Cautious Democrats

Religious Actors and Democratization Processes in Senegal

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6212909
AutoresLeonardo A Villalon (0000-0003-4464-4812, University of Florida, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen8
Número2
Páginas305-333
Fecha de publicación2015-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPolitics and Religion (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1755-0491 • E-ISSN: 1755-0483
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1755048315000176
OpenAlexW2120504144
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas29

This article analyzes the role of religious actors at different stages in the long and gradual processes of democratization in Senegal. It examines the transformations in their political influence from pillars of the stable (but non-democratic) post-independence state, to a more ambiguous posture in the decade of democratic opening. A discussion of the interactive relationship between religious change and the transition to democracy over the course of the 1990s leads us to an analysis of the role of religious actors in debating the substantive content of Senegalese democracy in the decade that followed. The article concludes that whileprocedurallyreligious actors are playing an important role in the development of the democratic system in Senegal,substantivelythey are doing so in part by calling into question some understandings of what democracy entails. The ultimate evaluation of their contribution to the consolidation of democracy hinges at least in part on our conceptualization of democracy itself

Conceptualization · Consolidation (business · Democracy · Democratic consolidation · Democratization · Economics · Independence (probability theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · African Studies and Ethnography · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development