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

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With the resurgence of religion as a political force shaping individual identities and political dynamics, as in the emergence of the Christian right in the United States, the return of British Red Toryism, Sarkozy's defence of France's Christian roots and Berlusconi's efforts to legislate a ban on abortion in Italy, the debate over whether religiosity may be a threat to democratic values has intensified. While some scholars argue that religion is related to prejudice and political intolerance that challenge democratic norms,¹others stress the importance of religious social networks for the development of civic skills and norms that can have a positive effect on support for democracy.²

Nonetheless, relatively little research has been dedicated to explaining the complex relationship between religiosity and democratic attitudes, which has been coined 'the political ambivalence of religion'.³One way of reconciling the contradictory evidence lies in viewing religiosity as a multidimensional phenomenon, one that involves belief, behaviour and belonging.⁴It has recently been demonstrated that different dimensions of religiosity have differential effects on attitudes towards democracy.⁵Although religious belief, due to its association with conservative and traditional values, generates opposition to change, desire for order and intolerance, which are incompatible with democratic values,⁶involvement in social religious networks contributes to democratic attitudes due to its positive influence on civic skills and the traditional role of religious institutions as agents of mobilization.⁷

While these claims suggest that different components of religiosity affect support for democracy through different mechanisms, the role of these mechanisms has not been examined empirically. This article aims to fill this lacuna by testing the argument that different dimensions of religiosity affect democratic attitudes through different mechanisms. More specifically, it demonstrates that traditional and survival values are the principle mediating mechanisms for the negative effect of religious belief on endorsement of democracy, while confidence in democratic institutions and interest in politics mediate the effect of social religious behaviour on democratic support.

The contributions of this article are fourfold. First, while empirical research on religiosity typically focuses on a single religious tradition or on case studies, we use multilevel path models to test our hypotheses with data from Wave 4 (1999-2001) and Wave...