I have a review essay on this subject in Perspectives on Politics, available under Open Access here.
The three very interesting books reviewed are:
How Economic Ideas Evolve: The Impact of Religion on the German and Italian Welfare State.
By Josef Hien. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. 195p.
The Islamic Welfare State: Muslim Charity, Human Security, and Government Legitimacy in Pakistan.
By Christopher Candland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 335p.
Refining the Common Good: Oil, Islam and Politics in Gulf Monarchies.
By Miriam R. Lowi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 212p
A note on the illustration (hat tip to ChatGPT): Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533), painted amid Europe’s religious upheavals, captures the intimate entanglement of diplomacy, political power and religious conflict that lies at the heart of this essay.
Here’s what ChatGPT had to say about why the illustration is appropriate for the essay:
- the hidden skull reminds the viewer that worldly political power is transient.
- it was painted at the moment of the English Reformation, when religion and politics were inseparable;
- the two ambassadors stand between diplomacy, theology and statecraft;
- the broken lute string evokes religious discord.