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The religious factor in economic development
World Development, Vol. 8, pp. 491-501 Pergamon Press Ltd. 1980. Printed in Great Britain
The Religious Factor in Economic Development CYNTHIA TAFT MORRIS The American University, Washington, D.C. and IRMA ADELMAN University of California, Berkeley Summary. - An earlier study, using factor analysis, indicated that there is a positive relationship between religion and socioeconomic development in a sample of 55 countries. This study reexamines the evidence and examines more intensively the relationship between the predominant type of religion in a country and 25 social and political indicators. We conclude that the strong statistical association is the outcome of comulex historical influences associated with the early spread of commercial and industrial capitalism. 1
1. INTRODUCTION In this paper we reexamine the positive relationship between religion and socioeconomic development that we obtained in 1966 for a sample of 55 non-communist underdeveloped countries.’ At that time, we applied factor analysis to study the importance of social and political influences on variations among countries in crude fertility rates. We incorporated a wide choice of social and political characteristics of nations, including a classification by predominant type of religion, together with per capita GNP. Our major purpose here is to reexamine the results of our 1966 study, treating our classification of countries by predominant type of religion as the dependent variable.2 Scholars have shown persistent interest in the social and economic consequences of religion. The generalizations of Weber and Tawney on the role of the Protestant reformation in the spread of capitalism stimulated controversies which are unresolved today.3 Sociologists of religion have studied various Asian religious groups to see whether they resemble early Protestants in such respects as stress on the religious significance of work.4 Anthropologists have studied in depth the interpenetration of economic and religious activites in small relatively homogeneous communities. Some, Geertz, for example, have explicitly explored the adaptations of religious systems to the inroads of economic and social modemization.5 The persistence of interest in the 491
subject is not surprising if we accept the view that an essential ingredient of modernization is a ‘new mentality’, the essence of which is a new attitude toward the phenomenon of change. In the West, according to Bellah, ‘to establish this new mentality required a great socio-psychological revolution’.6 In contemporary underdeveloped countries, any major shift in the individual’s conception of the phenomenon of change has necessitated major adaptations of religiou.: values that in premodem society formed an integral part of views on the alterability of the environment. Our re-examination of our 1966 factor analytic study is designed to see whether a cross-country aggregate analysis can throw any light on the relationship between religion and modernization. In the sections that follow, we recall the methodology that we applied, give our classification system for predominant type of religion, present the results of the statistical analysis, and discuss possible explanations for the cross-sectional relationships among type of religion, sociocultural concomitants of industrialization and urbanization, and per capita GNP. We conclude that the strong statistical association between level of socioeconomic development and predominant religion is the outcome of complex historical influences associated with the early spread of commercial and industrial capitalism. This complexity of influences operating over several centuries largely accounts for the world geographical pattern of the major religions as well as the
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Table 1. Classification of countries by predominant Country Algeria Argentina Bolivia Burma Cambodia Cameroun Ceylon Chile Columbia Costa Rica Cyprus Dahomey Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador Gabon Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea Honduras India Indonesia Iran Israel Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Lebanon Makasy Mexico Nepal Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Rhodesia Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa South Korea surinam Taiwan TanZarlia Thailand Trinidad Uganda United Arab Republic Uruguay Venezuela Zambia
type of religion *
Adelman and Morris classiticationt
Classification by A Cross-Polity Survey Z
B A B+ C C D c+ A A A AD A B+ A B+ D A B+ D A C B B Ai D A-k c+ B AB+ A c+ A cD A A B+ A B+ B D B+ C AAD C AB+ B A A B+
K B X J J
* Footnotes at bottom of next page.
: B B B R 2 B X B X Z G X Y B I K K P 2 :: K R X
Not
Not Not Not
:: B Y Z B B X B classified K Z X classified classified classified Z J R X K
B B Not classified
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMICDEVELOPMENT geographical distribution of institutional conditions strongly affecting current socioeconomic achievements. 2. THE TECHNIQUE
AND VARIABLES
Our purpose in selecting the technique of factor analysis and a set of interrelated social and political indicators was to study a domain where widely accepted 4 priori propositions were lacking. To quote Thurstone, who pioneered the use of factor analysis in pyschology : 7 Factor analysis has its principal usefulness at the border tine of science. It is naturally superseded by rational formulations in terms of the science involved. Factor analysis is useful, especially in those domains
where
basic and fruitful concepts are and where crucial experiments have been difficult to conceive. The new methods have a humble role. They enable us to make only the rudest first map of a new domain. But if we have scientific intuition and sufficient ingenuity, the rough factorial map of a new domain will cnable us to proceed beyond the exploratory factorial stage to the more direct forms of psychological experimentation in the laboratory.
essentially lacking
The data for the study were classification systems constructed so that judgmental information could be combined with statistical data to obtain reliable assignments of countries to from three to five major categories. Details on our procedures and a discussion of methodological issues are given in the prefatory chapter of Society, Politics, and Economic Development (revised edition).s We included a quite large number of variables to summarize characteristics of nations during the period 1957-1962. A number of these described social aspects of urbanization and industrialization: indicators of the character of basic social organization: the size of the traditional subsistence sector and the strength of traditional elites; measures of the modem-
493
ization of communication, education and outlook; other indicators of the social transformation accompanying industrialization such as the strength of the labour movement, the extent of social mobility and the degree of social tension; and the crude fertility rate. Indicators of political structure and administration were selected to represent leading characteristics of the emergence of modem nation states. Several of these summarize basic differences in the character and stability of political systems: the strength of democratic institutions, the predominant basis of political parties, the extent of factionalization of political parties, the degree of freedom of political opposition and press, the extent of centralization of political power and the extent of political stability. Four indicators of the caliber and orientation of government administration and leadership were included in the study: the degree of administrative efficiency, the extent of leadership commitment to economic development, the intensity of nationalism and the extent of government participation in economic activity. The domestic influence of significant power groups is depicted by an indicator of political strength of the military, as well as by two characteristics already cited: the strength of the labour movement and the strength of the traditional elite. A final characteristic included in the study is the classification of countries by type of religion which we will discuss in more detail in the next section.
3. CLASSIFICATION OF COUNTRIES BY PREDOMINANT TYPE OF RELIGION The primary basis for our classification by type of religion was A Cross-Polity Survey by Banks and Textor, raw characteristic No. 15, Religious Configuration.” Banks and Textor
t See the text for explanation. $ The typology of A Cross-f’o’oli?~ Sur~ql~ is, to quote p. 70: . designed to afford approximate, yet meaningful, religious identification for each polity for which relevant information is presently available. In general, we have adhered to a rule of 80 to 85 percent predominance. This means, for example, that a polity coded as ‘Muslim’ could have a non-Muslim religious minority of as much as 15 to 20 percent, but no greater. The lack of a more precise cutoff point is due to a lack of reliability in religious statistics generally. The details of the typology are as follows: A. B. G. H. I. J. K.
Protestant. Catholic. Eastern Orthodox. Mixed Christian. Hindu. Buddhist. Muslim.
Jewish. Mixed literate non-Christian. Mixed: Christian. literate non-Christian. Non-literate. Mixed: Christian. non-literate. Mixed: literate non-Christian. non-literate. Mixed: Christian. literate non-Christian. non-literate.
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DEVELOPMENT
classified 107 countries into 14 types which are listed in the note to Table 1. We combined these into four principal categories which we felt we could rank in a manner appropriate to our purpose.” Since the focus of our 1966 paper was on fertility rates, and thus on individual choices to limit families, we ranked the categories by the degree to which the predominant religion favoured or was consistent with the concept of individual control over personal fate. Our expectation was that fertility rates would be lower where the predominant religion viewed individuals as having significant influence over their destiny. We also expected less fatalistic attitudes to be positively associated with higher levels of economic development. The broad lines of the classification scheme are as follows: A. Countries in which the predominant religion emphasizes the individual’s responsibility for his actions and his ability to influence his environment. B. and C. Countries in which the predominant religion promotes moderately fatalistic attitudes toward man’s capacity to alter his destiny. D. Countries in which the predominant religion teaches that man is subject to the power of his physical and social environment. The detailed classification is shown in Table 2. Gradations are provided for countries of mixed religion. Table 1 presents our individual country classifications together with those of A CrossPolity Survey on which they are based. The final classification scheme has several attributes which should be noted because they limit its use. First, the degree of discrimination is not great with, for example, all countries that were predominantly Christian in the top category and all that were predominatly Muslim in Table 2. Adelman-Morris classificationscheme Classification A+
Type of religion
A
Mixed Christian; Jewish Catholic; Eastern Orthodox
A-
Mixed: Christian,
B+
Mixed: Christian, non-literate Muslim Mixed literate non-Christian Buddhist; Hindu Mixed: literate non-Christian, non-
B C+ C c-
literate
non-Christian
the second category. In fact. there is considerable diversity within major religions. Second, in a number of countries, no single religion predominated; A Cross-Polity Survey assigns these to ‘mixed’ categories. Where the different religions within a country were in adjacent categories in our scheme, we applied an intermediate score ; where the categories were not adjacent, no such solution was available. Our decision to rank predominant types of religion by the degree to which, in general, they favoured individual choice also limits our analysis of the relationships between religion and development. Religious attitudes toward individual control over the environment capture only one broad aspect of religion which we assumed was important to fertility. For example, interactions between religion and the political system in the Third World can influence significantly the course of national development. As has occurred recently in the Moslem world, religious faiths which, historically, have proved quite capable of absorbing a rich variety of individual and cultural behaviour can in a setting of nationalistic anti-colonial fervour reinforce greatly state actions designed to reestablish traditional values and limit the growth of Western-type individualism.i2 Our crude classification scheme cannot capture these interactions. It cannot be presumed, even on the average, that, where religions are more favourable to individualism, the ties between religion and the state are weaker or the political influence of religion less strong.i3 Our classification by religions is thus limited by its stress on individualism. Furthermore, to rank religions by the degree to which they favour individual choice is a controversial procedure. Most sociologists of religion maintain that, because of great heterogeneity within major religions, judgments regarding religion and individualism can only be made for small homogeneous communities.i4 In opposition to this view, one can point out that, whether by historical accident or intrinsic characteristics of the religion, some religions have fostered or absorbed a diversity of behaviour which appears, in the aggregate, to have been more favourable to individualism than the usual influence of other religions. We have based our classification scheme on broad judgments regarding this aspect of major religions. 4. THE FACTOR ANALYSIS: RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
literate D
Mixed: non-literate, literate nonChristian.
Christian
Table 3 presents the matrix of common factor coefficients, or ‘factor loadings’, that
495
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Table 3. Rotated factor matrix for 24 social and political variables and per capita GNP* Social and political indicators
F,
1. Type of religion
0.80
2. Size of traditional agricultural sector
-0.86
Rotated factor loadings hi F2 F. F,
(R’)
-0.18
0.696
-0.16 0.25
-0.19
3. Basic character of social organization
0.83
-0.13
0.04
4.
Extent of literacy
0.87
-0.22
0.04
5.
Extent of mass communication
0.90
-0.24
0.07
6. Degree of cultural and ethnic homogeneity
0.76
7. Significance of indigenous middle class
0.64
-0.33
0.67
-0.47
8. Degree of modernization
of outlook
9. Crude fertility rate
-0.69
10. Per capita GNP
0.69
0.37
11. Effectiveness of democratic institutions 12. Degree of freedom of political opposition and press 13. Degree of factionalization political parties 14. Basis of political 15. Strength
of labour
party
I
-0.02
0.820 0.870 0.736
0.37
0.10
0.665
0.12
0.745
-0.14
0.566
0.19
0.06
0.684
0.07
0.23
0.873
0.06
0.805
-0.19 -0.20
0.39
system
-0.41
0.793
0.49
0.06
-0.22
0.571
0.37
0.27
-0.04
0.639
-0.33
0.700
16. Political stength of the military
0.32
17. Degree of administrative efficiency
0.30
-0.26 0.30
0.30
0.676
of political
power
19. Extent
0.09
0.836 0.716
of
movement
18. Degree of centralization
-0.02
0.14
-0.11
-0.40
0.04
0.01
0.25
0.23
-0.02
-0.09
of social mobility
0.44
20.
Strength
21.
Extent of nationalism national unjty
22.
Degree of leadership commitment economic development
23.
Extent of government participation in economic activity
24.
Degree of social tension
25.
Extent of stability of political system
of traditional
elite
-0.01
-0.10
0.26
0.755 0.565
0.09
0.28
-0.19
0.713
0.60
0.09
-0.06
0.755
and sense of to 0.01
0.16 -0.16 0.08
-0.32 0.38
0.32
0.664 0.758
-0.05
0.790
-0.17
0.79;
* Boxes indicate the factor to which each variable is assigned. summarizes the results of factor analysis. Each factor loading (aij) gives the weight of factor j in explaining socio-political indicator i; that is, it indicates the strength of the linear relationship between each factor and the observed variables. The common factor coefficients may more easily be understood by reference to the squares of the entries in the factor matrix. Each (uij)2
represents the proportion of the total unit variance of variable i which is explained by factor j, after allowing for the contributions of the other factors. It can be seen, for example, from the first row of Table 3 that 64% of intercountry differences in predominant type of religion are ‘explained’ by factor 1, another 3% by factor 2 and an additional 3% by factors 3 and 4. The sum of the squared factor loadings
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496
for each variable, or its ‘communality’, may be found in the right-hand column of the table. The communality for type of religion may be stated as follows: (0.80)’ + (-0.16)’
+ (-0.18)’
+ (-0.02)’
= 0.696.
The matrix of factor loadings not only indicates the importance of each factor in explaining the observed variables, but also provides the basis for grouping the variables into common factors. Each variable is allocated to that factor in which it has the highest loading, i.e. that factor with which it is most cloqely correlated. In Table 3, the variables are grouped according to the factor in which they have their highest loadings. The highest loading for each indicator is boxed. After the variables have been assigned to common factors, the next step is to ‘identify’ each factor by providing a reasonable interpretation of the underlying forces which it may be construed to represent. To quote Thurstone, ‘The derived variables are of scientific interest only insofar as they represent processes and parameters that involve the fundamental concepts of the science involved.‘15 In the following sections, we, therefore, proceed to identify the factors which are specified in the results of our statistical analysis and to discuss their relationship with the predominant type of religion. In so doing, we treat only factor 1 in detail since factors 2 and 3 each explain only about 3%, and factor 4 less than 1% of intercountry variations in predominant type of religion.16 In contrast, factor 1 explains 64% of variations among countries in predominant type of religion.
(a)
The first fixfor
Nine characteristics have their highest loadings in factor 1: the size of traditional sector, the character of basic social organization, crude fertility rate, the extent of literacy, the extent of mass communication, the degree of cultural homogeneity, the significance of indigenous middle class, the degree of modernization and per capita GNP. Clearly, this factor summarizes the social and cultural changes associated with urbanization, industrialization and the raising of per capita GNP. To be more specific, factor 1 may be interpreted to represent the transformation of values and institutions accompanying the breakdown of traditional social organization. Social change may be viewed as taking place through the mechanism of differentiation and of integration
of social structure.” Differentiation involves ‘the establishment of more specialized and autonomous social units’;** integration is the process that co-ordinates and fuses the interactions of specialized social entities The process of social differentiation is portrayed by three variables with high loadings in this factor: the basic character of social organization classifies countries with respect to the degree of differentiation of nuclear family unit from extended kinship, village and tribal complexes; the size of traditional sector groups countries according to the extent to which self-sufficient family-community economic units have broken up. The strength of an indigenous middle class is a measure of the importance of a specialized group whose economic activities are removed from traditional socioeconomic environments. The process of social integration is also depicted by several country characteristics. Increases in the extent of mass communication, extensions of literacy and increases in linguistic homogeneity may all be viewed as contributing to the evolution of modem mechanisms that tend to weld together relatively diversified social units.ig The two final variables composing factor 1 are degree of modernization and the crude fertility rate. The modernization variable represents changes in social attitudes that typically accompany urbanization and industrialization. It is an overall indicator of the extent to which attachments to traditionalism and traditional society had lost their strength in the period under study. The inclusion of fertility in factor 1, negatively associated with the measures of social differentiation and social integration, is not surprising, given the well-known tendency for fertility rates to be lower where the breakdown of traditional social organization, participation in the market, industrialization and the spread of mass communication have proceeded further. The final variable, per cnpitu GNP in 196 1, is a crude measure of level of economic development which proved to have a negligible effect on the pattern of associations among the 24 social and political variables. When the analysis was run omitting this variable, the results were not significantly affected.*O The direction of the relationship between our ranking of types of religion and the sociocultural and economic characteristics grouped in factor 1 is consistent with our expectations. On the average, the predominant religion was more favourable to individual control over the environment where the socio-cultural transformations usually accompanying industrialization
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
and urbanization were further advanced, that is, where tribal and extended-family bonds were less strong, strong attachments to traditional society less common, the noncommercial subsistence sector less important, literacy and mass communication more widely spread, the indigenous middle class larger and fertility rates lower. The inclusion of religion with a high loading in factor 1 is also consistent with the views expressed by some sociologists of religion regarding the nature of religious evolution.21 We have interpreted this factor to portray a process of social differentiation among specialized, relatively autonomous social units and a process of social integration through modem mechanisms for bonding together relatively diversified social units. Religious evolution has also been regarded as a process in which religion becomes increasingly differentiated and complex. To quote Bellah in Beyond Belief:22 . . The central focus of religious evolution is the religious symbol itself. Here the main line of development is from compact to differentiateti symbolism, that is, from a situation in which world, self, and society are seen to involve the immediate expression of occult powers to one in which the exercise of religious ~influence is seen to be more indirect and “rational”. This is the process of the “disenchantment of the world” that-was described by Weber. Part of this process is the gradual diiferentiation of art, science. and other cultural systems as separate from religious symbolism. Furthermore, changes in the nature and position of religious symbolism effect changes in the conception of the religious actor. The more differentiated symbol systems make a greater demand on the individual for decision and commitment. To support this growing religious individualism, specifically religious group structures are required, whereas at earlier stages religion tends to be a dimension of all social groups. Finally, the capacity for religion to provide ideals and models for new lines of social development increases with the growing symbolic, individual, and social differentiation. The inclusion of religion with measures of socioeconomic modernization is also consistent with the view expressed by Bellah that the essence of religious evolution is the increased freedom of the personality and of society relative to environing conditions.23 The pattern of intercorrelations in factor 1 says little about the institutional mechanisms or channels through which religion and sociocultural change interact in the process of social and economic development. The literature on Western Europe suggests a set of complex causal interactions. Historically, the spread of rationalist and individualist thinking in the
497
Hellenist tradition contributed to transformations of both religious and socioeconomic institutions. Protestant religious reformation reinforced the conjunction of economic, social, cultural and political influences in promoting the spread of capitalism and the growth of a capitalist middle class. Capitalism in turn promoted individualist behaviour in the economic arena, thereby contributing to the eventual revolution in the individual’s view of her relationship to both her environment and religious authority.% However, one cannot transfer reasoning about Western Europe to the underdeveloped world of the early 1960s. Can we reason that the inter-country differences in religious configuration summarized by our indicator of predominant type of religion are accounted for in part by economic and social modernization? For the most part, the religious configurations in our sample predate by decades and even centuries the start of modem socioeconomic development. Thus, causation from the social and economic sphere (as measured by our variables) to the religious sphere does not seem to provide a plausible explanation for our results. Can we reason that causation runs from religious type to differences in the timing and success of modern development? Neither the literature on the sociology of religion nor recent experience supports such an interpretation. Studies of such countries as Japan and India provide some evidence that religious reforms can favour economic and social change in a manner similar to their operation in Western Europe.25 However, our classification scheme does not discriminate sufficiently to capture these individual group and country experiences. Recent experience with tribal societies also casts doubt on easy generalizations about the unfavourableness of individual tribal customs and values to modem economic development. Tribal societies have often proved quick to enter into market relations where economic opportunities were consistently favourable. A third possible explanation for our results is that common influences operated to produce both inter-country differences in religious configurations and variations among countries in social and economic characteristics. A marked coincidence of regional identifications, predominant religions and levels of socio-economit development lends some support to this possibility. Table 4 gives the regional identification of each country, the score on religion and a measure of socioeconomic development derived from a factor analysis for 74 noncommunist underdeveloped countries.26 Latin
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498
Table 4. Regional identification, type of religion and level of sQcio-economic development* Regional identificationt Algeria
Argentina Bolivia Burma Cambodia Cameroon Ceylon Chile Columbia Costa Rica Cyprus Dahomey Dominican Republic Ecuador El Sabador Gabon Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea Honduras India Indonesia Iran Israel Ivory coast JanutiCa Japan Jordan Lebanon M&NY
Mexico Nepal Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Rhodesia Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa South Korea Surinarn Taiwan TallZalIia Thailand Trinidad Uganda United Arab Republic Uruguay Venezuela Zambia
N Africa LA LA S Asia SAsia Africa S Asia LA LA LA N East Africa LA LA LA Africa Africa N East LA Africa LA SAsia F East N East N East Africa LA F East NEast N East Africa LA S Asia LA Africa Africa LA LA LA F East Africa Africa Africa Africa F East LA F East Africa F East LA Africa N East LA LA Africa
* Footnotes at bottom of next page.
Predominant type of religion% B A B+ C C
D C+ A A A AD A B+ A B+ D A B+ D A C B B Ai D A+ c+ B AB+ A c+ A cD A A B+ A B+ B D Bc C AAD C AB+ B A A B+
Per capita
GNP in 1961s
Level of socioeconomic developmentll
281 319 113 58 101 86 137 453 283 344 416 40 218 182 220 200 199 431 175 60 207 80 83 211 814 184 436 502 184 411 75 313 53 213 40 82 416 130 181 117 215 175 70 427 73 310 145 59 97 594 68 120 450 692 170
0.18 1.91 -0.35 -0.41 -0.55 -1.34 0.35 1.39 0.66 0.78 1.08 - 1.54 0.81 0.54 0.71 -0.83 -0.01 1.47 0.35 - 1.47 0.26 -0.28 -0.40 0.09 1.77 -0.98 1.06 1.63 0.16 1.44 -1.31 0.75 - 1.36 0.88 - 1.86 -0.91 0.84 0.97 0.68 0.56 0.14 -0.52 - 1.39 0.62 0.85 0.54 1.05 -1.22 0.50 1.15 - 1.22 0.73 1.59 1.37 -0.89
(0 W (1) (1) (J-) (U (0 W) (W U-0 W) CL) U-0 (1) W)
u-) (1) U-0 (1) u-) (1) (1)
(1) (1) 0-U (U W W)
(1) (HI u-) W) (L) (L) (L) CL) W) 0-O W (1) (0 a) CL) (0 00 (1) W) CL) (1) (HI CL) W 03) (H) 0-j
499
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
American
have most of the high African countries most of the low scores, and Near Eastern and Asian countries most of the intermediate scores. With respect to socioeconomic development (measured considerably more broadly than by per capita GNP), most Latin American countries fell in the ‘high’ group, most African countries in the low group, and most Near Eastern and Asian countries in the intermediate group. There were, of course, some striking exceptions. Given the information in Table 4, can we argue that common historical influences Produced the geographical distribution of both religions and levels of socioeconomic development reflected in our sample? Clearly, an explanation along these lines would involve explaining several centuries of economic and political change. It would include the colonial origins of the religious characteristics of Latin America as well as the historical spread of Islam and Christianity in Africa and the Middle East. A long-term historical explanation of our results would have to answer the questions why the net impact of colonial influences in Latin America proved, on the average, more favourable to economic change than elsewhere and why the Islamic countries along the Mediterranean proceeded further towards a start on socioeconomic modernization than did those of Central Africa. We will not pursue here the details of a possible long-term historical explanation of the positive relationship between religion and socioeconomic development. Such an explanation need not be inconsistent with the proposition that religious attitudes conducive to individualism acted favourably on the socioeconomic environment; nor need it be inconsistent with scores
countries
on religion,
the generalization that socioeconomic transformations accompanying the spread of capitalism
in turn altered religious perceptions of individual choice. On the contrary, levels of socioeconomic development represent the sum of country achievements over very long periods and the religious characteristics of underdeveloped nations have often been extremely persis-
tent over time; consequentljj, we would expect long-term interactions between religion and development to play a role in accounting for the geographical distribution of religious and socioeconomic characteristics evident in our results.
(b) The second
factor
The variables most closely associated with factor 2 are the strength of democratic institu-, tions, the freedom of political opposition, the degree of factionalization of political parties, the predominant basis of political party systems, the strength of the labour movement, the political strength of the military, the degree of administrative efficiency and the degree of centralization of political power. The associations in this factor are strongly suggestive of broad historical and contemporary differences between the political organization of the countries of Western Europe and the North Atlantic and those of the rest of the world. An increase in this factor may be interpreted to represent a movement along a scale which ranges from centralized authoritarian political forms to Western-type parliamentary systems. Historically, it was in Western Europe that a pattern of change occurred in which effective parliamentary institutions were associated with strong labour movements, weak political strength of the military and decentralization of political power. This factor, therefore, may be interpreted to represent the extent of political westernization. The coefficients resulting from the factor analysis indicate that a typically Western configuration of political traits is weakly associated with religions that favour the idea of individual control over personal destiny. The positive association of religious evolution (in the sense defined by Bellah) with political westernization is consistent with historical experience of Europe and the North Atlantic. However, the weakness of the association suggests that
? LA = Latin America. $ See Table 2. 3 1. Adelman and C. T. Morris, SocietJ3, Politics and Economic Development, Rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hop kins Press, 1971 J, p. 88. The source is the Agency for international Development, Statistics and ReportsDivision. II Adelman and Morris t 197 I), op. cit., p. 170. The factor scores are derived from the first factor of a factor analysis of 74 underdeveloped non-communist countries. This factor combines per capifa GNP and 10 measures of sociJ change which we interpret to represent level of socioeconomic development. On the basis of factor scores, we divided the 74 countries into three groups: low, intermediate and ‘high’. The assignment of countries to groups is given in parentheses in the last column. See Adelman and Morris ( 197 I), op. cit., Chap. 4 for details.
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500
European analogies do not provide a great deal of help in understanding the relationship between religion and political aspects of national development in contemporary underdeveloped countries.
(c)
The third factor
Factor 3 (whose association with types of religion is small) consists of five socio-political indicators of leadership characteristics: strength of traditional elite, extent of nationalism, degree of leadership commitment to development, extent of government participation in economic activity and extent of social mobility.27 The nature of leadership and of leadership strategies are the common bond for these variables. A movement along the scale of this factor involves a waning of the power of traditional elites and an increase in the power of nationalistic ‘industrializing elites’.“* The signs of the loadings in factor 3 indicate a weak tendency for religions more favourable to the idea of individual control over destiny to exist in countries characterized by stronger traditional leaderships. This relationship is contrary to our expectation. It may be a consequence of country observations (for example, Japan and South Korea) where the power of traditional elites had waned considerably by 1962, even though their predominant type of religion, on the average, did not stress a large scope of individual decision-making. A more differentiated scheme based on the actual favourableness of religion to individualism might have scored them differently.
(d) The fourth facfor As might be expected, factor 4 shows a negligible relationship between type of religion and social and political stability.
5. CONCLUSION In this paper we have reexamined a 1966 factor analytic study in order to see what insights it gives into the relationship between predominant type of religion and social and economic characteristics of nations. We found a strong association between a partial ranking of religious configuration by favourableness to individualism and a factor summarizing the socio-cultural concomitants of the industrialization-urbanization process. We found a very weak association between religion and the westernization of political institutions. Factor 1 explained statistically 64% of inter-country variations in predominant religion and factor 2 less than 3%. As expected, the predominant religion in countries that had proceeded further in the modernization process, on the average, stressed more the view that individuals have significant control over their fates. We concluded that the cross-sectional association between religion and modernization could nor be interpreted to reflect direct interactions between religion and the influences summarized by our measures of socioeconomic development. Rather, it reflects marked regional differences in both religious configuration and levels of socioeconomic development which are the outcome of common historical influences operating over several centuries. Of great importance among these are colonial patterns of expansion and the attendant spread of Catholicism in Latin America, the historical characteristics of the spread of Islam and of European economic expansion in the Mediterranean, and the impact of European imperialist expansion on the tribal societies of the African continent. The important historical influences most probably include interactions between religious attitudes and socioeconomic characteristics of the early spread of capitalism. However, it is also likely that complex common historical influences helped determine the operation of religious attitudes and actions as well as the phenomena of socioeconomic change.
NOTES 1. I. Adelman and C. T. study of social and political
Morris, ‘A quantitative determinants of fertility’,
Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 14
(January 1966), pp. 129-157. 2. In factor analysis, each of the variables included in the studv is treated as deuendent and independent in turn. Thus, by contrast ‘with regression analysis, which is a study of dependence, factor analysis is a study of mutual interdependence.
3. M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Translated T. Parsons (London: Unwin University Books, 1930); and R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitaiism (New York: Penguin Books, 1947). Originally published in 1926. 4. R. Bellah, ‘Reflections on the Protestant ethic analogy in Asia’, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 19 tJanuary 1963), pp. 52-60.
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 5. C. Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). 6. R. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 66. 7. L. L. Thurstone, Multiple Factor Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 56. 8. I. Adelman and C. T. Morris, Society, Politics, and Economic Development, Rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971). 9. This indicator classifies countries according to the strength of extended family and tribal ties along a spectrum in which the prevalence of the nuclear family is ranked highest, the extended family is intermediate along the spectrum, and the prevalence of tribal societies is ranked lowest. 10. A. Banks and R. Textor, A Cross-Polity Survey (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964), pp. 70-71. 11. There is, of course, no unique principle for ranking the categories of a nominal classification such as type of religion or occupation.
501
16. Since the scores of countries on the clamlfication scheme by predominant type of religion are based on an arbitrary linear scoring scheme, estimates of variance explained give only a general order of magnitude. Experiments with alternative scoring schemes that preserve ranks indicate that factor analysis results with our kind of data are surprisingly insensitive to altemative scoring schemes. See the Appendix to Adelman and Morris (1971), op. cit. 17. See N. Smelser. ‘Mechanisms of change and adjustment to change’, in B. F. Hoselitz and W. E. Moore (eds.), Industrialization and Society (New York: UNESCO, 1963), pp. 32ff. 18. ibid., p. 33. 19. E. Durkheim has pointed out with, special emphasis that the increasing division of labour and growing heterogeneity that accompany industrialization require the creation of new mechanisms for integrating societies. See his 77re Division of Labor in Society (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949), p. 41. 20. For the results without per capita GNP, see Adelman and Morris (1966), op. cit., pp. 129-157. 21. See Bellah (1970), op. cit., Chap. 2.
12. For a case study of the diverse experience of Morocco and Indonesia with the capacity of the Moslem faith to absorb varied cultures and attitudes, see Geertz (1968), op. cit. 13. At an early stage in our work on fertility, we attempted a five-way classification of countries by the political strength of religious authorities which showed an unexpected quite strongnegativeassociation with fertility and little or no relationship with the remaining social and political indicators. Because of conceptual difficulties and our inability to determine the influences for which this classification was apparently acting as a proxy, we did not pursue it and shifted our attention to the area of religion and individual choice. Our statistically most successful effort to explore the meaning of the preliminary classification by political strength of religions suggested that it was a proxy for climatic influences! 14. This point was made to the authors by Professor Charley Hardwick, Professor of Religious Studies, Philosophy and Religion at the American University. 15. Thurstone (1961), op. cit., p. 61.
22. ibid., p. 16. 23. ibid., p. 24. 24. These generalizations remain controversial. 25. Bellah (1970), op. cit., Chap. 3. 26. See Adelman and Morris (1971), op. cit., pp. 167-171. for an explanation of the derivation of these scores. 27. The reason for the high loading of the indicator of extent of social mobility in the factor that groups together leadership characteristics is that an important element in the definition of this indicator is the degree of openness of access to membership in the leadership elite. 28. The concept of an industrializing elite is discussed in C. Kerr, et al., Industrialism and Industrinl Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). Chap. 2.
The Religious Factor in Economic Development CYNTHIA TAFT MORRIS The American University, Washington, D.C. and IRMA ADELMAN University of California, Berkeley Summary. - An earlier study, using factor analysis, indicated that there is a positive relationship between religion and socioeconomic development in a sample of 55 countries. This study reexamines the evidence and examines more intensively the relationship between the predominant type of religion in a country and 25 social and political indicators. We conclude that the strong statistical association is the outcome of comulex historical influences associated with the early spread of commercial and industrial capitalism. 1
1. INTRODUCTION In this paper we reexamine the positive relationship between religion and socioeconomic development that we obtained in 1966 for a sample of 55 non-communist underdeveloped countries.’ At that time, we applied factor analysis to study the importance of social and political influences on variations among countries in crude fertility rates. We incorporated a wide choice of social and political characteristics of nations, including a classification by predominant type of religion, together with per capita GNP. Our major purpose here is to reexamine the results of our 1966 study, treating our classification of countries by predominant type of religion as the dependent variable.2 Scholars have shown persistent interest in the social and economic consequences of religion. The generalizations of Weber and Tawney on the role of the Protestant reformation in the spread of capitalism stimulated controversies which are unresolved today.3 Sociologists of religion have studied various Asian religious groups to see whether they resemble early Protestants in such respects as stress on the religious significance of work.4 Anthropologists have studied in depth the interpenetration of economic and religious activites in small relatively homogeneous communities. Some, Geertz, for example, have explicitly explored the adaptations of religious systems to the inroads of economic and social modemization.5 The persistence of interest in the 491
subject is not surprising if we accept the view that an essential ingredient of modernization is a ‘new mentality’, the essence of which is a new attitude toward the phenomenon of change. In the West, according to Bellah, ‘to establish this new mentality required a great socio-psychological revolution’.6 In contemporary underdeveloped countries, any major shift in the individual’s conception of the phenomenon of change has necessitated major adaptations of religiou.: values that in premodem society formed an integral part of views on the alterability of the environment. Our re-examination of our 1966 factor analytic study is designed to see whether a cross-country aggregate analysis can throw any light on the relationship between religion and modernization. In the sections that follow, we recall the methodology that we applied, give our classification system for predominant type of religion, present the results of the statistical analysis, and discuss possible explanations for the cross-sectional relationships among type of religion, sociocultural concomitants of industrialization and urbanization, and per capita GNP. We conclude that the strong statistical association between level of socioeconomic development and predominant religion is the outcome of complex historical influences associated with the early spread of commercial and industrial capitalism. This complexity of influences operating over several centuries largely accounts for the world geographical pattern of the major religions as well as the
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492
Table 1. Classification of countries by predominant Country Algeria Argentina Bolivia Burma Cambodia Cameroun Ceylon Chile Columbia Costa Rica Cyprus Dahomey Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador Gabon Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea Honduras India Indonesia Iran Israel Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Lebanon Makasy Mexico Nepal Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Rhodesia Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa South Korea surinam Taiwan TanZarlia Thailand Trinidad Uganda United Arab Republic Uruguay Venezuela Zambia
type of religion *
Adelman and Morris classiticationt
Classification by A Cross-Polity Survey Z
B A B+ C C D c+ A A A AD A B+ A B+ D A B+ D A C B B Ai D A-k c+ B AB+ A c+ A cD A A B+ A B+ B D B+ C AAD C AB+ B A A B+
K B X J J
* Footnotes at bottom of next page.
: B B B R 2 B X B X Z G X Y B I K K P 2 :: K R X
Not
Not Not Not
:: B Y Z B B X B classified K Z X classified classified classified Z J R X K
B B Not classified
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMICDEVELOPMENT geographical distribution of institutional conditions strongly affecting current socioeconomic achievements. 2. THE TECHNIQUE
AND VARIABLES
Our purpose in selecting the technique of factor analysis and a set of interrelated social and political indicators was to study a domain where widely accepted 4 priori propositions were lacking. To quote Thurstone, who pioneered the use of factor analysis in pyschology : 7 Factor analysis has its principal usefulness at the border tine of science. It is naturally superseded by rational formulations in terms of the science involved. Factor analysis is useful, especially in those domains
where
basic and fruitful concepts are and where crucial experiments have been difficult to conceive. The new methods have a humble role. They enable us to make only the rudest first map of a new domain. But if we have scientific intuition and sufficient ingenuity, the rough factorial map of a new domain will cnable us to proceed beyond the exploratory factorial stage to the more direct forms of psychological experimentation in the laboratory.
essentially lacking
The data for the study were classification systems constructed so that judgmental information could be combined with statistical data to obtain reliable assignments of countries to from three to five major categories. Details on our procedures and a discussion of methodological issues are given in the prefatory chapter of Society, Politics, and Economic Development (revised edition).s We included a quite large number of variables to summarize characteristics of nations during the period 1957-1962. A number of these described social aspects of urbanization and industrialization: indicators of the character of basic social organization: the size of the traditional subsistence sector and the strength of traditional elites; measures of the modem-
493
ization of communication, education and outlook; other indicators of the social transformation accompanying industrialization such as the strength of the labour movement, the extent of social mobility and the degree of social tension; and the crude fertility rate. Indicators of political structure and administration were selected to represent leading characteristics of the emergence of modem nation states. Several of these summarize basic differences in the character and stability of political systems: the strength of democratic institutions, the predominant basis of political parties, the extent of factionalization of political parties, the degree of freedom of political opposition and press, the extent of centralization of political power and the extent of political stability. Four indicators of the caliber and orientation of government administration and leadership were included in the study: the degree of administrative efficiency, the extent of leadership commitment to economic development, the intensity of nationalism and the extent of government participation in economic activity. The domestic influence of significant power groups is depicted by an indicator of political strength of the military, as well as by two characteristics already cited: the strength of the labour movement and the strength of the traditional elite. A final characteristic included in the study is the classification of countries by type of religion which we will discuss in more detail in the next section.
3. CLASSIFICATION OF COUNTRIES BY PREDOMINANT TYPE OF RELIGION The primary basis for our classification by type of religion was A Cross-Polity Survey by Banks and Textor, raw characteristic No. 15, Religious Configuration.” Banks and Textor
t See the text for explanation. $ The typology of A Cross-f’o’oli?~ Sur~ql~ is, to quote p. 70: . designed to afford approximate, yet meaningful, religious identification for each polity for which relevant information is presently available. In general, we have adhered to a rule of 80 to 85 percent predominance. This means, for example, that a polity coded as ‘Muslim’ could have a non-Muslim religious minority of as much as 15 to 20 percent, but no greater. The lack of a more precise cutoff point is due to a lack of reliability in religious statistics generally. The details of the typology are as follows: A. B. G. H. I. J. K.
Protestant. Catholic. Eastern Orthodox. Mixed Christian. Hindu. Buddhist. Muslim.
Jewish. Mixed literate non-Christian. Mixed: Christian. literate non-Christian. Non-literate. Mixed: Christian. non-literate. Mixed: literate non-Christian. non-literate. Mixed: Christian. literate non-Christian. non-literate.
WORLD
494
DEVELOPMENT
classified 107 countries into 14 types which are listed in the note to Table 1. We combined these into four principal categories which we felt we could rank in a manner appropriate to our purpose.” Since the focus of our 1966 paper was on fertility rates, and thus on individual choices to limit families, we ranked the categories by the degree to which the predominant religion favoured or was consistent with the concept of individual control over personal fate. Our expectation was that fertility rates would be lower where the predominant religion viewed individuals as having significant influence over their destiny. We also expected less fatalistic attitudes to be positively associated with higher levels of economic development. The broad lines of the classification scheme are as follows: A. Countries in which the predominant religion emphasizes the individual’s responsibility for his actions and his ability to influence his environment. B. and C. Countries in which the predominant religion promotes moderately fatalistic attitudes toward man’s capacity to alter his destiny. D. Countries in which the predominant religion teaches that man is subject to the power of his physical and social environment. The detailed classification is shown in Table 2. Gradations are provided for countries of mixed religion. Table 1 presents our individual country classifications together with those of A CrossPolity Survey on which they are based. The final classification scheme has several attributes which should be noted because they limit its use. First, the degree of discrimination is not great with, for example, all countries that were predominantly Christian in the top category and all that were predominatly Muslim in Table 2. Adelman-Morris classificationscheme Classification A+
Type of religion
A
Mixed Christian; Jewish Catholic; Eastern Orthodox
A-
Mixed: Christian,
B+
Mixed: Christian, non-literate Muslim Mixed literate non-Christian Buddhist; Hindu Mixed: literate non-Christian, non-
B C+ C c-
literate
non-Christian
the second category. In fact. there is considerable diversity within major religions. Second, in a number of countries, no single religion predominated; A Cross-Polity Survey assigns these to ‘mixed’ categories. Where the different religions within a country were in adjacent categories in our scheme, we applied an intermediate score ; where the categories were not adjacent, no such solution was available. Our decision to rank predominant types of religion by the degree to which, in general, they favoured individual choice also limits our analysis of the relationships between religion and development. Religious attitudes toward individual control over the environment capture only one broad aspect of religion which we assumed was important to fertility. For example, interactions between religion and the political system in the Third World can influence significantly the course of national development. As has occurred recently in the Moslem world, religious faiths which, historically, have proved quite capable of absorbing a rich variety of individual and cultural behaviour can in a setting of nationalistic anti-colonial fervour reinforce greatly state actions designed to reestablish traditional values and limit the growth of Western-type individualism.i2 Our crude classification scheme cannot capture these interactions. It cannot be presumed, even on the average, that, where religions are more favourable to individualism, the ties between religion and the state are weaker or the political influence of religion less strong.i3 Our classification by religions is thus limited by its stress on individualism. Furthermore, to rank religions by the degree to which they favour individual choice is a controversial procedure. Most sociologists of religion maintain that, because of great heterogeneity within major religions, judgments regarding religion and individualism can only be made for small homogeneous communities.i4 In opposition to this view, one can point out that, whether by historical accident or intrinsic characteristics of the religion, some religions have fostered or absorbed a diversity of behaviour which appears, in the aggregate, to have been more favourable to individualism than the usual influence of other religions. We have based our classification scheme on broad judgments regarding this aspect of major religions. 4. THE FACTOR ANALYSIS: RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
literate D
Mixed: non-literate, literate nonChristian.
Christian
Table 3 presents the matrix of common factor coefficients, or ‘factor loadings’, that
495
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Table 3. Rotated factor matrix for 24 social and political variables and per capita GNP* Social and political indicators
F,
1. Type of religion
0.80
2. Size of traditional agricultural sector
-0.86
Rotated factor loadings hi F2 F. F,
(R’)
-0.18
0.696
-0.16 0.25
-0.19
3. Basic character of social organization
0.83
-0.13
0.04
4.
Extent of literacy
0.87
-0.22
0.04
5.
Extent of mass communication
0.90
-0.24
0.07
6. Degree of cultural and ethnic homogeneity
0.76
7. Significance of indigenous middle class
0.64
-0.33
0.67
-0.47
8. Degree of modernization
of outlook
9. Crude fertility rate
-0.69
10. Per capita GNP
0.69
0.37
11. Effectiveness of democratic institutions 12. Degree of freedom of political opposition and press 13. Degree of factionalization political parties 14. Basis of political 15. Strength
of labour
party
I
-0.02
0.820 0.870 0.736
0.37
0.10
0.665
0.12
0.745
-0.14
0.566
0.19
0.06
0.684
0.07
0.23
0.873
0.06
0.805
-0.19 -0.20
0.39
system
-0.41
0.793
0.49
0.06
-0.22
0.571
0.37
0.27
-0.04
0.639
-0.33
0.700
16. Political stength of the military
0.32
17. Degree of administrative efficiency
0.30
-0.26 0.30
0.30
0.676
of political
power
19. Extent
0.09
0.836 0.716
of
movement
18. Degree of centralization
-0.02
0.14
-0.11
-0.40
0.04
0.01
0.25
0.23
-0.02
-0.09
of social mobility
0.44
20.
Strength
21.
Extent of nationalism national unjty
22.
Degree of leadership commitment economic development
23.
Extent of government participation in economic activity
24.
Degree of social tension
25.
Extent of stability of political system
of traditional
elite
-0.01
-0.10
0.26
0.755 0.565
0.09
0.28
-0.19
0.713
0.60
0.09
-0.06
0.755
and sense of to 0.01
0.16 -0.16 0.08
-0.32 0.38
0.32
0.664 0.758
-0.05
0.790
-0.17
0.79;
* Boxes indicate the factor to which each variable is assigned. summarizes the results of factor analysis. Each factor loading (aij) gives the weight of factor j in explaining socio-political indicator i; that is, it indicates the strength of the linear relationship between each factor and the observed variables. The common factor coefficients may more easily be understood by reference to the squares of the entries in the factor matrix. Each (uij)2
represents the proportion of the total unit variance of variable i which is explained by factor j, after allowing for the contributions of the other factors. It can be seen, for example, from the first row of Table 3 that 64% of intercountry differences in predominant type of religion are ‘explained’ by factor 1, another 3% by factor 2 and an additional 3% by factors 3 and 4. The sum of the squared factor loadings
WORLDDEVELOPMENT
496
for each variable, or its ‘communality’, may be found in the right-hand column of the table. The communality for type of religion may be stated as follows: (0.80)’ + (-0.16)’
+ (-0.18)’
+ (-0.02)’
= 0.696.
The matrix of factor loadings not only indicates the importance of each factor in explaining the observed variables, but also provides the basis for grouping the variables into common factors. Each variable is allocated to that factor in which it has the highest loading, i.e. that factor with which it is most cloqely correlated. In Table 3, the variables are grouped according to the factor in which they have their highest loadings. The highest loading for each indicator is boxed. After the variables have been assigned to common factors, the next step is to ‘identify’ each factor by providing a reasonable interpretation of the underlying forces which it may be construed to represent. To quote Thurstone, ‘The derived variables are of scientific interest only insofar as they represent processes and parameters that involve the fundamental concepts of the science involved.‘15 In the following sections, we, therefore, proceed to identify the factors which are specified in the results of our statistical analysis and to discuss their relationship with the predominant type of religion. In so doing, we treat only factor 1 in detail since factors 2 and 3 each explain only about 3%, and factor 4 less than 1% of intercountry variations in predominant type of religion.16 In contrast, factor 1 explains 64% of variations among countries in predominant type of religion.
(a)
The first fixfor
Nine characteristics have their highest loadings in factor 1: the size of traditional sector, the character of basic social organization, crude fertility rate, the extent of literacy, the extent of mass communication, the degree of cultural homogeneity, the significance of indigenous middle class, the degree of modernization and per capita GNP. Clearly, this factor summarizes the social and cultural changes associated with urbanization, industrialization and the raising of per capita GNP. To be more specific, factor 1 may be interpreted to represent the transformation of values and institutions accompanying the breakdown of traditional social organization. Social change may be viewed as taking place through the mechanism of differentiation and of integration
of social structure.” Differentiation involves ‘the establishment of more specialized and autonomous social units’;** integration is the process that co-ordinates and fuses the interactions of specialized social entities The process of social differentiation is portrayed by three variables with high loadings in this factor: the basic character of social organization classifies countries with respect to the degree of differentiation of nuclear family unit from extended kinship, village and tribal complexes; the size of traditional sector groups countries according to the extent to which self-sufficient family-community economic units have broken up. The strength of an indigenous middle class is a measure of the importance of a specialized group whose economic activities are removed from traditional socioeconomic environments. The process of social integration is also depicted by several country characteristics. Increases in the extent of mass communication, extensions of literacy and increases in linguistic homogeneity may all be viewed as contributing to the evolution of modem mechanisms that tend to weld together relatively diversified social units.ig The two final variables composing factor 1 are degree of modernization and the crude fertility rate. The modernization variable represents changes in social attitudes that typically accompany urbanization and industrialization. It is an overall indicator of the extent to which attachments to traditionalism and traditional society had lost their strength in the period under study. The inclusion of fertility in factor 1, negatively associated with the measures of social differentiation and social integration, is not surprising, given the well-known tendency for fertility rates to be lower where the breakdown of traditional social organization, participation in the market, industrialization and the spread of mass communication have proceeded further. The final variable, per cnpitu GNP in 196 1, is a crude measure of level of economic development which proved to have a negligible effect on the pattern of associations among the 24 social and political variables. When the analysis was run omitting this variable, the results were not significantly affected.*O The direction of the relationship between our ranking of types of religion and the sociocultural and economic characteristics grouped in factor 1 is consistent with our expectations. On the average, the predominant religion was more favourable to individual control over the environment where the socio-cultural transformations usually accompanying industrialization
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
and urbanization were further advanced, that is, where tribal and extended-family bonds were less strong, strong attachments to traditional society less common, the noncommercial subsistence sector less important, literacy and mass communication more widely spread, the indigenous middle class larger and fertility rates lower. The inclusion of religion with a high loading in factor 1 is also consistent with the views expressed by some sociologists of religion regarding the nature of religious evolution.21 We have interpreted this factor to portray a process of social differentiation among specialized, relatively autonomous social units and a process of social integration through modem mechanisms for bonding together relatively diversified social units. Religious evolution has also been regarded as a process in which religion becomes increasingly differentiated and complex. To quote Bellah in Beyond Belief:22 . . The central focus of religious evolution is the religious symbol itself. Here the main line of development is from compact to differentiateti symbolism, that is, from a situation in which world, self, and society are seen to involve the immediate expression of occult powers to one in which the exercise of religious ~influence is seen to be more indirect and “rational”. This is the process of the “disenchantment of the world” that-was described by Weber. Part of this process is the gradual diiferentiation of art, science. and other cultural systems as separate from religious symbolism. Furthermore, changes in the nature and position of religious symbolism effect changes in the conception of the religious actor. The more differentiated symbol systems make a greater demand on the individual for decision and commitment. To support this growing religious individualism, specifically religious group structures are required, whereas at earlier stages religion tends to be a dimension of all social groups. Finally, the capacity for religion to provide ideals and models for new lines of social development increases with the growing symbolic, individual, and social differentiation. The inclusion of religion with measures of socioeconomic modernization is also consistent with the view expressed by Bellah that the essence of religious evolution is the increased freedom of the personality and of society relative to environing conditions.23 The pattern of intercorrelations in factor 1 says little about the institutional mechanisms or channels through which religion and sociocultural change interact in the process of social and economic development. The literature on Western Europe suggests a set of complex causal interactions. Historically, the spread of rationalist and individualist thinking in the
497
Hellenist tradition contributed to transformations of both religious and socioeconomic institutions. Protestant religious reformation reinforced the conjunction of economic, social, cultural and political influences in promoting the spread of capitalism and the growth of a capitalist middle class. Capitalism in turn promoted individualist behaviour in the economic arena, thereby contributing to the eventual revolution in the individual’s view of her relationship to both her environment and religious authority.% However, one cannot transfer reasoning about Western Europe to the underdeveloped world of the early 1960s. Can we reason that the inter-country differences in religious configuration summarized by our indicator of predominant type of religion are accounted for in part by economic and social modernization? For the most part, the religious configurations in our sample predate by decades and even centuries the start of modem socioeconomic development. Thus, causation from the social and economic sphere (as measured by our variables) to the religious sphere does not seem to provide a plausible explanation for our results. Can we reason that causation runs from religious type to differences in the timing and success of modern development? Neither the literature on the sociology of religion nor recent experience supports such an interpretation. Studies of such countries as Japan and India provide some evidence that religious reforms can favour economic and social change in a manner similar to their operation in Western Europe.25 However, our classification scheme does not discriminate sufficiently to capture these individual group and country experiences. Recent experience with tribal societies also casts doubt on easy generalizations about the unfavourableness of individual tribal customs and values to modem economic development. Tribal societies have often proved quick to enter into market relations where economic opportunities were consistently favourable. A third possible explanation for our results is that common influences operated to produce both inter-country differences in religious configurations and variations among countries in social and economic characteristics. A marked coincidence of regional identifications, predominant religions and levels of socio-economit development lends some support to this possibility. Table 4 gives the regional identification of each country, the score on religion and a measure of socioeconomic development derived from a factor analysis for 74 noncommunist underdeveloped countries.26 Latin
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498
Table 4. Regional identification, type of religion and level of sQcio-economic development* Regional identificationt Algeria
Argentina Bolivia Burma Cambodia Cameroon Ceylon Chile Columbia Costa Rica Cyprus Dahomey Dominican Republic Ecuador El Sabador Gabon Ghana Greece Guatemala Guinea Honduras India Indonesia Iran Israel Ivory coast JanutiCa Japan Jordan Lebanon M&NY
Mexico Nepal Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Rhodesia Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa South Korea Surinarn Taiwan TallZalIia Thailand Trinidad Uganda United Arab Republic Uruguay Venezuela Zambia
N Africa LA LA S Asia SAsia Africa S Asia LA LA LA N East Africa LA LA LA Africa Africa N East LA Africa LA SAsia F East N East N East Africa LA F East NEast N East Africa LA S Asia LA Africa Africa LA LA LA F East Africa Africa Africa Africa F East LA F East Africa F East LA Africa N East LA LA Africa
* Footnotes at bottom of next page.
Predominant type of religion% B A B+ C C
D C+ A A A AD A B+ A B+ D A B+ D A C B B Ai D A+ c+ B AB+ A c+ A cD A A B+ A B+ B D Bc C AAD C AB+ B A A B+
Per capita
GNP in 1961s
Level of socioeconomic developmentll
281 319 113 58 101 86 137 453 283 344 416 40 218 182 220 200 199 431 175 60 207 80 83 211 814 184 436 502 184 411 75 313 53 213 40 82 416 130 181 117 215 175 70 427 73 310 145 59 97 594 68 120 450 692 170
0.18 1.91 -0.35 -0.41 -0.55 -1.34 0.35 1.39 0.66 0.78 1.08 - 1.54 0.81 0.54 0.71 -0.83 -0.01 1.47 0.35 - 1.47 0.26 -0.28 -0.40 0.09 1.77 -0.98 1.06 1.63 0.16 1.44 -1.31 0.75 - 1.36 0.88 - 1.86 -0.91 0.84 0.97 0.68 0.56 0.14 -0.52 - 1.39 0.62 0.85 0.54 1.05 -1.22 0.50 1.15 - 1.22 0.73 1.59 1.37 -0.89
(0 W (1) (1) (J-) (U (0 W) (W U-0 W) CL) U-0 (1) W)
u-) (1) U-0 (1) u-) (1) (1)
(1) (1) 0-U (U W W)
(1) (HI u-) W) (L) (L) (L) CL) W) 0-O W (1) (0 a) CL) (0 00 (1) W) CL) (1) (HI CL) W 03) (H) 0-j
499
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
American
have most of the high African countries most of the low scores, and Near Eastern and Asian countries most of the intermediate scores. With respect to socioeconomic development (measured considerably more broadly than by per capita GNP), most Latin American countries fell in the ‘high’ group, most African countries in the low group, and most Near Eastern and Asian countries in the intermediate group. There were, of course, some striking exceptions. Given the information in Table 4, can we argue that common historical influences Produced the geographical distribution of both religions and levels of socioeconomic development reflected in our sample? Clearly, an explanation along these lines would involve explaining several centuries of economic and political change. It would include the colonial origins of the religious characteristics of Latin America as well as the historical spread of Islam and Christianity in Africa and the Middle East. A long-term historical explanation of our results would have to answer the questions why the net impact of colonial influences in Latin America proved, on the average, more favourable to economic change than elsewhere and why the Islamic countries along the Mediterranean proceeded further towards a start on socioeconomic modernization than did those of Central Africa. We will not pursue here the details of a possible long-term historical explanation of the positive relationship between religion and socioeconomic development. Such an explanation need not be inconsistent with the proposition that religious attitudes conducive to individualism acted favourably on the socioeconomic environment; nor need it be inconsistent with scores
countries
on religion,
the generalization that socioeconomic transformations accompanying the spread of capitalism
in turn altered religious perceptions of individual choice. On the contrary, levels of socioeconomic development represent the sum of country achievements over very long periods and the religious characteristics of underdeveloped nations have often been extremely persis-
tent over time; consequentljj, we would expect long-term interactions between religion and development to play a role in accounting for the geographical distribution of religious and socioeconomic characteristics evident in our results.
(b) The second
factor
The variables most closely associated with factor 2 are the strength of democratic institu-, tions, the freedom of political opposition, the degree of factionalization of political parties, the predominant basis of political party systems, the strength of the labour movement, the political strength of the military, the degree of administrative efficiency and the degree of centralization of political power. The associations in this factor are strongly suggestive of broad historical and contemporary differences between the political organization of the countries of Western Europe and the North Atlantic and those of the rest of the world. An increase in this factor may be interpreted to represent a movement along a scale which ranges from centralized authoritarian political forms to Western-type parliamentary systems. Historically, it was in Western Europe that a pattern of change occurred in which effective parliamentary institutions were associated with strong labour movements, weak political strength of the military and decentralization of political power. This factor, therefore, may be interpreted to represent the extent of political westernization. The coefficients resulting from the factor analysis indicate that a typically Western configuration of political traits is weakly associated with religions that favour the idea of individual control over personal destiny. The positive association of religious evolution (in the sense defined by Bellah) with political westernization is consistent with historical experience of Europe and the North Atlantic. However, the weakness of the association suggests that
? LA = Latin America. $ See Table 2. 3 1. Adelman and C. T. Morris, SocietJ3, Politics and Economic Development, Rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hop kins Press, 1971 J, p. 88. The source is the Agency for international Development, Statistics and ReportsDivision. II Adelman and Morris t 197 I), op. cit., p. 170. The factor scores are derived from the first factor of a factor analysis of 74 underdeveloped non-communist countries. This factor combines per capifa GNP and 10 measures of sociJ change which we interpret to represent level of socioeconomic development. On the basis of factor scores, we divided the 74 countries into three groups: low, intermediate and ‘high’. The assignment of countries to groups is given in parentheses in the last column. See Adelman and Morris ( 197 I), op. cit., Chap. 4 for details.
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
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European analogies do not provide a great deal of help in understanding the relationship between religion and political aspects of national development in contemporary underdeveloped countries.
(c)
The third factor
Factor 3 (whose association with types of religion is small) consists of five socio-political indicators of leadership characteristics: strength of traditional elite, extent of nationalism, degree of leadership commitment to development, extent of government participation in economic activity and extent of social mobility.27 The nature of leadership and of leadership strategies are the common bond for these variables. A movement along the scale of this factor involves a waning of the power of traditional elites and an increase in the power of nationalistic ‘industrializing elites’.“* The signs of the loadings in factor 3 indicate a weak tendency for religions more favourable to the idea of individual control over destiny to exist in countries characterized by stronger traditional leaderships. This relationship is contrary to our expectation. It may be a consequence of country observations (for example, Japan and South Korea) where the power of traditional elites had waned considerably by 1962, even though their predominant type of religion, on the average, did not stress a large scope of individual decision-making. A more differentiated scheme based on the actual favourableness of religion to individualism might have scored them differently.
(d) The fourth facfor As might be expected, factor 4 shows a negligible relationship between type of religion and social and political stability.
5. CONCLUSION In this paper we have reexamined a 1966 factor analytic study in order to see what insights it gives into the relationship between predominant type of religion and social and economic characteristics of nations. We found a strong association between a partial ranking of religious configuration by favourableness to individualism and a factor summarizing the socio-cultural concomitants of the industrialization-urbanization process. We found a very weak association between religion and the westernization of political institutions. Factor 1 explained statistically 64% of inter-country variations in predominant religion and factor 2 less than 3%. As expected, the predominant religion in countries that had proceeded further in the modernization process, on the average, stressed more the view that individuals have significant control over their fates. We concluded that the cross-sectional association between religion and modernization could nor be interpreted to reflect direct interactions between religion and the influences summarized by our measures of socioeconomic development. Rather, it reflects marked regional differences in both religious configuration and levels of socioeconomic development which are the outcome of common historical influences operating over several centuries. Of great importance among these are colonial patterns of expansion and the attendant spread of Catholicism in Latin America, the historical characteristics of the spread of Islam and of European economic expansion in the Mediterranean, and the impact of European imperialist expansion on the tribal societies of the African continent. The important historical influences most probably include interactions between religious attitudes and socioeconomic characteristics of the early spread of capitalism. However, it is also likely that complex common historical influences helped determine the operation of religious attitudes and actions as well as the phenomena of socioeconomic change.
NOTES 1. I. Adelman and C. T. study of social and political
Morris, ‘A quantitative determinants of fertility’,
Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 14
(January 1966), pp. 129-157. 2. In factor analysis, each of the variables included in the studv is treated as deuendent and independent in turn. Thus, by contrast ‘with regression analysis, which is a study of dependence, factor analysis is a study of mutual interdependence.
3. M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Translated T. Parsons (London: Unwin University Books, 1930); and R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitaiism (New York: Penguin Books, 1947). Originally published in 1926. 4. R. Bellah, ‘Reflections on the Protestant ethic analogy in Asia’, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 19 tJanuary 1963), pp. 52-60.
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 5. C. Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). 6. R. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 66. 7. L. L. Thurstone, Multiple Factor Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 56. 8. I. Adelman and C. T. Morris, Society, Politics, and Economic Development, Rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971). 9. This indicator classifies countries according to the strength of extended family and tribal ties along a spectrum in which the prevalence of the nuclear family is ranked highest, the extended family is intermediate along the spectrum, and the prevalence of tribal societies is ranked lowest. 10. A. Banks and R. Textor, A Cross-Polity Survey (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964), pp. 70-71. 11. There is, of course, no unique principle for ranking the categories of a nominal classification such as type of religion or occupation.
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16. Since the scores of countries on the clamlfication scheme by predominant type of religion are based on an arbitrary linear scoring scheme, estimates of variance explained give only a general order of magnitude. Experiments with alternative scoring schemes that preserve ranks indicate that factor analysis results with our kind of data are surprisingly insensitive to altemative scoring schemes. See the Appendix to Adelman and Morris (1971), op. cit. 17. See N. Smelser. ‘Mechanisms of change and adjustment to change’, in B. F. Hoselitz and W. E. Moore (eds.), Industrialization and Society (New York: UNESCO, 1963), pp. 32ff. 18. ibid., p. 33. 19. E. Durkheim has pointed out with, special emphasis that the increasing division of labour and growing heterogeneity that accompany industrialization require the creation of new mechanisms for integrating societies. See his 77re Division of Labor in Society (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949), p. 41. 20. For the results without per capita GNP, see Adelman and Morris (1966), op. cit., pp. 129-157. 21. See Bellah (1970), op. cit., Chap. 2.
12. For a case study of the diverse experience of Morocco and Indonesia with the capacity of the Moslem faith to absorb varied cultures and attitudes, see Geertz (1968), op. cit. 13. At an early stage in our work on fertility, we attempted a five-way classification of countries by the political strength of religious authorities which showed an unexpected quite strongnegativeassociation with fertility and little or no relationship with the remaining social and political indicators. Because of conceptual difficulties and our inability to determine the influences for which this classification was apparently acting as a proxy, we did not pursue it and shifted our attention to the area of religion and individual choice. Our statistically most successful effort to explore the meaning of the preliminary classification by political strength of religions suggested that it was a proxy for climatic influences! 14. This point was made to the authors by Professor Charley Hardwick, Professor of Religious Studies, Philosophy and Religion at the American University. 15. Thurstone (1961), op. cit., p. 61.
22. ibid., p. 16. 23. ibid., p. 24. 24. These generalizations remain controversial. 25. Bellah (1970), op. cit., Chap. 3. 26. See Adelman and Morris (1971), op. cit., pp. 167-171. for an explanation of the derivation of these scores. 27. The reason for the high loading of the indicator of extent of social mobility in the factor that groups together leadership characteristics is that an important element in the definition of this indicator is the degree of openness of access to membership in the leadership elite. 28. The concept of an industrializing elite is discussed in C. Kerr, et al., Industrialism and Industrinl Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). Chap. 2.