Annette Schnabel, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf:
In times of increasing institutional convergence at the supra-national level, and growing diversities in e.g. wealth and life chances at the individual level, national and religious identities seem to re-gain salience as markers between "us" and "them". Potential consequences are changes in the patterns of social cohesion and societal solidarity. In the context of the ONBound-Project (GESIS & Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf) which merges and enriches a vast array of existing individual level and contextual data to produce a publicly available multi-level database we recoded how religion and nation are mirrored within constitutions. The presentation introduces the data set and shows first results of how such country-specific data can be used.
Constitutions establish the legal base for individual actions. They constitute the rights and duties of the citizens and by that they regulate religion, nation and government on the country-level. However, they do so in different ways which informs about the different ideas of how societies are organised worldwide and how religions and citizenships are legally related.