Religious Heterogeneity and Civic Participation In Comparative Perspective

The effect of diversity on civic participation is a hot issue in social sciences during the last decade. While some authors point out that diversity erodes social capital and decreases political participation, other researches prove that different type of diversity (namely ethnic or linguistic diversity) have different effects on political and civic participation. The current research focuses on the effect of religious heterogeneity on civic participation, taking into account the effect interaction between the religious heterogeneity and individual belonging to a particular religious denomination. The result of multilevel hierarchical models run on EVS 2008 data shows that religious heterogeneity has a negative effect on civic participation, but the moderate effect depends on the individual religious denomination.