Description:

EDGS Graduate Student Speaker Series

Gde Metera, Political Science

Previous research on Muslim democracies reveals that the distinction between a religious democracy and a religious autocracy lies on whether a religious control of politics is present in the polity. This paper contributes to the growing research on Muslim democracies by first (i) unpacking the concept of religious control of politics into direct religious control and indirect religious control of politics, and second (ii) offering preliminary empirical measurement of direct and indirect religious control of politics. A set of indicators is developed from Religion and State II (RAS 2) dataset to measure the level of direct and indirect religious control globally and across Muslim majority countries. This set of indicators further is utilized as an instrument to map 175 countries according to the degree to which direct or indirect religious control is present in their polities. The result demonstrates, among several findings, that the level of indirect religious control is, on average, low among Western secular democracies and is high among Muslim majority countries. Muslim democracies in general also have low level of indirect religious control with a notable exception of the case of Indonesia.