Browsing by Author "Sommer, Udi"

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Citation - WoS: 24
Citation - Scopus: 29
Does faith limit immorality? The politics of religion and corruption
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2013) Udi Sommer; Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom; Gizem Arikan; Bloom, Pazit Ben-Nun; Sommer, Udi; Bloompazit, Pazit Ben-Nun; Arikan, Gizem
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. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group LLC. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Citation - WoS: 25
Citation - Scopus: 31
Globalization Threat and Religious Freedom
(Blackwell Publishing Ltd customerservices@oxonblackwellpublishing.com, 2014) Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom; Gizem Arikan; Udi Sommer; Bloom, Pazit Ben-Nun; Sommer, Udi; Ben-Nun Bloom, Pazit; Arikan, Gizem
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. © 2013 The Authors. Political Studies. © 2013 Political Studies Association. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.