Faith of the Sovereign: Constitutive Conflicts and the Three Paths of National Leadership for Religious Minority Politicians
Journal: Nationalities Papers
Year: 2025

Abstract Why could politicians of religious minority backgrounds become national leaders in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas in some other countries, almost all the national leaders have been from the religious majority background for decades if not centuries? I argue that the most important factor explaining the incidence of national leaders of a religious minority background or lack thereof is whether the main adversary in the constitutive conf