Suchergebnisse

The overwhelming importance of religion in French pol'al life lies in the fact that it has had such divisive overtones for the French pol'al system, despite the near homogeneity of religious identification. The persistence of politico-religious controversy has been largely responsible for the reinforcement & exacerbation of left/right pol'al diff's in France which has made effective aggregation by the party system a difficult, if not impossible task. SP relationships have been changing under the pressures & dislocations of societal modernization. The new pol'al generation of Frenchmen holds forth a possibly new era of cooperation & understanding between Catholics & the French left. Such a change could have momentous consequences for future pol'al alignments in France. The purpose of this study is to reach out beyond speculation & utilize recent empirical findings in the area of survey res & voting behavior to assess with some degree of precision the current impact of religiosity on French electoral pot. The findings suggest several trends. 1st, religiosity, defined as intensity of practice, still exercises a strong impact on partisan choice, & continues to plan an important role of fashioning the 'psychol'al distances' or 'spaces' that individuals perceive between pol'al groupings in France. 2nd, one can conclude tentatively that in areas of 'high' religiosity the religious cleavage remains important as a determinant of electoral behavior, while other conflicts such as anti-Gaullism are purely secondary. The opposite, however, is not true in areas of strong secularism or religious indifference. Anti-clericalism has decli:7ed sharply in electoral appeal, & has become irrelevant as an aggregating banner for left voting. The data suggest that in areas of 'low' religiosity, the traditional clerical issue was submerged by the operation of another dimension of conflict-the controversy over Gaullism & SE modernization. IPSA.