The World the Missionaries Made | Robert Woodberry

This article demonstrates historically and statistically that conversionary Protestants (CPs) heavilyinfluenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world. It argues that CPs were acrucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms, thereby creating the conditionsthat made stable democracy more likely. Statistically, the historic prevalence of Protestant missionariesexplains about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania and removesthe impact of most variables that dominate current statistical research about democracy. The associationbetween Protestant missions and democracy is consistent in different continents and subsamples, and it is robust to more than 50 controls and to instrumental variable analyses.

— Robert Woodberry - The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy