Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America: A Kingdom of This World (02.14.23)
Our faculty lunch talks have returned! Please join us on Tuesday, February 14 at noon for a talk by our colleague Taylor Boas, Associate Professor of Political Science. Prof. Boas will be discussing his new book, Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America: A Kingdom of This World. Event is open to BU community (faculty, staff, students) and others with a research interest in the topic. Please register using the form below.
Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America: A Kingdom of This World
Tuesday, February 14, 2023 • 12 to 1:15 PM
Pardee School of Global Studies • 121 Bay State Road
Lunch provided!
Book description
Why are religious minorities well represented and politically influential in some democracies but not others? Focusing on evangelical Christians in Latin America, this book argues that religious minorities seek and gain electoral representation when they face significant threats to their material interests and worldview, and when their community is not internally divided by cross-cutting cleavages. Differences in Latin American evangelicals’ political ambitions emerged as a result of two critical junctures: episodes of secular reform in the early twentieth century and the rise of sexuality politics at the turn of the twenty-first. In Brazil, significant threats at both junctures prompted extensive electoral mobilization; in Chile, minimal threats meant that mobilization lagged. In Peru, where major cleavages divide both evangelicals and broader society, threats prompt less electoral mobilization than otherwise expected. The multi-method argument leverages interviews, content analysis, survey experiments, ecological analysis, and secondary case studies of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.
