Religious Freedom in Theory and Practice

This study uses the Religion and State round 2 (RAS2) dataset to examine the presence of religious freedom in 177 countries. There are many different conceptions of the meaning of religious freedom but they can be divided into two categories, those which focus on the free exercise of religion—that is the right to practice religion and maintain religious institutions—and those which focus on treating all religions equally, also known as the level playing field model. The results show that neither form of religious freedom is common even among democracies and states which have constitutional clauses protecting religious freedom. This finding has serious implications for our understanding of the nature of liberal democracy.