Similarities Between Woodberry And Shah

Authors’ Seymour Martin Lipset, Robert D. Woodberry, and Timothy S. Shah argue that external conditions like economic development and religious tradition can influence democracy in developing countries. More specifically, Lipset looks at economic factors like wealth, industrialization, urbanization, and education to describe why economic development leads countries to be more democratic; while Woodberry and Shah look at religious pluralism, civil societies, mass education, printing, economic development and corruption to describe why countries are led to become more democratic. In their overall analysis, both find that these external factors played a large role in influencing democracy in that country. For this reason, these arguments are complementary

Woodberry and Timothy S. Shah’s piece, The Pioneering Protestants, they analyze how history and social sciences show that Protestantism has contributed to the development of democracy. In this analysis, they focus on describing external factors like the rise of religious pluralism, the development of democratic theory and practice, a civil society, mass education, and economic development, to explain how each factor has influence on the development of democracy. Woodberry and Shah also explain the importance of individual conscience and how huge a role that had for many Protestants. “The main reason for this is the important role of individual conscience. Because saving faith must be uncoerced and individual, it requires in practice a diversity of independent churches to satisfy the inevitable diversity of individual consciences” (Woodberry and Shah, 49). While Woodberry and Shah give compelling evidence that links Protestantism to the development of democracy, there are examples of cases that are inconsistent with their arguments. One example being Islam, where there are relatively very few Muslim democracies. An argument that explains why Islam is unfavorable to democracy is how Islam does not separate church and state. Moreover, Islam is more patriarchal where women are subordinate to men. In addition to this, other arguments that Arabs are more unassociated with democracy adds to the explanation of a cases where religious traditions did not lead to democracy. In these countries, many of the arab dictators are in states that are rich from oil and the income from that allows bargaining to fund expensive militaries that are meant to repress (Treisman lecture 9). These examples are meant to show how each argument has its flaws and there will always be cases that we cannot