In this paper, I argue that religion matters for the emergence of democracies and dictatorships. Religion is defined as demand for public goods. Different types of religious collectives reflect different tradeoffs between centralized resource distribution and market rewards. Religions are...

Resource-rich dictatorships are more inclined to repress civil society than others. In this paper, we identify a tradeoff between political rents from natural resources and the organizational density of civil society. This organizational density determines the extent to which citizens can...

Contents: 1. Dimensionality of religion -- 2. Religious origins of political regimes -- 3. Religious identity, local governance & public goods -- 4. The political economy of Russian Orthodoxy -- 5. Back to the Prussian origins: kulturkampf & comparative modernization -- References -- Conclusions...