Browsing by Author "Ridge, HM"
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Item Open Access Enemy Mine: Negative Partisanship and Satisfaction with Democracy(Political Behavior, 2020-01-01) Ridge, HM© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. Polarization has increased in recent decades, including emotional distance between partisans. While positive partisan identity has been linked to the absorption of democratic norms and democratic satisfaction, this article addresses the impact of negative partisanship on citizens’ satisfaction with the functioning of their democracies. Employing two measures of negative partisanship – dislike for a party and unwillingness to ever vote for a party – the article finds that negative partisanship is linked to lower satisfaction with democracy, particularly negative partisanship for major parties. It also finds that respondents’ sentiments towards other parties moderate the experience of electoral outcomes; the win/loss satisfaction gap is greater for negative partisans. Defeat is more strongly tied to satisfaction for negative partisans of governing parties. Coalition membership, on the other hand, is more valuable to them. This relationship raises concerns that increasing rates of negative partisan identity reduces democratic commitment, undermining democratic stability.Item Open Access Just like the others: Party differences, perception, and satisfaction with democracy(Party Politics) Ridge, HMA robust literature on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy argues that system satisfaction is based on the policy outcomes that citizens anticipate from electoral results. A tacit assumption in this research is that there are differences between the parties and that citizens are aware of the ideological and preference diversity in their political environment. Some citizens, however, fail to perceive these differences. Using a multi-national set of post-election surveys, regression analysis, and propensity score matching, perceived party difference is shown to substantially impact citizens’ systemic satisfaction. Those who believe all parties are the same are substantially less satisfied with the functioning of their democracy. The negative effect of perceived party homogeneity is mitigated by closeness to a political party and sense of representation. By manipulating the public’s reserve of democratic satisfaction, this perception of party homogeneity threatens democratic stability.Item Open Access State regulation of religion: the effect of religious freedom on Muslims’ religiosity(Religion, State and Society, 2020-08-07) Ridge, HM© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Substantial scholarship argues that regulation of religion suppresses religiosity in a community by reducing individuals’ satisfaction with their religious experience. To date this research has assumed that regulations are enforced on and affect religious communities uniformly. It has also focused heavily on Western Christian populations and aggregated national data. We suggest that state regulation of religious communities and behaviours impacts citizens differently based on their affiliation. Using individual-level assessments of freedom and religiosity from Muslim-majority countries, we show that, at the individual level, restricting freedom suppresses religious belief and behaviour. Restrictions on religious minorities, however, can increase religiosity. As such, we question the religious market theory literature’s conclusion that the freest religious markets must have the greatest levels of religious participation. We also raise concerns about current measures of religious freedom’s capacity to measure individuals’ freedom in Muslim-majority countries.