Religious Credibility and Compromise: Evidence from Religious Leaders in Israel

• In Event: The Role of Religion in Conflict Processes

Abstract

In the past decade, religious leaders have been deal-breakers in conflicts ranging from Malaysia to Israel. While religious leaders play an important role in many conflict and post-conflict countries, the relative influence of religious leaders on conflict processes are not well understood by scholars or policy makers. For instance, why are some religious leaders able to help resolve conflict while others have little impact?

In this project, we examine to what extent religious leaders are able to generate a greater willingness among local populations to make political compromises with out-groups in conflict situations. This includes conflict over symbolic territory and disputes over religion and state issues.

We propose a theory which argues that religious leaders with political and religious credibility are uniquely situated to propose political compromises to issues that involve sacred values. We argue that in a competitive religious marketplace where religious elites compete for followers, elites attempt to outbid each other to signal their religious credentials. In this theoretical framework, compromises to conflicts involving sacred values are likely to be viewed as taboo and not-religiously credible by other religious leaders and the religious public.

Previous literature, however, suggests certain types of religious leaders who can avoid this reputation loss. Specifically, conciliatory statements made by a religious leader with a reputation as a political hardliner - based on previous actions or statements - will be viewed as more credible. For instance, past participation in protests against the government can give a religious leader a reputation of trustworthiness and political legitimacy. A second type of credibility is religious credibility, where political compromise in one domain is accompanied by a religiously extreme position in a different issue domain. For example, one can support giving away sacred territory in a religious conflict, but maintain religious credibility by adopting strict positions on esoteric religious issues.

Since people typically choose what religious leaders and messages they expose themselves to, it is hard to measure the causal impact due to the confounding effects of self-selection. We overcome this identification problem by using a novel experimental design with different populations that lie upon the religious spectrum in Israel. Israel presents an ideal setting to examine this issue as it is embroiled in a range of conflicts and contains local populations that are highly exposed to and influenced by religious teachings. Our treatment varies religious leader credibility along political and religious dimensions.

Initial pretests suggest that religious leader credibility does contribute to a greater willingness to make political compromises over symbolic territory. However, religious leader credibility has little impact on support for religious tolerance. Overall, this research makes important contributions regarding the potential for hardline religious leaders to moderate religiously motivated political claims.

Authors

• Michael Freedman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom, Hebrew University of Jerusalem