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Measuring Church and State: Religion, Culture, and the Impact on Democracy

This paper argues that the relationship between democracy and the separation of religion and state needs to be reexamined. Previous studies have misconceptualized the impact a lack of religion-state separation can have on democracy, or have taken a narrow focus by concentrating on specific cases or sectarian groups. I argue that by comparing different indexes that measure the separation of religion and state then the most relevant indicators for the social aspects of religion-state separation that impacts democracy can be identified. This focus addresses the questions of what indicators best conceptualize different dimensions of the separation of religion and state, and what relationship these indicators have with levels of democracy. I utilize a dataset measuring religious regulation covering 175 countries for the year 2002 to test my argument.