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

为什么宗教组织在某些情况下促进世俗政治参与，而在另一些情况下则不然？在解决这个问题，这个项目有助于我们的政治参与，宗教和集体行动之间的关系，种族和公共产品之间的关系，以及在解释世俗的政治活动的意识形态和利益的作用的辩论的理解。以前对宗教和政治参与的分析没有评估宗教机构对平信徒政治参与的微观影响。本研究利用集体行动文献中关于制度构建个人激励以生产公共产品的观点，形成了宗教制度对政治行动主义影响的理性主义微观假设。通过关注墨西哥民间社会、参与和民主之间的关系，这项研究将有助于学术界和决策界更好地了解民主治理和稳定的基本组成部分。 该项目的学术价值在于它审查了宗教组织与民主背景下的政治参与之间的关系。本研究调查了政治参与和动员的三种形式。墨西哥政治参与的区域差异将被用来揭示宗教组织动员政治行动的条件。该项目采用多方法研究设计，利用：1）从全国代表性的全国政治文化和公民调查（ENCUP）收集的13 500个数据观察进行定量分析; 2）在墨西哥恰帕斯州的圣克里斯托瓦尔德拉斯卡萨斯教区和尤卡坦州的尤卡坦大主教管区进行近6个月的定性实地研究;以及3）基于代理的模型，用于将模拟的经验预测与经验数据进行模式匹配。主要的期望是，在宗教机构将决策、监督和制裁权力下放给平信徒的地方，个人发展克服与政治活动有关的集体行动问题的能力。该项目还在更广泛的社会层面做出了重要贡献。全球“第三次民主化浪潮”涉及的国家，其公民在个人宗教信仰水平上普遍得分很高，但其公民在政治参与水平上也普遍得分很低。 更准确地了解有组织的宗教如何以及何时在政治动员中发挥作用，可以帮助我们更好地衡量这些国家公民参与的前景。此外，基于代理的建模在宗教和政治领域的使用是新颖的。 这种方法使用计算机来模拟宏观层面的结果，作为受制度因素约束的个人相互作用的结果。最后，该项目将包括培训直接来自尤卡坦实地研究地点的讲西班牙语的土著学生进行内容分析。这将促进研究方法的跨文化交流，并为代表性不足的土著学生从事学术研究提供一个独特的机会。

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.