Gizem Arikan

Religious Social Identity, Religious Belief, and Anti-Immigration Sentiment

Somewhat paradoxically, numerous scholars in various disciplines have found that religion induces negative attitudes towards immigrants, while others find that it fuels feelings of compassion. We offer a framework that accounts for this discrepancy. Using two priming experiments conducted among American Catholics, Turkish Muslims, and Israeli Jews, we disentangle the role of religious social identity and religious belief, and differentiate among types of immigrants based on their ethnic and religious similarity to, or difference from, members of the host society. We find that religious social identity increases opposition to immigrants who are dissimilar to in-group members in religion or ethnicity, while religious belief engenders welcoming attitudes toward immigrants of the same religion and ethnicity, particularly among the less conservative devout. These results suggest that different elements of the religious experience exert distinct and even contrasting effects on immigration attitudes, manifested in both the citizenrys considerations of beliefs and identity and its sensitivity to cues regarding the religion of the target group.

Religion and Support for Democracy: A Cross-National Test of the Mediating Mechanisms

Religion can be a source of undemocratic attitudes but also a contributor to democratic norms. This article argues that different dimensions of religiosity generate contrasting effects on democratic attitudes through different mechanisms. The private aspect of religious belief is associated with traditional and survival values, which in turn decrease both overt and intrinsic support for democracy. The communal aspect of religious social behaviour increases political interest and trust in institutions, which in turn typically lead to more support for democracy. Results from multilevel path analyses using data from fifty-four countries from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey suggest there is some regularity in mechanisms responsible for the effect of religiosity on democratic support that extend beyond religious denomination.

Does faith limit immorality? The politics of religion and corruption

Critically considering scholarship relating religiosity to ethical behaviour, we contend that religion is systematically related to levels of corruption, and that the nature of this relationship is contingent on the presence of democratic institutions. In democracies, where political institutions are designed to inhibit corrupt conduct, the morality provided by religion is related to attenuated corruption. Conversely, in systems lacking democratic institutions, moral behaviour is not tantamount to staying away from corrupt ways. Accordingly, in non-democratic contexts, religion would not be associated with decreased corruption. Time-series cross-sectional analyses of aggregate data for 129 countries for 12 years, as well as individual level analyses of data from the World Values Surveys, strongly corroborate the predictions of our theory. The correlation of religion with reduced corruption is conditional on the extent to which political institutions are democratic.

The effect of perceived cultural and material threats on ethnic preferences in immigration attitudes

This paper shows that cultural and material threats exist side by side, serving different psychological functions, and that they manifest in differential attitudes towards immigrants from different ethnic or racial origins. While culturally threatened individuals prefer immigrants akin to themselves, as opposed to those from different races and cultures, the materially threatened prefer immigrants who are different from themselves who can be expected not to compete for the same resources. We test our hypotheses using multilevel structural equation modelling, based on data from twenty countries in the 2002 wave of the European Social Survey. The disaggregation of these two types of perceived threat reveals responsiveness to the race of immigrants that is otherwise masked by pooling the two threat dimensions.

Social Values and Cross‐National Differences in Attitudes towards Welfare

Studies on public opinion about welfare already acknowledge the role context plays in individual attitudes towards welfare. However, the much-debated effect of socially held values and beliefs on attitudes towards social policy has not been empirically investigated. Drawing on studies in political and social psychology, as well as Shalom Schwartzs work on universal human values, this article argues that social values, specifically egalitarianism and embeddedness, affect individual support for social welfare policies. Moreover, we posit that social values condition the effect that individual ideological orientations have on attitudes towards government responsibility, such that the effect of embeddedness is much stronger for right-wing and moderate identifiers than those who lean towards the left. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Surveys (ESS) and International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Role of Government module and employing multi-level modelling. Our results provide evidence of the importance of social context and shared values in influencing attitudes towards welfare.

Globalization, Threat and Religious Freedom

While arguably central to the human experience, religion is a largely understudied component of social life and of politics. The comparative literature on religion and politics is limited in scope, and offers mostly descriptions of trends. We know, for example, that restrictions on freedom of religion are on the rise worldwide. In our theoretical framework, the recently higher universal levels of globalization combine with other sources of threat to account for the trend away from religious freedom. As threat to the majority religion increases, due to globalization and an increasing number of minority religions, freedom of religion is on the decline. Data for two decades from 147 nations are used to test hypotheses. Time-series cross-sectional and mediation models estimated at different levels of analysis with data from two independent sources confirm that threat systematically accounts for changes in religious freedom, with globalization playing a key role.

Trends in Party System Indicators for the July 2007 Turkish Elections

Abstract The stellar success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has led to the interpretation of the 2002 and 2007 elections as sharp deviations from past political trends. Through an analysis of national and regional‐level party system indicators in the post‐1980 period, the authors find that the success of the AKP should rather be seen as the continuation of trends that started in the early 1990s. Throughout the 1990s, the pro‐Islamist and nationalist bloc had already established a strong base in Central Anatolia, and the success of the AKP is due to its expansion of this voter base to Western regions and some of the predominantly Kurdish provinces in the southeast.

The influence of societal values on attitudes towards immigration

This paper examines the influence of societal values on individual attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. We argue that conflict between individual and societal values leads individuals to be exposed to frames and opinions that are contrary to their values, evokes competing considerations and creates attitudinal ambivalence and volatility. To evade ambivalence, individuals whose values are in conflict with those of their society rely less on their core values to construct their attitudes. Using data from the first wave of European Social Surveys and relying on Heteroskedastic Maximum Likelihood Regression, we test our argument simultaneously for 18 European countries and show that deviations from society’s conservation and self-transcendence values lead to greater ambivalence in attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. Our results provide evidence of the importance of the social context and society’s shared values in influencing personal political attitudes and judgments.

Values, Religiosity and Support for Redistribution and Social Policy in Turkey

This paper investigates the individual level factors that influence support for social redistribution and social policy in Turkey by focusing on the role of core values and religiosity. The analysis of data from Round 4 of European Social Surveys shows that self-transcendence and conservation values enhance support for government provision of social safety nets. Different aspects of religiosity have different effects on attitudes toward redistribution and social policy, with self-identified religiosity having a positive and social religious behavior having a negative effect on support for government responsibility in providing social insurance.

Religion and Political Protest: A Cross-Country Analysis:

Religion’s effect on individual tendency to engage in political protest is influenced both by the resources available to citizens at the individual level and opportunities provided to religious groups and organizations at the country level. Combining data from last two waves of the World Values Surveys with aggregate data on religious regulation, we show that private religious beliefs reduce an individual’s protest potential while involvement in religious social networks fosters it. At the country level, we find that government regulation of religion decreases individual tendency to protest, and has an especially detrimental effect on the likelihood of religious minorities joining peaceful protest activities. These findings are in line with opportunity structure theories that stress the importance of system openness for fostering political protest.