Immoral Alliances and their Aftermath: State/Church Cooperation during Authoritarian Regimes and its Influence on Morality Policy after Democratization

Religion is usually assumed to be a decisive explanatory factor for the permissiveness or stringency of national policies regulating moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. The causal conditions of Christian Churches being able or failing to veto the passage of policies that run against its core religious doctrine, however, remain undertheorized. This study explains cross-national variance in the permissiveness of moral policies with the moral authority enjoyed by national churches. This moral authority is shown to be contingent upon the state/church relationship during previous authoritarian regimes. The analysis consists of a comparative case study on the role played by Christian churches in seven third wave democratization countries before and after their respective regime changes, combined with in depth process tracing for the case of South Africa. The analysis reveals that a close cooperation between a religious institution and a former authoritarian regime leads to a diminished ability of churches to veto policies after democratization. This is the case in Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and South Africa, all of which have very permissive morality policies. However in Poland, Chile, and Russia, where the church was in opposition to the former authoritarian regimes, churches enjoy increased moral authority since democratization which results in morality policies remaining conservative. The article contributes to the theorization of religious influence on policy by highlighting the ways in which historical state/church configurations are altered by regime changes but remain important to religion’s current ability to shape state policy.