Political consequences of religiosity, post-materialism and ethno-nationalist attitudes in Netherlands

Todosijević, Bojan and Mijić, Emilija and Hristić, Ljubomir (2014) Political consequences of religiosity, post-materialism and ethno-nationalist attitudes in Netherlands. Sociološki pregled, 48 (2). pp. 141-164. ISSN 0085-6320 eISSN 2560-4880

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Abstract

The paper analyzes the political consequences of religiosity, post-materialism and nationalist attitudes. According to modernization and secularization theses, ideological orientations such as religiosity and (ethno)nationalism are supposed to decline in political relevance as modernizations progresses. On the other side, in the era of political de-alignment and re-alignment, political space is supposed to be determined by the 'new politics' ideological dimensions, of which post-materialist orientation is the most familiar. In order to examine the implications of these theoretical perspectives, this paper analyzes the ability of the aforementioned orientations to explain various aspects of political attitudes and behavior, such as the support for democracy, party preference, or ideological identification. The outlined problems are examined using data the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies (DPES). Several features make the Netherlands an appropriate case to address these problems. These include the sharp trend of secularization, but accompanied by the persisting religious political cleavage. More recent trends of post-materialist and anti-immigrant politics have also been early and vividly expressed in the Netherlands. The main findings show that ideological orientations such as post-materialism, religiosity, and ethnocentrism, continue to be important for explaining various aspects of political attitudes and behavior in the Netherlands. The results also indicate that modernization and 'post-modernization' theories are imperfect explanations for the observed trends.

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