The Long Shadow of the Cross: Religion and Vote in France

• In Event: Comparative Preference Formation and Voting

Abstract

Employing original fine-grained geocoded data (at the subdepartmental level – districts and arrondissements) from the French revolution (1791 oath of the constitutional civil clergy, voting behavior of national assembly deputies), 19th-century diocesan surveys on religious practice, 19th-century census data, and electoral results under the Third Republic, this paper revisits the long-run causes of the strong continuities of electoral behavior in contemporary France. French electoral preferences (at least until the 1970s) can be traced back to the (geographically heterogeneous) impact of the French Revolution on religious beliefs and practices. The findings confirm macrosociological theories à la Lipset and Rokkan (1967) and cast considerable doubts on alternative theories that insist on the role of geography (Siegfried 1906), property (Sutherland 1983) or even the autonomous agency political elites in the Third Republic (Kalyvas 1986, Aron). The findings speak to the new literature on religion and welfare state preferences (Rodden, Huber) and on the stickiness of social identities in politics (Achen and Bartels 2016).

Authors

• Carles Boix, Princeton University

• Filip Kostelka, University of Barcelona

• Christophe Lévêque

• Chitralekha Basu, Universitat de Barcelona