Do Religious Politicians Take Risks Differently? Evidence From Pakistan

Given popular religiosity, the presence of religious parties, and the politicization of religious issues, it is highly likely that politicians with varying levels of personal religiosity are active in politics. Yet, our knowledge of how politicians’ religiosity influences their political choices is still limited, particularly for developing countries. In this paper, I use data from a survey experiment fielded to Pakistani politicians in 2018 to study whether and how politicians’ personal religiosity influences their political risk preferences. Scholars debate whether religiosity is correlated with higher or lower risk aversion among citizens; however, no study has examined this relationship among politicians. I find that higher religiosity systematically predicts which politicians are more risk-averse and highly religious politicians’ decisions under uncertainty are inconsistent with expected utility maximization and prospect theory. These findings suggest that in contrast to existing assumptions of elite decision-making, politicians’ religiosity systematically influences their risk preferences and choices.