TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Ponzetto,Giacomo A. M.
AU  - Shapiro,Jesse M.
TI  - Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10835
PY  - 2004
Y2  - October 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10835
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10835.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Giacomo Ponzetto
CREI, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Barcelona GSE
C/ Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27
08005 Barcelona
Spain
Tel: +34 93 542 2829
Fax: +34 93 542 2826
E-Mail: gponzetto@crei.cat

Jesse M. Shapiro
University of Chicago
Booth School of Business
5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/834-2688
Fax: 773-753-0563
E-Mail: jmshapir@uchicago.edu
AB  - Party platforms differ sharply from one another, especially on issues with religious content, such as abortion or gay marriage. Religious extremism in the U.S. appears to be strategically targeted to win elections, since party platforms diverge significantly, while policy outcomes like abortion rates are not affected by changes in the governing party. Given the high returns from attracting the median voter, why do vote-maximizing politicians veer off into extremism? In this paper, we find that strategic extremism depends on an important intensive margin where politicians want to induce their core constituents to vote (or make donations) and the ability to target political messages towards those core constituents. Our model predicts that the political relevance of religious issues is highest when around one-half of the voting population attends church regularly. Using data from across the world and within the U.S., we indeed find a non-monotonic relationship between religious extremism and religious attendance.
ER  -