An Integrated Framework for Studying Political Belief System, Tolerance and Participation in Pakistan
Keywords:
Political belief systems, tolerance, participation, framework, SIT, TPB, SJTAbstract
This paper introduces a new integrated framework to analyze the relationships between political belief systems, tolerance, and participation in Pakistan, grounded in Social Identity Theory (SIT), the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and System Justification Theory (SJT). It proposes a comprehensive and context-specific tool tailored to Pakistan’s socio-political environment for quantitatively assessing these constructs. The framework incorporates key determinants such as religiosity, political knowledge, political interest, and partisan as well as ideological identification to provide insights into the interplay between belief systems and political behaviour like political tolerance and political participation. With the view to gauge the centrality of the political belief systems, the study used polarized views on various policy choices specific to Pakistani contexts. These issues were identified through a pre-pilot study (N-50) while a pilot study was conducted to test the data collection tool and determine its validity. While the framework lays the foundation for future empirical studies, it does not explore the deeper, formative processes of belief systems. This limitation underscores the need for qualitative research to complement the proposed framework. Future studies may integrate this tool with qualitative approaches to capture the depth and breadth of political behaviours and attitudes in a similar or diverse national and political contexts.
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