Center for the Study of American Politics American & Comparative Political Behavior Workshop: “From Religious Violence to Political Compromise: The Historical Origins of Institutional Trust”

Event time: 
Friday, November 2, 2018 - 12:00pm
Location: 
Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Room A002 See map
77 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06520
Event description: 

The Institution for Social and Policy Studies Center for the Study of American Politics American & Comparative Political Behavior Workshop presents: 

Isabela Mares, Political Science, Yale University:  “From Religious Violence to Political Compromise: The Historical Origins of Institutional Trust.”

This paper analyzes the long-term historical consequences of religious conflict that occurred during the period between the Augsburg Treaty (1555) and the Westphalian Peace (1648). We show that religiously divided communities that experienced the Catholic counter-reform faced relatively stronger demand for legal mechanisms of conflict resolution and developed distinct institutions of inter-religious mediation. We demonstrate that the creation of these institutions and the legalization of the religious conflict has a persistent effect to the present: citizens in localities that experienced counter-reform have a higher level of trust in political and legal institutions today. We also provide evidence that Protestant churches were an important vehicle for the transmission of institutional trust. This paper is co-written with Columbia University Ph.D. student, Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed.

Isabela Mares is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Isabela Mares has written extensively on a range of topics in comparative politics and political economy, including democratization, clientelism and corruption, taxation and fiscal capacity development, social policy reforms in both developed and developing countries. She is the author of The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development (New York: Cambridge University Press), Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment (New York: Cambridge University Press); From Open Secrets to Secret Voting: The adoption of electoral reforms protecting voter autonomy (New York: Cambridge University Press) and Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral clientelism in Eastern Europe, co-authored with Lauren Young (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). She is currently completing a book entitled Democratization after Democratization, which examines the adoption of electoral reforms limiting electoral irregularities in the Western World.

The Yale Center for the Study of American Politics is partnering with The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies in sponsoring the American and Comparative Political Behavior Workshop in its second year.  This workshop is focused on political behavior broadly considered and invites speakers from a range of social science fields. 

Faculty Organizers: Alan Gerber and Isabela Mares, Department of Political Science

This workshop series is sponsored by the ISPS Center for the Study of American Politics and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale with support from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund.

Lunch will be served.

Admission: 
Free
Open to: 
General Public