The Consequences of Political Incorporation

2017 ◽  
pp. 79-123
Author(s):  
Michael Hechter
Author(s):  
Rafaela M. Dancygier

As Europe's Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. This book explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. The book sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. It demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. The book highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, the book advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today's democracies.


2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Flanagan ◽  
A. Finlay ◽  
L. Gallay ◽  
T. Kim

Author(s):  
Ateş Altınordu

Religion and secularism have been central threads in Turkish politics throughout the history of the republic. This chapter focuses on three important aspects of the relationship between religion and politics in contemporary Turkey. First, it explores the political functions of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a government agency that has served as the primary means for the implementation of the religious policies of the Turkish state. Second, it investigates the relations between Islamic communities, political parties, and the state and argues that the distinction between official and unofficial Islam that has informed much of the work on the Turkish religious field must be strongly qualified. Finally, the author focuses on the trajectory of political Islam in Turkey, critically reviewing the literature on the rise, political incorporation, and authoritarian turn of Islamic parties. The conclusion emphasizes the need for studies investigating the impact of politics on religiosity in Turkish society.


Author(s):  
Rafaela M. Dancygier

This concluding chapter reflects on what conditions make it more or less likely that minority political incorporation has significant impacts on intergroup relations, the identities of parties, and the electoral alignments underpinning party systems. The discussion highlights that parties' recruitment strategies can meaningfully affect majority perceptions of the minority, minority views about the political system, and minority social integration. The waning of traditional structures of mobilization—in particular the decline of trade unions—raises the relative attractiveness of minority bloc votes and associated ethnically based campaign styles. Larger, more slow-moving, political and economic forces that shape linkages between the majority electorate and political parties thus also help determine whether and in what ways minorities are brought into the party system. The chapter then posits under what circumstances this incorporation will trigger electoral realignments and, in the process, generate a reordering of European party systems.


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