11. What Drives Religious Politicking?
- Author:
- Amy Erica Smith and Emma Rosenberg
- Publication Date:
- 04-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- In the last decade, scholars have begun to elaborate the diverse ways religion manifests in democracies. We draw on theories related to modernization, secularism, and religious competition, as well as survey data from the Comparative National Elections Project, to explain individual-level and country-level variation in religious politicking—religious leaders’ and organizations’ engagement in electoral campaigns. At the country level, though human development depresses the rate at which citizens receive political messages from religious organizations and clergy, both secularism and religious pluralism boost it. At the individual level, “civilizational” differences across religious groups are muted and inconsistent. However, across the globe, citizens with higher levels of education are consistently more likely to receive political messages—an effect that is stronger where religious politicking is more common. A case study of Mozambique further confirms the insights obtained when we unpack modernization and secularization theories.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, Politics, Religion, Developing World, Democracy, Citizenship, and Human Development
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Mozambique, Global Focus, and Global South