Religious Groups as a Force in Party Politics (original) (raw)
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The Impact of Religion on Party Identification in the Americas
Executive Summary. This Insights report asks whether religion is related to the extent to which citizens across the Americas identify with political parties. It does so by examining three components of religious identification: belonging, measured by denominational affiliation; believing, measured by the importance of religion in one's life; and behaving, measured by attendance at church activities. Results show that members of the main religious groups are more likely to identify with political parties than are religious non-identifiers, but there are no significant differences between denominations. Moreover, even after taking religious affiliation into account, believing and behaving have independent effects on party identification. This indicates that religion affects politics in the Americas by helping citizens engage with party politics.
The Many Faces of the Political God: A Typology of Religiously Oriented Parties
Democratization, 2013
Religion can influence party politics in several ways: directly, through the activity of explicitly religious parties; indirectly, both through the lobbying activity of institutional actors such as churches and religious non-governmental organizations, and through the influence of religious values on the manifestos of non-explicitly religious parties. However, although several studies about specific contexts exist in the literature, an exhaustive comparative typological analysis of the role of religion in party politics is still missing. One of the main obstacles to a thorough classification is the notion of “religious party” itself, which many reject since it proves too restrictive and is often perceived as carrying a normative meaning. This article therefore proposes a typology of “religiously oriented parties”, which includes not only explicitly religious parties, but also formally secular parties that have significant sections of their manifestos dedicated to religious values, explicitly appeal to religious constituencies, and/or include significant religious factions. The article offers five types of religiously oriented parties: the conservative, the progressive, the fundamentalist, the religious nationalist, and the camp types. Each type is examined through several variables related to political parties more broadly: their organization, their relation with interest groups, their ideology, their social base, and their impact on the quality of democracy and on democratization processes.
POLITICS AND RELIGION JOURNAL, 2013
Recent literature in the religion and politics area has focused on the effect of various measures of religious affiliation on the political behavior of the mass public. Here we add to the evolving literature examining the influence of religious orientation on political elite behavior, focusing on the U.S. House of Representatives. Method. We use data on the religious affiliations of U.S. House members and National Journal scores of foreign policy voting to test the influence of religion on foreign policy ideology from 1998-2003. Our findings indicate that even after controlling for traditional political factors, religious identity influenced foreign policy voting in the House. African-American Protestants, Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and Evangelical Protestants present the most distinctive patterns. Conclusions. From this analysis we see further indications that religion influences legislative behavior in a way that, although intertwined with political partisanship, appears distinc...
Religion and Roll Calls: Religious Influence on the U.S. House of Representatives, 1997–2002
Although the influence of religion on the political behavior of the mass public is the subject of a growing literature, few studies have assessed the way that religion affects the behavior of political elites, including members of Congress. This project uses documentary and roll call data to analyze how religious factors impacted voting in the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2002 (during the 105 th through the 107 th Congresses). We begin by putting legislative institutions in the context of the two dominant theoretical approaches to the electoral influence of religion, the ethnoreligious and religious restructuring models. We then note that the limited work on Congressional behavior has not fully reflected the frameworks or insights used by that electoral literature, which stresses the multidimensional nature of religion. We then outline an alternative approach, showing how religious affiliations, as well as theological perspectives and religious involvement influence voting on several summary measures of legislative behavior. In addition, we consider the impact of district religious composition on member behavior. We conclude with a stringent multivariate analysis that controls for several important variables typically included in legislative analysis, finding that religious measures often survive those controls.
Politics, Religion, and Society: Is The United States Experiencing a
Review of European Studies, 2012
This study investig ates th e effect of religious id entity o n U.S. Presi dential voter choice in o rder to determin e whether th is relationship chan ged over time. Th e research literature i s divided on t his question with sev eral investigators finding a positive trend in religious-political p olarization sin ce 19 80, and others fi nding no polarization. Th e stud y further addresses a pu tative li nk between so cial in equality and relig ious politics b y identifying the race, cl ass, and ge nder location of religiously influenced voters, using m ultiple cross sections from t he General S ocial Survey t o em pirically model P residential voting over t he period 1980 t o 2 008. T he findings demonstrate th at religious id entity in fluenced voter cho ice, and t hat th is influ ence in creased significantly and substantially across the study period. Second, that upper class whites are the source of religious partisan polari ty, and uppe r class whites beca me more po larized ove r t he period 1980 to 2008. The effect of gender on partisanship is less p ronounced, an d ov ershadowed b y so cial class and religio us identity. The study findings demonstrate that religiously influenced Presidential voting reflects the political behavior of a relativ ely privileged component of the electorate.
Religious mobilization in the 2004 presidential election
American Political Science …, 2005
In this paper we examine the impact of religious variables on the vote in the 2004 presidential election. First we review and evaluate two theories that underlie many interpretations of religion's role in American electoral politics, namely, the ethnoreligious and the religious restructuring perspectives. After demonstrating the strong association of both ethnoreligious and restructuring variables with vote choice and partisanship in 2004, we deploy a comprehensive classification incorporating religious affiliations, beliefs and practices that is even more successful in capturing the electoral impact of religion. We also demonstrate that religious variables were far more powerful in determining the vote in 2004 than social class, gender and other demographic traits of voters. Finally, we note some of the substantive implications of the findings for understanding public policies and policymaking.
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This paper explores the question of whether an individual's religiosity or rate of attendance of religious services affects their party identification. In doing so, we applied statistical measurements through the statistical software package Stata. In reviewing multiple scholarly articles, we find support for our hypothesis which is: as an individuals religiosity and rate of attendance of religious services increase, the stronger they will identify as Republican. Our data collection also yields support for our claim but with little statistical significance.
Religious Voting Blocs in the 1992 Election: The Year of the Evangelical?
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This article examines the political alignment and voting behavior of major Arnerican reli~ous traditions in 1992. We discover that evangelical Protestants solidified their growing Republican proclivities of recent decades, becoming a co, re voting bloc within the GOP coal/t/on. Main/ine Protestants, trad" tionally at the center of the Republican parry , deserted President Bush in large ntanbers for Clinton and Perot, while many Catholic voters returned to their former Democratic dle~ance. The exparding bloc of secular voters provided strong additional support for Democratic candida~ and liberal policies. In condusion, we speculate on the emergence of a &'fferent kind of ethnoreli~~us alignment in electoral politics.
Religious Influences in the 2004 Presidential Election
Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2006
In this article, we examine the impact of religious variables on the vote in the 2004 presidential election. First, we review and evaluate two theories that underlie many interpretations of religion's role in American electoral politics, namely, the ethnoreligious and the religious restructuring perspectives. Using both approaches, we deploy a comprehensive classification incorporating religious affiliations, beliefs, and practices that is quite successful in capturing the electoral impact of religion. We show that religious groups exhibited distinctive political priorities, attitudes toward the role of religion in the election, stands on critical campaign issues, and evaluations of President Bush's performance in office. We find that some religious factors had an important role in the Republican victory, especially in the so-called battleground states. Finally, we discuss some substantive implications of the findings for understanding public policies and policy making.