In this virtual Brown Bag lecture, Avital Livny, Assistant Professor of Political Science, will speak about her new book, Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World, published in August with Cambridge University Press. Drawing on rich data sources and econometric methods, Dr. Livny challenges existing explanations - such as personal faith - for the success of these movements. Instead, Dr. Livny shows that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity. This group-based trust serves as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in many Muslim-plurality countries. The book presents a new argument for conceptualizing religion as both a personal belief system and collective identity.
