Do Confidence in religious institutions and Liberal democracy go together across countries?

Across 103 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.52, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.55.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Confidence in religious institutions cause Liberal democracy?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Confidence in religious institutions vs. Liberal democracy

Fades after adjusting for income

A country is not a person. Countries where more people are counted as belonging to this group also tend to differ on the other measure, and that is all. It does not follow that the people in the group are the people with the different score. Making that leap is called the ecological fallacy: reading a pattern across places as a fact about individual people. It is the most common misuse of this kind of data. Religion also varies strongly with region, history and national income, so much of what looks religious here is really those. That is what the adjusted figures are for. The religion shares are estimates for two years only, and the survey questions are asked in rounds that can be ten years apart.

Across 103 countries, Confidence in religious institutions and Liberal democracy rise and fall together at r = -0.52 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.32, which could easily be chance (q = 0.12, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.

Comparing countries across the middle half of confidence in religious institutions, 47.3% to 76.7% of respondents, liberal democracy is worse by 0.198 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.106 points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.523p = 1.4e-8 · 103 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.316p = 0.001 · likely range [-0.48, -0.13]

p, allowing for regions0.026standard error 0.107 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.124across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Confidence in religious institutions · % of respondentslink with income -0.57 · moderate

Liberal democracy · index (0-1)link with income +0.52 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.523	1.4e-8	103
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.551	1.6e-9	103
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.316	0.001	103
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.284	0.004	103

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 103 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.207 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.374 (without CHN) to -0.265 (without QAT). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: CHN (-0.058).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	14	-0.32
Europe & Central Asia	48	-0.29
Latin America & Caribbean	13	-0.41
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	13	-0.29

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	35	+0.02
Middle third	34	-0.24
Richest third	34	-0.51

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	61	-0.07
Muslims	28	-0.19

By last european coloniser

	n	r
Never a European colony	15	-0.40
Spain	12	-0.21
United Kingdom	25	-0.55

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.316 after dropping 0 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	% of respondents	index (0-1)	Years
Bangladesh BGD	99.8%	0.116	2022, 2025
Indonesia IDN	98.3%	0.296	2022, 2025
Pakistan PAK	97.2%	0.176	2022, 2025
Ethiopia ETH	92.2%	0.1	2022, 2025
Philippines PHL	92.2%	0.291	2022, 2025
Mali MLI	90%	0.15	2010, 2025
Viet Nam VNM	89.3%	0.102	2022, 2025
Ghana GHA	89.3%	0.606	2014, 2025
India IND	89.1%	0.26	2022, 2025
Nigeria NGA	88.2%	0.311	2022, 2025
Uzbekistan UZB	86.7%	0.079	2022, 2025
Kosovo XKX	86.7%	0.457	2010, 2025
Zambia ZMB	86.3%	0.375	2010, 2025
Qatar QAT	86.2%	0.091	2014, 2025
Malaysia MYS	84.9%	0.355	2022, 2025

Haerpfer, C. et al., World Values Survey; EVS, European Values Study
Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project

Sources

Confidence in religious institutions

Share with confidence in churches and religious organisations

World Values Survey Association and European Values Study · via Our World in Data · Free for non-commercial use with attribution · updated irregular (survey waves, roughly every 5 years)

"A great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence, as against "not very much" or "none". Confidence in an institution is not belief in what it teaches. The gap between this and the importance of religion shows how far religious people trust their clergy. No "better" direction is set.

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Electoral democracy plus limits on the head of government, independent courts and protected personal freedoms. It contains the electoral democracy index as a part, so the two are built from the same numbers and bound to match.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Confidence in religious institutions and Liberal democracy

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Confidence in religious institutions changes Liberal democracy, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.