National Identity and Religious Diversity

Kenneth Harttgen and Matthias Opfinger

Kyklos, 2014, vol. 67, issue 3, 346-367

Abstract: type="main">

People are attracted to the idea of nationalism and a national identity. Existing literature proposes that social heterogeneity has a detrimental effect on national identity. We contribute to this literature by proposing that religious diversity, as another form of social heterogeneity, can better explain the formation of a national identity. We construct an index for national identity using information from the World Values Survey on peoples' affection for their nation. We then analyze the relationship between national identity and religious diversity. The results suggest that religious diversity is significantly and negatively related to national identity. We also find support for the previous finding that ethnic diversity does not seem to be related to national identity. Democratic institutions and mobility throughout the country are positively related to national identity if religious diversity is sufficiently high. Democratic institutions can overcome the negative effect of religious diversity on national identity.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/kykl.12058 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: National Identity and Religious Diversity (2013)
Working Paper: National Identity and Religious Diversity (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:kyklos:v:67:y:2014:i:3:p:346-367

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0023-5962

Access Statistics for this article

Kyklos is currently edited by Rene L. Frey

More articles in Kyklos from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().