Why religious influence varies: historical roots of religious politics in Thailand and Indonesia

Why do dominant religions with considerable demographic weights and socio-historical prominence exhibit different degrees of political influence? This study compares Thailand and Indonesia, where Buddhist and Islamic majorities are central to national identity yet display sharply contrasting political influences. While Buddhist mobilization has exerted limited influence on national politics in Thailand, Indonesian Islamic organizations have recurrently played pivotal roles in electoral competition, political mobilization, and contentious politics. Moving beyond theological determinism, this study argues that variation stems from the organizational configuration of religious authorities before state consolidation. The density, autonomy, and mobilizational capacity of religious networks shape the costs of centralization and determine whether religious authority is incorporated into hierarchical state institutions or retains organizational autonomy vis-à-vis the state, thereby shaping its long-term political influence. Thai Buddhist authority entered state consolidation with a fragmented organizational configuration characterized by weakly coordinated monastic networks. This reduced centralization costs for the state to incorporate the Sangha into monarchy-aligned hierarchical institutions, limiting autonomous religious mobilization. By contrast, Indonesian Islamic organizations built dense and socially embedded networks from the late colonial period onward, and acquired substantial mobilizational capacity before postcolonial state consolidation. This raised the costs of centralized institutional incorporation, leading successive regimes to rely on patronage, repression, and selective co-optation instead. These contrasting configurations produced enduring patterns of state–religion relations across successive regimes. This study offers a comparative explanation for cross-national and cross-religious variations in political influence and contributes to broader debates on state–religion relations and the historical origins of religious political influence.