The Governance of Islam in Europe, Religioznawstwo, Islam
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//-->Journal of Ethnic and Migration StudiesVol. 33, No. 6, August 2007, pp. 871Á886The Governance of Islam in Europe:The Perils of ModellingVeit BaderRecently, we have seen a shift from research on the internal structure and culture ofMuslim religiosity to research on the way in which societies create opportunities for thedevelopment of Islam, or oppose them, and more particularly to the political opportunitystructure and the institutionalised regimes and policies of governing Islam in Europefrom a neo-institutionalist perspective. This introduction to the special issue discusses theconcepts and perspectives of the governance and government of religious diversity,critically analysing the inherent problems of constructing patterns or models of therelationship between (organised) religions, societies, politics, nations and polities/states.My analysis opts for fairly disaggregated frames for the purposes of rich descriptions ofcases, synchronic comparisons and diachronic changes, which are a precondition forasking the relevant explanatory questions: Why what happened happened here and notthere? Why now and not then? This framework is used to critically assess the debate onwhether a European regime of religious governance in general, particularly with regard toIslam, is emerging, and to introduce the contributions in this special issue that analysedifferent aspects of governing Islam in Western Europe.Keywords: Religious Diversity; Governing; Governance; Islam; EuropeThe Muslim presence in Europe can only be called ‘new’ if we forget the lastingimpact ofAl Andalus,the Ottoman Empire and European Colonialism. Yet Muslimshave gained in prominence, numbers and visibility, particularly in Western Europe,after World War II due to post-colonial migration, the migration of guestworkers,family reunification, refugees and asylum-seekers. Increasing numbers of Muslimsfrom different regions and countries, characterised by a broad variety of languages,ethnic cultures and religious traditions in addition to differences in class-position,Veit Bader is Professsor of Sociology in the Department of Political and Socio-Cultural Sciences and of Socialand Political Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Correspondence to:Prof. V.M. Bader, Dept of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, NL 1012 CPAmsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: v.m.bader@uva.nlISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/07/0600871-16#2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13691830701432723872V. Baderage, citizenship status etc., have tried to live their religious practices as minoritiesunder conditions of entrenched but widely diverging regimes of governance ofreligious diversity. Moreover they have increasingly lived in a transnational context*in the triple meaning of demographic migration, of diasporas, and of increasinglyglobal public spaces (Bowen 2004: 891).On the one hand, these partly-new conditions had a considerable impact onMuslims’ everyday religiosity and on the doctrinal articulations of Islam; on the waysin which they raised common demands or claims; on the ways in which theyidentified, associated and acted collectively in order to change existing administrativepractices, legal rules, predominant policies, and even the institutional structure andcollective identities of the receiving societies and states. On the other hand, Muslims’presence, claims and collective actions also had an impact on institutionalisedregimes of government and governance in receiving societies, both individual statesand the European Union; on policies of assimilation or accommodation of religiousdiversity; and on predominant ideologies, images and collective identities.After some delay, studies of these dynamic interactions have entered into academicresearch agendas, initially slowly. In the last ten years or so, however, the number ofarticles, books and reports on nearly all aspects of the Muslim presence in Europe hasliterally exploded,1and the introduction to this special issue is certainly not the placefor even the shortest state-of-the-art report. Researchers from different disciplines,different research traditions embedded in different ‘national’ academic and politicalcultures, and working increasingly in close cooperation between internationally-oriented and interdisciplinary research centres, have produced a widely hetero-geneous body of literature on changing Islamic religiosity (mainly by anthropologistsand sociologists of religion, theologians, philosophers and normative legal theorists)and on changes in the governance of Islam (mainly by political scientists,institutionally-oriented sociologists and comparative legal theorists). Broadly speak-ing, we can see a shift from research of the internal structure and culture of Muslimreligiosity*the formation of their associations and organisations, the developmentof Muslim identities (if any)*to the ‘way in which societies create opportunities forthe development of Islam, or oppose them’ (Buijs and Rath 2003: 9), in other words,to theexternalopportunity structure generally. This latter includes the politicalopportunity structure and the institutionalised regimes and policies of governing´Islam. We also increasingly note the ‘dialectical’ (Cesari 2005) or dynamic interactionof internal and external aspects.Even in the narrow perspective of the Governance of Islam it would be futile todiscuss the most important studies of specific issues like Islamic instruction ingovernmental schools or religious dress codes, or the dynamics of accommodation inspecificunitsof governance or government*like firms, municipalities, nation-statesor the EU. Instead, I focus on theoretical and methodological problems in thispromising but still under-developed governance approach to the study of Islam(s) inEurope (Islamen Europe)and the contested emergence of a ‘European Islam’ (Islamd’Europe).First, I explain the concepts of governance and government that emergeJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies873from recent institutionalist approaches in the social sciences. In the next section Iaddress inherent problems of constructing models of regimes of governance ofreligions. Then I briefly discuss whether something like a European Regime ofReligious Governance is likely to emerge. In the final section I elaborate the specificfocus of this special issue on Governing Islam in Western Europe, and introduce thearticles in this issue.2Governance and the Government of Religious DiversityGovernance is an increasingly fashionable concept nowadays but it has not yet beenapplied very much to problems of ethnic and national minorities as reflected in theliteratures on multiculturalism in general and on religious minorities in particular.The governance of religious diversity has also been widely neglected in the sociologyof religion, which traditionally focuses on describing and explaining the diversity ofreligious beliefs and practices.Governance may be a fashionable concept but it is often used in a vague and´unspecified way (Heritier 2002; Pierre and Peters 2000; Treibet al.2005). Hence Istart by briefly summarising the conceptual distinctions between patterns or regimesof governance and of government as used in comparative institutional studies in thesocial sciences. Structured patterns (or ‘formations’ or ‘configurations’) compriserelevant interactions between economic, social, cultural (including ethno-national),political, legal, judicial, administrative and religious relations in all their diversity; toput it more traditionally, the relationships between economy, society, culture, politics,nation, state and (organised) religions. Studies of societyÁreligion patterns have toanalyse all mechanisms of action-coordination*markets, networks, associations,communities, private and public hierarchies (Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997 )*andall relevant (coalitions of) actors, their organisations and strategies, includinggovernments at all levels.The focus ofgovernanceis narrower: regulation or steering, guidance by a variety ofmeans, not only by rules. It includes only those mechanisms of action-coordinationthat provide intentional capacities to regulate, including co- and self-regulation.Markets, on the one hand, are important mechanisms for co-ordinating actions butthey do so by an ‘invisible hand.’ They have no regulatory capacity and thereforeshould not count as modes of governance. The perspective of governance, on theother hand, is much broader than that ofgovernment,which focuses on one(internally highly diversified) actor*the state*and on action-coordination by‘public hierarchy’, by rules, particularly law and law-like regulations. Governance,then, includes more actors and more modes of coordination in the perspective ofregulation and is well-suited to describe and explain recent ‘shifts from governmentto governance’. Yet it excludes some broad issues beyond governance: not all co-ordination is governance, only co-ordination by ‘policies’ in a very broad sense.Governance in general can best be understood by discussing it along twoaxes of regulation, distinguishing internal and external governance and democratic874V. Bader(bottom-up) and hierarchical (top-down) governance. Both internal and externalgovernance can be top-down or bottom-up.Let me apply these distinctions to explain three points about religious governance.First, the relatively free competition of all types of religion in ‘God’s BiggestSupermarket’ may be crucial for the opportunities for divergent religions and foroverall religious diversity, but this is not in itself a mode of governance. It is aninvisible-hand mechanism that is, in analogy to rules of contract and property,regulated everywhere at least implicitly (e.g. by freedom of religious conscience andother religious freedoms) and which has to be regulated by customs, conventions orlaws, by self-regulation within and among competing religions, by co-regulation andby public bodies.Second, religious governance refers to the internal and external regulation ofreligious diversity and to their dynamic interaction. Internal governance by therespective religious communities themselves*here understood as those groupswhich share certain religious beliefs and practices, however contested the boundariesand the beliefs and practices may be*includes ‘self’-regulation by religious laws andcustoms (ecclesiastical law andnomos)of many aspects of life from the cradle to thegrave. The rules and their interpretation and application can either be moreautocratic and hierarchical*e.g. formally organised, autocratic church hierarchiesand religious elites*or more democratic and bottom-up*e.g. by religiouscongregations and democratically elected religious organisations/leaders, or indeedby more informal networks and associations of believers, or religious counter-eliteslike dissenting theologians, leaders of religious political parties and communalbusiness elites.3Internal governance of religious diversity should not be called‘management’ (Bouma 1999) because management includes hierarchy and top-downcompetencies usually confined to either private or public hierarchies. Internalgovernance of religious communities clearly varies widely between religions (e.g.Catholicism approaching the autocratic pole, radical Protestantism the democraticone, and Islam the less-organised one) and, obviously, also in the historicaldevelopment of specific religions.Third, external governance of religious diversity also includes more voluntary anddemocratic forms of self-regulation by interfaith networks, associations andecumenical organisations, which are often neglected and cannot appropriately becaptured by ‘management of religious diversity’. The governance perspective alsostimulates analysis of the regulations of religious diversity inside so-called semi-public and private organisations by more or less autocratic or democratic forms of‘corporate governance’, as well as the analysis of their impact on the ways in whichreligious practices (particularly of religious minorities) are accommodated or not.Most attention has been focused on external governance of religious diversity bygovernments or public hierarchies*in other words what polities (on different levels,from local to supra-state), legislations, administrations, jurisdictions and the differentdepartments of government do to religions, particularly by law or law-like rules.Comparative studies of the divergent ways in which religions, particularly Islam,Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies875are governed in Europe have been initiated by legal scholars (e.g. Ferrari 1996;Ferrari and Bradney 2000; Shahid and van Koningsveld 2002). Much less research hasbeen done on what states (e.g. courts, administrations) actually do, on how thesediverse and changing practices relate to the country-specific predominant legalmodels or ideological policy-models, and on how different religious minoritiesrespond to those policies, which include not only legal opportunities and threats buta broad spectrum of other resources (money, expertise, networks etc.) and policyoptions (incentives and persuasions).Compared with the traditional focus on the government of religious diversity, theperspective of governance promises two important advantages. First, if governmentsfollow policies of deregulation and ‘privatisation’ also regarding religions, thegovernance perspective helps to prevent a dichotomous view of ‘either state ormarket’ and enables analysis of the huge variety of public but non-state actors and ofsemi-public and private actors which play such a big role in regulating religiousdiversity anyway and are gaining in importance by such ‘shifts from government togovernance’.4Second, it is more appropriate for the study of religious regimes likeAmerican denominationalism that are characterised by fairly thin legal regulationsand little ‘official’ cooperation between state and religions.The Perils of Modelling: Path Dependency and ChangeSocietal patterns and regimes of religious governance together define the generalexternal opportunity structure that, according to an institutionalist approach,contains the most important variables for explaining variations in Muslim religiosityand in the accommodation or non-accommodation of Muslim demands in Europe.Researchers looking for help by sociologists of religion only detect a lot ofdisagreement and competing attempts to construct such models. Here I brieflydiscuss the perils of all modelling but I also elucidate why we cannot do without suchmodels.5.Patterns*e.g. the American, English, Scandinavian, Mixed, Latin, Right Statist,Left Statist, and Nationalist patterns distinguished by Martin (1978)* requiresome degree of stability in a diachronic, historical perspective. ‘Nested’ structuresexclude other institutional options, and ‘path dependency’, in spite of its criticaledge against ‘necessitarian’ evolution, excludes other paths (Crouch and Farrell2004). Yet, path dependency has to allow for modifications and even breaks ofpatterns: history is not destiny. In constructing patterns, one has to avoid thedanger of presenting them as more stable over time than they actually are. Area orstate patterns change over time or are even revolutionised..Societies may be better described as patchworks orbricolagesthan as orders with avery high degree of systemic integration. Yet the fact that they are only ‘looselyconnected’ does not exclude attempts to detect weaker forms of ‘structuralinterdependency’ or ‘institutional complementarity’, and of vicious or beneficial
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