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Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania by Lavinia Stan; Lucian TurcescuReview by: Robert LegvoldForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 3 (May - Jun., 2008), p. 154Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20032689 .
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Recent Books
authoritarians. The Soviet Union swirled to its death in an economic crisis, driven in no small part by its misplaced depen dence on oil wealth. His quite explicit purpose is not simply to warn his fellow Russians against counting too heavily on oil revenues and yielding too easily to authoritarian solutions but also to strike against what he sees as a growing threat, the lingering hold of a "post-imperial nostalgia" on much of the political elite. This, he contends, is not only bad for Rus sia but also dangerous for everyone else.
Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania. BY LAVINIA STAN AND
LUCIAN TURCESCU. Oxford
University Press, 2007, 288 pp. $SS.00. Fashion in the social sciences has lately edged away from a preoccupation with ethnicity and ethnic conflict to the not totally unrelated topic of religion and politics. The appearance of dedicated centers and programs as well as publication series confirms the rise (not coincidentally
with a heavy focus on Islam). In keeping with the trend, religion has reemerged as a crucial dimension of state-society relations in postsocialist societies. Because these two authors have long given thought to the matter-not least because they lived it, and at a price, when still in communist
Romania-they bring seasoned judgments and a rich analytic framework to the sub ject. In Romania, the story revolves around the Romanian Orthodox Church, but there are other players, including minority religions and secular intellectual elites. Stan and Turcescu first parse the contending views of how organized religion should figure in the country's political life into four alternative models and then explore how religion and politics have
unfolded in Romania in six policy areas, from elections and the manipulation of nationalist themes to religion in schools and several other hot-button social issues.
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HAMZAWY, KARIM SADJADPOUR,
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"Ordinarily, any dominant power tries to maintain the status quo, whereas the
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East." Building on this appraisal of U.S. actions following 9/11, Roy offers an overview of diplomacy and war in the
Middle East during the past seven years. He reveals not a neat binary organizing theme of "us against them" in a would-be
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[154] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume87No.3
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