To what extent and how do agencies manage their reputations through the strategic use of communication? Under what conditions are regulators inclined to respond to external judgments of their performance, and when are they disposed to keep silent? Based on a comprehensive data set and quantitative content analysis of the Israeli banking regulator's responses to public expressions of opinion between 1998 and mid-2009, we show how this agency tends to keep silent on issues regarding which it generally enjoys a strong reputation, and on issues that lie outside its distinct jurisdiction, while responding to opinions about core functional areas with regards to which its reputation is weaker and areas wherein its reputation is still evolving. These findings, although based on one institution, are important because they demonstrate how an agency's assessment of the relative threat to its reputation is implicated in distinct communicative patterns across functional areas. They also demonstrate that words are actions, and, occasionally, so is regulatory silence.

The effects of religious belief and religious social behavior on support for democracy are investigated in a priming experiment conducted among Turkish Muslims and Israeli Jews. By varying the question order of World Values Survey (WVS) items, which measure religious belief and religious social behavior, it was demonstrated that priming religious social behavior facilitates, while priming religious belief impedes, support for democracy, compared with a control group of no prime. These results were independent of participants' intensity of religious belief or the frequency of their religious social behavior and held for the most part across both religious affiliations and political contexts.

Since most Americans are politically unsophisticated, but political attitudes are reasonably predictable, what is it that guides political behavior? This study suggests it is moral judgment. The article first lays down the mechanisms explaining the role of morality in attitude strength, extremity of attitude, tendency to issue voting, and participation, and then examines the extent these are accounted for by moral convictions. Sentimental and reasoned moral convictions are strong political cues, available to both ideological sides, and independent of political sophistication. Since political attitudes may be based on moral judgments that occur very quickly, via emotional and intuitive responses, coherent public opinion does not require unusual levels of political competence and motivation.

Religion can be a source of undemocratic attitudes but also a contributor to democratic norms. This article argues that different dimensions of religiosity generate contrasting effects on democratic attitudes through different mechanisms. The private aspect of religious belief is associated with traditional and survival values, which in turn decrease both overt and intrinsic support for democracy. The communal aspect of religious social behaviour increases political interest and trust in institutions, which in turn typically lead to more support for democracy. Results from multilevel path analyses using data from fifty-four countries from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey suggest there is some regularity in mechanisms responsible for the effect of religiosity on democratic support that extend beyond religious denomination.

Different components of the religious experience have differing effects on attitudes towards democracy. Using heteroskedastic maximum likelihood models and data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey for 45 democratic countries, we show that as a personal belief system, religiosity contrasts with democratic principles, generating opposition to democracy while increasing ambivalence towards democratic principles among religious people. Nevertheless, at the group level, religion also serves as a social institution which increases the homogeneity of one's social network, leading to lower ambivalence, and makes for an active minority group which benefits from the democratic framework, consequently increasing support overall for a democratic regime. This double-edged sword effect explains the mixed results currently found in the literature on religiosity and democracy, and clearly illustrates the multidimensionality of religiosity.

Religiosity increases both criticism and instability in democratic performance evaluations, and accordingly decreases reliance on these assessments in the construction of political self-efficacy, trust in institutions, and patriotism. This is due to the conflicting experiences that religious citizens of democracies live through; while their personal religious environment often adheres to many undemocratic characteristics, their experience as citizens contains assorted democratic attributes. These results, from heteroskedastic maximum likelihood models using data from a 2006 representative survey among Israeli Jews, augment the exclusive focus of the literature of democratic attitudes on the strength of attitudes, and shift attention from policy attitudes to other evaluative judgements.

Literature in the area of social networks indicates that increases in perceived social network attitudinal heterogeneity generate increased openness to attitude change. Recent evidence in the area of morality, however, shows that morally based attitudes are particularly resistant to persuasion and can result in the rejection of disagreeing others. Positing that considering morality would reduce network influence, an experiment varied moral cues presented along with a non‐network persuasive message while holding the actual content constant. Results demonstrate that morality and network composition interact to predict persuasion, such that when people are not cued to consider morality increased network heterogeneity predicts increased persuasion, but when identical messages are presented in a way that invokes morality the impact of network heterogeneity disappears or even reverses marginally. This interactive effect was replicated in two very different political issues: gay adoption and nationalized healthcare. Implications for persuasion by morally motivated sources independent of the effects of specific moral arguments are discussed.