ABSTRACT
The mapping of the EU27 documented in Chapter 3 appeared on first inspec- tion to support the conventional wisdom that the more securitised the regime, the less protection will be afforded religious freedom (hereafter RF). 1 However, Chapter 5 demonstrated that in two states that moved from a liberal minimalist (hereafter LM) to liberal nationalist regime (hereafter LN), it was societal rather than state factors that impacted most negatively on RF. This confuses the conventional wisdom which assumes a link between changes in official policy – rather than rhetoric – and the decline of human rights protection. One possible retort to this is that while LN states may suffer due to societal discrimination, securitised (hereafter S) states are affected, for the most part, by de-liberalisation at the official rather than unof- ficial level (a claim that would support the conventional wisdom). This chap- ter addresses these potential scenarios by looking in detail at one state which had a fall in RF when it moved from an LM to an S regime (Germany) and one state which had a fall in RF when it remained in the S regime throughout Periods 1 and 2 (the United Kingdom).
