Government & Politics Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2775
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Item Supernatural Ties: Religious Beliefs and Practices and Commitment and Cohesion in Politics(2024) Rao, Sean Christopher; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I propose a general mechanism of religion in politics which is not limited to the use of violent tactics or a particular religious background: religious belief and practice generate strong mutual commitment among individuals in a group and this commitment can, in turn, create political cohesion. This process gives a strong organizational resource to political actors who can successfully link political goals to religious commitment and illuminates three puzzles: first, why do some organizations persist in demanding autonomy or independence for decades while others cease after only a short time? Little is known about the persistence of contentious actors, violent and nonviolent, who may eventually become rebels in a civil war. Linking research on civil war duration, nonviolent contention, and the club model of religion with novel cross-national time series data from a sample of self-determination organizations in Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, and Canada, I find some evidence that organizations based on religion or religion-like ideologies in the sample are more likely to persist. I find stronger evidence that organizations persist when they encourage membership practices (such as religious study or dress codes) through which individual members demonstrate public commitment to the group. Second, why do some politicians offer an overt religious basis for their policies? Overt religious rhetoric can harm a politician’s standing with less religious voters in the United States, and positive stereotypes of religious people are diminishing. Still, even politicians who depend on less religious voters sometimes use overt rhetoric instead of subtler religious cues. In two survey experiments, I find that religious rhetoric does not increase the level of a voter’s confidence that a politician is committed to a noncontroversial policy in an undergraduate sample nor to a controversial policy in a national sample in the United States, but it does increase the probability that a voter becomes completely convinced of a politician’s commitment to a controversial policy, though not among Democrats, nor does visible participation in a congregation affect this signal. Third, what keeps some civil wars from resuming after violence has stopped? Previous research has shown religious civil wars are likely to recur due to time-invariant factors of issue indivisibility and information uncertainty. Using existing data on secessionist rebels from 1975 to 2009, I find evidence that recruitment from religious networks drives recurrence. Giving religious constituencies equal access to political power and reaching formal ceasefires or agreements with territorial rebels discourages rebels from mobilizing that network for a return to fighting and makes them no more likely to return than nonreligious territorial rebels. These results identify a general process of religion applicable across different religious backgrounds and political contexts: cohesion from practices, often related to religion, which allow individuals to signal their commitment to a group. Identifying this process makes the study of religion in politics less context limited giving a starting point for future research.Item Religious belief, religious minorities, and support for democracy(2023) Overos, Henry David; Birnir, Johanna K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last two decades, the intersection of religion in politics and democratic backsliding has prompted questions about public support for democracy. This study investigates the link between individual-level religious beliefs, religious minority status, and support for democracy. It presents a modified authoritarian personality theory, proposing that higher religious commitment correlates with stronger support for authoritarianism and weaker support for liberal democracy. This hypothesis is tested using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and validated through the World Values Survey data. A survey experiment in Indonesia in 2022 examines the impact of minority status on views regarding liberal democracy. The findings indicate that religious commitment is associated with reduced support for liberal democracy, and minority status can affect perspectives on democracy under specific political contexts. Additionally, this research pioneers a large-scale approach to measuring religious experience through clustering analysis. It underscores the need to explore how democracy is perceived differently by diverse segments of the population, adding depth to the study of democratic support.Item THE THEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION OF EVANGELICAL ELITES(2020) Burger, Matthew Joseph; Morris, Iwrin L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This inquiry reassesses the theological and political conservatism of the white evangelical tradition, a settled assumption in the academic and popular literature, in view of changing political rhetoric and priorities among the movement’s mainstream elites. It is contended that: 1) There is growing fragmentation among evangelical elites precipitated by a departure from the hallmarks of evangelical theological orthodoxy in a liberal direction by some elites. 2) Four distinct elite types have emerged from this theological fragmentation with distinct theological assumptions and characteristics, including, traditional evangelicals, marketers, emergents, and unmoored marketers. 3) Given the relationship between theology and politics (Green 2010), less theologically orthodox evangelical elite types should also exhibit less conservative political attitudes and behaviors. 4) The emergence of politically progressive social justice priorities among mainstream evangelical elites do not represent an inconsequential adjustment in political rhetoric, nor merely a broadening of the evangelical political agenda. (Pally 2011; Rogers and Heltzel 2008; Steenland and Goff 2014) Rather, it evinces real changes in the theological commitments of these elites that manifest in real changes for their politics. Employing pastor interviews, content analysis of sermons, and the examination of congregation-specific media, this study finds substantial evidence of theological liberalism among a significant segment of evangelical elites that is strongly correlated with a politically leftward migration in the personal political attitudes and behavior of pastors as well as the political priorities they advance in their congregations. Likewise, there is persuasive evidence that this liberalization is driving fragmentation among evangelical elites suggesting a future schism within the movement. It is argued, however, that the changing theological and political commitments of many evangelical elites is unlikely to produce large changes in the partisanship or voting behavior of those in the pews. Nevertheless, these findings do have important implications for how evangelicals are measured in survey research, the relationship between evangelicals and the Republican Party, and evangelical exceptionalism (Smith 1998) to the numerical decline experienced by other religious traditions. Indeed, it is contended that liberal evangelical elites, like their liberal mainline brethren, may increasingly be catechizing those in the pews to become religious “nones”.