Elisabeth Ivarsflaten is professor of political science and scientific director of the Digital Social Science Core Facility at the University of Bergen, Norway. Paul M. Sniderman is the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr., Professor of Public Policy at Stanford University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is, most recently, author of The Democratic Faith and coauthor of Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy: Islam, Western Europe and the Danish Cartoon Crisis.
The Struggle for Inclusion charts an evidence-based strategy for winning over a potentially inclusive non-Muslim majority in Western European countries. Rather than intervene in an attempt to change attitudes about Muslims, the authors search for hidden tolerant majorities by exploring the conditions under which survey respondents from seven countries express tolerant views. A meticulously crafted series of survey experiments shows how acceptance of Muslims changes, sometimes dramatically, depending on the substantive concerns at issue. -- Donald P. Green, Columbia University The key point of the book is that we should cease to focus on the intolerant and instead focus on the tolerant who are in favor of including Muslim minorities. In so doing, we should take into account that the terms of inclusion matter for them. In a series of impressive survey experiments, the authors demonstrate this key point in a highly effective manner. Without any doubt, this book makes an important contribution to the literature on attitudes about immigration, tolerance, liberal values, and their political implications. -- Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute