Replication Data for: The Political Sources of Religious Identification: Evidence from the Burkina Faso-Cote d'Ivoire Border

Under what conditions does religion become a salient social identity? By measuring religious attachment among the people living astride the Burkina Faso-Côte d’Ivoire border in West Africa, an arbitrary boundary that exposes otherwise similar individuals to different political contexts, we make a case for the importance of the political environment in affecting the weight that people attach to their religious identities. After ruling out explanations rooted in the proportion of different religious denominations, the degree of secularization, and the supply of religious institutions on either side of the border, as well as differences in the degree of religious pluralism at the national level, we highlight the greater exposure of Ivoirian respondents to the politicization of religion during Côte d’Ivoire’s recent civil conflict. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the power—and challenges—of exploiting Africa’s arbitrary borders as sources of causal leverage.