000			01932nam a22001577a 4500
999			_c521012 _d521012
008			221207b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100			_aAksoy, Ozan and Gambetta, Diego _935799
245			_aCommitment through sacrifice: How longer Ramadan fasting strengthens religiosity and political Islam
260			_aAmerican Sociological Review
300			_a87(4), Aug, 2022: p.555-583
520			_aReligions seem to defy the law-of-demand, which suggests that all else equal, an increase in the cost of an activity will induce individuals to decrease the resources they spend on that activity. Rather than weakening religious organizations, evidence shows that the sacrifices exacted by religious practices are positively associated with the success of those organizations. We present the first strong evidence that this association is neither spurious nor endogenous. We use a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the fasting duration—our measure of sacrifice—vary not just by latitude but from year-to-year. We find that a half-hour increase in fasting time during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by 11 percent in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018, and results in one additional attendee per 1,000 inhabitants for voluntary Quran courses. We further investigate two mechanisms, screening and commitment, that could explain the effects we find. By testing their divergent implications, we infer that commitment is the mechanism triggered by sacrifice, which drives up the intensity of religious beliefs and participation that in turn bolster the success of religious organizations. – Reproduced
650			_aReligion, Ramandan, Religious fasting, Voting, Screening, Signaling, Commitment, Natural experiment. _934224
773			_aAmerican Sociological Review
906			_aRELIGION
942			_cAR