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Islam and Support for Religious Social Conventions in Egypt
Abstract by Dr. Lisa Blaydes
Coauthors: Melina Platas
On Session 141  (Political and Social Activism)

On Monday, November 19 at 5:00 pm

2012 Annual Meeting

Abstract
The experience of citizen-led resistance and authoritarian collapse in Egypt has changed individuals’ views about their relationship to the state, their views toward democracy and autocracy, as well as their openness religiously–based political parties. This paper explores how religious values translate into political party support in Egyptian parliamentary elections. Egyptian voters are increasingly offered the choice not just to support an Islamist candidate, but to choose from a broad set of candidates espousing religious values as part of their political agenda. This paper will explore the spatial and socioeconomic bases of support for various types of Islamist political parties and candidates in Egypt. The paper will also examine the correlation between Islamist party support during the Mubarak era and Islamist candidate success in the 2011-12 elections as well as the empirical relationship between district-level political violence in the months following the Egyptian uprising and Islamist vote share in the parliamentary elections. The results of this project have implications for understanding the future of representative politics in Egypt and provide a deeper understanding of the politics of vote choice in Egypt’s more competitive electoral environment.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries