AUTHOR'S BIO

Alfred Stepan

Alfred Stepan is Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University.

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Turkey’s Secular Fundamentalist Threat

Alfred Stepan Series: Islam

2008-03-20

The Chief Prosecutor of Turkey’s High Court of Appeals recently recommended to the country’s Constitutional Court that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) be permanently banned for eroding Turkish secularism. But the prosecutor's demand merely underscores the authoritarian roots of Turkey's existing constitution.... read

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Senegal’s Democracy Put to the Test

Alfred Stepan Series: Into Africa

2007-02-16

Senegal, a country whose population is 90% Muslim, is one of the Islamic world’s most peaceful and democratic countries. This tranquility has been helped by the elaborate “rituals of respect” that have developed between the secular state and the Sufi orders, and the excellent relations between the country’s Muslim majority and the Catholic minority at all levels of society.... read

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Moving Beyond Mexico’s Crisis

Alfred Stepan Series: Latin America

2006-08-23

As the crisis over Mexico’s disputed presidential election continues, questions are being raised not only about the conduct of the seemingly defeated candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but also about Mexico’s presidential system. Is “presidentialism” as practiced in Mexico part of the problem?... read

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Why is France Burning?

Alfred Stepan and Ezra Suleiman Series: The Worldly Philosophers

2005-11-14

The urban disturbances in France have been called the most severe since the riots by students and workers in 1968. The analogy is misleading. While the 1968 protests challenged the French Republican model to live up to its finest aspirations, today’s crisis challenges the French Revolution’s model of citizenship and integration itself.... read

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The Arab World’s Democratic Opening

Alfred Stepan Series: The Worldly Philosophers

2005-04-14

Roughly 400 million Muslims currently live in non-Arab Muslim majority states – including Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, and Albania – that have held relatively free elections for their highest political offices. These countries may not yet be full democracies, but, because they hold competitive elections, they have met a necessary condition for being a democracy.... read

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Can Democracy Take Hold in Ukraine?

Alfred Stepan Series: The Worldly Philosophers

2004-12-27

Certainly, the diversity of forms of governance used over the centuries by Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Austria-Hungary when they ruled what is now Ukraine make creating a classic "nation state," with one dominant culture, difficult to imagine. Consider, for example, the robustness of the Russian language and the strength of the Orthodox Church- Moscow Patriarchate - in Donetsk that is in eastern Ukraine and the robustness of the Ukrainian language and the influence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Lviv in the west.... read

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Islam's Electoral Divide

Alfred Stepan Series: The World in Words

2004-06-21

How to reform the Islamic world will be among the topics NATO's leaders will discuss in Turkey next week. Both President Bush and the European Union have proposed bold democratization initiatives in the region. Can such initiatives succeed?... read

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