| This thesis adds to the burgeoning literature on the role of religion in International Relations (IR), and adds theoretical depth to the emerging sub-field of International Political Theology (IPT), by examining the subject through the prism of regime theory, which is necessarily augmented by Vendulka Kubalkova's linguistic model of constructivism. Since religion does not appear to be a rule-governed issue area in IR, religions are treated as regimes, or, as Stephen Krasner defines them, "sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor's expectations converge in a given area of international relations." Founded primarily on the work of George Modelski, this interdisciplinary study elucidates the nature of transnational religious regimes, which have been functioning since at least the reign of the Roman emperor, Constantine the Great (r. 306-337). By utilizing regime theory, and by tackling the case of the Vietnam War, this thesis also demonstrates that the modern transnational religious regime did not come to an end with the election of John F. Kennedy as the first Roman Catholic President of the United States. It also demonstrates that the view of the Iranian Revolution as the chief example of the global resurgence of religion is flawed, obscured by the early prominence of the modernization theory and secularization thesis in the Social Sciences. Ironically, modernization theory, it is seen, was an instrument of the existing Protestant-based religious regime, illustrating, like the case of the Roman Empire, that religion's importance is nothing new: religion has always been important in world affairs. |
