Internal and external patchworks : the relevance of religiosity in political positioning for Italian and Brazilian Catholics

The importance of structural versus value variables in determining political preferences is widely debated. The first ones seem to have declined substantially in favour of the second in Western countries. The possibility to generalize these findings beyond this cultural and political area is put to test in the paper through case studies - based on WVS data – on Italy and Brazil, both mostly Catholic countries. Italy is an almost exclusively Catholic country, but among Catholics a plurality of religious values and practices are observed (“internal patchwork”). On the contrary, Brazil is characterized by a plurality of religion denominations (“external patchwork”) and religious values and practices are more homogeneous. Religious practices and values (the importance of religion and God, service attendance, and pray practice), on the one hand, and socio-demographic variables (level of education, gender, age and occupation), on the other, contribute differently in explaining the self-positioning on the left-right scale in the two countries. Religious variables appear to explain political positioning more effectively in Italy than in Brazil: the “internal” patchwork” is more relevant than the “external patchwork”. The research contribute to broaden the discussion - through a most dissimilar research design – around a widely debated issue. Moreover, an in-depth analysis of the most important features of religiousness in the two cases is provided in the paper.