Longer religious fasting increases support for Islamist parties: Evidence from Ramadan

Abstract

Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively associated with the success of religious organizations. We present the first evidence that this association is causal. We employ a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the length of fasting time vary from year-to-year and by latitude. We find that an hour increase in fasting during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by about 6.5 percentage-points in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018. This effect is weaker in provinces where the proportion of non-orthodox Muslims is higher, but stronger in provinces where the number of per capita mosques and of religious personnel is higher. Further analyses suggest that the main mechanism underlying our findings is an increased commitment to religion induced by costlier practice. By showing that the success of religious organizations is causally related to the sacrifice demanded by religious practices, these results strengthen a key finding of the science of religion.