religion & politics

Letter from Paul Djupe, Co-editor, Politics & Religion (Section Journal)

Dear APSA Religion & Politics section members,

This is a brief update with some great news about our section's journal, Politics & Religion.

First, we are excited to announce that beginning Friday, April 6th, Politics & Religion will be run through Editorial Manager which is used by the other leading APSA journals. All submissions, reviews, and other journal correspondence will be conducted through this online system. This will make the publication process more transparent for all those involved and enable a more efficient review process. We, as co-editors, will have access to contact information of APSA members and their corresponding research interests which will facilitate the location of appropriate reviewers. If you are not registered with the editorial manager system already or you wish to submit a manuscript, please do so by following this link:

www.editorialmanager.com/prj

Second, we can report that the journal is healthy:

Submissions are up from this period last year (24 through March, compared to 16 in 2011) and response times on new submissions reflect the standards set by leading political science journals.

As you may be aware, the journal is now published three times per year (with 7 articles per issue), but in 2013 this will increase to four times per year (with 8 articles per issue). Moving to a quarterly publication will expedite publication of articles and ensure that the journal reflects the most current research.

In addition, from July 2012, articles accepted for publication will appear online at the Politics & Religion Cambridge website. This early online access before publication should encourage authors to place work with the journal. Moreover, Cambridge generously granted us 4 additional articles across the last two issues of volume 5 this year to help publish accepted articles faster.

We are very excited about the new developments for Politics & Religion and hope you are too. Please continue to evangelize about Politics & Religion as an outlet for research and send us your best work on religion and politics.

Sincerely,
Angelia Wilson and Paul Djupe, coeditors
Politics & Religion

Article: How does religion matter? Pathways to religion in International Relations

Review of International Studies, April 2012, Vol. 38, Issue 02

by MONA KANWAL SHEIKH

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing subfield of research on religion and International Relations (IR) by discussing ways to take substantial and sui generis aspects of religion into account. It is argued that IR scholars need more critical methodological and conceptual reflection on how to integrate religion in order to navigate between two typical analytical positions: either focusing on the instrumental relevance of religion only or treating religion as an unchangeable meta-category and delinking it from its practitioners or context. The article first discusses why there is a need to be attentive to distinctive aspects of religion and then moves on to scrutinise three IR-relevant pathways to include these aspects of religion in analysis, namely religion as belief community, religion as power, and religion as speech act. It appears that future research along these lines can contribute significantly to the way IR scholars habitually think about key issues such as parameters of behaviour, standards of legitimacy, and the dynamics of conflicts.

See Journal page here.