This paper attempts to analyze church-state relations from the perspective of democratic theory and practice in Western nation states. This is done in two steps. In a first step, typologies of church-state relations in comparative research are reviewed and confronted with the question whether a particular type of democracy corresponds with a particular pattern of church-state relations and religious governance. A medium range comparison of 19 Western democracies (EU-15, minus Greece and Luxembourg, plus Norway, Switzerland, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is followed by some country case considerations. In a second step, the paper will historically delineate the link between the genesis of church-state regimes, the emergence of modern democracy and the onset of globalization. Here the paper will take a closer look at parameters of democratic performance and their historical trajectories. The guiding research hypothesis is that current church-state relations are shaped by the struggle for democracy, rather than the other way round, and that in the age of globalization and mass migration, democratic polities tend to respond to pressures resulting from these processes with signs of convergence including church-state regimes.
