Autocracy, Religious Restriction, and Religious Civil War

This article illuminates the relationship between level of religious restriction and the onset of religious civil war in the context of autocracy. That is, we investigate how autocrats' religious restriction accounts for religious civil war. We hypothesize that in autocracies, moderate religious restriction is likely to engender religious civil war (Hypothesis 1), policy change from religious laissez-faire to moderate restriction raises the probability of religious civil war (Hypothesis 2), and the transition from tight restriction to moderate restriction is likely to trigger religious civil war (Hypothesis 3). To test our hypotheses, we conduct statistical analyses as well as case studies. The results confirm Hypotheses 1 and 2, but not Hypothesis 3. This suggests that (1) within autocracies, different levels of religious restriction exert different effects on religious civil war and (2) moderate religious restriction is dangerous enough to spark religious civil war and religious laissez-faire helps to generate religious peace.