Abstract
Most assume that when governments support a religion, they do so in the hope that they will increase their legitimacy. However, a growing literature implies that support for religion may decrease a government's legitimacy for three reasons. First, political secularism, an ideology mandating the separation of religion and state or state restrictions on religion, is increasingly popular. Second, state support for religion can undermine religious vitality. Third, support for religion entails an element of government control over religion which can undermine the perceived authenticity of a religion. We test this support-legitimacy relationship in Christian-majority countries from 1990 to 2014 using the Religion and State and World Values Survey data, comprising 54 countries and 126 country years. We find that state support for religion is associated with lower levels of individual confidence in government. We posit this has important implications for our understanding of the underpinnings of legitimacy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1395-1409 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | American Political Science Review |
| Volume | 117 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 7 Nov 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association.
Funding
The second category is funding for religion, which includes policies such as governments funding religious schools or providing grants to religious organizations. Countries have a range of policies regarding the financial support of religious institutions. For instance, in the United States, the constitution prohibits the direct funding of religious institutions by taxpayers. In contrast, a number of countries in Europe, like Austria, Denmark, and Germany, provide funding for churches with taxes paid by the public (Masci 2019).21 In Russia, the Orthodox Church has been the primary beneficiary of presidential grants in recent years (Brechenmacher 2017). Funding has a negative and statistically significant relationship with confidence in government and parliament.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| German–Israel Foundation | 1291-119.4/2015 |
| John Templeton Foundation | |
| Israel Science Foundation | 23/14 |
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