Multidimensional Identity Cleavages and Religious Discrimination

Abstract

To what extent does minority distinctiveness from the majority mitigate or exacerbate discrimination? Similarities between majority and minority groups may reduce societal and political discrimination. Yet shared identities along one cleavage coupled with distinctive characteristics along another may also render commonalities salient for inter-group competition and conflict. We examine how cross-cuttingness of group-level religious identity with ethnicity, geographic concentration, and economic class influences societal religious discrimination (SRD) and governmental religious discrimination (GRD) against religious minorities at the state level. We find that greater cross-cuttingness of religion and ethnicity leads to decreased SRD and GRD. Yet while more cross-cutting geographic distributions of religious groups correlate with lower SRD and higher GRD, greater economic cross-cuttingness between religious groups correlates with higher SRD and lower GRD. These findings offer a nuanced theoretical and empirical bridge to understand discrimination, as social and political behaviors between individual expressions of societal prejudice and intergroup violent conflict.