Mixed Blessing : La politique étrangère des Etats-Unis en engagement avec les dirigeants religieux, le cas de la Bosnie-Herzégovine
(2018) La politique étrangère — ISBN: [9789052012315], published
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- Abstract
- The chapter analyzes different ways in which religion influences foreign policy decisions. Using Bosnia and Herzegovina as a case study, it analyzes how decision makes at the USA embassies in Balkans perceive religion and the influence of religious leaders on the political life and, vice-versa, how religious leaders see the role of the foreign power on the domestic political life and their own socio-political role. Two main sources of data are the Wikileaks database that covers the period until 2010, and a set of interviews with religious leaders that the author conducted in 2015 and 2016. The chapter detect three main objectives in US Governments’ engagement with religious leaders: 1) building international reputation as an active promoter of religious freedom without negative bias to any religious group, and a successful peace-mediator, 2) addressing security concerns in light of growing Islamic extremism, and 3) achieving regional stability in Balkans in which a model of a unified state, without ethnoreligious divisions, is seen as optimal. At the same time, religious leaders are perceived as carriers of specific doctrines, and (trans)national identities, but also as influential opinion leaders in their national communities. On the other hand, local religious leaders express significant reservations towards those policies based on the perceived lack of foreign understanding of the local context and theological reasons which insist on a certain distance of religious institutions from practical policy-making.
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Citations
Odak, S. (2018). Mixed Blessing : La politique étrangère des Etats-Unis en engagement avec les dirigeants religieux, le cas de la Bosnie-Herzégovine. In Tanguy Struye, Tanguy de Wilde d’Estmael, Valérie Rosoux (ed.), La politique étrangère. Struye, Tanguy; de Wilde d’Estmael, Tanguy; Rosoux, Valérie. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/228060