Ammar Maleki | Tilburg University (original) (raw)
Papers by Ammar Maleki
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
This article contributes to the internationalization of survey methodology by discussing a case f... more This article contributes to the internationalization of survey methodology by discussing a case from a totalitarian state, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2020, GAMAAN (The Group for Measuring and Analyzing Attitudes in Iran) conducted an online survey on religion. The survey had 50,000 participants, around 90 percent of whom lived in Iran. This article discusses the result that, after weighting, 8 percent identified as Zoroastrian—many times the number of Zoroastrians as recorded by scholarship on Iranian Zoroastrianism. We dub this phenomenon “Survey Zoroastrianism” and offer an explanation for this finding. After describing the position of Zoroastrianism in modern Iran and adding two further online surveys conducted by GAMAAN in 2022, we discuss the Survey Zoroastrians’ demographics and their religious and political views. The analysis shows that participating in surveys beyond the government's control provided affordances for performing alternative identity aspirations tied...
IPSA 2021 - 26th World Congress of Political Science, Jul 1, 2021
The 8th ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques, 2013
ABSTRACT The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in poli... more ABSTRACT The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries. Keywords: models of democracy; integrative dimension of democracy; participative dimension of democracy; cultural values; dimensions of national culture
ECPR General Conference 2021, Sep 1, 2021
How do leading methods mislead? Measuring public opinions in authoritarian contexts. Paper presen... more How do leading methods mislead? Measuring public opinions in authoritarian contexts. Paper presented at IPSA 2021-26th World Congress of Political Science. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
waarom-hetopenbaar-bestuur-ertoe-doet-over-de-economische-en-sociale-betekenis-van-bestuurlijkein... more waarom-hetopenbaar-bestuur-ertoe-doet-over-de-economische-en-sociale-betekenis-van-bestuurlijkeinstituties/Waarom+het+openbaar+bestuur+ertoe+doet.pdf General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
The survey titled “Iranians’ attitudes toward religion” was conducted from June 6 to 21, 2020. Ov... more The survey titled “Iranians’ attitudes toward religion” was conducted from June 6 to 21, 2020. Over 50 thousand respondents were surveyed, around 90% of whom lived in Iran. This study’s findings reflect the views of literate Iranian residents aged above 19, who comprise 85% of Iran’s adult population. The results can be generalized to the target population with a 95% credibility level and credibility intervals of 5%. The survey aimed to measure and document the attitudes of Iranians toward religion and related political concepts, none of which can be openly discussed in Iran due to the current restrictions.
Cross-Cultural Research, 2013
Since Hofstede introduced his approach to understanding cultural differences through dimensions o... more Since Hofstede introduced his approach to understanding cultural differences through dimensions of national culture, various authors have presented their own dimensions, sometimes similar, sometimes different, and sometimes partially overlapping. The status quo in the development of research on cultural dimensions can now be qualified by two words: enriched and messy. Some scholars have attempted to bring the most likely common denominators of the dimensions together in an overview, but these attempts were based on ad hoc considerations and common sense. The goal of this article is to come to a synthesis of the insights from relevant authors and present a set of clusters of cultural dimensions based on systematic theoretical and statistical analysis. This is done by testing the conceptually established clusters through an ecological factor analysis. We included the work produced by Hofstede, Inglehart, Schwartz, GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness), Mi...
Cross-Cultural Research, 2014
Grid–Group Cultural Theory (CT), developed by Mary Douglas and followers, is a well-known and oft... more Grid–Group Cultural Theory (CT), developed by Mary Douglas and followers, is a well-known and often-used framework for the analysis of culture in the political–administrative world. Although Douglas herself was rather wary of detailed operationalization of CT, many scholars have tried to measure Grid and Group and tested implications of the theory along these dimensions at different levels of analysis, within or between nations. In this article, we recognize and discuss some grave challenges surrounding the operationalization of Grid and Group, particularly at the cross-national level. Presenting distinct facets of Group and Grid, we debate that in some measurements, divergent and unrelated cultural attributes are used in the operationalization of Grid and Group, making validity and reliability of such operationalization problematic. We also exhibit that Grid and Group cannot cover some cultural variances between or within societies; hence, we introduce and elaborate on a third dime...
Examining the relation between cultural orientations and political institutional arrangements (i.... more Examining the relation between cultural orientations and political institutional arrangements (i.e. democratic models) is a new theme in institutional research. The results of a few recent studies have provided a general picture of how societal culture and models of democracy walk hand in hand. However, much more should be done to elucidate more details of this striking, mysterious picture. To this aim, the effect of cultural orientations on the institutional choices that forming models of democracy should be studied. These choices are manifestations of the political preferences of people in each society. They can be considered outcomes of the interaction between a constellation of cultural orientations and an arrangement of institutional choices. While cultural orientations are durable and hard to change, institutional settings can be reformed and manipulated. In this study, I want to zoom in on the interrelations between cultural orientations and some underlying institutional elem...
Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relations... more Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relationship between religion and modernity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s mass mobilisation of Islam showed that modernisation by no means implies a linear process of religious decline. Reliable large-scale data on Iranians’ post-revolutionary religious beliefs, however, has always been lacking. Over the years, research and waves of protests and crackdowns indicated massive disappointment among Iranians with their political system. This steadily turned into a deeply felt disillusionment with institutional religion. In June 2020, our research institute, the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN), conducted an online survey with the collaboration of Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
This article contributes to the internationalization of survey methodology by discussing a case f... more This article contributes to the internationalization of survey methodology by discussing a case from a totalitarian state, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2020, GAMAAN (The Group for Measuring and Analyzing Attitudes in Iran) conducted an online survey on religion. The survey had 50,000 participants, around 90 percent of whom lived in Iran. This article discusses the result that, after weighting, 8 percent identified as Zoroastrian—many times the number of Zoroastrians as recorded by scholarship on Iranian Zoroastrianism. We dub this phenomenon “Survey Zoroastrianism” and offer an explanation for this finding. After describing the position of Zoroastrianism in modern Iran and adding two further online surveys conducted by GAMAAN in 2022, we discuss the Survey Zoroastrians’ demographics and their religious and political views. The analysis shows that participating in surveys beyond the government's control provided affordances for performing alternative identity aspirations tied...
IPSA 2021 - 26th World Congress of Political Science, Jul 1, 2021
The 8th ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques, 2013
ABSTRACT The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in poli... more ABSTRACT The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries. Keywords: models of democracy; integrative dimension of democracy; participative dimension of democracy; cultural values; dimensions of national culture
ECPR General Conference 2021, Sep 1, 2021
How do leading methods mislead? Measuring public opinions in authoritarian contexts. Paper presen... more How do leading methods mislead? Measuring public opinions in authoritarian contexts. Paper presented at IPSA 2021-26th World Congress of Political Science. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
waarom-hetopenbaar-bestuur-ertoe-doet-over-de-economische-en-sociale-betekenis-van-bestuurlijkein... more waarom-hetopenbaar-bestuur-ertoe-doet-over-de-economische-en-sociale-betekenis-van-bestuurlijkeinstituties/Waarom+het+openbaar+bestuur+ertoe+doet.pdf General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
The survey titled “Iranians’ attitudes toward religion” was conducted from June 6 to 21, 2020. Ov... more The survey titled “Iranians’ attitudes toward religion” was conducted from June 6 to 21, 2020. Over 50 thousand respondents were surveyed, around 90% of whom lived in Iran. This study’s findings reflect the views of literate Iranian residents aged above 19, who comprise 85% of Iran’s adult population. The results can be generalized to the target population with a 95% credibility level and credibility intervals of 5%. The survey aimed to measure and document the attitudes of Iranians toward religion and related political concepts, none of which can be openly discussed in Iran due to the current restrictions.
Cross-Cultural Research, 2013
Since Hofstede introduced his approach to understanding cultural differences through dimensions o... more Since Hofstede introduced his approach to understanding cultural differences through dimensions of national culture, various authors have presented their own dimensions, sometimes similar, sometimes different, and sometimes partially overlapping. The status quo in the development of research on cultural dimensions can now be qualified by two words: enriched and messy. Some scholars have attempted to bring the most likely common denominators of the dimensions together in an overview, but these attempts were based on ad hoc considerations and common sense. The goal of this article is to come to a synthesis of the insights from relevant authors and present a set of clusters of cultural dimensions based on systematic theoretical and statistical analysis. This is done by testing the conceptually established clusters through an ecological factor analysis. We included the work produced by Hofstede, Inglehart, Schwartz, GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness), Mi...
Cross-Cultural Research, 2014
Grid–Group Cultural Theory (CT), developed by Mary Douglas and followers, is a well-known and oft... more Grid–Group Cultural Theory (CT), developed by Mary Douglas and followers, is a well-known and often-used framework for the analysis of culture in the political–administrative world. Although Douglas herself was rather wary of detailed operationalization of CT, many scholars have tried to measure Grid and Group and tested implications of the theory along these dimensions at different levels of analysis, within or between nations. In this article, we recognize and discuss some grave challenges surrounding the operationalization of Grid and Group, particularly at the cross-national level. Presenting distinct facets of Group and Grid, we debate that in some measurements, divergent and unrelated cultural attributes are used in the operationalization of Grid and Group, making validity and reliability of such operationalization problematic. We also exhibit that Grid and Group cannot cover some cultural variances between or within societies; hence, we introduce and elaborate on a third dime...
Examining the relation between cultural orientations and political institutional arrangements (i.... more Examining the relation between cultural orientations and political institutional arrangements (i.e. democratic models) is a new theme in institutional research. The results of a few recent studies have provided a general picture of how societal culture and models of democracy walk hand in hand. However, much more should be done to elucidate more details of this striking, mysterious picture. To this aim, the effect of cultural orientations on the institutional choices that forming models of democracy should be studied. These choices are manifestations of the political preferences of people in each society. They can be considered outcomes of the interaction between a constellation of cultural orientations and an arrangement of institutional choices. While cultural orientations are durable and hard to change, institutional settings can be reformed and manipulated. In this study, I want to zoom in on the interrelations between cultural orientations and some underlying institutional elem...
Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relations... more Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relationship between religion and modernity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s mass mobilisation of Islam showed that modernisation by no means implies a linear process of religious decline. Reliable large-scale data on Iranians’ post-revolutionary religious beliefs, however, has always been lacking. Over the years, research and waves of protests and crackdowns indicated massive disappointment among Iranians with their political system. This steadily turned into a deeply felt disillusionment with institutional religion. In June 2020, our research institute, the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN), conducted an online survey with the collaboration of Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.
This book (in Persian) aims to define a new manifestation of civil protests that is called 'Civil... more This book (in Persian) aims to define a new manifestation of civil protests that is called 'Civil Misobedience.' Civil misobedience has features in common with civil disobedience, but lacks others and is a different type of civil protest. This kind of protest mostly emerges in countries under authoritarian regimes where public and overtly disobedient civil action can lead to severe punishments. The author elaborates on the definition and characteristics of civil misobedience in light of Iranian protest styles, providing several examples of these from the Iranian context. The book includes a section on 'Civil Disobedience' in which the definitions and attributes of civil disobedience are introduced and compared according to nine prominent scholars and civil activists, namely David Henry Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Ronald Dworkin and Nelson Mandela. The book has been endorsed and recommended by distinguished Iranian figures such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer and co-winner of the Sakharov Prize, and Reza Alijani, a Journalist of the Year laureate by Reporters Without Borders.
Democratization, Apr 29, 2014
The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political sci... more The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries.
Keywords: models of democracy; integrative dimension of democracy; participative dimension of democracy; cultural values; dimensions of national culture