When the Church Votes Left

• In Event: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion

Abstract

Existing research on the role of religion in distributive politics overlooks the role of religious ideas about economic redistribution, focusing instead on religious conservative tenets about social policies or ignoring the role of religious ideas altogether. In this paper, I argue that church leaders who advance doctrinal interpretations that favor progressive economic policies can increase support for redistribution and may mobilize their adherents in support of the left. Yet they will only do so if the left does not advance policies that contradict their conservative social agenda. When the fraction of pious voters is large enough, the left will find it advantageous to attract the support of the church by moderating their position on social policies. I test this argument using original archival data from the Catholic Church and drawing on a natural experiment in Brazil after Pope John Paul II's appointment in 1978. Leveraging plausibly as-if random variation in bishop vacancies, as well as Pope John Paul II's systematic appointment of conservative bishops to posts where progressives previously held court, I study the effect of progressive bishops on the electoral success of the left-wing Workers' Party. I find that the left's electoral prospects suffered significantly in places where progressive bishops were replaced between 1978 and Brazil's first democratic elections after the military dictatorship. I present evidence that the party's stronger performance in progressive dioceses can be explained by its access to religious networks, which allowed it to build organizational structures that delivered an electoral advantage. However, the electoral benefits of religious support came at the cost of marginalizing the political demands of the party's socially progressive faction.

Author

• Guadalupe Tuñón, University of California, Berkeley