{"title":"Religion, Sexuality Politics, and the Transformation of Latin American Electorates","authors":"Amy Erica Smith, Taylor C. Boas","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000613","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Right-wing candidates have rallied against same-sex marriage, abortion, and ‘gender ideology’ in several recent Latin American elections, attracting socially conservative voters. Yet, these issues are largely irrelevant to voting decisions in other parts of the region. Drawing on theories explaining partisan shifts in the US and Europe, we argue that elite and social movement debates on sexuality politics create conditions for electoral realignment. When politicians take polarized positions on newly salient ‘culture war’ issues, the masses’ voting behaviour shifts. Using region-wide multilevel analysis of the AmericasBarometer and Latinobarómetro and a conjoint experiment in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, we demonstrate that the rising salience of sexuality politics creates new electoral cleavages, magnifying the electoral impact of religion and sexuality politics attitudes and shrinking the impact of economic views. Whereas scholarship on advanced democracies posits the centrality of partisanship, our findings indicate that sexuality politics prompts realignments even in weak party systems.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"British Journal of Political Science","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000613","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
Right-wing candidates have rallied against same-sex marriage, abortion, and ‘gender ideology’ in several recent Latin American elections, attracting socially conservative voters. Yet, these issues are largely irrelevant to voting decisions in other parts of the region. Drawing on theories explaining partisan shifts in the US and Europe, we argue that elite and social movement debates on sexuality politics create conditions for electoral realignment. When politicians take polarized positions on newly salient ‘culture war’ issues, the masses’ voting behaviour shifts. Using region-wide multilevel analysis of the AmericasBarometer and Latinobarómetro and a conjoint experiment in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, we demonstrate that the rising salience of sexuality politics creates new electoral cleavages, magnifying the electoral impact of religion and sexuality politics attitudes and shrinking the impact of economic views. Whereas scholarship on advanced democracies posits the centrality of partisanship, our findings indicate that sexuality politics prompts realignments even in weak party systems.
期刊介绍:
The British Journal of Political Science is a broadly based journal aiming to cover developments across a wide range of countries and specialisms. Contributions are drawn from all fields of political science (including political theory, political behaviour, public policy and international relations), and articles from scholars in related disciplines (sociology, social psychology, economics and philosophy) appear frequently. With a reputation established over nearly 40 years of publication, the British Journal of Political Science is widely recognised as one of the premier journals in its field.