Religious Regulation as Indirect Discrimination? Religious “Color‐Blindness” and Democratic Legitimacy Among Religious Majorities and Minorities

ABSTRACT Background What is the impact of “colorblind” religious discrimination political attitudes of religious minorities? Cross‐national research exploring religious regulation's impact on democratic support among religious has given priority to the analysis of explicit forms of religious discrimination while also focusing exclusively on religious minorities as a subgroup. This article addresses this gap in the literature by measuring how neutral regulation of religion drives divergent evaluations of state legitimacy and democracy in general between religious minorities and majorities. Objective This study extends the literature on religious governance by examining the impact that colorblind religious discrimination has on divergences in political attitudes, particularly toward state legitimacy and evaluations of democracy, between religious communities. Methods I apply multilevel ordinal logistic and linear regression models with cross‐level interactions on data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Religion and State (RAS) datasets. Results Within countries with high levels of neutral restrictions on religion, evaluations of government and preferences for democracy diverge between religious majorities and minorities. Above the 89th percentile of broad religious regulation, religious majorities are significantly more likely to give higher evaluations of the government. Conversely, above the 74th percentile, religious minorities tend to view democracy significantly more favorably compared to majorities. Conclusion From the analysis, I conclude that minorities perceive broad restrictions on religion as a “colorblind” form of discrimination which both disproportionately erode their confidence in the state at a greater rate compared to majorities while strengthening their affinity toward democracy. On the majority side, I find that broad religious restrictions bolster the state's legitimacy among members of the religious majority, who themselves have a lower affinity toward democracy compared to minorities.