Abstract
This paper summarises my recent monograph, based on my doctoral dissertation findings. A seminal contribution of my work is that the historical institutional influence of religion has been a crucial factor in sustainable development, surpassing the current proportion of adherents. In contrast to common views in economics and sociology on how religion impacts prosperity/transparency via its cultural influence (i.e. à la Weber), my research demonstrates that, instead, the core variable influencing prosperity is the institutional influence of religion. This finding shifts how the relationship between religion and development should be viewed. Several pieces of evidence corroborate this finding: 1) the abundant historical, theological, and theoretical information; 2) the empirical results on State religion, Concordats, and Legal origin; 3) the analysis of specific cases. A comprehensive methodological framework has been developed in this research, consisting of different epistemological approaches (mixed methods). The quantitative (regressions) part establishes the interrelations between the investigated variables (i.e., corruption, competitiveness, environment, and institutional religion), while QCA further infers causal relations for 65 countries in Europe and the Americas. The qualitative part uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine four case studies (Switzerland, Uruguay, Cuba, and Colombia). Combining the following three main factors accounts for uneven sustainable development performance in Europe and the Americas: (1) Religion: (1.1) Historical Protestantism and its positive influence on law, institutions, and language (highest performance); (1.2) anti-clericalism (medium-high performance); (1.3) Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy (medium-low performance); (1.4) Syncretism (low performance). (2) Political non-religious influences: (2.1) Communism (low performance). (3) Geography and environment.
Presenters
Jason Garcia PortillaLecturer, Department of Responsible Management and Leadership, Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies, University of Winchester, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Religion, Corruption, Prosperity, Roman Catholicism, Protestant Reformation, Church-State Relations, Competitiveness
