Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values

Edward Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto and Jesse Shapiro

No 10835, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Party platforms differ sharply from one another, especially on issues with religious content, such as abortion or gay marriage. Religious extremism in the U.S. appears to be strategically targeted to win elections, since party platforms diverge significantly, while policy outcomes like abortion rates are not affected by changes in the governing party. Given the high returns from attracting the median voter, why do vote-maximizing politicians veer off into extremism? In this paper, we find that strategic extremism depends on an important intensive margin where politicians want to induce their core constituents to vote (or make donations) and the ability to target political messages towards those core constituents. Our model predicts that the political relevance of religious issues is highest when around one-half of the voting population attends church regularly. Using data from across the world and within the U.S., we indeed find a non-monotonic relationship between religious extremism and religious attendance.

JEL-codes: D72 D78 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-10
Note: EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published as Glaeser, Edward I., Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto and Jesse M. Shapiro. "Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans And Democrats Divide On Religious Values," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005, v120(4,Nov), 1283-1330.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10835.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values (2005)
Working Paper: Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values (2004)
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:nbr:nberwo:10835

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10835

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().