Regional and Religious Support of Political Parties and Effects on their Issue Positions

Abstract

Political sociology assumes that social cleavages are manifested in political alignments. This research focuses on the cleavage factors of region and religion in group support of national political parties. It discusses problems in analyzing these factors across cultures and illustrates the problems by analyzing social support for approximately 150 parties in 53 nations in all cultural-geographical areas of the world. Regional and religious patterns of support clearly affect parties' positions on issues. Regionally homogeneous parties tend to oppose national integration, and religiously homogeneous parties tend to oppose the secularization of society. Moreover, parties' positions on secularization also depend heavily on their specific religious composition.