Which Countries Have State Religions?

Citation:

Barro, Robert J., and Rachel M. McCleary. 2005. “Which Countries Have State Religions?”. Copy at http://www.tinyurl.com/y6zx4re4
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Date Published:

Feb 1, 2005

Abstract:

For 188 independent countries in 2000, 72 had no state religion in 2000, 1970, and 1900; 58 had a state religion at all three dates; and 58 had some kind of transition. Among the 58 transitional countries, 12 had 2 transitions, 4 of which (former Soviet Republics in Asia) involved different forms of state religion. We use a Hotelling-type spatial competition model with a distribution of religion preferences to think about when the religion market would be monopolized. In this model, we can assess how changes in exogenous variables affect the likelihood of monopoly. We argue that these predictions carry over to a political setting in which the government decides whether to institute a state religion.

Notes:

Last updated on 07/25/2016