The Islamic political revival in the Muslim world in the last several decades has been a central topic of inquiry in the social sciences. Even if their electoral performances and ability to capture power exhibit significant variation, Islamist movements continue to be the most formidable and resilient political forces in many countries. Avital Livny’s Trust and Islamic Advantage argues that Islamists do have a competitive advantage when it comes to mobilizing support and inducing individuals to engage in both political and economic collective action. That advantage lies in group-based trust that emerges from participation in religious activities and services and makes participants more likely to collaborate and coordinate their actions.

Livny critically engages with a number of alternative perspectives that aim to explain why Islamist politicians may be better positioned to develop popular appeals: grievance-based theories suggesting that Islamists capitalize on popular discontent with existing regimes and parties, faith-based theories suggesting that religiosity ameliorates the risks and costs of political participation, and information-based theories suggesting that Islam signals reputability and credibility in an environment of uncertainty and misinformation. She uses various cross-national and Turkey-specific datasets and finds little empirical support for these alternative perspectives.

Starting in chapter 4, Livny develops her own theory of Islamic advantage. She first demonstrates that interpersonal trust levels remain relatively low in Muslim-majority countries. Rather ironically, this climate of distrust, which is pernicious for both political and economic activities, provides an opportunity for the formation of more parochial forms of cooperation based on a shared identity. In a Muslim country, this shared identity happens to be based on Islamic norms and values that are cultivated via participation in religious services such as mosque attendance. She then presents cross-national evidence that mosque attendance is associated with higher levels of political participation (signing a petition, demonstrating, and boycotting) among people who distrust others (p. 139). In Turkey, voters in provinces with more salient religious identity (as measured by religious school and Qur’an course enrollment) are less likely to support parties that ultimately fail to gain parliamentary representation. On the basis of this finding, Livny argues that religious identity leads to greater coordination among the electorate and results in lower levels of wasted vote (pp. 171–75). At the same time, it is surprising that there is no attempt to use survey data and to test the group-based trust explanation with the support for the AKP (the Justice and Development Party) as the main dependent variable. In chapter 7, Livny switches her focus to a prominent Islamic business association in Turkey and argues that trust based on a shared religious identity helps its members develop networks of solidarity, especially during periods of economic volatility.

Trust and Islamic Advantage is commendable in several respects. First, Livny is tireless in her efforts to bring a series of large-N datasets (some of which are originally compiled) together in creative and informative ways. Next, there is a good balance between statistical rigor and presentability. The main findings are reported in well-designed graphs, and tables detailing models and robustness tests are included in an online appendix. This approach helps readers develop a clear evaluation of how the empirical evidence speaks to the hypotheses. Furthermore, the book shows a solid grasp of several bodies of literature and refers to findings from a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, including behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology. These engagements make the book valuable to multiple scholarly audiences and demonstrate the value of a holistic approach when studying political behavior.

Despite its merits, the book’s main argument leads to a paradox. On the one hand, Livny argues that there has been no religious resurgence in Turkey, an assertion that is highly contested in the post-1980 period (pp. 14, 55–56). This means that the ultimate success of an Islamist political movement depends on its ability to appeal to secular or nominally religious people. Religious platforms that only address the concerns of core supporters of the movement would not result in winning electoral campaigns. On the other hand, for Livny, the main advantage of an Islamist movement lies in its ability to tap into group-based trust among individuals who regularly attend religious services. These individuals are able to engage in a variety of collective action, including voting in elections. Accordingly, the Islamic advantage, as described in the book, is most effective among the electorate attending religious services (those are mostly men who pray in mosques), but not necessarily among the rest of the society. Consequently, it does not tell us much about the ability of an Islamist movement to capture and stay in power by expanding its electoral constituency.

An alternative approach that brings the state into the analytical narrative and focuses on how the Islamists use governmental power to sustain popular support provides a promising way to address this particular paradox. After coming to power in 2002 in the midst of a devastating economic crisis, the AKP managed to stabilize the economy, delivered growth, and improved public services for some years. Hence, economic voting is a useful perspective to make sense of the longevity of its public support. Equally important is the extensive and hierarchical patronage networks that the party cultivated at both the local and national levels via pork-barrel policies. Clientelism has been a central strategy of the AKP rule for almost two decades. Finally, the AKP fostered polarization and excluded societal groups from access to public resources that remained outside of its ideological and clientelistic orbit. This last strategy helped the party solidify support among its core supporters while aggravating social tensions and creating an atmosphere of fear. These three dynamics—economic voting, clientelism, and polarization—are well discussed and analyzed in the extensive literature on comparative and Turkish politics. Livny briefly considers economic voting (p. 164), but ultimately pursues a monocausal explanation based on group-based trust cultivated by religious identity. That is a missed opportunity, because we would be better off by making peace with equifinality and accepting it as an inevitable aspect of social inquiry. We can then identify the multiple dynamics enabling Islamists to mobilize public support via the ballot box, the bullhorn, or the police baton.

As Livny argues, group-based trust has been important to how the Islamists built up their initial strength. Yet, this factor, by itself, provides limited insight into how the AKP elicited support once it became a ruling party, a year after its founding. In Livny’s analytical framework, the state remains absent, playing no role in shaping political attitudes and behaviors of individuals at the grassroots level. Yet, there is not much “Islamic-based mobilization from the bottom up” (p. 23) to speak of, not only in Turkey but also in many other Middle Eastern countries where authoritarian rule prevailed following the short-lived euphoria of the Arab uprisings. Consequently, it is hard to be sanguine about the implications of Islamic advantage for democratic struggles in the region.

These critical remarks aside, Trust and Islamic Advantage makes an empirically rich and theoretically engaging contribution to the scholarship on religion and politics and Middle Eastern politics. With its meticulous empirical analyses, it will stimulate high-quality scholarly discussions on the role of identity-based trust in political processes in Muslim-majority countries and beyond.