Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/177384 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Citation: 
[Journal:] Comparative Political Studies [ISSN:] 1552-3829 [Volume:] 51 [Issue:] 4 [Publisher:] Sage [Place:] Thousand Oaks, CA [Year:] 2018 [Pages:] 477-513
Publisher: 
Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA
Abstract: 
The relation between religious organizations and political authority is notoriously tense. Max Weber argued that this is because both compete over the same resource: human commitment. This article revisits Weber’s hypothesis. Specifically, we explore two psychological mechanisms through which Protestant missionaries affect political authority: obedience and persuadability. Exploiting exogenous variation in missionary activity in Peru, we demonstrate that missionaries make converts more obedient, which we attribute to a theological and a social mechanism. Yet, we also find that missionaries make converts less susceptible to persuasion by political authorities because they shift attention from secular topics to questions of theological importance, and endorse a skeptical stance toward the government. Exploiting variation in treatment intensity, we argue that the degree to which political authority is affected depends on a given mission’s theological strictness. We arrive at these findings by combining experimental outcomes and process-tracing evidence using Bayesian integration.
Subjects: 
religion and politics
quantitative methods
Latin American politics
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Additional Information: 
Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich / This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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