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Public Opinion on the Role of Religion in Political Leadership: A Multi-level Analysis of Sixty-three Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2006

MATTHEW CARLSON  and
OLA LISTHAUG
MATTHEW CARLSON
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of VermontMatthew.Carlson@uvm.edu
OLA LISTHAUG
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway and Centre for the Study of Civil War, PRIOolal@svt.ntnu.no
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Abstract

Are there significant variations across major religious faiths about the proper political roles of religion? Using recent World Values/European Values data from 63 countries we study the attitudes of mass publics on two separate aspects of this question. First, should religious beliefs be used as a criterion for selecting political leaders (dimension I)? Second, should religious leaders use their position for political influence (dimension II)? For dimension I we find that Muslims are somewhat more likely than followers of other faiths and denominations to say that religious beliefs are important in selecting leaders. The remaining results of our investigation somewhat weaken or modify this result. On dimension II we find that Muslims do not stand out as comparatively favorable towards the view that religious leaders shall use their position for political influence. Finally, we find a negative, albeit weak and somewhat irregular effect of education on attitudes towards a close link between religion and political leadership (dimension I). However, this effect holds up equally well for Muslims as for other denominations, suggesting that Muslims are not immune to the effects of secularization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , December 2006 , pp. 251 - 271
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Loek Halman and Thorleif Pettersson for discussions about this research and the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.