"Patterns of State Engagement with Muslim Faith-Based Organizations in Britain: The Second Image Reversed?" with Ger FitzGerald

Monday, May 5, 2014 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM EDT
Johnson Center, Meeting Room F, 3rd Floor

Over the course of the last 25 years, European states have demonstrated considerable cross-case and within-case variation in their patterns of engagement with national level Muslim faith-based organizations (FBOs).  The central argument of this dissertation chapter is that the short-term foreign policy urgencies of Her Majesty’s Government provides the most consistent explanation for changes in government strategies of engagement with Muslim FBOs in the domestic realm in Britain. Employing data gathered from personal interviews with leaders of national-level Muslim organizations and government officials, as well as an extensive survey of the secondary literature, this research identifies reactive sequences that connect external political events and considerations with changes in patterns of engagement with domestic FBOs. In other words, what is observed in the British case is that foreign policy considerations–rather than concerns over social or community cohesion–have driven the more corporatist or more pluralist structuring of intermediation in this particular issue-area, an effect that Philip Gourevitch terms “the second image reversed” in the political science lexicon.

Ger FitzGerald is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at George Mason University. His dissertation focuses on changing engagement strategies between Western European states and national level Muslim faith-based organizations.