ABSTRACT
In the past decade, there has been a renewed interest for national models of churchstate relations. In the academic field, research on Muslim mobiliza tion, claimsmaking and the institutionalization of Islam, especially in West ern Europe, increasingly looks at churchstate theory to explain distinctive national patterns of accommodation (Fetzer and Soper 2005: Maussen 2007: 47-52, Loobuyck et al. 2013). In a related scholarly field, that of comparative law, there has always been interest in differences between legal regimes of religious government and constitutional models, such as models of separation, corporatist models and models with an established or state church (Robbers (ed.) 2005; Doe 2011). This type of modelling has gained wider resonance by being embedded in neoinstitutionalist theories seek ing to show how (in a comparative perspective) distinctive societal and institutional patterns and churchstate traditions have developed and how they can be used to explain contemporary forms of government of religious diversity (Bader 2007a: 50-62). Finally, in normative theory, we have seen a spectacular revitalization of reflections on secularism and neutrality and the ways liberaldemocratic states should relate to (organized) religion (Bader 2003, 2007, 2009; Laborde 2005; Habermas 2008).
