The Role of Religion in Modern Societies by Olson Daniel V. A. Pollack Detlef

Author:Olson, Daniel V. A., Pollack, Detlef
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Appendix: Axioms and Propositions

Definition 1: Secularization is a process that represents a loss of spiritual belief among individuals in society and a decline in the number of people participating in organized religious practices.

Definition 2: Religious goods are the theological and philosophical answers to the great mysteries of life and have some supernatural component to them.

Axioms

Axiom 1: Religious leaders are parishioner maximizers (or, at a minimum, prefer to limit membership losses).

Axiom 2: Religious leaders seek to maximize financial and human resources.

Axiom 3: Religious leaders seek job security.

Axiom 4: Religious goods are difficult to price and susceptible to free riding.

Axiom 5: Because religious goods are relatively easy to produce and difficult to verify the credibility of, religious groups are susceptible to competitors.

Axiom 5: People vary in their religious tastes.

Axiom 6: People have different price elasticities for religious goods.

Axiom 7: Political actors try to maximize political survival.

Axiom 8: Politicians then seek to maximize revenue, economic growth and to minimize the cost of ruling.

Propositions

Prop. 1: The higher the level of regulatory restrictions on religious denominations, the less likely they will be able to proselytize or serve their parishioners, and hence the higher the level of secularization.

Prop. 2: To the extent that high levels of regulation favor one denomination over others, pluralism will be limited and society will become more secularized.

Prop. 3: The higher the level of per capita social welfare spending by a government, the less church attendance there will be over time.

The following are descriptions and sources for the variables used in Tables 6.2––6.3.

Dependent Variables

Church Attendance: Percentage of survey respondents for each country claiming to attend religious services weekly or more. Source: World Values Survey (Inglehart et al. 1995) and Eurobarometer (European Commission 1995).

Independent Variables.

Welfare: Total government social welfare expenditures (including social security) divided by GDP and calculated on a per capita basis. Source: International Monetary Fund 2000.

Regulation: Religious Regulation Index recalculated from World Christian Encyclopedia’s Religious Persecution Index to account for non-mutually exclusive categories. In the original WCE Index, 5 = state neutrality towards religion. Values less than 5 represent state favoritism to particular denominations, while values greater than 5 represent persecution (on a 1–10 scale). On the assumption that state favoritism of religion represents a restriction of the marketplace just as harassment may, these scores were recalculated to reflect absolute distance from the value of 5. Most states included in the survey had scores of 5 or below in the initial index. Higher values in the recalculated index represent more religious regulation of (or state interference in) the religious market. Source: Barrett et al., 2001.

Pluralism: Natural log of denominations per million people in a country. Natural log calculated to adjust for skew. Higher values represent more religious pluralism. Source: Barrett et al., 2001.

Urbanization: Percentage of population living in urban areas. Source: World Bank, 2001.

Literacy: Percentage of population age 15 + classified as literate in 1995. Source: Barrett et al., 2001.

Televisions: Number of televisions per 1,000 people in 1995. Source: Barrett et al., 2001.

Catholic Dummy: Classification whether country has a majority Catholic population.

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