Feed the Church, starve the party? Church-state relations and religious political mobilisation in 21 Catholic-majority countries

This contribution examines the effects of state religion policy on religious political mobilisation, focusing on the case of the Catholic Church in the post-Cold War era. Catholicism remains politically salient in most Catholic-majority societies, but the presence and success of parties that explici...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religion, state & society
Main Author: Mantilla, Luis Felipe (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge [2019]
In: Religion, state & society
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B RAS Round 3 dataset / Catholic church / Majority / State / Party (law) / Catholic / Political participation
RelBib Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
CG Christianity and Politics
KDB Roman Catholic Church
Further subjects:B Religious parties
B Catholic Church
B religion and state dataset
B State Religion Policy
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Description
Summary:This contribution examines the effects of state religion policy on religious political mobilisation, focusing on the case of the Catholic Church in the post-Cold War era. Catholicism remains politically salient in most Catholic-majority societies, but the presence and success of parties that explicitly mobilise Catholicism in the electoral arena varies enormously. In addition, Catholic-majority countries display a wide variety of institutional arrangements governing the relationship between religion and state. This contribution presents a theoretical framework for analysing the effect of these institutions on the performance of political parties that seek to mobilise religion. Relying on a dataset that covers 137 elections in 21 Catholic-majority countries as well as key measures from the Religion and State (RAS) dataset, this contribution shows that countries with higher levels of state regulation of religion and friendlier religion-state relations are more likely to host parties that mobilise religion; it also suggests that funding for the Catholic Church may constrain such parties.
ISSN:1465-3974
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion, state & society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2018.1533296