Why do politicians belonging to religious minorities attain the highest political offices in some countries but not others? Koç University Professor of International Relations Şener Aktürk presented his research on the subject in a CDDRL research seminar series talk. 

A key element in shaping this outcome, Aktürk argued, is the configuration of a given nation’s constitutive conflict, which often takes the form of wars of independence or civil wars.  If the primary adversary in this conflict is of a different religion, he explained, the majority religion will likely be closely associated with national identity. However, in cases where that adversary is of the same religious sect, religious identity will end up becoming less central in the formation of national identity. Accordingly, it will become easier for religious minority politicians to assume leadership afterward.  If the majority religion is nationally institutionalized — which generally coincides with constitutive conflict structured along religious lines – it will likely be difficult for minority politicians to rise through the ranks. 

To illustrate this pattern, Aktürk reviewed the religious affiliation of chief executives across various countries. In the United Kingdom, whose constitutive conflict pitted Protestants against Catholics — and resulted in a Protestant victory — every Prime Minister from 1721 through 2021 was Protestant. Any claimed exceptions converted are a telling sign. Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim religious minorities had their first representatives, or “pioneers,” in the House of Commons by affiliating with the left, demonstrating that left-liberalism was their entry point into politics. 

In Catholic France, where the constitutive conflict was internal (French Revolution), there were 5 Protestant Prime Ministers, with the first one elected within the first 50 years of the Third Republic, when the new republican regime consolidated. A Jewish Prime Minister was reelected three times. The left represented politicians of minority religions, whereas the right represented those of the core group. 

In Hungary, the formative conflict consisted of Catholics fighting against each other. This has allowed Protestant minority leaders to claim they are more nationalistic than their Catholic counterparts, who were presumably forced to pick between their nation and religion. A similar story holds in Italy, the first country to have a Jewish Prime Minister. 

Germany is the most unique case, as it experienced a change in constitutive conflict. Following the Franco-Prussian War, Germany was majority Protestant, with state persecution of the Catholic minority. However, a bloodier and more traumatic constitutive conflict replaced the first one — the Holocaust and World War II. Under Hitler, who was of Austrian Catholic origin, German nationalism ceased to be a Protestant-led movement.

What does women’s representation look like under autocratic governments? In a recent research seminar series talk, CDDRL Visiting Scholar Mona Tajali, who is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Agnes Scott College, explored the complexities of this issue in the contexts of Iran and Turkey. 

Tajali’s talk underscored the gap between women’s political participation and representation. Voter turnout rates for women match those of men, and they are quite active in political organizations and in mobilizing for political causes. However, rarely do they reach the highest level of government. It is clear that structural factors, at times more than cultural or religious factors, are impeding women’s accession to senior government posts. 

Women in Iran and Turkey, from across different ideological currents, have long been demanding greater representation and calling for a level playing field. While there has been some progress in enhancing women’s representation, Tajali reminded us that nominal representation does not always lead to meaningful power or influence. Contradictory politics intervenes, with parties sometimes treating women as politically expedient tokens.

But, despite the impediment women face in formal politics, there are many examples of feminist movements making meaningful advancements. The Turkish movement KADER ran a campaign highlighting those parties who were truly responsive to women’s demands, not just those paying lip service. This was effective in putting pressure on mainstream parties to better represent the women in their electorate. In Iran, an online campaign was launched to change the male-dominated face of parliament. It identified misogynist candidates and incumbents with a poor record in their stances on women’s rights. 

However, the state has little tolerance for women critical actors seeking to challenge the status quo. The Council of Guardians in Iran and male party leadership in Turkey have disqualified and prevented many women from running for office. There has been an uptick in the harassment and intimidation of outspoken women in the parliament, not to mention the crackdown on feminist groups. This backlash has undermined collaboration among women activists who do hold political office.

As the confidence in electoral politics wanes, an important shift is happening with a demand for bottom-up political change. Groups are coming together to discuss their grievances despite the authoritarian contexts in which they are operating. The feminist movements are becoming bolder, clearer, and less censored in their demands. From journalists to students, women are engaging in courageous acts of defiance, many of which carry very real consequences.

Why did state-building efforts in Afghanistan fail? In a CDDRL Seminar Series talk, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Public and International Affairs Jennifer Brick Mutrazashvili argued that the answer lies in the bureaucratic legacies the country inherited from the Soviet era.

Building on her fieldwork in Afghanistan and long engagement with relevant stakeholders on the ground, Murtazashvili explained that the country’s domestic institutions remained static even after the 2001 US-led intervention. Even though presidential elections were convened and a nominally democratic process was put in place, Afghan political institutions retained their longstanding feature. That is, power remained centralized by the executive without any meaningful devolution of authority to subnational structures, notwithstanding the persistence of informal governance bodies at the local level in some parts of the country.

Executive centralization of power was due to the persistence of governance patterns dating back to the Soviet era. These patterns were shaped by the influx of Soviet aid beginning in the 1950s. Soviet influence helped build highly centralized and dysfunctional institutions, which persisted through 2001. Instead of restructuring these institutions after 2001, the international community worked to preserve their centralized features, fearing that decentralization could empower local warlords. This approach aligned with the interest of national leaders who saw centralization as key to their hold on power and control over state resources. 

The Afghan public was uneasy about continued centralization. Public opinion data underscored the widespread sentiment that opportunities for participation in government were limited. People wanted to be represented by local leaders. Numerous protests broke out when the Kabul national leadership handed governorships to individuals hailing from regions other than the ones they were tasked with governing. 

These dynamics deepened feelings of disenfranchisement among communities residing outside the capital. Participation in elections declined as Afghans were disillusioned by the lack of change. With the waning of trust in democratic institutions and people failing to experience tangible change in how they are governed, the political fortunes of the Taliban grew. 

State building, Murtazashvili argued, failed in breaking from the Soviet-era legacies of centralization.

On Wednesday, December 6, Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), delivered the twentieth annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World on “Power, Performance, and Legitimacy: Renewing Global Democratic Momentum” in Washington, D.C.

The Lipset Lecture was inaugurated in 2004 by the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto as an important new forum for discourse on democracy and its progress worldwide. It is also co-sponsored by the Embassy of Canada to the United States.

The lecture was followed by a conversation between Diamond and Democratic Leader of Belarus Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, moderated by NED’s vice president for studies and analysis, Christopher Walker. A recording of both is available below, and the lecture will also be featured in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Democracy.