Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Research Proposal - Religion's Effect on Constitution

 
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Religion's Effect on Constitution

Doğukan Güzel
Research Question:   To what extent do countries adopt religious teachings on their constitutional law?

Literature Review and Alternative Explanation:

      National constitutions shape civil, political rights and freedom of citizens.   Davenport (1996), studies about how constitutions’ of states provide political repression on people.   Constitution is also important because it influences governments’ behaviors towards citizens.   He mentions other researchers’ arguments about the relevance of political repression and national constitutions.   They claim that constitution is the source that decides what are the civil rights and liberties that people have. The second argument is the constitution gives information about what a government can apply repressive behavior and limit civil rights of people during the emergency.   Other than this, some researchers believe that government’s attitude to people and communicate with the society is provided by the constitution’s “guiding principles” while other researchers supports that constitution is just the things written on the paper.   Therefore, governments implement civil rights and freedom on the citizens as they wish.   There are many examples of it.   Then Davenport (1996) argues that some constitutions have degrees about civil rights and liberties, and then in this case governments are not likely to violate these rights. Oppositely, some constitutions do not have degree about civil rights and governments might tend to use political repression.

      If the civil rights mentioned in the constitution like freedom of speech, press, expression and unionization, then according to researcher governments can have two attitudes. First, the government tries to follow and protect these values and there will be lower repression. This is “constitutional promise”. Second, the government is very sensitive about these values and use political repression for they are more threatened by them. This is “constitutional threat”. (Davenport 1996)

      Before the author starts his own research, he mentions others’ surveys.   They are simply searched about the importance and effect of the constitution on government and protecting civil rights and liberties.   Then the author investigates relationship between constitutional structure and repressive behavior.   As a result he found that freedom of press and freedom of expression are the most likely restricted.   (Davenport 1996)

      I conclude from this article that if national constitutions specify the civil rights and liberties like freedom of press, expression, mention of states of emergency and so on, the government use less repressive attitude when there is a problem because governments try to behave in the territories of the constitution.   According to my opinion, Davenport (1996) did not use enough indicators. As he mentioned in the further research part there are many things that researchers should consider. Therefore, I will focus on how religion, religious teachings and religious freedom influence constitutions of the countries in this paper.

      For Islam, it is not easy to adopt Western law because of its historical background.   There is a debate about how Muslim Middle East countries pass to the secularization and modernization with the religion and religious law between researchers.   According to Meyer (1987) countries should get rid of Islamic institutions and laws and adopt Western institutions and laws.   However, traditional Islamic idea does not allow that and this is a very important obstacle for reforms and development programs in those countries.   Secularism idea is adopted by educated elites and technocrats, but ordinary citizens continue to traditional form of Islam.   Actually, in my opinion the reason of that situation is the religious teachings in the constitution of those countries lead these kinds of attitudes, so people have that ideology in their mind. (I remind Davenport’s article for this opinion.) In Islamic countries the idea of traditional Islam influences politics and leaders.   Meyer (1987) gives an example from Iran. Iran made an article about respecting other sects’ religious differences and allow them to imply their law in certain issues like marriage, divorcing.   Meyer (1987) considers that tolerance sign in Iran but I think this is not about religious freedom. With that article Iran decides how people live their religion and it arranges people’s attitudes in some sense. Therefore, it’s not about tolerance.   There are some other states that adopt religious teachings in their constitution like Sudan, Pakistan and Libya. And we can think that Turkey does not adopt these and works for secularization.   In my research proposal I might compare this kind of countries levels of individual freedom and liberties.

      To compare those countries I will use “freedom house index”.   After I look at this cite I observe that countries who adopt some religious teachings in their constitution can block other religions’ activities and that is also limits civil rights and liberties in those countries.

Hypothesis:

      Countries which adopt religious teachings in their constitutions decrease people’s level of individual liberties and freedom.

BIBLIOGRAPY:

Davenport, A. Christian. 1996. "Constitutional Promises" and Repressive Reality: A Cross-National Time- Series Investigation of Why Political and Civil Liberties are Suppressed. The Journal of Politics 15 (3): 627-654

Mayer , Ann Elizabeth. 1987. Law and Religion in the Muslim Middle East. The American Journal of Comparative Law 35 (1): 127-184

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=359 civil rights and liberty ratings in some countries.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=116 Belarus

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=276 freedom in the world

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=752 about Kazakhstan