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A Holy Alliance between the Catholic Church and Constitution-Makers? The Diffusion of the Clause of Cooperation in Third Wave Democracies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2017

Madalena Meyer Resende
Madalena Meyer Resende*
Affiliation:
NOVA University of Lisbon, Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Madalena Meyer Resende, NOVA University of Lisbon, Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais, R. D. Estefânia, 195, 5° Dto 1000-155 Lisbon, Portugal. E-mail: madalena.resende@ipri.pt.
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Abstract

What explains the adoption of the regime of cooperation between church and the state in the democratic constitutions of Spain and Poland, while Portugal maintained a regime of strict separation in the United States and French tradition? The explanation could be that a consensual constitution-making process resulted in a constitutional formula accommodating religion and guaranteeing religious freedoms. Alternatively, the constitutional regime of cooperation could result from the diffusion of international norms to national constitutions, in this case, the cosmopolitan law of the church. The article process-traces the constitution drafting processes and finds that the emergence of a constitutional consensus among secularist and constitutional drafters in Spain and Poland was based on the Vatican Council II doctrine and facilitated by the intervention of the Catholic hierarchies. In Portugal, the violent context of the revolution excluded the church, and the constitutional regime of strict separation between church and state was adopted.

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Type
Articles
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Politics and Religion , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 55 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2017 

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