Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Religion and Political Activism in Mexico

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Why do religious organizations facilitate secular political participation in some settings and not in others? In addressing this question, this project contributes to our understanding of political participation, the relationship between religion and collective action, the relationship between ethnicity and public goods, and the debate over the role of ideology and interests in explaining secular political activism. Previous analyses of religion and political participation have not assessed religious institutions' micro-level impacts on laity political participation. By utilizing the insight from the collective action literature that institutions structure individual incentives for producing public goods, this study forms rationalist micro-level hypotheses of religious institutions' effects on political activism. By focusing on the relationship between civil society, participation, and democracy in Mexico, the study will help the academic and policy-making communities better understand fundamental building blocks of democratic governance and stability. The project's intellectual merit is associated with its examination of the relationship between religious organizations and political participation in a democratic context. The research investigates three forms of political participation and mobilization. Regional variation in political participation across Mexico will be used to uncover the conditions under which religious organizations mobilize political action. The project employs a multi-method research design utilizing: 1) a quantitative analysis of 13,500 data observations collected from the nationally representative National Survey of Political Culture and Citizenship (ENCUP); 2) qualitative field research of nearly 6 months in the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas in the Mexican State of Chiapas and the Archdiocese of Yucatán in the State of Yucatán; and 3) an agent based model to pattern-match simulated empirical predictions against empirical data. The main expectation is that where religious institutions devolve decision-making, monitoring, and sanctioning authority to laity, individuals develop capacities to overcome collective action problems related to political activism. The project also makes important contributions at a broader social level. The global "third wave of democratization" involved nations whose citizenry generally score high on levels of individual religiosity, yet whose citizens also generally score low on levels of political engagement. A more precise understanding of how and when organized religion plays a role in political mobilization can help us better gauge the prospects of citizen participation in these countries. Additionally, the use of agent-based modeling is novel in the field of religion and politics. This method uses computers to simulate macro-level outcomes as the result of the interactions of individuals constrained by institutional factors. Finally, the project will incorporate training of native indigenous Spanish-speaking students directly from the field research site in Yucatan to perform content analysis. This will facilitate a cross-cultural exchange of research methods and provide a unique opportunity for underrepresented indigenous students to engage in scholarly research.