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Religious Influence in Electoral Behavior: The Role of Institutional and SocialForces in Israel

Kenneth D. Wald; Samuel Shye

The Journal of Politics

, Vol. 57, No. 2. (May, 1995), pp. 495-507.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3816%28199505%2957%3A2%3C495%3ARIIEBT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23

The Journal of Politics

is currently published by Southern Political Science Association.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/spsa.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgWed Jul 4 23:57:23 2007

Religious Influence in Electoral Behavior: The Role of Institutional and Social Forces in Israel 

Kenneth

D.

Wald

University of Florida

Samuel Shye

Louis Guttman-Israel Institute of Applied Social Research

Religious group membership may affect political behavior through multiple paths of influence andmay be engaged in different political contexts. This study first distinguishes between associationalism, ameasure of commitment to formal religious organizations, and a communal dimension that entails im-mersion in social networks dominated by coreligionists. We then suggest that religious commitment,however conceived, may be harnessed either to parties of religious

interest

or to political movements thatexpress a broader religious

ethos.

Evidence from the 1984 Knesset elections in Israel demonstrates thatboth forms of religious involvement enhanced support for ostensibly "secular" parties in the right-wingbloc and Israel's religious parties. Support for parties of religious interest was most responsive to asso-ciational religiosity while parties of religious ethos exerted equal pull for voters high in religious com-munalism and assoc~tionalism. hese results underscore the need for theoretical rigor in assessing reli-gious influence in elections. It matters greatly how both religious commitment and religious voting aredefined.

Thisnote argues that different forms ofreligiosity may be politically engaged bydifferent stimuli. Using Israeli voting data from

1984,

we explore the impact of twoforms of religious commitment on two distinct types of religiously based voting.The empirical analysis confirms that different modes of religious commitment arelinked to distinctive types of religiously based voting.

Two

FORMS

F

RELIGIOSITY,

TWO

OF

RELIGIOUS

YPES

VOTING

Scholars have long distinguished between personal-subjective and social-collective modes of religious commitment, designating them, respectively, as asso-

This research was supported by a Fulbright grant to the first author from the United States-IsraelEducation Foundation and by grant no. 13 to the second author from the Ford Foundation receivedthrough the Israel Foundations Trustees. Though we are grateful for the support, neither institutionbears responsibility for our interpretations or analysis. We are grateful for the helpful suggestions ofDavid Leege and Paul Abramson.

THE

OURNAL

OF

POLITICS,Vo1. 57, NO. 2, May 1995, Pp. 495-507

0

1995 by the University of Texas Press,

P.O.

Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

496Kenneth

D.

Wald and Samuel Shye

ciational

and

communal

(Roof 1979, 19-20; Lenski 1963). The associational view-point treats religious groups in Weberian terms as specialized institutions chargedwith the administration or intermediation of grace. The appropriate measure ofsuch "associational" involvement is the extent to which the individual relies on thereligious group for instruction, worship, and understanding. In surveys, associa-tionalism is empirically represented by orthodox religious values, public worship,private devotionalism, and membership in religious organizations. The other modeof religious involvement, communalism, recognizes that religious groups also servethe needs of individuals for social identity, interaction, and fellowship. Sometimesknown as "folk" or "popular" religion to distinguish it from the formal religiosityof orthodox belief and organized worship, communalism takes what might be calleda tribal form in which ties of friendship and kinship are the principal link betweenthe individual and the religion. Religious communalism is indexed by the promi-nence of coreligionists in intimate social networks.The difference between these two forms of commitment is illuminated by theircontrasting approaches to symbolic religious occasions (Liebman and Cohen 1990,124-27). Associational religiosity is expressed through formal ritual while commu-nal commitment is more commonly celebrated in ceremony. Ritual is "stylized,repetitive behavior" that "provides a bridge between man and God by engaging theparticipant in an act that God has commanded." Ritual has meaning precisely be-cause it "connects the participant to some transcendent presence." By contrastwith such teleological acts, ceremonial behavior "reinforces the sense that the socialorder exists and that the individual is part of it." Though ceremonies may ape rit-ual, they are often performed without the same meticulous attention to detail andwith a diminished sense of transcendence. The difference is evident on the IsraeliSabbath. Although Israeli Jews usually spend the Sabbath with family, the seculartend to view it as a welcome relief from work, providing opportunities for recre-ation and tourism, while the religious emphasize the day as a chance "to be caughtup in the service of the spiritual and eternal" (Heilman 1992, 144). More generally,a communally religious person "observes the tradition out of a sense of commitmentto the customs of his parents or perhaps even the history of the Jewish people, butnot because of a belief that this is what God has commanded" (Liebman 1990, xv).The two forms of religiosity, which appear in most traditions, are likely to exhibitsome independence among people neither wholly encapsulated nor completely es-tranged from religious beliefs and institutions. The two religious domains may tapdifferent political orientations.'

'Lenski (1963, 176-84) and Fee (1976) found that associational and communal religiosity sensitizedCatholics to different political cues. Church involvement apparently increased exposure to clergy whoemphasized traditional moral values in voting, favoring the Republicans, while social interaction raisedthe salience of class and status disadvantages, activating Democratic loyalties. That is, churchgoingCatholics voted for religiously inspired morality policies while communal Catholics voted as membersof a subordinate minority. This finding underlines the need to treat the separate components of reli-gious identity.

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