Research

Book Manuscript
Democracy’s Devout Defenders: Churches, Education and Liberal Democracy in sub-Saharan Africa

Conventional accounts of struggles for democracy emphasize the role of economic actors, whether this is trade unions, industrialists or the middle class. In contrast, this book makes the empirical observation that churches have often been at the forefront of activism for liberal democracy in recent years, and it provides an explanation for this apparent puzzle. In an argument that counters the conventional wisdom that churches are a threat to democracy due to their strong commitment to their belief systems, this book argues that this can give churches particular motivation to speak out when liberal democracy is at stake in the contemporary period. Focusing specifically on the case of Christian churches in sub-Saharan Africa, the book argues that the power of this motivation depends critically on how churches are inserted into the country’s religious school system. Churches with higher numbers of schools are more exposed to the risks of autocracy because governments introduce regulations that crackdown on educational autonomy more frequently than they restrict worship in congregations. But churches whose schools depend on government subsidies will weigh the costs of reduced financial support against any benefits of mobilizing against autocracy in deciding whether to speak out.  As a result, churches with fiscally independent schools are the most likely to speak out against autocracy as a means for protecting their autonomy over education, while churches without significant involvement in schooling and churches with schools that are fiscally dependent on the state are less likely to do so. The book examines the causes and consequences of church activism through a mixed methods approach. It includes analysis of original data on church education provision and democratic activism across sub-Saharan Africa from the 1970s onward, and within-country analyses of how governments and citizens respond to church actions in Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana, drawing on interviews, surveys and conjoint experiments. You can read the first chapter of the book here.