Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>We develop a theory of how religious persecution unfolds, and test it against the case of communist Mongolia from 1921 to 1939. This is an unusually clean case study, because Soviet forces directed both Mongolia’s state-building and its anti-religious ideology, making them quasi-exogenous. Using a game-theoretic model, we show that a persecuting state first targets religious leaders and clergy, and only later — if state capacity permits — escalates to widespread oppression of the broader faithful. Weak states are trapped in the first phase; only once they invest in capacity can they proceed to mass religious repression. We apply this logic to communist Mongolia’s persecution of Buddhism in the 1920s and 1930s. We show that while Mongolia’s state was weak, it could only afford to target the Buddhist clergy and leadership; however, in the 1930s, once the Mongolian state was sufficiently strong, it embarked upon widespread oppression, nearly eliminating organized Buddhism from the country. Our findings indicate that state capacity can be a precondition for systematic persecution. JEL Codes: P26, D74 , N45, Z12</p>