Christianity and Democracy: The Catholic Wave

Issue Date April 2004
Volume 15
Issue 2
Page Numbers 32-46
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Catholicism played an important role in bringing about the third wave of democratization. This was due to a long historical rapprochement through which both church and the democratic state came to tolerate the other. The Church then exercised a direct influence upon democratization in many countries—strongly in Poland, Lithuania, Spain, the Philippines, and Brazil, but weakly in other places, like Argentina. The Church was most likely to exercise a strong influence when it was differentiated from the state—in its governance, in its transnational links, in its domestic alliances, and in its identification with national identity.

About the Author

Daniel Philpott is assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and faculty fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the author of Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (2001).

View all work by Daniel Philpott