ABSTRACT
The chapter starts with an account of recent developments in the research field of religion and politics. It then theoretically assesses the compatibility of each of the world religions and their sub-branches with democracy. Overall, Protestantism and Buddhism are found to be more compatible than incompatible with democracy, Christian Catholicism, Hinduism, and Ethnoreligions are neither compatible nor incompatible with democracy, whereas Christian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, and Chinese folk religions are more incompatible than compatible with democracy. The chapter then discusses the roles of secularism and religious fragmentation in the relationship between religion and democracy and also introduces a number of measures of the concepts in question.
