Cabrales Domínguez, Sergio
(2022)
Compete, accompany, or democratize? The Nicaraguan Catholic Church’s motivations for involvement in the 2018 wave of protest.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
In 2018, a wave of more than 2,000 mass protests in Nicaragua demanded democratization and the resignation of President Ortega. Members of the Catholic Church (Catholic Agents) played a critical role during these protests by certifying the protesters and their causes, making available multiple religious assets, and negotiating with the parties. To what extent and why did the Catholic Church contribute to this mass mobilization? Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork, this paper offers an analysis of the motivations of the Church in this political process. This case provides a powerful new setting to evaluate expectations of Religious Economies Model (Finke, R., & Stark, 2005; Gill, 1998; Trejo, 2009) against other emerging motivations. The findings show that Catholic agents were not motivated to compete for membership and political favoritism in the oligopolistic religious market (Yang, 2010). They elaborated transcendent and institutional motives resulting from the historical conflict with the Sandinistas and political perceptions about the viability and duration of the protests. Above all, an explicit will to democratize Nicaragua fueled these Catholic actions. The new case study thus offers an opportunity to understand the Catholic involvement in political upheavals, a similar behavior observed during the “Third Wave” of democratization (Huntington, 1991; Troy, 2009).
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
17 June 2022 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
28 February 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
17 June 2022 |
| Submission Date: |
3 April 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
81 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Sociology |
| Degree: |
MA - Master of Arts |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Catholic Church, religious market, democratization, protests |
| Date Deposited: |
17 Jun 2022 14:22 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Mar 2023 18:13 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43115 |
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