College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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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 Did I Say This Land Is Your Land? Patterns of Contention in Indonesian Environmental Disputes(2014) Innes, Tara; Haufler, Virginia; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Environmental disputes occur frequently, particularly in contexts of poor natural resource management and vague law, but while some of these disputes end quickly without fatalities, some escalate to violence or become persistent contentious juggernauts that are increasingly hard to end. What makes a sequence of contentious events more likely to escalate to violence or persistent contention? This dissertation argues that strategic interactions in the form of violence, government behavior, and scarcity type signal the likelihood that the government will support claimant demands, and thus determine whether desperate claimants must escalate to maintain access to environmental goods and services necessary for survival. I also argue that there are material constraints from current repression and violence, and that timing matters. I test these propositions in two sets of logistic regressions, using new sub-national data from Indonesia and an in-depth case study. I find empirical support for the claims that prior violence, structural scarcity, and past government repression increase the likelihood of continued contention. The same variables except for past government repression also increase the likelihood of violence. Current government repression reduced the likelihood of both violence and continued contention, but as time passed it exerted a more pernicious effect on violence and resolution. In other words, timing mattered, although dense events were surprisingly less likely to yield violence or continued contention. This project indicated that there are significant opportunities for reducing the likelihood of violence and persistent contention through policy changes, potentially reducing the suffering of individuals, the destruction of natural environments, and drains on the capability of the state.