Trust influences preference for religious politicians

Activity: Talk or presentation typesLecture and oral contribution

Peter Birkelund Andersen - Lecturer

Andreas Baumann - Lecturer

Abstract: Democratic elections pose a two-dimensional problem for voters; the voter wants to maximise ideological congruity while simultaneously maximising the personal qualities of the candidate such as passion, trustworthiness or intelligence.
We illustrate this problem by studying the role of religion in politics. the stark difference in the importance of religion in national politics between the United States and Western Europe is often explained by the varying intensity of religious engagement in civil life: Americans elect more religious leaders because they are more religious. However, in this paper, we suggest a complementary mechanism: given the high diversity and low trust of the contemporary United States, religious posturing may function as a signal of trustworthiness.
Using cross-national data from the European Values Survey, we show that distrust causes preference for religious leaders. We expand this into a more fully-fledged model of the interplay between trust, political preference and religiosity and elaborate on how this may provide additional insights into the role of religion in politics across the globe.
4 Jul 20177 Jul 2017

Event (Conference)

TitleInternational Society for the Sociology of Religion - Conference
Abbreviated titleISSR
Date04/07/201707/07/2017
CityLausanne
Country/TerritorySwitzerland
Degree of recognitionInternational event

    Research areas

  • European Value Survey, Secularisation, Signaling based model, Politicians and religion, religion and politicians, Clerics and politics, Politics ans clerics

ID: 180942305