Religion, sexuality politics, and the transformation of Latin American electorates
Date
2023-12-04
Authors
Boas, Taylor C.
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
Smith AE, Boas TC. Religion, Sexuality Politics, and the Transformation of Latin American Electorates. British Journal of Political Science. Published online 2023:1-20. doi:10.1017/S0007123423000613
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.
Description
License
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. This article has been published under a Read & Publish Transformative Open Access (OA) Agreement with CUP.