In the last few years, the field of religion and politics has been enriched by a number of important works aimed at providing more rigor and depth to a field that was previously understudied. In the latest addition to Routledge Press' “Extremism and Democracy” series, Madalena Meyer Resende's Catholicism and Nationalism: Changing nature of party politics adds to this wave of scholarship by examining the Catholic Church's role in relation to party politics and its effect on nationalism. Using a most similar case design, Resende compares the effects of an active and influential Catholic Church on the post-communist/post-fascist party politics of Poland and Spain. Using the language of causality (86), she concludes that the conservative nature of Poland's Catholic Church resulted in Poland's “introverted nationalism” (xiv), while a liberal and politically neutral Catholic Church resulted in Spain's “extroverted nationalism” (xvi). After years of communist repression, the Polish church became more politically active and assertive in the period of democratic consolidation, whereas the Spanish church was more politically disengaged as it tried to overcome its historical association with the fascist-Franco regime.

Resende's examination leads her to the conclusion that “church intervention had a bearing on the deepening of a religious/national cleavage that impacted on the emerging party system, and, ultimately, on the reform of nationalism … [The] strategic choices of the religious hierarchies were crucial for the mobilization of confessional identities and their translation into resilient political forces” (4). The critical junctures she identifies are the authoritarian period, the transition to democracy, the realignment of parties in the right-wing, and the formulation of national discourses by conservative forces.

The basis for Resende's research is important: Do the strategic choices of an institutionalized, organized religion have an impact on politics, particularly party formation and nationalism in periods of democratic transition and consolidation? In Poland, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) adopted the National Catholic position, which explained its attitude of introverted nationalism towards its neighbors and European integration. Spain's Partido Popular (PP), on the other hand, promoted extroverted nationalism because of the political disengagement of the Spanish Church during the transition in the 1970s. Resende's answer, therefore, is clearly “yes” in both cases. The evidence she presents, however, too neatly connects one to the other.

Resende does not clearly differentiate between the causal and the influential relationship of the Catholic Church: the former would treat the Church as an independent variable, the latter an intervening one. Distinguishing between the two is important, since Resende's use of causality leads to an overstatement of the Church's actual role. What appears to be of significance here is how right wing political parties in both countries dealt with the changing character of nationalism given the countries' distinct and different historical experiences with partition, regionalism, fascism, communism, Catholicism, and the Catholic Church. Given these issues, her notions of introverted and extroverted nationalism and their outcomes could have been attributed to the strategic choices of the political parties, and not necessarily the Catholic hierarchy.

The differences between the cases, therefore, are not adequately highlighted. One of the most fundamental differences is the variance in historical/political division and war. Having experienced partition twice undoubtedly affected the course that nationalism would take in Poland. Another equally fundamental difference is grounded in the ideological experience of Poland's communism and Spain's fascism, and the position of the Church in relation to these ideologies. The ideological hostility of communism toward religion in general is simply not the same as the Church's historical relationship with Spanish fascism. Furthermore, what of the role of economics and foreign intervention/alliances, which may have shaped the context to allow the political parties to exploit nationalist sentiment, intermingled with Catholicism? The tense relationship Poland has with its neighbors, particularly Germany and Russia, is not comparable to the relationship Spain has with its neighbors. Finally in the post-fascist period, the political effects of Spain's Basque and Catalonian issues may help explain why Spain's extroverted nationalism may have been a political necessity rather than a religio-political outcome. Poland, on the other hand, did not have to deal with the political tensions that can result from such regional issues.

Unfortunately, the book is further weakened by editorial and grammatical errors, and the book's introduction does not sufficiently ground the basis of the study to prior scholarship. Introducing concepts such as “introverted” and “extroverted” nationalism without more direct reference and more in-depth discussion to its genealogy or to the scholarship of others might lead aspiring specialists to think that the ideas were original to the author. Granted, as a hardcover edition in this series, which is “intended for a more specialist readership,” the work would benefit from more pronounced connections to the relevant general scholarship. Finally, the cursory analysis of Vatican II and its effect on Poland and Spain along with the omission of important works on religion and politics specific to these cases — such as Adam Michnik's The Church and the Left — further weakens the author's discussion.

Overall, the book is important in the sense that it sheds light on the activities of the Catholic Church in the post-consolidation period and, more importantly, on the activities and strategies of political parties on the right (Chapters 4 and 5 are particularly interesting). It would be more appropriate, therefore, to view this book as contributing to the scholarship on party development, nationalism, and integration. Resende makes a similar statement early on: “The book contributes to the understanding of conservative parties' attitudes to European integration” (12). Yet, this statement appears more of an after-thought (listed under “Wider issues”) rather than the primary contribution of the book. Religion, as studied in this context, is just one of many variables that have influenced the development of political identities and parties in the post-consolidation period of Poland and Spain.