Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom

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 Conditional Nature of Value-Based Proximity Between Countries Strategic Implications for Mediated Public Diplomacy

Media attention accorded to foreign countries constitutes a crucial facet of public diplomacy. Studies have shown that proximity in values is a key factor that determines such media attention. Models of media interest generally assume that the impact of value proximity is universal across countries with different societal value orientations. Yet this study shows that the effect of societal value orientation on media attention to foreign countries is more complex. It is argued here that the societal value orientation in different countries primes different sets of values, which are then applied as a criterion for assessing the importance of foreign states. Our empirical examination is based on the visibility of foreign countries gauged by searching web portals in 57 countries. It shows that in line with our theoretical argument, countries systematically differ in recognizing proximity, such that democracies base their judgment on similarity in shared democratic principles, whereas authoritarian countries focus on the affinity in religious culture. We discuss the strategic implications of this finding for the study of mediated public diplomacy.

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.

State‐Level Restriction of Religious Freedom and Women's Rights: A Global Analysis

The literature is divided on the nature of the relationship between state-level restriction of religious freedom and women’s rights, as religious freedom can empower members of marginalized groups or advance gender-discriminatory practices. Employing a time-series cross-sectional analysis of data for two decades from 153 nations, this study shows that the relationship between religious regulation and women’s rights depends on the type of regulation, with regulation of the majority religion improving state-level women’s rights and discriminatory regulation specifically targeting minority religions impairing them. Furthermore, the effect of regulation is moderated by the context. Even relatively small regulatory steps promote women’s rights in patriarchal and non-democratic regimes by weakening the religion-state fusion and patriarchal values. However, in liberal democracies, the beneficial effects of regulation wane or even backfire, as religious institutions may rally around the religion. Consequently, th...The literature is divided on the nature of the relationship between state-level restriction of religious freedom and women’s rights, as religious freedom can empower members of marginalized groups or advance gender-discriminatory practices. Employing a time-series cross-sectional analysis of data for two decades from 153 nations, this study shows that the relationship between religious regulation and women’s rights depends on the type of regulation, with regulation of the majority religion improving state-level women’s rights and discriminatory regulation specifically targeting minority religions impairing them. Furthermore, the effect of regulation is moderated by the context. Even relatively small regulatory steps promote women’s rights in patriarchal and non-democratic regimes by weakening the religion-state fusion and patriarchal values. However, in liberal democracies, the beneficial effects of regulation wane or even backfire, as religious institutions may rally around the religion. Consequently, this article advocates a multidimensional view of religious freedom, and warns against viewing secularization as inherently promoting gender equality.

The Public’s Compass Moral Conviction and Political Attitudes

Since most Americans are politically unsophisticated, but political attitudes are reasonably predictable, what is it that guides political behavior? This study suggests it is moral judgment. The article first lays down the mechanisms explaining the role of morality in attitude strength, extremity of attitude, tendency to issue voting, and participation, and then examines the extent these are accounted for by moral convictions. Sentimental and reasoned moral convictions are strong political cues, available to both ideological sides, and independent of political sophistication. Since political attitudes may be based on moral judgments that occur very quickly, via emotional and intuitive responses, coherent public opinion does not require unusual levels of political competence and motivation.

Does counterterrorist legislation hurt human rights practices? A longitudinal cross-national analysis

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many countries have passed new counterterrorist legislation. One of the common assumptions about such legislation is that it comes with a price: a compromise to practices of human rights. Previous research, looking at a wide range of case studies, suggested that this is indeed the case and that counterterrorist legislation often leads to subsequent repression. However, no large-scale cross-national study has yet assessed this relationship. Relying on a newly assembled database on nation-level counterterrorist legislation for the years 1981-2009, we conduct a cross-national time series analysis of legislation and repression. Our analyses find little evidence for a significant relationships between national counterterrorist legislation and various measures of core human rights in most countries. However, while legislation does not affect repression of physical integrity rights in countries with low and high levels of repression, it is associated with greater state repression in countries with intermediate scores of repression.