Religion, Politics, and Judicial Independence: Theory and Evidence

Sultan Mehmood and Avner Seror
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Sultan Mehmood: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Most enlightenment philosophers argued that the separation between Church and State would prevent capture of resources by one state religion. We formalize and test a theory that addresses a different danger. We demonstrate that a reduction in the separation between Church and State can be corrosive to political institutions, especially the Judiciary. We show that religious leaders use their high legitimacy to gain political office, and become particularly abusive politicians, misusing their political authority to undermine the independence of the Judiciary. We provide a theoretical framework and estimate the structural equations of our theory using data from Pakistan. Our empirical strategy exploits the plausibly exogenous timing of a military coup to provide causal evidence for the key predictions of our theory.

Keywords: Religion; Judicial independence; Elections; Economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-pol
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Working Paper: Religion, Politics, and Judicial Independence: Theory and Evidence (2020)
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