Replication Data for: Conversionary Protestants do not cause democracy

In “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy”, Robert D. Woodberry (2012) claims that the emergence of stable democracies around the world was influenced by conversionary Protestantism. While Woodberry’s historical analysis is exhaustive, the accompanying empirical evidence suffers from severe inconsistencies. We replicate Woodberry’s analysis using 26 alternative democracy measures and extend 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. We discuss some alternative explanations for Woodberry’s results which we hope can inform future research on this topic.

在《自由民主制的传教士根源》（*The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy*）一文中，罗伯特·D·伍德贝里（Robert D. Woodberry，2012）提出，全球范围内稳定民主政体的形成受到皈依型新教（conversionary Protestantism）的影响。尽管伍德贝里的历史分析极为详尽，但其配套的实证证据却存在严重的不一致性。我们采用26种替代性民主测度指标对伍德贝里的分析进行了复现，并延长了民主测度指标的平均化时间区间。这两处简单的修正使得伍德贝里的研究结果不再成立。我们未发现新教传教活动与民主发展之间存在显著关联，这引发了对伍德贝里研究结果的稳健性及其更广适用性的质疑。我们针对伍德贝里的研究结果探讨了若干替代性解释，以期为该主题的后续研究提供参考。