A new APSR article [ungated] argues for the crucial role of Protestant missionaries in the global spread of liberal democracy. The statistical analyses tease out the effect of missionaries from the influence of the characteristics of colonizers (Britain, the Netherlands, France, etc.) and pre-existing geographic, economic and cultural characteristics of the states. Interestingly, Protestant missionary influence not only remains a significant predictor of democracy outside the Western world once these factors are controlled for, but it renders them obsolete (which is a big deal because the same institutional, geographic, economic and cultural characteristics have been the usual explanations of democracy diffusion). On the other hand, the patterns in the data are consistent with the plausible mechanisms through which the effect of Protestant missionaries is exercised – the spread of newspapers, education, and civil society. I am sure this article is not going to be the last word on democracy diffusion, but it certainly puts the influence of Protestantism center stage. The major issue, I suspect, is not going to be methodological (since the article already considers a plethora of potential methodological complications in the appendix), but conceptual – to what extent the effect of Protestant missionaries can be conceptually separated from the improvements in education and the growth of the public sphere. In other words, do (did) you need the religious component at all, or education, newspapers and civil society would have worked on their own to make liberal democracy more likely (even if fostered by other channels than Protestant missionaries) . In terms of methodology, it might be interesting…
Research Design Matters