fewer problems for democracy in the long run. The article concludes with general lessons for the study of religion in democratization.