DOES FASTING AFFECT SUPPORT FOR ISLAMIST POLITICAL PARTIES? EVIDENCE FROM RAMADAN
Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively associated with the success of religious organizations. We present a first evidence that this association could be causal. We employ a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan as a result of which the hours of fasting vary exogenously from year-to-year and by latitude. We find that an hour increase in fasting during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by about 6.5 percentage-points in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018. This effect is stronger the more per capita mosques and religious personnel there are and weaker the higher the proportion of non-orthodox Muslims in a province. By showing that the success of religious organizations is causally related to the sacrifice demanded by religious practices, these results strengthen a key finding of the science of religion.
Date: 5 February 2020, 17:00
Venue: Nuffield College, New Road OX1 1NF
Venue Details: Clay Room
Speaker: Ozan Aksoy (UCL)
Organising department: Nuffield College
Organisers: Nan Dirk de Graaf (Nuffield College), Dave Kirk (Nuffield College)
Organiser contact email address: maxine.collett@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Nuffield College Sociology Seminars
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Maxine Collett