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Société québécoise de science politique Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? Author(s): Jonathan Fox Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1-25 Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25166062 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 15:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Canadian Political Science Association and Société québécoise de science politique are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.127.68 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 15:42:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State?

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Société québécoise de science politique

Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State?Author(s): Jonathan FoxSource: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 40,No. 1 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1-25Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25166062 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 15:42

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Political Science Association and Société québécoise de science politique are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne descience politique.

http://www.jstor.org

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State?"

Jonathan Fox Bar Ilan University

This study asks a seemingly simple question: Do democracies have sep aration of religion and state (SRAS)? However, answering this question is not a simple endeavour, for three reasons. First, there is no agreement on the meaning of SRAS. Second, however it is defined, SRAS is diffi cult to measure. Third, the same can be said of democracy. One of the

main foci of this study is to provide a set of usable operational defini tions of the concept of SRAS and to examine how many democracies (as

measured by existing datasets), as well as how many other states, have SRAS. To accomplish this goal, this study develops seven separate oper ationalizations of SRAS based on four different definitions of SRAS.

Despite this objective focus, it is important to remember that the appro

priate role of religion in liberal democracies, and for that matter gov ernment in general, is a hotly contested political issue in many states,

involving a number of normative issues that are anything but objective. This study addresses the role of religion in democracies using data

from the Religion and State (RAS) dataset, which was developed by the author and includes 62 variables in six broader categories measuring dif ferent aspects of SRAS for all 152 states with populations of one million or more. The democracy data is taken from the Polity and Freedom House datasets. All analyses are performed for the years 1990 and 2002 in order to test whether the relationships found in this study hold true over time. This analysis is novel because the RAS data contains more information

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Patrick James, Shmuel Sandler and Baruch

Susser, as well as the Canadian Journal of Political Science's anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments. Any errors of fact or interpretation remain mine alone.

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 896/00) and the Sara and Simha Lainer Chair in Democracy and Civility. A copy of the RAS dataset can be obtained from Jonathan Fox at [email protected].

Jonathan Fox, Department of Political Studies, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel;

[email protected]

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 40:1 (March/mars 2007) 1-25 DOI: 10.1017/S0008423907070035 ? 2007 Canadian Political Science Association (1'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Societe quebecoise de science politique

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2 Jonathan Fox

on SRAS than all previous datasets, as well as observations for more countries than most previous datasets. Furthermore, the few studies which use analogous SRAS data tend not to focus on its relationship with

democracy.

Religion and Democracy

The debate over whether there is some special relationship between

democracy and SRAS is reflected in several different literatures. Space considerations allow for only a brief discussion of these literatures.

Many in the West assume that SRAS is the norm in liberal democ racies. Democracy alone implies that the majority decision rules and this can include the decision to violate the principle of SRAS. It is liberalism that includes protections for the rights of minorities. This is often used to justify SRAS on the grounds that it is a protection against the poten tial tyranny of religious majorities, especially given past histories of reli

gious intolerance in many democratic states. The expectations placed on democracies by this strain of liberalism are described by Stepan (2000: 39-40) as follows:

Democratic institutions must be free, within the bounds of the constitution and

human rights, to generate policies. Religious institutions should not have con

stitutionally privileged prerogatives that allow them to mandate public policy to democratically elected governments. At the same time, individuals and reli

gious communities ... must have complete freedom to worship privately. In

addition, as individuals and groups, they must be able to advance their values

publicly in civil society and to sponsor organizations and movements in polit ical society, as long as their actions do not impinge negatively on the liberties

of other citizens or violate democracy and the law.

Many make the normative argument that SRAS is desirable and even

essential to democracy. For example, Rawls (1993: 151) argues that we

must "take the truths of religion off the political agenda." Demerath (2001: 2) similarly asserts that "separating religion from the state is both possi ble and desirable." Some would go as far as to claim that liberalism was at least in part a response to the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and specifically includes SRAS in the ideology in order to alleviate this type of conflict (Shah, 2000). Many of these argu ments are based on the assertion that religion often does not tolerate dis sent to its dictates, which makes it incompatible with democracy.

This normative argument, that democracy and religion are incom

patible, is by no means universally accepted. Tocqueville argues that "suc cessful political democracy will inevitably require moral instruction

grounded in religious faith" (Fradkin, 2000: 90-91). Greenawalt (1988: 49, 55) asserts that liberal democracy tolerates people who want to impose

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Abstract. While many argue that separation of religion and state (SRAS) is an essential ele ment of democracy, others posit that religion is an essential element of democracy's moral under

pinnings. This study examines the debate using data from the Religion and State (RAS) dataset, which includes 62 variables in six broader categories measuring different aspects of SRAS for all 152 states with populations of one million or more, as well as data on democracy from the

Polity and Freedom House datasets. It also develops seven operational definitions of SRAS that can be constructed using this data. Overall, the results show that a clear majority of democra cies do not have SRAS even when evaluating multiple operational definitions of both democ

racy and SRAS. However, democracies tend to have lower average levels of government involvement in religion (GIR) than do non-democracies. This is because, while most democra cies do not have SRAS, there is an upper limit to the amount of GIR that is found in any

democracy that does not appear to apply to non-democracies. All this indicates that the proper

question regarding religion and democracy is not one of SRAS but rather one of how much and what types of GIR can democracies tolerate.

Resume. Alors que de nombreuses personnes pretendent que la separation de la religion et de l'Etat est un element essentiel de la democratic, d'autres avancent que la religion est un ele

ment essentiel des fondations morales de la democratic Cette etude analyse ce debat en uti lisant des donnees provenant de la base de donnees Religion and State, qui comprend 62 variables

regroupees en 6 grandes categories et mesurant les differents aspects de la separation de la

religion et de l'Etat dans les 152 pays dont la population atteint un million d'habitants ou plus, ainsi que les donnees sur la democratic fournies par la base de donnees Polity et l'indicateur de Freedom House. L'article met aussi au point sept definitions fonctionnelles de la separation de la religion et de l'Etat, que Ton peut composer a partir de ces donnees. Dans l'ensemble, les resultats montrent que la grande majorite des democraties ne pratiquent pas la separation de la

religion et de l'Etat, meme lorsque Ton prend en compte plusieurs definitions fonctionnelles de la democratic et de la separation de la religion et de l'Etat. En revanche, le niveau moyen

d'engagement religieux du gouvernement tend a etre plus bas dans les democraties que dans les pays qui ne sont pas des democraties. Cela s'explique par le fait que, bien que la plupart des democraties ne pratiquent pas la separation de la religion et de l'Etat, elles observent un plafond d'engagement religieux qu'on ne retrouve pas dans les pays qui ne sont pas des democraties. Tout ceci indique que la question la plus appropriee concernant la religion et la democratic n'est pas celle de la separation de la religion et de l'Etat, mais plutot celle du degre et des modeles d'engagement religieux que les democraties peuvent tolerer de la part de leurs

gouvernements.

their religious convictions on others "just as it tolerates people who wish to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat," and that without resort to

religion there are often insufficient "grounds for citizens to resolve many political issues."

This debate also includes differences of opinion over the facts on the ground. On the one hand, many authors posit that democracy is not

possible in religiously plural societies (Mill, 1951: 46; Horowitz, 1985:

86-86). The literature on consociationalism and power sharing reflects this by implicitly arguing that heterogeneous societies can only maintain

democracy through complex power-sharing arrangements (for example, Lijphart, 1977). On the other hand, there are numerous examples of reli

gion and democracy coexisting, including the existence of established churches in several Western European states and widespread government support in Europe for religion, especially religious education (Stepan,

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4 Jonathan Fox

2000: 41-43). Anthony Smith (2000) links many particular nationalist

ideologies in democratic states like France, Greece, Ireland, the US and the UK to religious origins. Research suggests that when there is a stra

tegic interest in doing so, religious groups often support democracy (Kaly vas, 1998, 2000; Linz, 1978).

Mazie (2004) takes an intermediate approach, arguing that some ele ments of religion are compatible with democracy, while others are not. National religious holidays are acceptable as long as observance is not

mandatory and religious minorities can observe their own holidays. Fund

ing of religion is possible because democratic checks and balances and an effective judicial system can prevent reasonable levels of support for

religion from turning into religious tyranny. However, imposing reli

gious values or behaviour is in most cases incompatible with democracy. This distinction between acceptable and unacceptable violations of

SRAS brings out more clearly something that is inherent in the argu ments of all of those who posit that religion and democracy are compat ible: religion and democracy can coexist, but there are clearly intolerant forms of religion which are not compatible with the concept of pluralism and some that are not even tolerant of any diversity within their own

traditions. Thus, democracy can coexist only with manifestations of reli

gion which are either willing to tolerate democracy or whose followers do not have the ability to oppose it.

This debate touches upon several other literatures. Modernization and secularization theory predict that as countries modernize they will become more secular because factors inherent in modernization will lead

directly to the demise of religion. These factors include mass literacy and education, urbanization, and the rise of science and rationalism as a

basis for organizing society, solving problems and explaining the world.1 The popularity of this body of theory has been waning of late and is countered by an emerging literature which argues that rather than caus

ing religion's demise, modernization has brought about its resurgence (for

example, Appleby, 2000; Casanova, 1994; Juergensmeyer, 1993). How

ever, some continue to defend elements of the theory. For example, Nor ris and Inglehart (2004) argue that religiosity is dropping among the

wealthy and those who live in more economically developed states, but as most of the world's population does not fit into these categories, world

religiosity is actually increasing. Bruce (2002: 30, 44) defends the para

digm even more strongly, asserting that "individualism, diversity, and

egalitarianism in the context of liberal democracy" has led to a "long term decline in the power, popularity, and prestige of religious beliefs and rituals."

This overall debate over whether religion and democracy are com

patible is also important in other discussions, including the argument over

whether an Islamic state can be democratic.2

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

5

Measuring SRAS

While one generally discusses theoretical definitions of a concept before

addressing how to measure it, in this case the former is considerably dependent upon the latter. Accordingly, I discuss the RAS measures of SRAS before turning to the question of how SRAS is to be defined.

The RAS dataset essentially measures government involvement in

religion (GIR). This is defined as any form of government support for

religion or interference in religion. This includes treatment of both the

majority and minority religions in a state. I set aside for the moment the

question of how much GIR of what type can exist in a state without vio

lating the principle of SRAS, because this question is easier to discuss in the context of the specific RAS measures used here.

The RAS dataset measures GIR from several perspectives. This is because there are a number of ways a government can support religion or interfere in religious practices and institutions. Thus any compre hensive assessment of GIR must include an assessment of several types of GIR.

The RAS data is available yearly for the 1990 to 2002 period for all 152 states with populations of one million or more. All of the variables are coded primarily based on the behaviour of a state's national govern ment. They do not include the behaviour of regional and local govern ments, unless the majority of such governments engage in a practice. The codings also do not include societal practice, because the dataset focuses on the behaviour of governments and not on general societal

practices. There are seven RAS variables used here: 1) official support: the

extent to which a government officially endorses or supports a religion or several religions; 2) official hostility', the extent to which governments are officially hostile to all religions; 3) general restrictions: whether the state in general restricts religious practices; 4) religious discrimination: the extent to which a government engages in 16 types of restrictions that can be placed on the religious practices of minority regulations; 5) reli

gious regulation: the extent to which a government engages in 11 types of restrictions or regulation that can be placed on the majority religion in a state; 6) religious legislation: whether the government engages in any of 33 types of religious legislation; and 7) general GIR: a. composite vari ables which includes the above six variables. A more detailed descrip tion of these variables is provided in appendix A and Fox (2006). The RAS variables are considerably more detailed and comprehensive than

previous measures of SRAS. There are a small number of studies that have developed limited SRAS variables. Chaves and Cann (1992: 280) measure several aspects of SRAS for 18 Western European countries. Norris and Inglehart (2004: 253-254) expanded this measure to 20 com

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6 Jonathan Fox

ponents. Price (1999) measures religion's influence on politics for 23 Muslim states and 23 non-Muslim states. Barrett et al. (2001) collected data on whether states have a "religious character" but did not systemat ically analyze the data, though others such as Madeley (2003a, 2003b) and Barro and McCleary (2003) did make use of the data.

All of these measures are less comprehensive than the 62 measures

used in this study. Also, other than the crude Barrett et al. (2001) vari

ables, none of them were collected for much more than half of the world's

states, much less the 152 included in this study. With a few notable exceptions, all other studies which include vari

ables for religion are either survey-based studies that examine individual

religiosity, or macro-level studies that use religious identity variables. Sur

vey studies are not comparable to this one because they focus on indi vidual religiosity. The identity-based studies, most of which focus on

religion's influence on conflict, measure whether conflict is more likely when the two sides belong to different religions (Henderson, 1997) or

whether religious diversity within a state is linked with increased con

flict (Rummel, 1997; Roeder, 2003; Reynal-Querol, 2002; Fearon and

Laitin, 2003). Most of the exceptions tend to use variables that focus on narrow issues like ethnic conflict (for example, Fox, 2002, 2004).

A few studies directly test the link between democracy and some

aspect of religion. Several found that Islamic states tend to be more auto

cratic (Fisch, 2002; Midlarsky, 1998). However, Price (1999) found that Islam neither undermines nor supports democracy and human rights. Chaves and Cann (1992) and Fox and Sandler (2005) show that many

European states regulate religion. These studies all have at least one of three limitations: looking only at the link between a particular religion and democracy; focusing on only one or two aspects of SRAS in a lim ited context; or looking only at a limited number of states.

Defining and Operationalizing SRAS

The RAS measures used in this study essentially measure a definition of

SRAS that I call absolute-SRAS\ the absence of any government support for religion or interference in religious practices. This is an extremely strict standard that essentially requires that a government score a zero on

each of the RAS measures. Put differently, operationally, this definition means that a government which in any way engages in any of the 62

types of GIR measured by the RAS variables would not have SRAS. As is discussed in more detail below, only one state, the USA, meets

this standard of SRAS. Thus it is advisable to create another category of

SRAS, which I will call near-absolute-SRAS; this adheres to the spirit of

absolute-SRAS but allows for a minimal level of GIR. The definition

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

1

includes states that generally follow policies of avoiding GIR but have some limited exceptions to those policies. I include two operationaliza tions of near-SRAS, with the first being more strict than the second. Of

necessity, these operationalizations are somewhat arbitrary but are argu ably representative of the intent to allow low levels of GIR within the definition of SRAS. These operationalizations, as well as the others dis cussed in this section, are presented in Table 1.

While the absolute-SRAS standard for SRAS is inherent in the cur rent US tradition of SRAS, it is not discussed extensively in the literature on the topic. The literature tends to focus on two less strict definitions of SRAS.3 The first, neutral political concern, defines SRAS as requiring that the state neither help nor hinder any particular ideal more than oth ers. This standard of SRAS allows government support and/or interfer ence in religion, as long as this support and/or interference is equal for all religions. The RAS variables can be used to measure this standard. This

study creates three different operationalizations of this standard in order to reflect varying levels of strictness of interpretation of this standard.

For a state to have a level of SRAS consistent with this definition it would need to be coded as "no support" or "supportive" on the official support variable, because all of the higher codings involve preferential treatment for some religions. The latter of these codings does include

support?but on an equal basis?for all religions. The "no hostility" cod

ing of the official hostility variable certainly fits this standard. The other

codings may or may not fit this standard. On the one hand, none of them

imply any preferential treatment of religion, as it is possible for the state to be equally hostile to all religions. However, at some point the level of

government hostility to religion can be said to violate an intuitive under

standing of SRAS. For the purposes of this study, a coding of "sepa rationist" is always considered to meet the neutral political concern

standard, because it implies low-level but general hostility toward reli

gion, but the highest coding of "hostility" is deemed to be too high to meet this definition of SRAS. It also implies a government preference of an anti-religious ideology that is essentially supporting a secular ideal over religious ones.

The neutral political concern standard also requires low levels of

religious discrimination, because such discrimination implies unequal treatment. However, as is the case with the near-absolute-SRAS stan

dard, the operationalization of the neutral political concern standard allows for some low levels of religious discrimination. Operation alizing this definition with regard to religious regulation and religious legislation is also difficult. The state can theoretically engage in low levels of these types of GIR without violating the neutral political con cern standard of SRAS but it is difficult to determine exactly where to draw the line.

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00

Table 1

Operationalizations of Separation of Religion and State

Official Official General Religious Religious Religious General

Support Hostility Restrictions Discrim. Regulation Legislation GIR

Absolute-SRAS None None None None None None 0 Only Near-Absolute-SRAS 1 None None None Up to 3 Up to 3 Up to 3 Up to 5 Near-Absolute-SRAS 2 None Separationist None Up to 5 Up to 5 Up to 5 Up to 10

Neutral Political Concern 1 None & None & None None Up to 3 Up to 3 Up to 10

supportive separationist

Neutral Political Concern 2 None & None & Practical Up to 3 Up to 5 Up to 5 Up to 15 supportive separationist limitations Neutral Political Concern 3 None & None, separationist Practical Up to 5 Up to 10 Up to 5 Up to 20 supportive &

inadvertent limitations insensitivity

Exclusion of Ideals None, All codings Practical Up to 10 Up to 10 See list Up to 30

supportive & legal

& cooperation limitations

o > H > X

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

9

The second standard of SRAS, exclusion of ideals, defines SRAS as an absence of a preference for any particular way of life in state actions. This definition focuses on intent rather than outcome. Since the RAS variables focus on action rather than intent, it is difficult to operational ize this standard. However, it is fair to argue that when the outcome of a

state's practices involve a certain amount of GIR, it is unlikely that the intent to maintain SRAS exists. States with official religions certainly do not have SRAS even under this standard. It is also extremely unlikely that those that in law or practice give preference to a single religion over others ("civil religion" or higher on the official support measure) or

engage in substantial levels of religious discrimination have SRAS based on this standard. It is also arguable that the following types of religious legislation do imply the legislation of a specific religious tradition, thus

indicating that "ideals" are involved in this legislation:

dietary laws (restrictions on producing, importing, selling or consum

ing specific foods); restrictions or prohibitions on the sale of alcoholic beverages; restrictions on conversions away from the dominant religion; restrictions on public dress;

mandatory closing of some or all businesses during religious holidays, including the Sabbath or its equivalent; other restrictions on activities during religious holidays, including the Sabbath or its equivalent ("blue laws"); some or all government officials must meet certain religious require

ments in order to hold office;

prohibitive restrictions on abortion; the presence of religious symbols on the state's flag; and

presence of an official government body that monitors "sects" or minor

ity religions.

While this operational definition is not exact, it arguably approximates the exclusion of ideals standard. It also, arguably, includes close to the

maximum amount of GIR that any fair interpretation of the exclusion of ideals standard would allow.

The operationalizations of all of the standards for SRAS other than absolute-SRAS reflect a fair amount of ambiguities in applying these def initions and include cutoffs that are somewhat arbitrary. Unfortunately, an element of arbitrariness is unavoidable in this type of exercise. Thus, these seven operationalizations are clearly not the only possible ones, and the use of seven operationalizations, as opposed to six or eight, for

example, itself is also arbitrary. Nevertheless, I argue that these operationalizations meet four key

criteria that make them useful and appropriate. First, they represent a

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10 Jonathan Fox

good faith attempt to operationalize the concepts at hand. Second, they range from the relatively strict to the relatively lenient, thus allowing for the testing of a broad range of operational definitions of SRAS. In fact the most lenient of the definitions arguably allow about as much GIR as

any reasonable definition would likely allow and the strictest allows the minimum possible amount of SRAS. Third, there are a sufficiently finite number of operationalizations to make them workable in a study of this nature. Finally, based on the results presented below, it is unlikely that other operationalizations that remained faithful to the definitions of SRAS discussed here would produce substantially different results.

It is important to note that both the neutral political concern and exclusion of ideals standards are part of a more general liberal ideal, which advocates that the state should be separate from religion. While these definitions are more recent developments, they are based on clas sical liberal thought. This concept is strongly tied to the concept of secularism (Madeley, 2003a). Secularism "identifies something called

'religion' and separates it from the 'secular' domains of the state, the

economy, and science. The 'secular', then is associated with the worldly or temporal. It carries no overt reference to a transcendent order or divine

being. In normative terms, secularism in characterized by its universal ist pretensions and its claim to superiority over non-secular alterna tives" (Hurd, 2004: 235).

It is also important to note that this tradition of secularism and some

definitions of SRAS, especially the neutral political concern standard, have been criticized as not actually being neutral, because they in effect

give preference to the secular. That is, in practice many government pol icies of "neutrality" toward religion give preference to secular ideologies and institutions over religious ideologies and institutions (Bader, 1999; Hurd, 2004: 239; Monsma and Soper, 1997). Be that as it may, this study is not intended to assess whether any particular form of SRAS gives pref erence to secularist ideals. Rather, it determines whether democracies meet

any standard of SRAS. Thus, this criticism, while important for our under

standing of how SRAS policies influence government decisions, does not substantially influence the analysis presented here.

Research Design

Unless otherwise noted, all variables in this study are taken from 1990 and 2002 and all tests in this study assess each of these years separately. These years are used because they are the first and last available for

the RAS data and using them implicitly tests whether the relationships included in this analysis change over time.

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

11

I use two variables for democracy, which focus on different aspects. The Polity variable from the Polity dataset has a range from -10 to 10, with -10 being the most autocratic and 10 being the most democratic. It is based on the regulation, openness and competitiveness of executive

recruitment, constraints on the executive, and the regulation and compet itiveness of political participation.4 The Freedom House variable includes two scales, one for civil rights and one for political rights, both of which

range from one to seven, with one being the most democratic.51 re-scaled each of these measures to range from zero to six, with six being the most

democratic, then added the two to create a scale of zero to 12. This inver sion of the scale is to increase ease of comparison with the Polity mea

sure, which also gives the highest score to the most democratic countries. These variables are the most used in quantitative studies to measure

democracy6 and including both variables allows testing of whether results based on the two variables are consistent.

The data analysis proceeds in several steps: first, I analyze whether states have SRAS based on the criteria described in Table 1 and control

ling for democracy. This is presented as the percentage of states in a

given category that have SRAS based on each of the seven operational definitions used in this study. For this test, I divide both the Polity and Freedom House scales into several categories, ranging from the most dem ocratic to the least democratic. I determined the specific components of each category based on two criteria: an accurate assessment of the range of regimes and an approximately equal number of states in each cat

egory. I also provide the percentage of states with SRAS among Western democracies7 and states that have constitutional clauses declaring SRAS.8 The test using constitutional clauses is performed only for 2002 because the data on constitutional clauses was collected for that year only.

Second, I use OLS multiple regressions to assess the impact of

regime type on GIR, controlling for other factors using all seven mea sures of GIR as dependent variables. I use the Polity and Freedom House variables to measure democracy, though each of them is used in separate regressions because the two are strongly correlated. The control vari ables are as follows:

(1) Economic development, as measured by log-per-capita GDP taken from the UN Statistics Division Web site.9

(2) Several variables measuring the specific religion of the majority population in each state including: Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Chris

tian, other Christian10 and Muslim.11 Each of these variables measures one if the majority of the state's population is of the specified religion and zero if it is not. These variables are included because many argue that reli

gious tradition has a significant influence on political phenomena.12 (3) Religious diversity is measured using the Herfindahl index, which

measures the probability that two random people will belong to the same

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12 Jonathan Fox

religion. As this index effectively measures religious homogeneity, the version used here is 1?(Herfidahl index).13 I include this variable be

cause, as noted above, several studies link religious diversity to political phenomena.

(5) Political stability. This is measured by how many years a regime has persisted without a change in the Polity measure.

(6) The log of that state's population (in thousands) is taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Third, I analyze scatter-plots between the two democracy variables and general GIR. This analysis is included in order to explain a contrast in the results from the first two sets of analysis, explained in more detail

below.

Data Analysis and Discussion

The results presented in Table 2 show that the vast majority of democra cies do not have SRAS. Depending on the year in question and opera tional definitions of democracy and SRAS, between 2.9 and 32 per cent of the states in the most democratic category have SRAS. In fact, in no

category of state in this table do more than 36.8 per cent of states have

any of the operationalizations of SRAS. Furthermore, in a number of

cases, a greater proportion of states in some of the less democratic cat

egories have SRAS than do the most democratic states.

Only one state in the study, the US, has absolute SRAS. The expla nation for this cannot be found in any uniqueness in the US constitu tional structure. Of the 128 states in this study for which I was able to obtain an English-language copy of their constitution, 50 of them (includ ing the US) have constitutional clauses or the equivalent that declare SRAS. Yet, as shown in Table 2, the majority of these states do not have SRAS. What seems to differentiate the US and other states with consti tutional SRAS clauses is not the clauses themselves but, rather, the enforcement of those clauses. The US court system traditionally strictly interprets the establishment clause of the US Constitution. Based on these

results, this policy appears to be the exception rather than the rule. Given all of this, it is fair to conclude that most governments do not

have SRAS based on any definition or operationalization of the term used

here, and that this is also true for democracies. The verdict also applies to liberal democracies, as the results are similar for Western democracies.

However, OLS regressions predicting GIR, presented in Table 3, show that democracies are associated with lower levels of GIR. In fact, with the exception of the regressions for official support, both the Polity and

Freedom House measures of democracy are significantly and negatively associated with the RAS variables for all of the regressions, both in 1990

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

13

Table 2

The Proportion of States That Have SRAS in 1990 and 2002, Based On Seven Operational Definitions of SRAS_

% of States That Meet Operationalization of SRAS

Neutral Neutral Neutral Near Near Political Political Political

Absolute SRAS SRAS Concern Concern Concern Exclusion

Democracy Variable n SRAS 12 12 3 of Ideals

Polity, 1990 10 (most democratic) 26 3.8% 19.2% 23.1% 19.2% 23.1% 23.1% 15.4%

8 to 9 19 0.0% 15.8% 21.1% 15.8% 31.6% 36.8% 5.3% 6 to 7 8 0.0% 25.0% 25.0% 12.5% 25.0% 25.0% 0.0% 0to5 13 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 7.7% 7.7% 15.4%

-6to-l 14 0.0% 21.4% 21.4% 21.4% 28.6% 28.6% 14.3% -10 to-7 47 0.0% 19.1% 21.3% 17.0% 23.4% 23.4% 4.3%

Polity, 2002 10 (most democratic) 31 3.2% 6.5% 19.4% 9.7% 16.1% 22.6% 19.4%

8 to 9 29 0.0% 14.3% 21.4% 7.1% 28.6% 28.6% 10.7% 6 to 7 21 0.0% 13.6% 27.3% 13.6% 31.8% 31.8% 18.2%

0to5 18 0.0% 16.7% 16.7% 16.7% 16.7% 22.2% 0.0% -6to-l 25 0.0% 12.0% 12.0% 8.0% 16.0% 24.0% 8.0%

-10 to-7 23 0.0% 3.6% 7.1% 0.0% 7.1% 7.1% 3.6% Freedom House, 1990

11 to 12 (most dem.) 31 4.0% 20.0% 24.0% 16.0% 28.0% 32.0% 12.0% 8 to 10 26 0.0% 22.2% 22.2% 18.5% 25.9% 25.9% 11.1%

5 to 7 22 0.0% 4.5% 4.5% 4.5% 9.1% 9.1% 13.6% 3 to 4 27 0.0% 23.1% 23.1% 19.2% 26.9% 26.9% 0.0%

0to2 25 0.0% 16.1% 19.4% 16.1% 22.6% 22.6% 3.2% Freedom House, 2002

11 to 12 (most dem.) 35 2.9% 11.4% 25.7% 11.4% 25.7% 28.6% 25.7% 8 to 10 32 0.0% 12.5% 18.8% 9.4% 21.9% 25.0% 6.3% 5 to 7 31 0.0% 9.7% 16.1% 9.7% 19.4% 22.6% 9.7%

3 to 4 25 0.0% 12.0% 12.0% 8.0% 12.0% 16.0% 4.0% 0to2 29 0.0% 6.9% 10.3% 3.4% 12.8% 17.2% 3.0%

W. Democracies, 1990 20 5.0% 20.0% 20.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 10.0% W. Democracies, 2002 20 5.0% 10.0% 20.0% 10.0% 20.0% 20.0% 10.0% State has SRAS clause

in constitution, 2002 50 2.0% 12.0% 26.0% 10.0% 30.0% 36.0% 24.0% All states, 1990 132 0.8% 17.4% 19.7% 15.9% 23.5% 24.2% 8.3% All states, 2002 152 0.7% 10.5% 17.1% 8.6% 19.1% 22.4% 10.5%

and 2002. Furthermore, in all but one of these 16 regressions where the

democracy variables are significant, the beta for the democracy variable is the highest of any of the variables in the regressions, meaning that

democracy is the most influential variable in predicting the extent of GIR. This does not appear to be consistent with the results presented in Table 2.

Setting aside this seeming inconsistency for the moment, it is impor tant to note that other factors also have an impact. Religious denomina tion proves significant in most of the regressions. This set of relationships is complex and is beyond the scope of the topic at hand, but should prove

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Table 3

OLS Regressions

Predicting

GIR, 1990 and 2002_

Independent

Variables Dependent Variables

Official Support Official Hostility General Restrictions

1990 2002 1990 2002 1990

Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Maj. Catholic -.124 -.110 -.154 -.144 -.224 -.195 -.058 -.097 -.208* -.174 Maj. Orthodox .037 .041 .185** .187** -.098* -.109 -.125 -.159* .005 -.013

Maj. Other Christ -.016 -.009 -.005 -.003 -.380*** -.331*** -.277*** -.261** -.155 -.103

Maj. Islam .096 .047 .011 .009 -.438*** -.435**** -.274** -.284** -.082 -.040

Rel. Diversity -.648**** -.686**** -.658**** -.651**** .090 .060 .146 .099 -.289*** -.299***

Democ: Polity .033 ? .002 ? -.239* ? -.415**** ? -.381**** ?

Democ: F. House ? -.017 ? -.039 ? -.405*** ? -.400*** ? -.480****

Regime Stability .081 .104 .019 .019 .004 .038 .128 .158 .026 .044 Per-Capita GDP .085 .065 .099 .123 .089 .201 .026 .053 .094 .188 Log Population -.071 -.047 .002 -.002 .129 .146 .141* .102 .195** .144*

DF 128 124 145 147 128 124 145 147 128 124

adj-r-squared .456 .442 .405 .405 .125 .166 .167 .148 .234 .239

General Restrictions Religious Discrimination Religious Regulation

2002 1990 2002 1990 2002 ?h

Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 5

- >

Maj. Catholic -.093 -.142 -.262** -.235** -.112 -.164* -.374**** -.324*** -.206** -.243** ffi Maj. Orthodox .161** .114 -.063 -.084 .260**** .210*** -.202** -.224*** -.039 -.074 >,

Maj. Other Christ -.146 -.123 -.229** -.196* -.160* -.134 -.373**** -.369**** -.215** -.183**

Maj. Islam .028 -.008 -.004 -.004 .086 .051 -.369*** -.295*** .026 -.007 q!

Rel. Diversity -.088 -.155* -.243** -.278*** -.050 -.123 -.265*** -.233** -.014 -.087 X

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Democ: Polity -.556**** ? -.379*** ? -.591**** ? _.422**** ? -.484**** ? -.

Democ: F. House ? -.597**** ? -.520**** ? -.622**** ? -.524**** ? -.502**** t5

Regime Stability -.025 .017 .017 .057 .044 .089 -.015 .016 -.059 -.017 ?

Per-Capita GDP .199** .259*** .247** .346**** .276**** .333**** .153 .293*** .141 .174* ^j

Log Population .175*** .118* .247**** .235**** .225**** .167*** .256**** .263**** .268**** .227**** fl>

- g

DF 145 147 128 124 145 147 127 124 145 147 ?

adj-r-squared .378 .384 .331 .373 .523 .489 .300 .343 .420 .408 ^

- 5^

Religious Legislation General GIR ^

- - ?

1990 2002 1990 2002 ^

- - - - te Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 ?}

- <

Maj. Catholic -.181** -.184** -.159* -.158* -.304*** -.270*** -.194** -.227*** ^

Maj. Orthodox -.081 -.093 -.012 -.024 -.057 -.073 .152** .115* ^

Maj. Other Christ -.069 -.060 -.003 .010 -.238*** -.204** -.161** -.138* ^

Maj. Islam .313**** .327*** .328**** .327**** -.051 -.051 .048 .023 ^

Rel. Diversity -A24**** -.439*** -.380**** -.385**** -.538**** -.569**** -.391**** -.443**** ^ Polity -.194** ? -.189** ? -.312**** ? -.467**** ? g Freedom House ? -.215** ? -.245*** ? -.444**** _ -.516*** ;g

Regime Stability .047 .065 -.039 -.025 .055 .092 .017 .053 ^

Per-Capita GDP .320**** .339**** .314**** .360**** .221** .305*** .248**** .307**** ^ Log Population .052 .049 .121** .097* .140** .136 .187**** .139*** ^

_ fl}

DF 128 124 145 147 127 124 145 147 ^

adj-r-squared .583 .562 .517 .531 .482 .502 .586 .599 g.

All values in table are Beta values.

= significance > .1 >* ** = significance > .05 ^

*** = significance > .01 ?/s **** = significance > .001 ^

J?

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16 Jonathan Fox

to be an interesting avenue for further research. Religious diversity is

consistently associated with less GIR. This indicates that SRAS is a

popular strategy for mitigating religious tensions in religiously diverse societies.

Per-capita GDP is positively associated with religious discrimina

tion, religious regulation, religious legislation and general GIR. This is a

particularly intriguing result because it contradicts the predictions of mod ernization and secularization theory. If secularization theory were cor

rect, one would expect more economically developed countries to have less GIR.14 On the surface, these results seem to contradict the empirical findings of Norris and Inglehart (2004), who established that in more

developed societies, individual religiosity is lower. However, individual

religiosity and GIR are not the same thing. Furthermore, the supply-side theory of religion specifically predicts an inverse relationship between individual religiosity and state religious monopolies, so from this per

spective the findings presented here are consistent with those of Norris and Inglehart (2004).15 A full discussion of this result is beyond the scope of the topic at hand and should be explored in future research and analysis. Finally, countries with larger populations tend to have higher levels of GIR.

As noted earlier, on the surface, the results in Tables 2 and 3 do not seem fully consistent. On the one hand, most democracies do not have SRAS but on the other hand, democracies tend to have less GIR than non-democracies. The results in Figure 1 help to explain this seeming contradiction. Due to space considerations, Figure 1 presents the results for general GIR only, but these results are consistent with those of the other GIR variables, except for official support. In order to briefly illus trate the extent of GIR that is reached in democracies, the highest scores in democratic states (based on the most democratic categories of the Pol

ity and Freedom House datasets in Table 2 and Western democracies) are

presented in Table 4. The results show that while many democracies have substantial scores

on the general GIR variable as well as the other RAS variables, there is an upper limit. That is, many democracies have substantial levels of GIR but there seems to be a line that democracies do not cross. Except for

official support, democracies do not have scores that place them among the highest on any of the RAS measures but, as illustrated in Table 4, some do have scores that are well above absolute-SRAS.

Thus, the results from Tables 2 and 3 are in fact consistent. Most democracies do not have SRAS, but since there appears to be an upper limit for GIR in democracies, on average, non-democratic states tend to have more GIR than do democracies. The only governments that might be said to cross the line between being involved in religious issues and

becoming religious states are some (but by no means all) of the more

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

17

Figure 1

Scatter-plots for Democracy and General GIR, 1990 and 2002

12 ? ? ? *? 10 ?? MM ?!? ?

O 8 - < ?*

? 10- ? ?* ? 6-? ?? *

*" <? ? 4

* * *

? 8-*# g> *

? ? ? 2 <> O 6 - ? m > ?"

- ? -2 *

Q 4-? ?? (?-4

"g <*? <?

u. -8 - ^j j^

0 + -1-? ? ? .-1 -10 -U--1-r? -1-#n 0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80

General GIR, 1990 General GIR, 1990

10 ip>j"Hjy*?5j 12?? ?? ?*??

6<i?* ft** **

? 10" * ? **? ?? <M <M? 4?4?

? 8- ?? ?

s 2 : ?

>; o-?* ? 6^? ??

= -2 % C ?

? -4^ ++? + X O 4 <& <* # ? 6

?? ? ? *

JE 2-m

-8 U. ^ ^ .10-I-,-?,-,- , o-I-,-?? ? m i-#i

0 20 40 60 80 0 20 40 60 80

General Gir, 2002 General Gir, 2002

autocratic ones. Using the results for general GIR in 2002, the demo cratic states that come the closest to being religious states are Israel (gen eral GIR =

36.84), Greece (general GIR = 33.31), Finland (general GIR =

32.88) and Costa Rica (general GIR = 31.61). While the governments of

these states are substantially involved in religious matters, there is no

comparison between them and the more autocratic states, which score much higher on the general GIR measure, such as Saudi Arabia (77.56), Iran (66.59), Egypt (62.92) and Jordan (60.51).

This brings up an interesting result. The majority of the highest scoring states on the general GIR variable are states with Muslim major ities. In fact, nine of the highest ten scores on general GIR are found in

Muslim majority states, as are 21 of the 25 top scoring states. In con

trast, none of the top 25 are Christian states. Sixteen of the lowest 25

scoring states are Christian states and only three of them are Muslim.

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Table 4 ?

Highest Scores by

Democracies

on RAS Measures, 1990 and 2002_

Official Official General Religious Religious Religious Support Hostility Restrictions Discrimination

Regulation Legislation

Polity 1990 One Official Religion Separationist

Legal Limitations

6 (Austria, Germany, 3 (Costa Rica 10 (Greece,

(Costa Rica, (Uruguay) (Austria, Belgium,

Greece

& Switzerland) & Portugal) Sweden & the UK)

Denmark, Greece, Finland, Hungary

Norway & Sweden) & Spain)

Polity 2002 One Official Religion Separationist

Legal

Limitations 6 (Austria, Germany 4 (Mongolia) 15 (Israel)

(Costa Rica, (Uruguay)

(Austria,

Belgium, & Switzerland)

Denmark, Greece, Finland, Hungary

Israel & Norway) & Spain)

Freedom House One Official Religion Separationist

Legal

Limitations 73 (Pakistan) 3 (Costa Rica 16 (Pakistan)

1990 (Costa Rica, Denmark, (France)

(Austria, Belgium, & Portugal)

Greece, Norway, Finland, Pakistan

Pakistan & Sweden) & Spain)

Freedom House One Official Religion Separationist Legal Limitations 6 (Austria, France, 3 (Costa Rica, 10 (Belgium

2002 (Costa Rica, (France & (Austria,

Belgium,

ermany, Slovenia Panama & Portugal) & the UK)

Denmark, Dominical Uruguay) Finland, France & Switzerland)

Rep. & Norway) & Hungary)

W. Democracies One Official Religion Separationist

Legal

Limitations 6 (Austria, Germany, 3 (Portugal) 10 (Greece,

1990 (Denmark, Greece, (France) Austria,

Belgium,

Greece & Switzerland) Sweden & the UK) ^h

Norway & Sweden) Finland & Spain) ?

>

W. Democracies One Official Religion Separationist Legal Limitations 6 (Austria, Germany, 3 (Portugal) 10 (Belgium H

2002 (Denmark, Greece (France)

(Austria,

Belgium, Greece & Switzerland) & the UK) >

& Norway) Finland, France ^

& Spain) q

_ X

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

19

Conclusions

While there is a vigorous debate in the literature over whether democra cies do and should have SRAS, the results presented in this study show that most democracies do not have SRAS. This is true whether democ

racy is measured through its procedures via the Polity dataset or whether it is measured with the civil and political rights measures of the Freedom

House dataset. It is also true for Western democracies. These empirical results strongly indicate that SRAS, no matter which operationalization of the concept one uses, is not necessary for a functioning democracy or liberal democracy.

Furthermore, some of these operationalizations of SRAS allow for substantial GIR. For instance, based on the exclusion of ideals defini tion, a state can do all of the following and still be considered to have SRAS:

Give preference to some religions over others, as long as no single religion is singled out for special status. Have a general policy of regulating all religious institutions to the same extent that it regulates other political and social institutions, even if the government is generally hostile to all such institutions. Place practical restrictions on some religious institutions or denominations.

Engage in as many as five of the 16 types of religious discrimination

against minority religions in the RAS dataset (less if some of these individual types of religious discrimination are applied widely or in their more extreme form). Significantly regulate all religions, including the majority religion (or just the majority religion). This can include up to 10 of the 11 types of

religious regulation included in the RAS dataset, though less if some of these types of regulation exist in their more extreme forms.

Legislate any or all of the 23 types of religious legislation included in the RAS dataset that are not on the list of 10 types of religious legis lation that specifically violate the exclusion of ideals standard for SRAS.

Even based on this extremely forgiving operational definition of SRAS, most democracies do not have SRAS, either in 1990 or 2002. This includes most Western democracies, which tend to be considered liberal democ racies. Given this, it is clear that either SRAS is not a necessary element of liberal democracy, or that many of those states considered to be lib eral democracies do not, in fact, fulfill the criteria to be included in this

category.

However, this study also shows that no democracy goes beyond a certain point of GIR. Thus, the major difference between democracies

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20 Jonathan Fox

and non-democracies is not the presence of SRAS but rather an upper limit on GIR.

Given the above conclusions, it is necessary to rethink the debate over the link between democracy and SRAS. It is difficult to argue that a

democracy, or even a liberal democracy, requires SRAS to function, as

many in fact do just that, despite not having SRAS by any of the opera tional definitions used in this study, which include some very forgiving standards. It is even arguable that these results speak to the normative debate over whether democracies ought to have SRAS. That is, most democracies do not have SRAS and seem to function well enough; con

sequently, SRAS is not a necessary trait for liberal democracies.

However, as Mazie (2004) points out, there are some forms of GIR that violate the principles of liberal democracy more than others. For

instance, restrictions on the practice of minority religions are a far less

acceptable feature than the funding of religious institutions. Given this and the results of this study, our understanding of the role of religion in

democracy would be better served by inquiries into which forms of GIR are compatible with democracy and which are not, than by inquiries into the definition of SRAS and which states have it.

Notes

1 For a more complete discussion and critique of this theory see, among others, Fox

(2002: 31-64) and Wilson (1982). 2 For more on this debate see Dalacoura (2000: 879), Lewis (1993: 96-98), Stepan

(2000: 46-49), Esposito and Piscatori (1991), Fuller (2002) and Hefner (2001: 494). 3 I use the descriptions provided by Madeley (2003a) of these definitions of SRAS but

it should be noted that Madeley's discussion is based on Raz (1986). 4 For more details see Jaggers and Gurr (1995) and the Polity project Web home page

at http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htm. 5 It should be noted that the Freedom House measure includes religious freedom as

one of its components, so there are some minor issues of covariance with the RAS

variables, especially the religious discrimination variable.

6 See, for example, Midlarsky (1998) and Fisch (2002). 7 For the purposes of this analysis, Western democracies include Western Europe, North

America, Australia and New Zealand.

8 The phrasing of these clauses varies. They include statements such as bans on declar

ing a religion, declarations that there is no official religion, and declarations that the

state is a secular one.

9 For more details see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm. I selected this variable

over others like the UN's human development index and birth mortality because it

was available for more states. However, the results based on these other measures of

economic development are similar to those for log-per-capita-GDP. 10 This category includes Christian denominations that do not fit into any of the other

categories, states where no one Christian denomination is in the majority, and states

where information on denomination is unavailable or unclear.

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

21

11 A variable measuring the "other" category in the religious population variable is not

necessary because the variables for Catholic, other Christian and Islam, when used

together, effectively control for this final category. 12 See, for example, Minkenberg (2002) and Norris and Inglehart (2004), who provide

extensive references to this literature.

13 This variable is taken from Barro and McCleary (2003) and measures religious diver

sity in 2000. As religious diversity does not change significantly over short periods of time, using this variable for the years 1990 and 2000 is not problematic.

14 For a more complete discussion of this finding see Fox (2006). 15 For a further discussion of the supply-side theory of religion see, among others, Nor

ris and Inglehart (2004), Chaves and Cann (1992) and Stark and Iannaccone (1994).

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Stepan, Alfred. 2000. "Religion, Democracy, and the 'Twin Tolerations.'" Journal of

Democracy 11(4): 37-56.

Wilson, Bryan R. 1982. Religion in Sociological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Appendix A: The RAS Variables

There are seven RAS variables used in this study. More detailed descrip tions of these variables, as well as reliability tests for them, are provided in Fox (2006). The first variable, official support, measures government support for religion on the following scale:

0. No support. 1. Supportive: The state supports all religions more or less equally. 2. Cooperation: The state falls short of endorsing a particular religion

but certain religions benefit from state support more than others. (Such support can be monetary or legal.)

3. Civil religion: While the state does not officially endorse a religion, one religion serves unofficially as the state's civil religion.

4. The state has more than one official religion. 5. The state has one official religion.

The second variable, which complements the first, is official hostility, which measures government hostility to religion on the following scale:

0. No hostility. 1. Separationist: Official SRAS, and the state is slightly hostile toward

religion. 2. Inadvertent Insensitivity: There is little distinction between regulation

of religious and other types of institutions. 3. Hostile: Hostility and overt prosecution of all religions.

The purpose of these two variables is to measure the official relationship between religion and state. They are based on a measure developed by Durham (1996) that, to my knowledge, was never collected. The vari ables (not the concepts of tolerance and hostility) are mutually exclusive in that it is not possible for both of the variables to be coded as above zero at the same time. While many states support some religions while

being hostile to others, these two variables do not reflect this because

they focus on the treatment of the majority religion in a state rather than the treatment of all religions. This is because states that support any reli

gion are not hostile to the concept of religion. This is a critical dis tinction that differentiates states such as Saudi Arabia, which supports

Wahabbi Sunni Islam and is hostile to all other religions, and states like North Korea, which is hostile to all religions. The treatment of minority religions is assessed in a separate variable.

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24 Jonathan Fox

The third variable, general restrictions, measures whether the state in general restricts religious practices. It is measured on the following scale:

0. No (other) religions are illegal and there are no significant restric tions on (other) religions.

1. No (other) religions are illegal but some or all (other) religions have

practical limitations placed upon them. 2. No (other) religions are illegal but some or all (other) religions have

legal limitations placed upon them. 3. Some (other) religions are illegal. 4. All (other) religions are illegal.

The word "other" is in parentheses because states with preferred reli

gions will restrict other religions but states with no preferred religion may restrict all religions.

The fourth variable, religious discrimination, measures restrictions that are placed on the practice of religion by minority religions but not the majority religion in a state. It includes 16 specific types of discrim

ination; each of the following restrictions is coded on the following scale:

0. Not significantly restricted for any. 1. The activity is slightly restricted for some minorities. 2. The activity is slightly restricted for most or all minorities or sharply

restricted for some of them. 3. The activity is prohibited or sharply restricted for most or all minorities.

The results are then totalled to result in a composite variable that ranges between 0 and 48. A full listing of the components of this variable, as well as the components of the next two variables, can be found in Fox

(2006). I weight each component in this measure equally (and do the same

for the measures described below) not because I feel that each is equally important. Rather, it is because there is unlikely to be any consensus as

to the weight that should be given to each of these 16 measures. Given

this, the most transparent option is to weight each equally. As each com

ponent variable is coded separately, others who wish to weight them dif

ferently will be able to do so. The fifth variable, religious regulation, measures whether the gov

ernment regulates all religions or the majority religion. It includes 11

separate components, each of which is coded on the following scale:

0. No restrictions. 1. Slight restrictions including practical restrictions or the government

engages in this activity rarely and on a small scale.

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"Do Democracies Have Separation of Religion and State? "

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2. Significant restrictions including practical restrictions or the govern ment engages in this activity occasionally and on a moderate scale.

3. The activity is illegal or the government engages in this activity often and on a large scale.

The results are then totalled to result in a composite variable that ranges between zero and 33.

The sixth variable, religious legislation, examines whether the gov ernment legislates religious precepts as law. It includes 33 individual types of laws, each if which is coded as one if such a law exists in a state.

While there are 33 components to this variable, the optional and manda

tory religious education components are mutually exclusive. Thus, when

totalled, this measure ranges from zero to 32. The final measure, General GIR, is a composite measure of the above

six variables. It provides an approximate measure of the overall relation

ship between religion and state. I re-scaled each of the above variables to measure from zero to 20. For example, religious legislation, which ranges from zero to 32, is divided by 32 then multiplied by 20. Since official support and official hostility cannot both be greater than zero at the same

time, the resulting scale ranges from zero to 100. I weight each of these measures equally for the same reasons as described above for weighting the individual components of these measures equally.

It is certainly arguable that the qualitative differences in the phenom ena measured by the components of this variable make combining them

problematic. I do not dispute that this objection has some validity, but I

argue that the advantages to using this measure outweigh the disadvan

tages. Each individual measure looks at a limited aspect of GIR and does not present the entire picture. By combining these diverse measures, I

create a variable that arguably provides a more accurate assessment of GIR. Also, since most of the tests performed in this study are also per formed on each of the individual measures, those who disagree with this decision are able to evaluate the impact of these individual measures.

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