Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C.

Director of the Ford Family Program
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
and Kellogg Faculty Fellow

"The Religious Factor in African Politics: Christians, Muslims and Political Culture in Nigeria, Uganda and Senegal"

Tuesday, April 8, 2008
12:30 pm - C103 Hesburgh Center

Abstract

This presentation will highlight preliminary results of a mass survey of mainline Christians, Pentecostal Christians, and Muslims conducted in Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda during 2006 and 2007. Among other things, it will explore whether and how communal religious observance affects civic engagement, political participation, and support for democracy. The evidence highlighted in this presentation calls into question the conventional wisdom that the impact of religious observance on political culture depends on the type of religious community in question, i.e., whether it is Christian or Muslim, Catholic or Protestant, mainline Protestant or Pentecostal. This presentation argues that rather than the type of religious community, the social setting, especially the extent to which the setting is religiously plural, has a significant impact on whether religious leaders encourage or discourage actions and attitudes conducive to democracy and the receptiveness of individual believers to such encouragement or discouragement.

Biography

Rev. Robert Dowd, CSC, is director of the Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity and assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Dowd did his graduate work in African studies and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles and is author of several articles on how religion and ethnicity affect political transitions in Africa. A major grant from the Templeton Foundation has supported Dowd’s most recent survey research, which attempts to discern how Christianity and Islam affect political attitudes and behaviors in Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. Currently he is working on a book manuscript titled, “Faith in Democracy: Christianity, Islam and Political Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa.”