A new session of the Advanced Studies Seminar – Conference Series will take place on May 5, with Ananya Jan Rovny (Sciences Po, Paris) as the guest speaker. The theme will be Diversity and Democracy: Muslim Minorities and the Support for Democracy. The event will take place in the Maria de Sousa Room at ICS-ULisboa, starting at 10:30 a.m. See the full program of this seminar series.

Can diversity and democracy coexist? This seminar studies the democratic support of Muslim minorities in western Europe. It argues that ostracised ethnic minorities—viewed as a cultural or political threat by significant portions of the majority—are more likely to support democratic institutions in order to seek legal equality and civil liberties. This search for democracy is attenuated by religious particularism and cultural conservatism. Using data from the European Social Survey and an original survey from France, the seminar demonstrates that more secular or liberal Muslim minorities, who make up most of the Muslims in our sample, are significantly more likely to support democracy than the majority. Religious or conservative Muslims do not differ from the majority. These findings suggest that, overall, western European Muslims are an asset for liberal democracy.

Jan Rovny is a professor of Political Science at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, Paris. His research focuses on political competition in Europe, with the aim of uncovering the political conflict lines in different countries. It explores the issues that political parties contest across the continent, the strategies that different parties follow, as well as the preferences and voting patterns of voters. His main research interest is the impact of different voter profiles, particularly their ethnicity and exposure to various social risks, on their political attitudes and voting behaviour, as well as on the forms of their political representation.