Religion, Politics, and Judicial Independence: Theory and Evidence

Sultan Mehmood () and Avner Seror
Additional contact information
Sultan Mehmood: Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, EHESS, Ecole Centrale, AMSE, Marseille, France

No 2004, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

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)
JEL-codes: D72 K10 K40 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 90 pages
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/fil ... /wp_2020_-_nr_04.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Religion, Politics, and Judicial Independence: Theory and Evidence (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France AMU-AMSE - 5-9 Boulevard Maurice Bourdet, CS 50498 - 13205 Marseille Cedex 1. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gregory Cornu ().