While government policy towards religion has liberalized, the Sangha remains under Party control and monks have to study official government policy. Since the 1990s, the Sangha has been re-oriented as a primarily religious organisation. With Buddhist institutions being still firmly integrated into the Party State, Buddhism and the language, moral values and lifestyles associated with it, are now again promoted as "national culture". Vatthana Pholsena describes this as "a secularized image of Buddhism in order to reconcile the official ideology and the religion." A process of the Buddhification of the political sphere, but also everyday culture and is observable, at least in regions with a high proportion of ethnic Lao. Although the ethnic and religious conversion of animist ethnic minorities has been a long-standing feature of the region, it seems that the increasing reach of the nation-state accelerates this process. 'Laotification' and 'Buddhification' very often go hand-in-hand, at least in some southern regions of Laos where Mon-Khmer minorities and ethnic Lao live in close proximity to each other. Like in the past, Buddhism offers social upward mobility to poorer segments of society and ethnic minorities.