RESEARCH PAPERS The Impact of Government Interference to Religion on Religious Giving: Evidence from European Countries Murat C¸ okgezen 1 • Mohammed Seid Hussen 1 Ó International Society for Third-Sector Research 2020 Abstract While the impact of government interference to the religious domain has long been discussed in previous literature, empirical evidence on the nexus between gov- ernment intervention to religion and individuals’ giving to religious organizations remains limited. In this study, we aim to fill this gap and examine whether government intervention affects individuals’ giving to faith-based charities. To this end, a survey data conducted in 20 European countries and two measures of government intervention to religion were used. Our empirical investi- gation based on multilevel logistic regression, after con- trolling for possible confounding factors at individual and country levels, indicates that government regulation of religion has a significant negative impact both on religious donation and volunteering. The findings of the present study add substantially to our understanding of nexus between government and religion and will serve as a base for future studies. Keywords Government regulation  Religious giving  Multilevel logit regression  Europe JEL Classification Z12 Introduction Throughout history, all over the world, those who are holding political power have used/controlled organized religion (including atheism), at varying degrees of intensity, to influence masses toward their aims/beliefs. In some cases, politicians formed an alliance with religion in an effort to enhance political stability, whereas in others they restricted the practice of the religion when they view it as an ideo- logical or political alternative for their power. For instance, in the pre-modern era, Christianity was an integral part of the state in Europe, and the government was the protector of the Christian faith (Nieuwenhuis 2012). In those days, govern- ment intervention was to the extent that religious dissenters were subject to torture and even death. Nevertheless, the patterns of religion–state relation have changed with the rise of modern capitalism and Protestant reformation in the six- teenth and seventeenth century (Cantoni et al. 2018; Jose´ 1994, pp. 11–39).The enlightenment thinkers of the eigh- teenth century were in favor of rationalism and scholarship as a basis for directing government operations than religious doctrines and promoted the concept of separation of state and church (Fox 2008, p. 14). Since then, there has been a heated debate regarding the importance of political secularism, and eventually, by the end of the twentieth century, most coun- tries in the world have avowed themselves as a secular state. Nowadays, the role of religion has declined in many areas of public life, and religious freedom was recognized as an international norm. 1 & Murat C¸ okgezen mcokgez@marmara.edu.tr Mohammed Seid Hussen meetmame@gmail.com; mohammedhussen@marun.edu.tr 1 Department of Economics, Marmara University, Go¨ztepe Campus, Kuyubas¸ ı, 34722 Kadıko¨y, Istanbul, Turkey 1 Article 18 of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and 1966, respectively, proclaimed that religious freedom as one of the inherent right human being and obliged the signatory countries to respect religious freedom. 123 Voluntas https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00250-5