How Does Religious Beliefs Affect Political Participation? Empirical Analysis Based On Micro-Survey Data In Myanmar

Originating from adjacent regions and similar cultures,China and Myanmar have been friendly neighbors since ancient times and have maintained close ties for a long time.Since the "Belt and Road" initiative was put forward,the cooperation between China and Myanmar in various fields such as economic level and cultural level has been deepened day by day.As one of the key nodes of the "Belt and Road" initiative,Myanmar has natural advantages and unique importance in the construction of China-Myanmar economic cooperation,and there is also a huge strategic interest relationship between China and Myanmar.Therefore,conducting country-specific research on Myanmar is of great significance for promoting the healthy development of China-Myanmar relations,ensuring a partnership of equality,mutual benefit,and win-win cooperation between the two sides,and stabilizing the huge strategic interests of southwest my country.Political participation is regarded as an important indicator to measure the degree of democratization of a country.Analyzing the political participation level and attitude of the Burmese people will help us to grasp the current situation of Burmese political culture and ideology,and predict its future trend.At the same time,the importance of religious factors in the political life of the Burmese people is still relatively large.Therefore,this article will take the understanding of the political attitudes of the Burmese people as the starting point to analyze the relationship between the Burmese people’s religious beliefs and political participation and the reasons.This paper uses the comprehensive survey data of Myanmar’s domestic situation and foreign relations(2018/2019)initiated by Yunnan University,and based on the existing theoretical analysis framework of political participation,three groups of independent variables related to religious factors and three groups related to political participation are selected respectively.Two sets of dependent variables,as well as control variables such as educational background,years of education,province,state,and age,were used to establish a binary logistic regression nested model,principal component analysis and factor analysis models using Mplus and Stata statistical analysis software.The ordinal logistic regression model is used to analyze the influence of religious factors on the political participation pattern of the Burmese people.The results show that: First,from the perspective of people with different religious beliefs,Buddhists are more inclined to participate in political life by means of institutional political participation than Christians,and the proportion of Buddhists among voters who support the Gongfa Party is higher than that of Christianity and Islam.teach.Secondly,in terms of religious factors in Myanmar people’s political participation,Myanmar people with a high degree of religious piety tend to adopt non-institutional political participation;Buddhist extremism supporters are more inclined to non-institutional political participation,and they vote more in favor of non-institutional political participation.The Gongfa Party or other minority political parties,not the NLD;there is a significant negative correlation between religious tolerance and both types of political participation,that is,people with lower religious tolerance are more willing to participate in political life.There is no significant difference between the degree of religious tolerance of the people and the way of political participation.In addition,this paper strives to contribute to the theoretical framework of political participation,refine and advance theories about the role of religious factors in people’s political participation,and draw general conclusions based on the data results:there is a correlation between religious beliefs and ordinary people’s political participation,Religious factors can be used as one of the paths to study the influencing factors of political participation.Finally,this paper considers the problem of Myanmar’s domestic political transition under the new situation.