Religion and Support for Democracy: A Comparative Study for Catholic and Muslim Countries

This article presents a cross-country empirical analysis of the relationship between religion and political attitudes among the Catholic and Muslim publics, using the most recent data from the World Values Survey. We find that public support for democracy is stronger among the better educated in bot...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Politics and religion
Authors: Gu, Man-Li (Author) ; Bomhoff, Eduard Jan 1944- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2012]
In: Politics and religion
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This article presents a cross-country empirical analysis of the relationship between religion and political attitudes among the Catholic and Muslim publics, using the most recent data from the World Values Survey. We find that public support for democracy is stronger among the better educated in both the Catholic and Muslim countries. Contrary to the conventional belief that pious believers are less receptive to democracy, individual religiosity, measured by belief in God, is found to have a significant positive impact on desire for democracy in both types of society. Our findings further indicate that at the societal level, overt support for democracy is consistently positively correlated to the attachment of a set of more implicit tolerant civil values in Catholic-majority countries, while exactly the opposite is observed in Muslim-majority countries.
ISSN:1755-0491
Contains:Enthalten in: Politics and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S1755048312000041