The Political Consequences of Religious Institutions and Practices
The Political Consequences of Religious Institutions and Practices
This project examines the dynamic interactions between religious institutions and practices on the one hand and political outcomes on the other - in other words, how religion both shapes and is shaped by politics. While primarily adopting quantitative approaches, analyzing various survey data and location data of various religious institutions, it also draws insights from qualitative evidence and case studies. The project focuses on Indonesia as the initial case and will add more cases as appropriate. AvH, 2025-2026
The project examines several questions related to how religious institutions and practices are related to political attitudes and behavior, among others:
1. How do religious institutions and practices influence political behavior and attitudes, and which political issues are particularly susceptible to this influence? 2. What social and political factors explain the growth rate of religious institutions, such as houses of worship and religious schools, in an area? 3. How do religious institutions and practices correlate with democratic quality and attitudes in a community? How does their presence interact with state institutions?
Beitrag zu internationaler Forschung
The project contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it focuses on the political significance of non-state institutions and practices in shaping political behavior, thus complementing existing insights on the importance of formal and state institutions. Second, it brings data from Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country and third-largest democracy. The country is relatively understudied, yet its clientelistic political landscape makes it a particularly promising case to study informal political structures and practices. Third, on a broader level, studying religious institutions and practices in Indonesia and how they affect political behavior enhances our understanding of politics in the Muslim world beyond the Middle East and North Africa region.
Forschungsdesign und Methoden
The project will rely on the analyses of two types of data. The first type of data is survey data. This includes the Indonesian Family Life Survey, which is panel data of thousands of respondents from 1993 to 2014; the SIKAP data, which is high-frequency surveys of over 80,000 voters fielded over 58 weeks from November 2023 to January 2025; as well as surveys of Indonesian politicians. The second type of data is location data of various religious institutions, specifically mosques and religious schools in Indonesia. These data will be analyzed using different statistical models appropriate to answer the aforementioned questions.
Using new data from 42,000+ Islamic boarding schools, this analysis maps Indonesia's pesantren landscape for the first time—revealing geographic patterns, organizational ties to NU, accelerated growth after democratization, and surprising correlations with electoral outcomes.
Drawing on data from over 300,000 mosques and a two-wave survey of 16,000+ respondents in Indonesia, this article shows that mosques correlate with increased exclusionary attitudes toward non-Muslims. This is driven by the role of mosques as hubs for community communication and information.
