Local Religious Heterogeneity and Outgroup Tolerance in Lebanon

This paper explores the relationship between religious diversity and political tolerance in Lebanon, where sectarian identities are explicit in parties and government positions. Using district-level voter registration data (which includes religious confession) and three waves of individual-level survey data from the Arab Barometer, I investigate how religious identity and local context affect tolerance toward religious outgroups. Using proportional odds models for ordinal regression, I find that the relationship between tolerance and share of coreligionists in one’s region changed from positive in 2016 to negative in 2021. Religiosity has an inconsistent moderating effect on this relationship. These findings contribute to spatial understandings of group dynamics and provide insights into religion’s role as a social identity in shaping tolerance in divided societies.