ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 analyses the interaction between the urban and the national governance of religious diversity. It shows how national policies and discourses influence urban contexts and, simultaneously, how urban ideas, decisions and controversies impact how the national level of the state operates and broader discourses on religion develop. The chapter identifies and discusses seven channels through which ideas and policies on religion, religious diversity and laïcité travel in top-down, bottom-up and horizontal ways within the administrative levels of the state: 1) national laws and court decisions, 2) top-down policy measures, 3) urban political and policy entrepreneurs, 4) bottom-up knowledge production and dissemination, 5) mediatisation of controversies, 6) electoral campaigns and party politics and 7) city networks and inter-municipal policy transfers.
