Thomas Banchoff

Since the first fertilization of a human egg in the laboratory in 1968, scientific and technological breakthroughs have raised ethical dilemmas and generated policy controversies on both sides of the Atlantic. Embryo, stem cell, and cloning research have provoked impassioned political debate about their religious, moral, legal, and practical implications. National governments make rules that govern the creation, destruction, and use of embryos in the laboratory—but they do so in profoundly different ways. In Embryo Politics, Thomas Banchoff provides a comprehensive overview of political struggles about embryo research during four decades in four countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Banchoff’s book, the first of its kind, demonstrates the impact of particular national histories and institutions on very different patterns of national governance. Over time, he argues, partisan debate and religious-secular polarization have come to overshadow ethical reflection and political deliberation on the moral status of the embryo and the promise of biomedical research. Only by recovering a robust and public ethical debate will we be able to govern revolutionary life-science technologies effectively and responsibly into the future.

Ethics and Policy in Atlantic Democracies

Embryo Politics

Globalization has spawned more active transnational religious communities, creating a powerful force in world affairs. Religious Pluralism, Globalization and World Politics, an incisive new collection of essays, explores the patterns of cooperation and conflict that mark this new religious pluralism. Shifting religious identities have encouraged interreligious dialogue and greater political engagement around global challenges including international development, conflict resolution, transitional justice, and bioethics. At the same time, interreligious competition has contributed to political conflict and running controversy over the meaning and scope of religious freedom. In this volume, leading scholars from a variety of disciplines examine how the forces of religious pluralism and globalization are playing out on the world stage.

Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics

Religious pluralism is everywhere in today's politics. Increased immigration flows, the collapse of communism, and the globalization of communications technologies have all fostered a wider variety of religious beliefs, practices, and organizations within and across democratic societies. This is true in both the United States and Europe, where growing and diverse minority communities are transforming the political landscape. As a result, controversies over such things as headscarves and depictions of Mohammed are unsettling a largely secular Europe, while a Christian majority in the US faces familiar questions about church-state relations amidst unprecedented religious diversity. Far from receding into the background, religious language pervades arguments around established issues such as abortion and capital punishment, and new ones such as stem cell research and same-sex marriage. In Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, leading scholars from multiple disciplines explore these dynamics and their implications for democratic theory and practice. What are the contours of this new religious pluralism? What are its implications for the theory and practice of democracy? Does increasing religious pluralism erode the cultural and social foundations of democracy? To what extent do different religious communities embrace similar -- or at least compatible -- ethical and political commitments? By seeking answers to these questions and revealing religious pluralism as both a source of animosity and a potent force for peaceful engagement, this book offers a revealing look at the future of religion in democratic societies.

Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism

Associate Professor of Government and the Berkeley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs Thomas Banchoff

Does the new, more powerful Germany pose a threat to its neighbors? Does the new German Problem resemble the old? The German Problem Transformed addresses these questions fifty years after the founding of the Federal Republic and ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many observers have underscored the reemergence of Germany as Europe's central power. After four decades of division, they contend, Germany is once again fully sovereign; without the strictures of bipolarity, its leaders are free to define and pursue national interests in East and West. From this perspective, the reunified Germany faces challenges not unlike those of its unified predecessor a century earlier. The German Problem Transformed rejects this formulation. Thomas Banchoff acknowledges post-reunification challenges, but argues that postwar changes, not prewar analogies, best illuminate them. The book explains the transformation of German foreign policy through a structured analysis of four critical postwar junctures: the cold war of the 1950s, the dtente of the 1960s and 1970s, the new cold war of the early 1980s, and the post-cold war 1990s. Each chapter examines the interaction of four factors--international structure and institutions, foreign policy ideas, and domestic politics--in driving the direction of German foreign policy at a key turning point. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of German history, German politics, and European international relations, as well as policymakers and the interested public. Thomas Banchoff is Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University.

Thomas Banchoff

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