Trust & the Islamic Advantage
Named a 2022 Best Book by the American Political Science Association's MENA Politics Section
In much of the Muslim world, Islamic political and economic movements appear to have a comparative advantage. Relative to similar secular groups, they are better able to mobilize supporters and sustain their cooperation long-term. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Turkey, a historically secular country that has experienced a sharp rise in Islamic-based political and economic activity. Drawing on rich data sources and econometric methods, I challenge existing explanations -- such as personal faith -- for the success of these movements. Instead, I show that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity. This group-based trust serves as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in many Muslim-plurality countries. My book presents a new argument for conceptualizing religion as both a personal belief system and collective identity.
Read the introduction here.
My first book was motivated by a puzzle: a rise in support for Islamic-based parties in vote-share, but no concomitant increase in religiosity. I explain the apparent disconnect by distinguishing between two aspects of religiosity -- personal piety and a religious group-identity. The latter supports cooperation and coordination within Islamic-based movements because it solves a critical trust problem among citizens.
Online AppendiX
To make the empirical analysis in the book as accessible as possible, I include mostly graphical depictions of raw data. But throughout, I bolster these with econometric models, described in the text but appearing here, in the Online Appendix. These are available alongside additional tables and figures that did not appear in the physical book.
The full set of appendices is available as a single download here, but the individual tables and figures are as follows:
Tables:
OA.2 Political Participation Rates in the Muslim World, Difference of Means
OA.3 Political Participation Rates in the Muslim World, Hierarchical Models
OA.4 Economic Participation Rates, Inside and Outside of the Muslim World
OA.5 Grievances and Political Participation in the Muslim World
OA.7 Personal Piety and Political Participation in the Muslim World
OA.12 Trust among Migrants
OA.16 Generalized Distrust and Political Participation Multinomial Logit Models
OA.17 Generalized Distrust and Political Participation OLS Models
OA.18 Generalized Distrust and Political Participation Robustness Checks
OA.20 Islamic Identity and Political Participation Robustness Checks
OA.21 Mosque Attendance, Distrust, and Political Participation Robustness Checks
OA.22 Mosque Attendance, Distrust, and Political Participation Additional Outcomes
OA.27 Bank Savings and Interpersonal Trust, across Turkish Provinces
OA.28 Distrust and Wasted Votes, across Turkish Provinces over Time
OA.29 Distrust and Wasted Votes, across Turkish Provinces over Time Robustness Checks
OA.30 Islamic Identity and Wasted Votes, across Turkish Provinces over Time
OA.31 Distrust, Islamic Identity, and Wasted Votes, across Turkish Provinces over Time
OA.32 The Success of Islamic Parties in Distrusting, Uncoordinated Districts
OA.34 Generalized Trust and Willingness to Make Loans in Turkey
OA.35 Vertical Integration, Macroeconomic Volatility, and Firm Performance
OA.36 MÜSİAD Membership, Macroeconomic Volatility, and Firm Performance
OA.37 MÜSİAD Membership, Vertical Integration, and Firm Performance
OA.40 The Benefits of Current, Former, and Future MÜSİAD Membership
OA.41 The Substitution Effect across Religious Denominations
OA.42 Distrust and Vote Volatility in Cross-National Comparison
Figures:
OA.2 Happiness and Political Participation in the Muslim World
OA.5 Religious Identity, Personal Religiosity, and Political Participation
OA.10 Bivariate Correlations of Measures of Religious Identity in Turkey
OA.11 Islamic Identity and Wasted Votes, across Turkish Provinces over Time
OA.12 Islamic Identity and Wasted Votes, with or without Islamic Parties Competing
OA.13 Distrust and Wasted Votes, across Levels of Islamic Identity
OA.14 Effect of Distrust on Wasted Votes, across Levels of Islamic Identity
OA.17 MÜSİAD Members across Sectors in ISO Lists (1990-2011)
OA.18 Trust and Honesty, across Levels of Regulation and Political Trust
Data for replicating these results are available elsewhere on this site. I welcome any and all feedback by email.