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This article looks at Taiwan's policy towards religion to show that non-Western societies can also achieve what Alfred Stepan called a "twin toleration" wherein the state does not intervene in religious affairs, and religion does not seek to control the state. The paper shows the sets of constraints in which policy-makers struggling for an adequate way to deal with religion operate. They have to choose among a variety of models in democratic societies, to take into account the legacy of the authoritarian era, and to consider the specificities of Taiwan's situation, influenced by a Chinese cultural heritage, Japanese colonialism and observations from other parts of the world. The paper then describes how these constraints have influenced the major stages in the evolution of relations between state and religions in Taiwanese society and then argue that the state had yet to reach a consensus up until 2008 on the legislation of religion because of disagreements between different religious actors. (JCCA/GIGA)

The history of state-religion relations in Taiwan from 1945 to the present can be divided into three stages. The first stage lasted from 1945 to 1987 during which the Leninist state, for the first time in Chinese history, effectively exercised tight control over religion. In the second stage, from 1987 to 2000, the democratizing state gradually withdrew its control over religion while most religious groups tended to refrain from involvement in politics. From 2000 to the present, the democratic state and various religions have developed constructive relations involving checks and balances, and this has maximized religious freedom, helped eradicate religious discrimination, and expanded the democratic participation of religious groups in politics. This paper combines theories of the state in political economy and religious market theory to explain these changes in religion-state relations and their impact on religious freedom. In conclusion, state-religion relations in Taiwan may provide an alternative model for appropriate state intervention in religion and the involvement of religion in politics in transitional democracies. (Issues Stud/GIGA)

Despite a robust literature on general forms of state repression, the determinants of religious repression remain unclear. This article argues that a regime's experience with religious conflict will lead it to be more repressive of religious groups within its territory for three primary reasons. Religious conflict increases the behavioral threat posed by religious groups, lowers the cost of repressing these communities, and evokes vivid memories of past religious violence that underscore the role of the state in taming religion to maintain social order. New, cross-national data on religious conflict and repression from 1990 to 2009 show that religious conflict has a significant and positive effect on the level of religious repression for the time period under investigation, expanding the types and severity of government restrictions on religion in a country. Our findings point to the importance of studying the causes and nature of negative sanctions against religious communities, specifically.

Before considering evolving relations between the United States and the Atlantic Community, it is useful to examine briefly the meaning of the words "Atlantic Community," a term that means different things to different people. It has no agreed definition because it is still a concept and not yet an institution. It purports to be geographically descriptive. However, when one considers the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is generally regarded as the most important institutional reflection of a community of interests between the European and North American countries bordering the Atlantic basin, one finds Italy, Greece, and Turkey are members while Spain and Eire, both Atlantic countries, are absent. Similarly, if one looks at the membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is another institution generally regarded as reflecting common interests of the "Atlantic Community," one finds that all the NATO members belong as well as Eire, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and Spain. Although there are political reasons to account for all this confusion, at the present time the term "Atlantic Community" connotes neither an agreed geographic area nor a specific group of countries.

AbstractThe interactions between religious and secular elites differ across societies, and those interactions may evolve differently even in the face of similarly controversial issues. What explains variation in relations between religious and secular elites in comparative settings? We highlight the links between religious change, political incentives, and the level of conflict or cooperation between religious and secular actors in public life. We illustrate distinct patterns of religious-secular relations with a paired comparison of two democracies with an intertwined history: the United States and the Philippines. In the United States, religious-secular relations have becoming increasingly conflictual as political incentives have changed in response to religious change. In the Philippines, in contrast, religious and secular actors maintain cooperative ties in part because relative religious stability has diminished political incentives to stoke religious-secular tensions.