Abstract

How does one’s religions commitment affect the proclivity that one will engage in unconventional political behavior? By building on Dalton’s model predicting this protest behavior, I seek to answer this question. Dalton's model illustrates how, in industrialized societies, those with more education and affluence are more likely to engage in this sort of protest activity but eschews religion and religiosity form the picture entirely. To test this data from the World Values Survey is used and tested with a multivariate regression. It is shown herein that religiosity is negatively correlated with participation in unconventional political behavior Namely, the more religious one becomes the less likely that they will engage in unconventional political behaviors. The causal factor driving this dampening effect on protest behavior is held to be the natural outgrowth of religion reinforcing of one’s instincts to be more obedient to authority. This relationship holds regardless of the denomination, indicating that religion type is not important in the process while the degree of religious commitment is.