Religious Freedom in Jeopardy? Path dependencies, New Religious Diversity and the Current State of Affairs in Swiss State-Religion Relations on a National and Sub-national Level

Western democracies are built on a distinct institutional set that combines majoritarian ruling with institutional restrictions of government. Human rights codified in their constitutions are a central device to overcome the Tocquevillian risk of "tyranny of the majority" in a modern democracy. The basic right of freedom of religion and belief and institutional settings of separating state and religion are prerequisites of any democratic political system. Yet, more recent research showed that Western democracies are far from perfect on these principles in practice. Especially democratic political systems with a long history of state-church cooperation are at risk of malfunctioning when challenged with a significant shift in religious diversity, may it by an increase of the religious minorities in general and Islam in particular, may it by an increase of people without religious belonging. Switzerland is a case in point. The paper presents the current structure of state-religion relations at the national and sub-national levels. It reports, which religious groups are recognized by which canton ("öffentlich-rechtliche Anerkennung" or "öffentliche Anerkennung"), what kind of advantages are present, and whether and how new religious groups can be integrated into existing forms or state-church cooperation. The result of this analysis illustrates how long-standing path dependencies combined with current political interests run against newcomers in the religious sector. The current state of affairs will be explained by a political will to uphold a particular regime of integration policy. As a by-product, difficulties of empirical research in reducing the existing complexity into consistent quantitative measures of state-religion relations will be discussed. The paper is based on the author's database on state religious policy in Germany and Switzerland and results from his long-running research on religion and politics in both countries.