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The main argument is that the contemporary manifestations of right-wing populism in Europe ought to be understood, at least in part, as reactions to a distinctive form of postwar European society, which I will call here embedded constitutional democracy. The argument is that the populist reaction to embedded constitutional democracy generally takes a conservative form. This conservatism is expressed in rather different ways (ranging from ethnoreligious views to 'illiberal liberal' ones), but at the same time populism displays a shared core of criticisms on liberalism, and in particular regarding the internationalized or global version of liberalism. In the article, I will start with a brief analysis of the emergence of postwar society in the form of embedded constitutional democracy, used as a backcloth for the subsequent discussion of critical views of liberal understandings of the law in conservative populist thinking. I will, then, focus on populists' critical views of liberalism and 'globalism', analyzed in the form of contemporary articulations of (conservative) populism in both East-Central Europe (Hungary and Poland), and Western Europe (France, Italy, the Netherlands). In order to identify ideological affinities and critical positions, I discuss four themes: abstractness and inauthenticity, identity threat, domination, and legal fundamentalism.

Intellectual history has never been more relevant and more important to public life in the United States. In complicated and confounding times, people look for the principles that drive action and the foundations that support national ideals.American Labyrinthdemonstates the power of intellectual history to illuminate our public life and examine our ideological assumptions. This volume of essays brings together 19 influential intellectual historians to contribute original thoughts on topics of widespread interest. Raymond Haberski Jr. and Andrew Hartman asked a group of nimble, sharp scholars to respond to a simple question: How might the resources of intellectual history help shed light on contemporary issues with historical resonance? The answers-all rigorous, original, and challenging-are as eclectic in approach and temperament as the authors are different in their interests and methods. Taken together, the essays ofAmerican Labyrinthillustrate how intellectual historians, operating in many different registers at once and ranging from the theoretical to the political, can provide telling insights for understanding a public sphere fraught with conflict. In order to understand why people are ready to fight over cultural symbols and political positions we must have insight into how ideas organize, enliven, and define our lives. Ultimately, as Haberski and Hartman show in this volume, the best route through our contemporary American labyrinth is the path that traces our practical and lived ideas.

Support for lesbian and gay (LG) civil rights has increased in recent decades, but heterosexism is still prevalent, particularly among highly religious populations. Evidence suggests, however, that it may not be affiliation, but rather conviction in one’s beliefs that relates to prejudicial attitudes. The aims of this study were to examine the relationships among religiosity, heterosexism, and level of support for LG civil rights, as well as potential moderating effects by religious fundamentalism. This study used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Mturk) to recruit a U.S. national sample (n = 407) to participate in an online survey. A mediation model was constructed with religiosity leading to heterosexism, which diminished support for LG civil rights. This mediation model was expanded into moderated mediations with three types of religious fundamentalism as moderators. Heterosexism fully mediated the relationship between religiosity and support for LG civil rights. A moderated mediation was observed for aspects of religious fundamentalism reflecting external authority and worldly rejection (but not fixed religion) such that the mediation was present only when participants had high levels of these types of religious fundamentalism. Despite the belief that religious people endorse higher levels of heterosexism and that this influences their support for LG civil rights, this is only true when religiosity is also coupled with fundamentalist belief systems reflecting external authority and worldly rejection.

The traditional 'jurisprudential model' of law views the application of legal sanctions primarily as a function of the facts of the case and the rules that govern the proceedings. Sociology of law scholars have challenged this model on theoretical grounds, arguing persuasively that law is variable and often yields patterns that parallel broader considerations of community social organization and collective sentiment. The authors' analysis yields evidence that the certainty and severity of sanctions for murder cases are heightened where social capital is more plentiful, religious fundamentalist values more prevalent, and support for punitive sanctions is greater. They also find that sentences given to murder defendants are longer in areas in which the public expresses higher levels of fear. Overall, the findings provide provocative evidence that legal outcomes in murder cases are influenced by several features of the social environments in which they are processed. Adapted from the source document.

Located in Africa’s Sahel region, the Republic of Mali enjoyed various fruits of its transition to political pluralism and liberal economic restructuring from the 1990s to the early 2000s. When the Malian government sought to amend civil laws governing marriage and family life, and eliminate legal discrimination against women, however, it faced considerable political opposition. Islamic civil society groups capitalised on men’s heightened anxieties to claim a more assertive role in the national public sphere. Subsequent legal reforms constituted a clear political victory for political Islamism in the country and a corresponding setback for Western-backed women’s organisations. Tracing the evolution of Malian marriage and family law from the 1960s to the 2020s, this article argues that conflicting notions of what it means to protect women, coupled with the structural failings of Mali’s post-colonial state, have stymied efforts to ensure women’s rights within a secular, egalitarian legal framework.

The Korean government’s public health responses to the COVID-19 epidemic have achieved a remarkable outcome in terms of the measured number of infected patients and the overall mortality rate. Nonetheless, the public health authority’s various mitigation strategies and vaccination efforts have faced several challenges primarily posed by politically motivated Christian fundamentalists and ultraconservative media’s distorted news framing in Korea. This paper examines how these conservative forces – both religious and political – have undermined the Korean public health authority’s various mitigation efforts and discusses how to address the problems from a public policy point of view. The paper argues that a comprehensive legal reform including the introduction of effective punitive damages in the media market is a necessary minimum to address some of these problems.

From the cleric-led Iranian revolution to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, many people have been surprised by what they see as the modern reemergence of an antimodern phenomenon. This book helps account for the increasingly visible public role of traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars (the `ulama) across contemporary Muslim societies. Muhammad Qasim Zaman describes the transformations the centuries-old culture and tradition of the `ulama have undergone in the modern era--transformations that underlie the new religious and political activism of these scholars. In doing so, it provides a new foundation for the comparative study of Islam, politics, and religious change in the contemporary world. While focusing primarily on Pakistan, Zaman takes a broad approach that considers the Taliban and the `ulama of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and the southern Philippines. He shows how their religious and political discourses have evolved in often unexpected but mutually reinforcing ways to redefine and enlarge the roles the `ulama play in society. Their discourses are informed by a longstanding religious tradition, of which they see themselves as the custodians. But these discourses are equally shaped by--and contribute in significant ways to--contemporary debates in the Muslim public sphere. This book offers the first sustained comparative perspective on the `ulama and their increasingly crucial religious and political activism. It shows how issues of religious authority are debated in contemporary Islam, how Islamic law and tradition are continuously negotiated in a rapidly changing world, and how the `ulama both react to and shape larger Islamic social trends. Introducing previously unexamined facets of religious and political thought in modern Islam, it clarifies the complex processes of religious change unfolding in the contemporary Muslim world and goes a long way toward explaining their vast social and political ramifications.

In the wake of Pakistani dictator General-Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization process (1977-1988), the country experienced an unprecedented tilt towards religious fundamentalism. This initiated judicial transformations that brought in rigid Islamic Sharia laws that impacted women's freedoms and participation in the public sphere, and gender-specific curbs and policies on the pretext of implementing a religious identity. This suffocating environment that eroded women's rights in particular through a recourse to politicization of religion also saw the emergence of equally strong resistance, particularly by women who, for the first time in Pakistan's history, grouped and mobilized an organized activist women's movement to challenge Zia's oppressive laws and authoritarian regime. This movement was to see the emergence of non-governmental women's organizations (NGOs), feminist writers, activist theatre groups, human rights and legal aid cells, as well as activist documentary filmmakers with a common agenda for social change and justice. Using secondary sources, this paper presents a comprehensive historical overview of the feminist and oppositional developments that began to take shape during Zia's dictatorship, and have steadily grown to make their mark in contemporary Pakistani society as organs for socio-political change and women's rights.

Recent social science research indicates that animal rights philosophy plays the functional role of a religion in the lives of the most committed animal rights advocates. In this paper, I apply the functional religion thesis to the recent debate over the place of direct action animal rights advocacy in democratic theory. I outline the usefulness of the functional religion thesis and explain its implications for theorists that call for deliberative theories to be more inclusive of coercive forms of activism.