The policy impact of church-state relations: Family policy and abortion in Britain, France, and Germany

Abstract

This study tests the proposition that patterns of church-state relations have an impact on public policy outputs by examining family policy and abortion regimes in Britain, France, and Germany. Between them, these three large countries exemplify the three main types of church-state relations, as identified in conventional accounts. The study concludes that the different patterns of church-state relations thus identified provide only a limited match with policy outputs while other, more developed typologies improve the match, particularly when other cultural and political variables are factored in. The dynamics of influence are found to differ as between contexts where churches operate as public institutions (as in Britain and Germany) and where (as in the French case) they operate as interest groups.