Author Meets Critics: "The Origins of Secular Institutions" by Zeynep Bulutgil

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This is an author-meets-critics session on Zeynep Bulutgil’s, “Origins of Secular Institutions: Ideas, Timing, and Organization” (Oxford University Press).

"The Origins of Secular Institutions" focuses on an important aspect of state formation that is often neglected: the emergence of secular state institutions. The book provides a theory that combines ideational and organizational mechanisms to understand the origins of institutional secularization. Theoretically, it proceeds in two steps. First, it focuses on why political groups with a secularizing political agenda emerge. The argument is that the circulation of Enlightenment literature among the elite and the existence of associations through which the elite could exchange ideas were the main factors that influenced the early emergence of secularizing movements. Second, the book turns to the conditions under which these movements succeed. The argument is that secularizing political groups have a comparative disadvantage in recruiting grassroots support because, unlike religious actors, they cannot rely on a pre-existing institutional structure. Secularizing groups overcome this obstacle if they have time to build a robust organization before religious political movements emerge.

Empirically, the book supports these arguments by combining statistical analysis of original data on the post-1800 period with comparative historical analysis of countries in Europe (France, Spain, The United Kingdom) and the Middle East/North Africa (Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia). The comparative analysis evaluates the fine-grained empirical implications that follow from the causal story that relate to the timing and sequence of events.

Overall, the book contributes to the literatures on political institutions, religion and politics, and state formation by developing and corroborating a theory that links the dissemination of ideas and organizational timing to the emergence of secular institutions.

The panel will bring together leading scholars of political institutions, historical state formation, religion and politics, as well as European and Middle Eastern political history for a critical evaluation of the book and reflection on future research projects that expand on its findings.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Chair

• Anna M. Grzymala-Busse Stanford University

Presenters

• H. Zeynep Bulutgil University College London

• Adria Lawrence Johns Hopkins University

• James Mahoney Northwestern University