CHURCH INVOLVEMENT, ETHNOCENTRISM, AND VOTING FOR A RADICAL RIGHT-WING PARTY - DIVERGING BEHAVIORAL OUTCOMES OF EQUAL ATTITUDINAL DISPOSITIONS

In the 1991 Belgian general elections, the radical right-wing party, the Vlaams Blok, obtained more than 10 percent of the valid votes cast in Flanders in Belgium. A post-electoral survey found that the attitude towards immigrants was the major predictor of the likelihood of voting for the Vlaams; Blok. This was the response to the open ''why'' question about the reasons for voting. Church involvement had a substantial and significant net effect on both the attitude toward immigrants and the voting for the radical right-wing party. This conclusion is based on multivariate logistic regression with generation (age), level of education, professional activity, urban/rural environment, and membership of voluntary associations as background variables, and with utilitarian individualism, authoritarianism ism, political powerlessness, and nationalism as possible intermediate variables. The churchgoers and some categories of non-Catholics were less likely to support negative ideas about immigrants than the marginal Catholics and the non-believers. However, the differences in the attitude toward Immigrants between these groups were not sufficient to explain the differences in the voting for the Vlaams Blok. Once they felt threatened by the immigrants, the non-Catholics were far more attracted by the appeal of the radical right-wing Party than the Catholics. This diverging behavioral outcome of equal attitudinal dispositions can be explained by the structural and cultural context of Flemish Catholicism and non-confessionalism.