Political science and religion, a matter of underestimate? Comparative analysis of the european political science meganizes between 2010-2015

Abstract

The chorus of authors, who considers that the European and North American political science had been negligent, for not paying attention to the religious phenomena in the study of the political events that influenced the world, in particular since the 1970s, is extensive. Our work aims at testing the validity of this assertion, analysing, for this purpose, the contents of political science journals within a group of selected European countries. We chose nine scientific journals, from six different countries, and we analysed nearly 700 publications of the discipline. To support our comparative matrix, we examined more than 750 papers of sociology and social sciences and international relations. Their classification was made through the introduction of operational criteria of analysis that allowed us to distinguish between three different types of coded units: primary (religion is predominant), secondary (auxiliary function) and unclassified (not took into account). The period of study is between 2010 and 2015 and we found that, though Western political scientists continue to overlook the relevance of religious affairs and/or its scientific journals offer little space to these subjects, the picture is not as negative as the state of the art stated.