ISSN 1556-3723 (print) Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion __________________________________________________________________ Volume 9 2013 Article 13 __________________________________________________________________ Deregulation and Demographic Change: A Key to Understanding Whether Religious Plurality Leads to Strife Brian J. Grim* Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project Washington, D.C. Vegard Skirbekk International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Vienna, Austria Jesus Crespo Cuaresma Vienna University of Economics and Business Vienna, Austria *
[email protected] Copyright © 2013 Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion is freely available on the World Wide Web at http://www.religjournal.com. Deregulation and Demographic Change: A Key to Understanding Whether Religious Plurality Leads to Strife Brian J. Grim Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life Washington, D.C. Vegard Skirbekk International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Vienna, Austria Jesus Crespo Cuaresma Vienna University of Economics and Business Vienna, Austria Abstract Using a new cross-country dataset, we test and extend the religious economies perspective on reli- gious conflict in two ways. First, we expand earlier analyses of whether religious pluralities lead to more or less conflict. Second, we assess the apparent demographic anomaly that high popula- tion growth is often found not to contribute to higher levels of violent religious persecution and conflict. We introduce a new demographic measure that captures the net effect of the demographic transition rather than just recent population growth dynamics, thus concentrating on differences in long-term population growth patterns.