The Religion and State-Minorities dataset
| Published date | 01 November 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343311418997 |
| Author | Jonathan Fox,Yasemin Akbaba |
| Date | 01 November 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Special Data Feature |
Special Data Feature
The Religion and State-Minorities dataset
Yasemin Akbaba
Department of Political Science, Gettysburg College
Jonathan Fox
Department of Political Studies, Bar Ilan University
Abstract
This article presents the Religion and State-Minorities (RASM) dataset addressing its design, collection, and utility.
RASM codes religious discrimination by governments against all 566 minorities in 175 countries which make a
minimum population cutoff. It includes 24 specific types of religious discrimination coded yearly from 1990 to
2002. Religious discrimination measures the absence of the human right of religious freedom which includes limits
on religious practices such as worship as well as limits on religious institutions such as churches and mosques which
are not placed on the majority group. Thus the dataset focuses on the restriction of religious group rights. Most
similar datasets, including those that focus on human rights in general, include a single discrimination score for a
country. RASM is the first to contain an accounting of religious discrimination against all relevant religious mino-
rities on an individual basis while avoiding some methodological problems of previous similar data collections.
In order to demonstrate the utility of the dataset, we examine the relationship between religious identity and religious
discrimination. We find that both majority and minority identities matter in predicting the treatment of religious
minorities. This demonstration that codings for individual minorities add to our understanding of the correlates
of religious discrimination is illustrative of the potential uses of this dataset. It also indicates that this type of data
can be useful in other types of studies where dyads based on religious identity are relevant, such as studies of ethnic
conflict and civil war.
Keywords
discrimination, freedom, human rights, identity, minorities, religion, repression
Introduction
This study introduces a new module of the Religion and
State (RAS) dataset – the Religion and State-Minorities
(RASM) dataset. This moduleis different from the original
dataset presented in Fox (2008) in two respects. First, it
increases the types of religious discrimination included
from 16 to 24. Second, while RAS only includes a global
score for a country, RASM includes a separate score for
each religious minority in each country which meets a
minimum population threshold of 0.25% or 500,000 in
countries with populations of over 200 million, resulting
in 566 minoritiesworldwide. No previousdataset contains
a complete accounting of religious discrimination of all
relevant religious minorities on an individual basis.
In the following sections we first discuss the purposes
and uses of the RASM dataset, the methodology for data
collection, and the structure of the data. Second, we
assess the data’s reliability using several methodologies.
Third, we provide descriptive statistics and time trends.
Finally, we analyze the causes of religious discrimination
Corresponding author:
yakbaba@gettysburg.edu
Journal of Peace Research
48(6) 807–816
ªThe Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0022343311418997
jpr.sagepub.com
p
eace
R
ESEARCH
journal of
To continue reading
Request your trial