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Conversionary Protestants Do Not Cause Democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 November 2020
- Elena Nikolova*
- Affiliation:Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies-Regensburg, Central European Labor Studies Institute, and Global Labor Organization
- Jakub Polansky
- Affiliation:University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
- *
- *Corresponding author. E-mail:Nikolova.ele@gmail.com
Abstract
InThe Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy, Robert D. Woodberry (2012) claims that conversionary Protestantism influenced the emergence of stable democracies around the world. While his historical analysis is exhaustive, the accompanying empirical evidence suffers from severe inconsistencies. This letter replicates Woodberry's analysis using twenty-six alternative democracy measures and extends the time period over which the democracy measures are averaged. These two simple modifications lead to the breakdown of Woodberry's results. We find no significant relationship between Protestant missions and the development of democracy, which raises concerns about the robustness and broader applicability of Woodberry's findings. The letter discusses some alternative explanations for Woodberry's results, which can inform future research on this topic.
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- Letter
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
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Nikolova and Polansky supplementary material
Nikolova and Polansky supplementary material
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