The Decline of Religion and Its Rise in Electoral Politics: Religious Belief, Religious Practice, and the Strength of Religious Voting Cleavages

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231169019
• Author: John Huber,Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed
• Date: 01 December 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(14) 2201–2230

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231169019

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The Decline of Religion

and Its Rise in Electoral

Politics: Religious Belief,

Religious Practice, and

the Strength of Religious

Voting Cleavages

John Huber

1

and Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed

2



Abstract

Economic development has been linked to a declining importance of religion.

But alongside secularization, there has been an increased salience of religion in

electoral politics. These seemingly contradictory trends can be understood by

distinguishing between two dimensions of religiosity: religious belief and

church attendance. We show that religious voting cleavages are strongest in

democracies where there is religious cohesion, which means belief and

practice go hand in hand. Voting cleavages require group members to have

distinctive policy preferences and be politically engaged. Strong religious

beliefs are associated with distinctive policy preferences (but not with political

engagement), and church attendance is associated with political engagement.

Thus, religious cohesion provides the key ingredients for a religious political

cleavage. But what explains variation in religious cohesion in democracies?

We f‌ind that religious cohesion increases with economic security. Thus,

economic security can promote secularization, but also facilitate the religious

cohesion associated with strong religious voting cleavages.

1

Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

2

Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed, Stanford University, 420 west 118th st., Room 710, Stanford, CA

10027-7256, USA.

Email: aem2251@columbia.edu

Keywords

religion and politics, political economy, quality of democracy, representation

and electoral systems

Religiosity is declining in many parts of the Christian world. This is not only

true in advanced Western countries (Inglehart, 2020;Tamir et al., 2020;

Thiessen and Wilkins-Laf‌lamme, 2017) but also in Latin America,

1

which is

fueling public discussions about the “the end of religion.”However, religion is

showing no signs of retreat from democratic politics (Beer, 2017;

Minkenberg, 2002,2010;Smith, 2019). The heated divisions over abortion

rights and the resurgence of far-right parties emphasizing religious values

demonstrate that religious divisions remain politically salient, despite de-

clining religiosity levels and popular opposition to the inf‌luence of religion on

policy-making (Grzymala-Busse, 2015). By developing and testing an ar-

gument about the strength of religious voting cleavages, this paper provides an

explanation for why secularization—the decline of religiosity in society—can

co-exist with a strong inf‌luence of religion in electoral politics.

We focus on two related but distinct dimensions of religiosity: religious

belief, which we also call “spirituality,”and religious practice, characterized

by church attendance. While religious belief and practice are obviously re-

lated, they are also conceptually distinct, do not always go together, and arise

under different conditions. Our point of departure is not to recognize that these

two dimensions differ, but rather is to emphasize the political importance of

the strength of the connection between them.

Our analysis proceeds in two steps. The f‌irst is to describe why the strength

of the connection between belief and practice should be related to the salience

of religion in elections. For any group voting cleavage to exist, it must be true

that members of the group are electorally engaged and have distinctive policy

preferences. Using the World Values Survey (WVS), we show that across

countries and time periods, religious belief is much more strongly associated

with conservative policy preferences than is religious practice, especially on

social issues like abortion but also on economic issues like inequality. We also

provide evidence that religious practice is much more strongly associated with

political engagement than is religious belief. Thus, political cleavages based

on religion should be strongest in societies where there is a strong connection

between belief (which is associated with distinctive preferences) and church

attendance (which is associated with political engagement). We test this idea

and f‌ind strong support in the WVS data: voting cleavages based on religiosity

are strongest in societies with a strong connection between belief and practice.

The second step is to examine the strength of the connection between belief

and practice: if this connection is related to the intensity of religious voting

2202 Comparative Political Studies 56(14)