Bulletin n. 2/2008
September 2008
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Tocci Nathalie, Mikhelidze Nona
    How to Engage with Political Islam? Lessons from Europe
    in International Spectator (The) , Vol. XLIII, n. 3, July - September ,  2008 ,  67-83
    Since the late 1980s, research on political Islam has been much in vogue in Europe and the US. This phenomenon is typically viewed as an expression of religion rather than of politics. Precisely because of the assumed “religious” underpinnings of political Islam, most Western attempts to engage with Islamists often remain trapped in an attempt to test their “democratic credentials”. By focussing on what Islamists think about democracy, many studies have ignored the political, social and economic contexts in which Islamists operate. Accounting for the political underpinning of Islamist movements can both help understand their political evolution and open up fruitful avenues for comparative analysis. For this reason, attention is turned to Europe to seek best practices of external engagement with domestic opposition movements in authoritarian contexts, such as Western engagement with opposition actors in Franco's Spain, Kuchma's Ukraine and Shevardnadze's Georgia.
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