Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T18:52:54.780Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

State Religion and Freedom: A Comparative Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2013

Steven Kettell
Steven Kettell*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Steven Kettell, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

State religions form one of the main features of the international political landscape, but scholarly research into their dynamics and effects remains limited. This article aims to address this deficiency through a comparative examination of state religions and levels of political and religious freedom. The findings show that countries with a state religion have substantially lower levels of freedom across a range of measurements than countries with no state religion. The absence of any clear correlation to levels of human development, religious diversity and religiosity indicates a key causal role for the institutional mechanics of state religion itself.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 538 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. 2004. “Does God Matter, and if so Whose God? Religion and Democratization.” Democratization 11:192–217.Google Scholar
Barro, R.J., and McCleary, R.M.. 2005. “Which Countries have State Religions?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 120:1331–1370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brathwaite, R., and Bramsen, A.. 2011. “Reconceptualizing Church and State: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Separation of Religion and State on Democracy.” Politics and Religion 4:229–263.Google Scholar
Casanova, J. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, T. 1997. “A Critique of “Religion” as a Cross-Cultural Category.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 9:91–100.Google Scholar
Fox, J. 2006. “World Separation of Religion and State into the 21st Century.” Comparative Political Studies 39.Google Scholar
Gorski, P.S. 2000. “Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700.” American Sociological Review 65:138–167.Google Scholar
Hallward, M.C. 2008. “Situating the ‘Secular’: Negotiating the Boundary between Religion and Politics.” International Political Sociology 2:1–16.Google Scholar
Hsu, B., Reynolds, A., Hackett, C., and Gibson, J.. 2008. “Estimating the Religious Composition of All Nations: An Empirical Assessment of the World Christian Database.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47:537–569.Google Scholar
Norris, P., and Inglehart, R.. 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philpott, D. 2009. “Has the Study of Global Politics Found Religion?” Annual Review of Political Science 12:183–202.Google Scholar