Religiosity and its Political Effects

Authors

  • Author

  • Dana El Kurd

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12816/0049613

Keywords:

Democracy, Pubic Opinion, Religiosity, Political Tolerance

Abstract

​What is the effect of religiosity on public opinion? Islamist religiosity in particular has been linked to a variety of outcomes, including authoritarianism and violence. Nevertheless, many scholars have countered that there is in fact no relationship between religiosity in the Arab world and adverse political outcomes. Thus the debate remains unresolved to some degree. To adjudicate this debate, we use the Arab Opinion Index's 2016 data to examine the effect of individual religiosity on public opinion and political behavior. We find that there is no link between increased religiosity and negative views of democracy; in fact, the opposite is the case. There is also no link between religiosity and political participation. Finally, there is a positive correlation between religiosity and political tolerance.

Author Biography

  • Dana El Kurd
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References

  1. Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture , 2 nd ed. (London, UK: F. Cass, 1994), pp. 5 - 6.
  2. M. Steven Fish, "Islam and Authoritarianism," World Politics , vol. 55, no. 1 (2002), pp. 4 - 37.
  3. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Bassam Tibi, "Why They Can't Be Democratic," Journal of Democracy , vol. 19, no. 3 (2008), pp.
  4. Daniel Brumberg, "Islam is not the Solution (or the Problem)," The Washington Quarterly , vol. 29, no. 1 (2005), pp. 97 - 116.
  5. Mark Tessler, "Do Islamic Orientations Influence Attitudes toward Democracy in the Arab World? Evidence from the World Values Survey in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria," International Journal of Comparative Sociology , vol. 43, no. 3 - 5 (October 2002), pp. 229-249; Mark Tessler, "Islam and Democracy in the Middle East: The Impact of Religious Orientations on Attitudes toward Democracy in Four Arab Countries," Comparative Politics , vol. 34, no. 3 (April 2002), pp. 337 - 354.
  6. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). الشكل (1) التدين الشخصي ودعم الديمقراطية

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Published

2018-01-01

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43 views 51 downloads

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 030 (2018): Issue 030

Section

The Arab Index

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Dana El Kurd (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.