How Religion Influenced Public Policy.

Minkenberg
COMPARATIVE/ RELIGION
POLITICAL
ANDSTUDIES
PUBLIC POLICY
/ March 2002
This article addresses the relationship between religion and politics in liberal democracies from
a public policy angle. The analysis shows that contrary to the general secularization thesis, there
is a visible religious impact on public policy, but it varies according to what measure of secular-
ization is used. Confessional heritage (Catholicism versus Protestantism) and cultural values
(levels of religiosity) are better predictors than institutional differentiation or political mobiliza-
tion. When confessional heritage is held constant, the institutional impact increases. It is not sur-
prising that Catholic countries produce less than fully liberal abortion policies, but the most
restrictive abortion policies are found in those Catholic countries where high levels of religiosity
persist. Moreover, a strong presence of religious parties is not associated with restrictive abor-
tion policies, but in all countries with moderate to high levels of religiosity and with strong Chris-
tian Democratic parties and only there, moderate or “distress” models of abortion exist.
RELIGION AND PUBLIC POLICY

Institutional, Cultural, and Political Impact
on the Shaping of Abortion Policies
in Western Democracies
MICHAEL MINKENBERG
Europa-Universität Viadrina
T he interaction of religion and politics has once again become a chal-

lenging issue in the social sciences. Earlier predictions of the decline of
religion in a secularized world notwithstanding, there is a wealth of literature
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Earlier versions of this article have been presented at the European Con-
sortium of Political Research (ECPR) joint sessions of workshops in Copenhagen in April 2000
and at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in Washington,
D.C., in September 2000. The author wishes to thank Stefano Bartolini and the European Uni-
versity Institute in Fiesole, Italy, for the opportunity to conduct research and write parts of this
article. The author also expresses his thanks to all participants in the ECPR workshop “Church
and State in Europe” and on the APSA panel “The Family and the State,” to the four anonymous
Comparative Political Studies reviewers, to Peter Katzenstein and the graduate students at the
Department of Government of Cornell University, and to John Madeley at the London School of
Economics for helpful comments.
COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 35 No. 2, March 2002 221-247
© 2002 Sage Publications
221
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222 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / March 2002
on religion’s political impact, most notably in the fields of electoral and party
research and political sociology. In recent years, this literature has been
enriched by a theoretical debate about the concept of secularization and the
usefulness of rational choice approaches in the study of religion (see Gorski,
2000). This article addresses these issues from another angle. Instead of
examining the decline or persistence of religious values or the input of reli-
gion into political behavior, the focus here is, in the context of Western
democracies, on the input of religious values and institutions into substantive
policy areas. The perspective of this article is derived from the intersection of
three questions: Do institutions matter? Does religion matter? Does politics
matter? Thus the article follows a shift in public policy research from an
emphasis on levels of socioeconomic development to one on more political
variables such as differences between dominant party traditions and between
contrasting governmental structures. In addition, it emphasizes cultural vari-
ables that have only recently received more attention (see Castles, 1993,
1998; Schmidt, 1997).
A major study of modernization and new social movements concluded
that the liberalization of abortion is a manifestation of a comprehensive and
long-lasting secularization process (Rucht, 1994). By contrast with general
secularization theories implicit in this thesis, this article argues that there is a
visible religious impact on public policy but that it varies according to what
measure of secularization is used. The article attempts to test whether cul-
tural heritage (Catholicism versus Protestantism) and cultural differences
(levels of religiosity) are better predictors than variation in institutional dif-
ferentiation or political mobilization. In other words, is religion’s influence
on public policy culturally path dependent, as a values-oriented approach
might suggest, or is it the consequence of political design and behavior, as
implied in rational-choice approaches? Relevant policy areas include welfare
state regimes, the rules governing minority religions, and more specifically,
education policy and family policy. Of course, religious interests may also
play a role in other policy fields such as foreign affairs or environmental pro-
tection. But very few policy areas involve religious and moral values and
interests as deeply and visibly and are as hotly contested as abortion. More-
over, abortion policies vary considerably across Western democracies, hence
the article’s focus on this particular policy area.
The article is organized into five parts. First, the role of religion in recent
public policy literature is reviewed and an attempt is made to provide a theo-
retical anchoring of the major argument. Then the problem of identifying
classificatory types among the variety of abortion policies is tackled. Third,
variations in the institutional arrangement of church-state relations are

Minkenberg / RELIGION AND PUBLIC POLICY 223
operationalized and their effects on abortion policies analyzed. Fourth, the

cultural impact of religion is assessed using the confessional composition of
the countries or their “cultural inheritance” and levels of religiosity. Finally,
political parties—Christian democratic or otherwise religious—as major
actors in the policy-making process are included in the analysis. The selec-
tion of country cases rests on a most similar systems design on a global scale,
the criteria of which being whether a country is a consolidated democracy
with a high ranking on a variety of democracy scales, has a Western or Latin
Christian religious heritage, and has reached a high level of socioeconomic
development, that is, a gross national product of at least $10,000 per capita in
the late 1990s (see Fischer Weltalmanach, 1999; Lijphart, 1999; Schmidt,
2000).
RELIGION AND PUBLIC POLICY

IN THE MODERN WORLD
If politics is understood as “authoritative allocations of values” (Easton,

1965, p. 24), these values clearly include more than goods and services as
measured in public expenditures. It is true that “money is not all there is to
policy, but there is little policy without it” (Klingemann, Hofferbert, &
Budge, 1994, p. 41). But the literature’s usual focus on quantifiable policy
outputs often leads to the ignoring of a wide realm of government action and
outputs that shape society as much as spending levels. It is worth remember-
ing that Almond and Powell (1978) distinguished four kinds of public poli-
cies: policies of extraction, policies of distribution, policies of regulation, and
symbolic policies. The former two largely involve money in terms of taxation
and spending. It is the third type, the regulation of individuals and groups in
the society by the political system, along with the fourth that are of special
interest here. Many of the domains that Almond and Powell attributed to the
type of regulatory policies (such as family relations, personal conduct, pro-
tection of the person, and religious activities) belonged historically, at least in
the Western, premodern world, to the domain of the churches and religion
instead of the secular state.
During the past few decades, the importance of regulatory and symbolic
or, more generally, nonmaterial policies has increased as a result of various
trends in Western democracies. They include both socioeconomic changes
such as urbanization and postindustrialization and sociocultural changes
such as the spread of mass education and the phenomenon of “value change”
(see Inglehart, 1990). They signify an era that elsewhere has been character-

ized as “postmodernity” or as “reflexive modernity,” defined not as an oppo-

site to modernity but an increasingly self-reflecting, self-critical modernity
in which cultural orientations, a heightened awareness of crises, the primacy
of the Lebenswelt, and the central role of education, language, and communi-
cation dominate, in short processes of further individualization, pluraliza-
tion, and loss of authority (see Beck, 1986; Inglehart, 1997; Münch, 1998). In
this context, quality-of-life issues and related policies, such as education pol-
icy, abortion, and other aspects of family policy; religious freedom; and
immigration and naturalization policies, gain importance. In other words, in
the context of “postmodernity,” personal concerns are increasingly public,
and thus public policy, concerns (see Castles, 1998, p. 248).
Thus a closer look at the relationship between religion and public policy
seems relevant, but most comparative public policy literature ignores reli-
gious or cultural variables and tends to concentrate instead on the question of
whether politics or economics matter (see Nelson, 1998). Only a few major
studies include religion, but then only marginally and not in a manner that dif-
ferentiates between various manifestations of religion. For example, Esping-
Andersen (1990) distinguished three welfare state regimes that roughly cor-
respond with Protestant and Catholic traditions, that is, the liberal regimes of
the successor states of the British empire, the conservative regimes of Conti-
nental Western Europe, and the social-democratic regimes of Scandinavia.
But in his empirical analyses, the religious factor appears only in terms of the
existence of a Catholic party. In contrast, van Kersbergen (1995) focused on
one type of welfare state only and analyzes the influence of Christian Demo-
cratic parties and traditions. Castles (1993, 1998) took these approaches one
step further in his “families of nations” concept. He recognized that “since
religion defines both the cultural appropriateness of beliefs and behavior,
religious differences are clearly relevant to policies concerning education
and personal conduct” (Castles, 1998, p. 53). But these “religious differ-
ences” are identified only by a narrow range of variables: Christian Demo-
cratic incumbency, Catholicism, and Catholic cultural impact, the last being a
dichotomous summary measure of the first two. This operationalization
treats different religious traditions as “Catholic cultural impact” (as in
Germany or, for that matter, Orthodox Greece), ignores links between non-
Christian Democratic conservative parties and the established churches (as in
the United Kingdom), and does not take into account the issue of laïcité, that
is, a strict regime of church-state separation, which decisively delimits any
Catholic impact (as in France). Thus it is problematic that France, Germany,
and Greece along with Italy and Austria belong to the category of nations
with a Catholic cultural impact.

The following analysis applies a more nuanced operationalization of reli-

gion’s independent effects on public policy. Measures of this impact are
derived from the current debate on secularization theory, which, in fact,
encompasses a number of theories. In its most well-known version, as
advanced by Max Weber and other sociologists, this theory posits the decline
of religious worldviews in the age of modernity and the shrinking signifi-
cance of religion in public life. Other variants predicted religion’s complete
disappearance (Comte), its privatization (Luckmann), or its transformation,
that is, an institutional decline coupled with a diffusion and persistence of
Christian values in the Western world (Parsons) (see Gorski, 2000; see also
Casanova, 1994; Martin, 1978). The secularization paradigm has recently
been attacked by a school of scholars promoting a rational-choice or an “eco-
nomics of religion” model (Gorski, 2000). Based on data of religious partici-
pation in the United States or individual religious beliefs, these scholars
advanced a supply-side argument to explain church attendance or church
strength in particular and secularization in general (see, for example,
Iannaccone, 1991; Stark & Iannaccone, 1994). For example, Iannaccone
pointed out that religious competition that flourishes most under conditions
of low to zero regulation by the state stimulates interest in churches because
these are forced to adjust to changing market forces. This approach takes its
inspiration from Adam Smith and argues that self-interest motivates the
clergy and other religious “providers” just as much as it motivates secular
producers and that market forces affect churches as much as they do secular
firms (Iannaccone, 1991).
Clearly, there is significant evidence against general theories of secular-
ization that depict a straight-line decline in the significance of religion,
although the supply siders’ argument of an upswing of religion in the modern
age is equally debatable (see Bruce, 1999; Gorski, 2000). Recent global stud-
ies on modernization and cultural change demonstrated the persistence of
religious values even in Europe, where adherence to the institutions of reli-
gion has dramatically decreased in the postwar period. This is so because
“cultural change [is] path dependent. Economic development tends to bring
pervasive cultural changes, but the fact that a society was historically shaped
by Protestantism or Confucianism or Islam leaves a cultural heritage with
enduring effects that influence subsequent development” (Inglehart & Baker,
2000, p. 49). Thus although the general secularization thesis may apply to the
industrial age, the current emergence of postmodern societies seems not to
have perpetuated this trend (see also Inglehart, 1997). Moreover, in the tran-
sition toward postmodernity and globalization, a “deprivatization” of reli-
gion has occurred, a new entry of churches into the public sphere that com-

bines the religious message with a defense of modern universalistic values

and liberal democracy or a “transformation of the church from a state-ori-
ented to a society-oriented institution” (Casanova, 1994, p. 220).
In sum, secularization theory’s core claim of an ongoing differentiation of
religious and nonreligious values and institutions remains valid (Casanova,
1994). It represents a variant of theories of rationalization and modernization
that postulates a continuing functional differentiation of modern societies
along with a growing autonomy of the self or individualization (Rucht, 1994;
Weber, 1920). But this modernization process reflects separate “moments of
secularization” (Casanova) that must be clearly distinguished: secularization
as “institutional differentiation,” in particular the separation of state and
church and the growing autonomy of churches in a liberal democracy, and
secularization as “individual disenchantment,” that is, the loosening ties of
the individual to the values and institutions of religion. Usually, the pluraliza-
tion within the realm of organized religion is also seen as an aspect of secular-
ization triggered by the Protestant Reformation, which initially, however, led
to institutional de-differentiation in the “alliance of throne and altar” (see
Casanova, 1994; Martin, 1978). In this light, the supply siders’ argument that
political deregulation enhances religious vitality employs one meaning of
secularization, that of institutional differentiation, to refute another one, that
of a decline of religious beliefs and practices.
However the point of this article is not to show whether and how institu-
tional differentiation affects religiosity or vice versa but whether any of them
affect political outputs across various political systems and, if so, by how
much. From the preceding discussion, a supply-side or rational-choice argu-
ment might be advanced that political deregulation, that is, strict separation
of church and state, has a particularly strong impact on abortion policy. In
contrast, the cultural or values-oriented approach, which postulates a persist-
ing influence of confessional values, would suggest a differential effect on
abortion policies of the contrast between Catholic and Protestant societies.
As a variant on the cultural approach, stressing the importance of religiosity
leads to an expectation that disenchantment predicts abortion policies better
than institutional differentiation or confessional heritage. Finally, a narrowly
political argument might hypothesize that the presence and strength of reli-
giously oriented parties, especially Christian Democratic parties, should be
particularly consequential.
One might argue that other political actors must also be included, most
notably, the Catholic churches and women’s movements, which often hold
diametrically opposed views on abortion and related issues. Clearly
churches, like political parties, are independent actors and can be studied as
interest groups (see Warner, 2000), but in this article, they are conceptualized

as institutions acting via the institutionalized relation they have with the state
and as interest groups acting via the political parties. Women’s movements
will also be excluded from the current exercise on the grounds that unlike
churches or Christian Democratic parties, they cannot be modeled as a reli-
gious variable. Moreover, comparative research on women’s movements and
the abortion issue shows that the evidence of the relationship between the
movements’ strength and resources and the outcome is inconclusive. The
movements were important in putting the issue on the agenda but, compared
with other factors, left few traces in the actual making of policy (see Rucht,
1994, especially p. 172; Yishai, 1993; see also M. F. Katzenstein & Mueller,
1987).
POLICY OUTPUT: ABORTION POLICIES

IN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES
The abortion conflict involves a clash of values or even of “absolutes”

(Tribe, 1992) that counter poses an individual woman’s self-determination
and the protection of unborn human life. In the political realm, the confronta-
tion between feminists’ insistence on a woman’s absolute freedom of repro-
ductive choice and the Catholic and, to a lesser extent, Protestant churches’
insistence on the absolute priority of human life (which includes the fetus’s
right after conception) has been met by a variety of authoritative responses
from governments and states. On a worldwide scale in the early 1990s, 133
states regulated abortion but only 18 of them practiced abortion on request
(Yishai, 1993).
In general and following these remarks, abortion policies can be classified
according to their degree of “liberalism,” that is, the priority given to the prin-
ciple of individual choice. If this principle outweighs the principle of the
sanctity of human life, including unborn life, these policies are considered
liberal; if the priority of the principles is reversed, they are considered restric-
tive. The problem with such a simple dichotomy is that it obscures important
distinctions as well as other dimensions that are useful in distinguishing abor-
tion policies. Thus in an innovate approach, Yishai’s (1993) analysis pro-
ceeded in terms of two dimensions, arguing that there are two logically unre-
lated aspects of the issue: individual choice and the state’s commitment to
allowing this choice. According to this classification scheme, each abortion
policy in any country falls into one of four categories: an enabling policy in
which abortion is allowed strictly on the basis of a woman’s subjective con-
sideration and the state provides the means, through funding and health care,
to implement the abortion (Sweden); a hindering policy in which individual

choice is principally acknowledged and largely unrestricted but the state is

not committed to enabling a woman to act on her decision (United States); an
intrusive policy that restricts individual choice but allows the implementation
by state means of whatever choice is available (Israel); and a restrictive policy
in which neither individual choice nor state assistance to implement a deci-
sion exist (Ireland).
This classification certainly has advantages because, for example, it draws
attention to a distinction between similarly liberal cases such as Sweden and
the United States that nonetheless diverge sharply in the state’s role in
enabling a woman to implement her decision. It also raises fundamental
questions about the meaning of principles in practical politics. However,
there are a number of problems with it. First, it puts too much emphasis on the
state’s role in enabling women to pursue their choice as opposed to the role of
society or the market. Second, in relation to the first point, it confuses two dif-
ferent policy areas, that of abortion and that of health care. It is not so much
the importance of the different interpretations of individual choice that sepa-
rates Sweden and the United States but the privatization of health care in the
United States and the entirely different role of the state in Swedish politics
and society. Third, it creates an odd category, with Israel as a case, of a gro-
tesque mix of policy elements in which choice is restricted but enabling
means are provided without discussing whether this is a truly exceptional
case or a category into which other countries might also fall.
Therefore this article employs the aspect of individual choice as the pri-
mary criterion but allows for a more nuanced classification. For example,
Eser (1994) distinguishes among three types of abortion legislation along a
continuum between a pole characterized by the priority of individual choice
and a pole at which abortion is illegal and individual choice is replaced by
various “exceptions”: the period model (Fristenmodell auf Selbstbestim-
mungsbasis in the original), that is, unlimited individual choice within a
legally defined period, is contrasted by the indication model (Indika-
tionsmodell auf Drittbeurteilungsbasis) in which abortion is declared per-
mitted only as an exception based on legal criteria and others’ (usually physi-
cians’) judgment if these criteria are met. Somewhat in between is a distress
model (Notlagenmodell auf Selbsteinschätzungsbasis), whereby a woman
can claim a situation of social or otherwise defined distress (Eser, 1994).
Clearly, the first model is a rather liberal approach because it acknowledges a
woman’s reproductive rights: It is her exclusive right to decide whether to ter-
minate her pregnancy within a certain time span (usually the third trimester),
without having to give special reasons. On the other hand, the indication
model is a very restrictive policy because abortion is declared a crime and
therefore punishable. Only under certain circumstances not decided by the

Table 1
A Typology of Abortion Policies
Period Model Distress Model Indication Model
Denmark Belgium Australia

Norway France
Sweden Italy Portugal
The Netherlands Spain
a
Canada Austria Switzerland
Finland Germany
a
United States New Zealand
a a
United Kingdom Ireland
Liberal Restrictive
Source: Eser, 1994; Eser and Koch, 1988; International Planned Parenthood Federation, 2000;
Rolston and Eggert, 1994; Rucht, 1994; Yishai, 1993; Sachdev, 1988.
Note: The classification is based on the following criteria: inauguration date of current ruling,
the ruling’s underlying principle, the model as applied in practice, the restriction to certain peri-
ods of pregnancy, the existence and length of waiting periods, the existence of compulsory coun-
seling, the location of the abortion practice as allowed under the ruling, and uniformity of the rul-
ing. Information on public funding is not included in the list of criteria. For details, see appendix
in Minkenberg (2000).
a. In these countries, practice diverges sharply from the legal principle: Ireland does not even
have an indication model, but theoretically, a legal abortion based on a “vital indication” is possi-
ble. In current British and New Zealand practice, the abortion policy follows the logic of a dis-
tress model, whereas the Canadian Supreme Court declared the indication model of 1969 illegal,
thereby allowing a very liberal practice.
woman but by doctors or other experts who determine the “indications” are
exceptions allowed and the woman exempted from criminal charges. The
woman’s choice is second to null; counseling is usually mandatory. Finally,
the distress model emphasizes the priority of the unborn life but leaves the
final decision up to the woman. Here also, counseling is usually compulsory,
there are waiting periods, and it is made clear that abortions are granted only
exceptionally. The woman has to give special reasons for her decision to ter-
minate her pregnancy and claim a situation of distress. Where the final deci-
sion is only hers, variants of this model can be classified as moderately lib-
eral. With the exception of Ireland, the abortion policies in all Western
democracies fall into one of the three categories (see Table 1).
When considering the variation of abortion policies and strictly political
institutions or variables, such as the type of democracy (consensus versus
majoritarian democracy), party system (multiparty versus two-party system),
federalism, or judicial review (see Lijphart, 1999), no identifiable patterns
emerge. One might argue that the distress model is somewhat associated with
consensus democracy in which the existence of multiparty systems and other

factors mediate “extreme approaches” (see Lijphart, 1999, p. 284). One

might hypothesize a particularly strong impact of religious or secular parties
in two-party systems, other things being equal. However, taking into account
federalism and judicial review in the United States and Germany, other things
are equal but the results are not. Both countries are federal systems and have
the most independent constitutional court and judicial review systems. But
whereas in the United States, the Supreme Court issued a very liberal rule in
1973 (somewhat restricted in the 1989 decision), in Germany just a few years
later, the Constitutional Court overturned liberal legislation in 1975 and
issued a restrictive rule (somewhat loosened in 1995). This direct German-
American comparison suggests that factors other than those of political insti-
tutions are at work, and to these the remainder of the article will now turn.
DO INSTITUTIONS MATTER? THE COMPLEX WEB

OF CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS
Structural approaches and typologies of church-state relations tend to be

based on a combination of institutional links on one hand and the degree of
secularization or the confessional mix in the respective nations on the other.
A large variety of descriptive-analytical terms has been generated by the lit-
erature, but the terms can be grouped into families of concepts. One family,
under the influence of Weber (1922/1974), classifies church-state relations
according to the degree of legitimacy of political and religious authority,
whereas another derives its criteria from the conception of the state in a lib-
eral democracy and the extent and nature of the state’s neutrality toward reli-
gion (see Esbeck, 1994; Monsma & Soper, 1997). Yet another family uses as
a yardstick the legal recognition of churches and denominations, in particu-
lar, the extent of discrimination or privilege (Messner, 1999) or the degree of
constitutional separation and laïcité (Barbier, 1995; see also Zylberberg,
1995). In light of this article’s argument, two dimensions of the debate can be
distinguished, one empirical and the other normative. On one hand, numer-
ous empirical studies tend to be case-study based and highly legalistic. For
example, an influential volume in the field lists descriptively, country by
country, many legal aspects of church-state relations as they have evolved
during the past decades in member states of the European Union (Robbers,
1996). On the other hand, many texts continue explicitly to raise the question
of the desirability of a strict separation and its implications for civil rights and
democracy. Some argue for a particular form of “positive neutrality” toward
religion on behalf of the state (Monsma & Soper, 1997), whereas others
employ measures of legal aspects and public policy outputs in arguing a

legalistic case in defense of the French tradition of laïcité (Messner, 1999; see
also Barbier, 1995; Zylberberg, 1995).
All of these approaches are characterized by the fact that they either are
built on a single dimension (or a small number of interrelated indicators) or
involve a broad variety of indicators but do not sufficiently distinguish
between independent and dependent variables in the church-state relation-
ship or the difference between the institutional arrangement itself and its
political corollaries. For the purpose of comparative political analysis, a more
robust operationalization is required that would involve the identification of
political, economic, and legal criteria while avoiding mere historical or insti-
tutional accounts. Instead of being legalistic, normative, or case-study ori-
ented, the approach should be empirical, analytical, and comparative.
A first step toward a concept that satisfies these criteria is provided by
Chaves and Cann (1992). In contrast to Iannaccone’s supply-side approach
and his focus on the relationship between Protestant concentration and
church attendance rates (which showed a strong correlation but ignored
Catholic countries; see above and Iannaccone, 1991), Chaves and Cann
argued with de Tocqueville that the theoretical focus needs to be adjusted
toward political aspects:
Like Smith, [de Tocqueville] focused on the separation of church and state, but
he highlighted the political rather than the economic aspect of that separation:
the advantage that religion enjoys when it is not identified with a particular set
of political interests. (Chaves & Cann, 1992, p. 275)
Moreover, they suggested that regardless of the official relationship between

church and state, Catholic societies are by definition much less pluralistic in
religious terms than are Protestant societies and that different dynamics are at
work.
To overcome the problems of Iannaccone’s (1991) approach, Chaves and
Cann (1992) measured church-state relations with a six-item index of regula-
tion/deregulation that includes political, economic, and legal aspects but
excludes policy elements such as religious education in public schools. Thus
among the virtues of this index are that it avoids the problems associated with
choosing a single dichotomous distinction that counter poses church-state
separation with established religion and that it draws a clear line between the
institutional arrangement and its public policy implications, for example, in
the realm of education. The six items measure whether (a) there is a single,
officially recognized state church; (b) there is official state recognition of
some denominations but not others; (c) the state appoints or approves the
appointment of church leaders; (d) the state directly pays church personnel

Table 2
A Continuum of Church-State Relations
0 1 2 2.3a 3 4 5 6
Australia France Austria Belgium Denmark Finland

b
Canada Portugal Germany Norway Sweden
Ireland Spain Italy
The Netherlands Switzerland
New Zealand United Kingdom
United States
State-church State-church
separation fusion
(deregulation) (regulation)
Source: Chaves and Cann (1992), p. 284.
a. Mean.
b. Portugal, which is missing in Chaves and Cann’s (1992) classification, is coded 2 according to
their criteria based on Canas (1995).
salaries; (e) there is a system of ecclesiastical tax collection; and (f) the state
directly subsidizes, beyond mere tax breaks, the operation, maintenance, or
capital expenses for churches (Chaves & Cann, 1992). The result of this
index is the following distribution of countries along a 7-point scale (see
Table 2).
This distribution of 19 countries shows that there is a significant variation
of church-state relationships, even within the group of Catholic countries
such as Ireland on one hand and Belgium on the other; that is, “although
Catholic countries are uniformly non-pluralistic, they are not uniformly reg-
ulated” (Chaves & Cann, 1992, p. 283, see also Table 4). As expected, the
four Scandinavian countries, all Protestant, appear at the pole of strong state
regulation, whereas historically Catholic France and the predominantly
Protestant United States are close to each other at the pole of separation or
deregulation. It is not surprising that Germany is in the middle along with
Protestant Britain and Catholic Belgium but above the mean.1
A first attempt can now be made to look at the implications of the relation-
ship between church and state for abortion policies. For the sake of clarity, the
continuum of church-state relations has been condensed into a threefold
typology: Countries with values of 0 and 1 are classified as cases of church-
1. It might seem surprising to find Ireland at the extreme end of the separation scale, but the
powerful presence of Catholicism did not require constitutional or institutional privileges. Other
classifications such as Messner’s (1999) also list Ireland, along with France and the Netherlands,
among the “pluralist countries.”

Table 3
Abortion Policies and Church-State Relations
Separation Canada France Australia

United States The Netherlands Ireland
New Zealand
Partial establishment Austria Portugal
Belgium Spain
Germany Switzerland
Italy
United Kingdom
Full establishment Denmark
Finland
Norway
Sweden
state separation, those with values between 2 and 4 belong to the category of
partial establishment, and the rest are considered as cases of full establish-
ment. The results of the analysis are presented in Table 3.
No overall pattern emerges when abortion policies and varieties of
church-state relations are taken into account, but some clustering of the cases
is visible. In all four Scandinavian countries, which are the only ones with full
establishment, the liberal period model is applied. But the other two countries
with a period model scored lowest on the establishment scale. Thus secular-
ization as institutional differentiation by itself does not lead to a liberalization
of abortion. However, among those cases with establishment, partial or full, a
pattern is apparent. Full establishment correlates highly with the most liberal
model, whereas partial establishment corresponds with the less liberal dis-
tress or the very restrictive indication model. This suggests that where estab-
lishment exists, the interest of churches to prevent a liberal abortion ruling is
better served if churches operate somewhat independently of the state, as
deprivatized, society-oriented churches (Casanova, 1994; see above). Over-
all, Table 3 demonstrates that the institutional impact is modest to low and
that secularization as differentiation does not predict effects of religious val-
ues on public policy. In other words, contrary to some secularization theorists
(see Gorski, 2000, and above), institutional differentiation does not augur the
demise of religious influence in politics. But in contrast to expectations that
the economics of religion model might raise, the political deregulation of
religion does not much enhance religion’s impact on public policy either.

DOES RELIGION MATTER? CONFESSIONAL

COMPOSITION AND RELIGIOSITY
In light of the modest policy impact of institutional differentiation, a more

pronounced effect might be expected from a cultural modeling of religion. As
argued previously, two versions of the cultural model must be distinguished:
on one hand, the confessional composition of a country that, if at all, is the
standard variable of religion’s input in comparative public policy research;
on the other hand, levels of religiosity as another measure of a country’s cul-
tural values. In terms of the secularization argument outlined earlier, the first
might be seen as an indicator of a country’s cultural differentiation or cultural
pluralism, whereas the second points to the country’s path of secularization
as disenchantment.
Most texts that emphasize the role of confessions in a nation’s history clas-
sify countries as Catholic, Protestant, or confessionally mixed, and most of
them, as well as some of the public policy literature (see above), assert a long-
lasting influence of these cultural patterns on current policy and politics (see
Bruce, 1996; Inglehart, 1997; Martin, 1978). The following analysis is based
on a theoretically orientated categorization of countries and confessional pat-
terns as provided by Martin (1978). Martin distinguished between “crucial
events” such as the success or failure of the Reformation and the outcome of
civil wars and revolutions, on one hand, and “resultant patterns” on the other
(for example, the British, American, Russian, Calvinist, and Lutheran pat-
terns). From these, he derived five fundamental categories according to
whether a culture is Protestant and whether it is pluralistic (Martin, 1978).
Only the first three of them are of interest here: (a) cultures with a Protestant
dominance, resulting either from a lack of Catholics (the Scandinavian coun-
tries) or because Catholic minorities arrived after the pattern had been set
(England, the United States). These cultures are shaped by the principle of
the individual conscience in religion and politics and the withdrawal of the
church from attempts at dominating society independent from the state. The
other two categories of interest are as follows: (b) cultures with a Protestant
majority and substantial Catholic minorities according to the historic ratio of
60 to 40 (the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland),2 where a cultural rather
than a mere political bipolarity has emerged along with subcultural segre-
2. The emphasis is on the historic weight of the Protestant majority, not on the current propor-
tion, such as that in the Netherlands of the early 1990s where Catholics (36%) outweigh Protes-
tants (26%) and are rivaled by an equally large group of those with no church affiliation at all (see
Fischer Weltalmanach, 1999).

Table 4
Church-State Relations and Confessional Composition
Predominantly Mixed Predominantly

Protestant Protestant Catholic
Separation Australia Canada France

New Zealand The Netherlands Ireland
United States
Partial establishment United Kingdom Germany Austria
Switzerland Belgium
Italy
Portugal
Spain
Full establishment Denmark
Finland
Norway
Sweden
Source: Chaves and Cann (1992); Martin (1978).
gation; and (c) cultures with a Catholic dominance and democratic or

democratizing regimes (France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Ireland) that are
characterized by large political and social fissures, organic opposition, and
secularist dogmas. The differences between the first two types are striking:
“Whereas in Protestant societies the secular symbols of res republica [sic]
and the religious symbols converge, in Catholic societies the symbols of
Church and Republic diverge” (Martin, 1978, p. 120). Other striking differ-
ences concern the roles of education, divorce, and the individual conscience.
Historically, countries with a Catholic dominance and a sizable Protestant
minority (a reverse of the 60-40 ratio in Category 2) have not materialized.
Thus a spectrum results that is summarized in Table 4.
The confessional distribution of countries in Table 4 corresponds closely
with the ordering of countries along one of the two axes of Inglehart’s (1997)
modernism-postmodernism map, that is, the axis with the two poles of values
of survival and values of well-being, the latter pole largely consisting of pre-
dominantly Protestant countries (see Inglehart, 1997). Clearly, confessional
traditions, even in an era of progressive secularization, shape dominant val-
ues in societies. However, there seems to be no clear relationship between
confessional composition of a country and its citizens’ leanings toward more
traditional or more secular-rational concepts of authority (Inglehart, 1997).
The combined look at both the historical (cultural) and institutional (struc-

Table 5
Abortion Policies, Confessional Composition, and Church-State Relations

a a a
Predominantly Protestant United States New Zealand Australia
Denmark
Finland United Kingdom
Norway
Sweden
a a
Mixed Protestant Canada The Netherlands
Germany Switzerland
a a
Predominantly Catholic France Ireland
Austria Portugal
Belgium Spain
Italy
a. Countries with church-state separation (see Tables 2 and 3).
tural) dimensions of church-state relations underlines the observations made

previously: There is no unilinear relationship between degree of regulation or
institutional differentiation and degree of Protestantism in the countries (see
also Chaves & Cann, 1992).
When confronting the confessional map with the world of abortion poli-
cies (see Table 5), a pattern emerges that underlines the relevance of cultural
factors. The period model is applied only in countries with Protestant popula-
tions or majorities. But the opposite is not true for the restrictive indication
model, which is found in Catholic, mixed, and Protestant countries alike.
Table 5 suggests a distinct “Catholic effect,” because there is no Catholic
country in which a clearly liberal model of abortion is applied, and there is
only one predominantly Protestant country with the restrictive approach of
the indication model. In the mixed countries, no relationship is discernible.
But a closer look also demonstrates some combined effects of confes-
sional composition and of church-state relations on abortion policies. Within
the group of mixed countries, a clear separation tends to go along with a more
liberal approach, whereas a closer relationship—partial establishment—
tends to favor a more restrictive approach (see also Table 1). When consider-
ing that in addition, those Catholic countries in which the indication model
exists are also countries with rather low levels of regulation of churches (see
Table 2), the distribution suggests that the Catholic church in mixed or Catho-
lic societies is a more effective political actor when it is separated from the
state rather than somehow privileged or regulated. Within the group of pre-
dominantly Protestant countries, the reverse seems true. Although a “wall of

separation” does not entail a particular abortion model, the Protestant “state
church group” of the Nordic countries is also the one with the most liberal
abortion policies. Because an analysis of the Greek case with an orthodox
state church reveals a similar outcome (Mavrogordatos, 2000), one might
infer that highly privileged churches do not put their money into fighting for
particular policy positions that are traditionally dear to them. They instead
seem to prefer preserving their status, even by compromising on these issues.
In other words, they have ceased to be religious interest groups and have
turned into political institutions.3 Overall, Table 5 confirms the limits of a
culture-blind economics of religion approach: When confessional patterns
are introduced and held constant, the policy effects of institutional differenti-
ation increase somewhat.
One of the most relevant considerations affecting how churches operate is
level of religiosity, because high levels of religiosity assure churches high
legitimacy as political actors. Moreover, religiosity may be a better predictor
for public policy than confessional composition alone if the question of
whether a country is Catholic or Protestant is held to be less important than
whether Catholics or Protestants actually attend church or believe the teach-
ings of the church. In the following analysis, religiosity is measured by fre-
quency of churchgoing rather than by religious beliefs because it ties religi-
osity to existing institutions instead of more abstract religious concepts and
values. Data on churchgoing in the 19 countries analyzed here are taken from
the 1980s and 1990s waves of the World Values Survey (see Inglehart &
Baker, 2000; Inglehart & Minkenberg, 2000). Table 6 summarizes levels of
religiosity as measured by average rates of churchgoing in the two decades.
The pattern in Table 6, taken together with the data in Table 2, underlines
the importance of distinguishing the different dimensions of secularization.
In terms of institutional differentiation, the Scandinavian group of countries
is not secularized. But the data on religiosity (whether measured in terms of
churchgoing or in terms of religious beliefs) indicate an advanced state of
secularization as disenchantment. Quite the opposite seems true for countries
such as Ireland, Canada, Spain, and the United States, where regardless of
confessional factors, churchgoing rates or subjective religiosity is compara-
tively high and the institutional separation of church and state is rather
advanced (for data on religious beliefs, see Inglehart & Baker, 2000;
Inglehart & Minkenberg, 2000).
3. This suggests that churches can be analyzed as interest groups (see Warner, 2000), but they
do not always behave as such. They assume various roles, and in some cases, it may be more
appropriate to analyze them as parapublic institutions that link private and public sectors and act
on only a few selected policy fields (P. Katzenstein, 1987).

Table 6
Levels of Religiosity
Low Religiosity Medium Religiosity High Religiosity
Denmark (19) Austria (35) Canada (42)

Finland (12) Australia (32) Ireland (88)
France (17) Belgium (36) Italy (47)
Norway (13) Germany (31) Portugal (42)
Sweden (12) The Netherlands (35) Spain (44)
New Zealand (no data) United States (58)
Switzerland (34)
United Kingdom (24)
Source: World Values Surveys 1981, 1990-1991, 1995-1998, in Inglehart & Baker (2000, p. 46);
Inglehart & Minkenberg (2000, p. 128; recalculated).
Note: Data represent the average frequency of churchgoing (percentage at least once a month) in
the 1980s and 1990s. The position of New Zealand is an estimate derived from other sources and
based on circumstantial evidence.
The data in Table 7 complete the analysis of the direct religious impact on
public policy and provide the clearest pattern of relationships. Low religios-
ity corresponds with liberal abortion policies. The difference between Scan-
dinavia and France lies in the difference between Protestantism and Catholi-
cism and between full establishment and separation. However, high
religiosity is not automatically associated with restrictive abortion policies,
but coupled with Catholicism, it is. The “Catholic impact” marks the differ-
ence between the United States and Ireland, the two countries that score high-
est in religiosity while applying a separatist model of church-state relations.
That is, other things being equal, religious doctrine or the cultural pattern set
earlier in a country’s history is an important factor for explaining the effects
of religion on politics. But among Catholic countries in which differences of
religious doctrine are less relevant, variations in abortion policy can best be
explained by levels of religiosity, with France, Austria, and Belgium on one
hand and Ireland, Portugal, and Spain on the other (Italy being an exception
here). A direct comparison of France and Ireland is most telling, because both
countries share the heritage of Catholic doctrine and a separation of state and
church but differ vastly in terms of religiosity. In general, when comparing
Tables 3 and 7, it becomes clear that religiosity is a better predictor of public
policy than is institutional differentiation, especially when religious doctrine
is also taken into account. Moreover, whereas the institutional impact
increased when the confessional makeup of the countries was held constant
(see Table 5), it is less strong than the confessional impact when levels of reli-
giosity are held constant (Table 7).

Table 7
Abortion Policies, Religiosity, and Confessional Composition

a
Low religiosity Denmark
a
Finland
a
Norway
a c
Sweden France
ac ac
Medium religiosity New Zealand Australia
a
United Kingdom
b b
Germany Switzerland
bc
The Netherlands
Austria
Belgium
ac
High religiosity United States Irelandc
bc
Canada Portugal
Italy Spain
a. Countries that are predominantly Protestant.
b. Countries that are mixed Protestant.
c. Countries that are cases of church-state separation.
DOES POLITICS MATTER?

RELIGION IN THE PARTY SYSTEM
The most direct link between religion and politics at the intersection of the
electoral and policy-making levels exists where explicitly religious parties,
most notably, Christian Democratic ones, play a role in the party system.
Here, one would expect distinct policy effects, particularly in those areas of
public policy in which church interests are visible. The study of party systems
and the role of religious forces therein has been influenced largely by the
seminal article of Lipset and Rokkan (1967). They argued that the state-
church cleavage was one of the most consequential factors shaping West
European party systems:
The decisive battle came to stand between the aspirations of the mobilizing
nation-state and the corporate claims of the churches. This was far more than a
matter of economics. . . . The fundamental issue between Church and State
focused on the control of education. (p. 15)
The result of these policies of the nation-state was the formation of confes-
sional parties as a defensive reaction of the churches.
However, contrary to the general persuasiveness of the model, Lipset and
Rokkan’s (1967) theory cannot explain why in the French III Republic, no

such party emerged. Here, the major theoretical conditions for the formation
of a confessional party were met, that is, a strong Catholicism and an intense
conflict between state and church (see Kalyvas, 1996). Furthermore, the the-
ory did not anticipate the emergence of Protestant parties or movements such
as those in contemporary Scandinavia or the United States (see Minkenberg,
1990; von Beyme, 1984). In general, it is important to distinguish between
the existence of a religious cleavage and the existence of a confessional party:
“A religious cleavage without a confessional party is bound to produce a sig-
nificantly different political environment than a religious cleavage with a
confessional party” (Kalyvas, 1996, p. 116).
The relevance of religious cleavages in the postmodern world has been
demonstrated by a variety of election studies. Whereas the class cleavage has
undergone a steady decline in significance and denominational voting fol-
lowed a similar but less linear trend, the religious cleavage in terms of the
relationship between religiosity (as measured by church attendance; see
above) and Left-Right voting behavior has stayed rather stable. No clear
upward or downward trends occurred, except for a slight but steady increase
of religious voting in the United States, which can be attributed to the grow-
ing mobilization efforts of the New Christian Right (see Dalton, 1996; see
also Inglehart, 1997; Minkenberg, 1996). In the early 1990s in all but the
United States and the United Kingdom, the strength of the relationship
between church attendance and voting exceeded that of social class voting
(see Dalton, 1996). The relationship was strongest in Central and Northern
European countries, that is, those countries on which some Christian
(Protestant or Catholic) parties have appeared in the postwar party system but
secularization as disenchantment has advanced furthest. It is also evident that
with few exceptions (United States, Canada), religiosity is a more powerful
predictor of voting behavior than denomination.
Thus considering that religious cleavages are in fact relevant for voting
behavior and party competition and, as shown elsewhere, party competition
matters for public policies (see Klingemann et al., 1994), one should expect
decisive effects of the cleavage on public policy.4 In fact, Castles’s (1998)
analysis showed that in the case of security transfers, public education expen-
ditures, and divorce rates, there is a religious effect. But Christian Demo-
cratic incumbency correlates much less with the dependent variables than do
other related variables such as the political right’s incumbency and
Catholicism-Catholic cultural impact (see Castles, 1998). Because his
4. In their analysis, Klingemann, Hofferbert, and Budge (1994) largely ignored religiously
relevant policies. Of the 54 categories of party platform items they use, only two relate to reli-
gion. Churches or other religious groups are not included in the list of social groups.

Table 8
Strength of Religious Partisan Impact (1945 - 1999)
0 1 2 3 3.3a 4 5
France Australia Ireland Austria The Netherlands

New Zealand Canada Portugal Belgium Italy
Spain Denmark
Sweden Finland
Switzerland Germany
United Kingdom Norway
United States
Source: For the complete list of references, see Minkenberg (2000, p. 24, Table 7); see also Gold
(1992); Franklin, Mackie, and Valen (1992).
a. Mean.
operationalization of the religious factor has some drawbacks (as noted pre-
viously), it is proposed here to approach the role of religion in the party sys-
tem by a different route. To arrive at a measure that captures a religious
(Christian) instead of a merely Catholic partisan impact, the countries are
classified according to five criteria (during the entire time span from 1945
until 1999): (a) Are there explicitly religious parties? (b) Are there (other)
parties with ties to religious groups or churches? (c) Do the platforms of these
parties contain explicitly religious contents? (d) Is the religious cleavage
salient (i.e., a value of 0.25 or more, as measured by Dalton, 1996)? (e) Have
any of these parties been part of the national government for at least 20 years?
The summary in Table 8 shows some striking similarity between the ranking
of these nations and the ranking of the salience of religious voting, with the
Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Norway at the top of the
scale (Dalton, 1996). There is an obvious relationship between the cleavage
factor on the voters’ side and the parties’ orientation at the party system and
government side. It also shows that with regard to the partisan variable, these
countries cannot be ranked according to their confessional composition.
For the last step of the analysis, the continuum of religious partisan impact
is condensed into a threefold typology: countries with a value of 4 or 5 are
classified as having a strong religious partisan impact, those with values 2
and 3 as having a medium impact, and those with values 0 and 1 as having a
low impact. A detailed discussion of each country’s Christian Democratic or
otherwise religiously oriented party and their platform positions on abortion
cannot be pursued here. Suffice it to say that in Germany, the Christlich-
Demokratische Union and even more so the Christlich-Soziale Union
opposed the liberalization of the abortion policy in both the early 1970s and
early 1990s. But unification added a more liberal wing of East German activ-

Table 9
Abortion Policies, Religious Partisan Impact, and Religiosity
Period Distress Indication

Model Model Model
b a a
Low religious partisan impact Canada New Zealand Australia
France
b a b
Medium religious partisan impact United States United Kingdom Ireland
b
Portugal
b
Spain
a
Sweden Switzerland
bc
High religious partisan impact Italy
ac
Austria
Denmark Belgiumac
Finland Germanyac
ac
Norway The Netherlands
a. Countries that are those with a medium-level religiosity (see Table 6).
b. Countries that are those with a high level of religiosity.
c. Countries that have strong Christian Democratic elements in the party system.
ists to the Christlich-Demokratische Union. In Italy, the Democrazia

Cristiana Italiana pursued a more conservative policy than those parties to the
left of it. In the Netherlands, the Christen Demokratisch Appel, in govern-
ment with either the liberals or the social democrats, also maintained a con-
servative position but was hindered by its coalition partner from putting a
restrictive policy into practice. Likewise, a more liberal ruling was blocked
by the Demokratisch Appel. Finally, in the United States, the Republican
party, under the growing influence of the New Christian Right movement of
mostly Protestant fundamentalists, dropped its liberal position on abortion in
the late 1970s and can now be considered by and large an antiabortion party
(see Eser & Koch, 1988; Minkenberg, 1990; Rolston & Eggert, 1994; Rucht,
1994).
When contrasting the abortion policies with the role and strength of reli-
gion in party politics, some interesting patterns emerge (see Table 9). First of
all, the most restrictive policies exist in countries in which religious partisan
impact is rather limited. The interaction of confessional path dependence,
religiosity, and the separation of church and state play a more important role
here than do religiously oriented parties. This holds true also for the United
States, where the strong presence of the New Christian Right has not resulted
in overturning the liberal model—some modifications notwithstanding.
Accordingly, a high religious partisan impact taken by itself does not result in
a restrictive abortion policy.

But religious partisan impact is mediated through confessional character-

istics, levels of religiosity, and type of party. Among the eight countries in
which such impact is high, those with low levels of religiosity apply the
period model. The prominent role of Protestant parties in the Nordic coun-
tries obviously did not undo their liberal abortion policies, which suggests a
political rather than religious identity of these parties and the strength of the
confessional impact vis-à-vis specific political actors. But the remaining five
cases are those with a medium to high level of religiosity and a high Christian
Democratic impact. All countries with a strong Christian Democracy employ
the moderate abortion policy of the distress model, regardless of their church-
state arrangements or the role of Catholicism, a finding that underscores that
Christian Democracy, as in the case of welfare state regimes, brings about
policies of a rather specific nature (van Kersbergen, 1995).
CONCLUSION
This article has shown that even in the age of postmodernity, religion is
still a force in the realm of politics, including policy making. Unlike mere
functionalist accounts, which hold that the liberalization of abortion is a man-
ifestation of a comprehensive secularization process, a more nuanced con-
cept of secularization allows us to see a distinct impact of religious values on
public policy. In general, secularization as institutional differentiation mat-
ters less than secularization as disenchantment and cultural pluralization. In
light of the debate between secularists and religious economists, a supply-
side-inspired argument postulating that political deregulation, that is, strict
separation of church and state, has a particularly strong impact on abortion
policy could not be verified. Variations in church-state relations alone do not
produce identifiable patterns of policy outputs in the chosen area. In contrast,
a cultural or values-oriented approach, postulating a persisting influence of
confessional values and a high relevance of individual religiosity, proved
more powerful in explaining religious impact on public policy. When the
confessional factor is held constant, institutional impact increases somewhat.
The comparative analysis has largely confirmed what has been shown for
other policy areas, that is, a “Catholic cultural impact” (Castles, 1998). The
confessional pattern set earlier in a nation’s history is an important factor for
explaining the effects of religion on politics. Unsurprisingly, Catholic coun-
tries produce less than fully liberal abortion policies. But it is not only reli-
gious, in particular, Catholic, doctrine but also confession coupled with reli-
giosity, that is, current religious beliefs and practices, that account for most of
the differences. At one end of the spectrum, Catholicism in combination with

high levels of religiosity results in the most restrictive abortion policies. At

the other, Protestantism and low levels of religiosity lead to the most liberal
abortion policies. In all countries with a strong Christian Democratic partisan
impact, a moderate abortion model has emerged reflecting a particular policy
profile of Christian Democracy in association with a larger and distinct vision
of society (see van Kersbergen, 1995). The evidence also sheds some light on
the role and impact of the Catholic Church in postmodern societies, which
depends on the path of secularization; it is most powerful where institutional
differentiation has progressed most but level of religiosity has remained high.
This underlines Casanova’s (1994) assertion that the political role of
churches is most legitimate and effective when they operate not as privileged
political institutions but as “deprivatized” society-oriented, rather than state-
oriented, churches.
To the extent that modernization trends such as further individualization,
pluralization, and loss of authority continue in Western societies, one might
expect a decline of traditional religious beliefs and practices, even in societies
in which levels of religiosity are still comparatively high, and thus a decline
of religious impact on public policy. But political change, in the sense of
changes in public policy toward a liberalization of abortion, has been shown
to be culturally path dependent. The politics of abortion reflects an
institutionalization of religious values that has survived secularization.
Moreover, general levels of subjective religiosity remain rather stable (see
Inglehart & Baker, 2000). These developments are accompanied by the
increasing public policy relevance of quality-of-life issues and personal con-
cerns in the postmodern age and the emergence of new policy fields such as
biotechnology that involve profound moral issues. At the same time, the fact
that the Muslim community is the largest and fastest-growing non-Christian
religious community in many Western societies raises new questions in the
field of the political regulation of religion. Therefore it does not take much
visionary power to foresee a continuing role of religion in public policy.
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How Religion Influenced Public Policy.

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How Religion Influenced Public Policy.

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Minkenberg

RELIGION AND PUBLIC POLICY

T he interaction of religion and politics has once again become a chal-

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operationalized and their effects on abortion policies analyzed. Fourth, the

RELIGION AND PUBLIC POLICY

If politics is understood as “authoritative allocations of values” (Easton,

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ized as “postmodernity” or as “reflexive modernity,” defined not as an oppo-

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The following analysis applies a more nuanced operationalization of reli-

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bines the religious message with a defense of modern universalistic values

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POLICY OUTPUT: ABORTION POLICIES

The abortion conflict involves a clash of values or even of “absolutes”

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choice is principally acknowledged and largely unrestricted but the state is

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Period Model Distress Model Indication Model

Denmark Belgium Australia

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factors mediate “extreme approaches” (see Lijphart, 1999, p. 284). One

DO INSTITUTIONS MATTER? THE COMPLEX WEB

Structural approaches and typologies of church-state relations tend to be

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Moreover, they suggested that regardless of the official relationship between

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Australia France Austria Belgium Denmark Finland

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Period Model Distress Model Indication Model

Separation Canada France Australia

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DOES RELIGION MATTER? CONFESSIONAL

In light of the modest policy impact of institutional differentiation, a more

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Predominantly Mixed Predominantly

Separation Australia Canada France

gation; and (c) cultures with a Catholic dominance and democratic or

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Period Model Distress Model Indication Model

tural) dimensions of church-state relations underlines the observations made

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Low Religiosity Medium Religiosity High Religiosity

Denmark (19) Austria (35) Canada (42)

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Period Model Distress Model Indication Model

DOES POLITICS MATTER?

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France Australia Ireland Austria The Netherlands

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Period Distress Indication

ists to the Christlich-Demokratische Union. In Italy, the Democrazia

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But religious partisan impact is mediated through confessional character-

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high levels of religiosity results in the most restrictive abortion policies. At

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