Human Rights in Postcommunism: Discourse and Parties in the Development of Religious Freedom
Admiraal, Beth Marie
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/82562
Description
Title
Human Rights in Postcommunism: Discourse and Parties in the Development of Religious Freedom
Author(s)
Admiraal, Beth Marie
Issue Date
2004
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Leff, Carol S.
Department of Study
Political Science
Discipline
Political Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Religion, General
Language
eng
Abstract
Most accounts of religious life in the region rest on the consensus that religion, where it is infused with a national character, is an institution that can be linked by elites to the nation (and prop up an 'established' church model of church-state relations) or be divested of its national prestige (to allow for a pluralist or separation model of church-state relations). However, if we conceive of the nation as a type of appeal with practical and eventful qualities, bounded only by an imprecise conception of the membership of the nation and the grounds for membership, the relationship between religion and the nation becomes much more complex. The normative component of the concept of 'nation' yields an external, internal and strong internal models of church-state relations in which, respectively, elites postulate a significant, necessary or sufficient relationship between church and nation. The multiplicity of these models allows us to identify types of postcommunist elite discourse and indicate, to a degree, why elite discourse is volatile. Second, the human rights literature fails to account for the institutional prerequisites for human rights development in procedural democracies. Particularly, the political party system must be competitive for religious discourses to become consistent. A competitive party system plays two important functions in elite rhetoric and action: it grounds elites into consistent positions by forcing Habermasian discourse and, in a presidential or semi-presidential system, it helps overcome the paucity of opposition. In an ironic twist, then, some democratic configurations, most significantly, weak party systems in presidential systems, foster human rights violations.
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