New initiative: the Inclusive Politics Project

Research on the reactions of majorities to Muslim minorities in Western Europe has focused on exclusion – opposition to immigration, prejudice towards minorities, the surge in support for the far right, understandably.  The Inclusive Politics Project takes research in a new direction.  It focuses on inclusion, not exclusion, on the tolerant, not the intolerant.  The difference is not a play on words.  It is a different undertaking.  How far are citizens who subscribe to the values of a contemporary  democracy willing to go to include Muslim minorities. Where do they draw the line?  And why do they draw it there and not elsewhere? 

 

The Inclusive Politics Project is a collaboration between the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and the Digital Social Science Core Facility (DIGSSCORE) of the University of Bergen.  Paul Sniderman, the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor in Public Policy at Stanford University, and Elizabeth Ivarsflaten, professor of comparative politics at the University of Bergen, have completed the first stage of this project, carrying out multiple studies in Norway, Great Britain, Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United States.  The next phase is an expansion of the scale of collaboration.  Research partnerships are being formed with co-principal investigators in multiple countries in Western Europe, beginning with Sweden and Germany.  The primary objective remains discovery of the conditions under which inclusion of Muslim minorities is broadly acceptable to non-Muslim majority citizens. The secondary objective is to create opportunities for advanced graduate students in one country to work alongside senior researchers in other countries.