Religion and the European Union

Abstract

We review a recent literature on cultural differences across euro member states. We point out that this literature fails to address cultural differences between Protestants and Catholics, which are likely a major underlying reason for cross-country differences. We argue that confessional culture explains why Catholic countries tend to have weaker institutions but are more open to economic and political integration. EU policies after the economic crisis looked clumsy and failed to address all concerns, but were viable, caused only a manageable amount of serious backlash and tied in well with Europe’s cultural diversity, also providing scope for learning and adaption.

We are grateful to Adrian Chadi, for help putting together data on the German federal election 2017, and to Johannes Buggle, Mircea Epure as well as the volume editors for comments. Arruñada wishes to acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness through grant ECO2017-85763-R.