Missionaries used schooling as a route to gain adherents in Africa. This study links that historical missionary activity to long-run patterns in education, religious identity, and political behavior, showing that political impacts depend sharply on the type of regime people lived under.
📍 How exposure was identified:
- Exploits plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to Catholic missionaries generated by the Church’s territorial administration (diocese headquarters).
- Employs a regression discontinuity design comparing areas near versus just away from historical diocese headquarters.
- Shows proximity to a historical diocese headquarters raised the local presence of Catholic missionaries.
📚 Long-term religious and educational effects:
- Increased Catholic identity among populations exposed to higher historical missionary presence.
- Improved educational outcomes that persist into the long run.
⚖️ Political effects depend on regime type:
- Effects on political behavior vary by regime: democratic and closed-anocratic contexts do not show increased political participation tied to missionary exposure.
- In contrast, individuals exposed to greater historical missionary activity in open anocracies are more likely to participate in politics compared to their counterparts in democracies and closed anocracies.
- Those same individuals in open anocracies are also more politically engaged, more supportive of democratic institutions, and simultaneously more disenchanted with the state of democracy and incumbent leaders.
🔎 Why this matters:
- Demonstrates that missionary schooling produced durable gains in religion and education, but the translation of those gains into political participation and attitudes depends on the openness of the regime.
- Highlights how religious institutions and education interact with regime context to shape long-run political development in Africa.
