Conference Papers & Current Trends
Discussion of Rational Choice Theory
Round 2: Reviews & Rejoinders
Daniel H. Levine
University of Michigan, Chair, Political Science
Review of Rendering Unto Caesar. The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America, by Anthony Gill for the Review of Politics.
This ambitious work attempts to lay out a new agenda for the study of religion and politics in Latin America. Three points undergird the argument: that concepts derived from rational choice theory can be usefully applied to this reality; that doing so results in more systematic research and more fruitful results than other approaches have offered; and that the central force making for change in Catholic stances towards the state is the competition from expanding Protestantism, and the threat this embodies to the Catholic church's ability to hold mass publics. More threat from Protestants means more disengagement of church institutions from old alliances with the state, more open opposition to that state (e.g. through promotion of human rights) and more vigorous promotion of popular groups. Churches are treated as unitary actors; what bishops do and say (as manifest in episcopal conferences) stands in for "the church".
That religion and politics mix at all is taken as something in need of explanation. "Even in the United States" Gill writes, "the constitutional separation of church and state cannot keep the religious and political realms apart. The intertwining of religion and politics is even more pronounced in Latin America--the focus of this study, where the issue of church-state separation remains far more ambiguous. "(2) This is not a good way to begin the search for a new approach. Strong ties between religion and politics have been a conspicuous part of US history, are visible in all cultures and traditions (by no measure "even more pronounced in Latin America") and evolve continuously everywhere. The issue is not to keep these "realms apart", either in theory or practice, but to understand who brings them together, for what purposes, and with what consequences.
After a brief historical overview, the author focuses on church-state relations in the post 1930 period, with special reference to the last three decades. He sees 1979 as a turning point in church state relations. That year brought Sandinista victory in Nicaragua (with multiple religious-political alliances both in support and opposition), the regional bishops' conference at Puebla, which enshrined the notion of a "preferential option for the poor" in Catholic vocabularies, not to mention initial impact of the first of many visits by Pope John Paul II to the area. Subsequent chapters lay out "An Economic Model of Church-State Relations" (3), followed by a case studies of Protestant expansion and Catholic response (4), and by of the progressive church in Chile (5), and the conservative Church and its complicity with the dirty war in Argentina (6).
Central to the author's "economic model" is an expanding supply of religious goods which leads churches to fierce competition for clientele. Competition, in turn, makes clergy and church leaders more responsive to parishioners' needs. Gill insists that without competition, there is no option to exit, and hence no effective pressure on elites to change positions. (66). What about the option to do nothing, or to vote with one's feet, leaving religious and other choices for a subsequent point? Both have been much exercised in Latin America. Underlying the model is the assumption that "there has always been a relatively high demand for both social justice and religion in Latin America"(48) Unfortunately little or no attention is paid to how needs are defined, how those definitions change, or how competing visions of need are brought to mass clientele which is what brought social justice issues to center stage in the first place. The propositions advanced are extremely general: viz. that church state conflict occurs when the opportunity cost of cooperation for any one party exceed the present or future benefits of cooperation. (63). Propositions of this kind are not very helpful: they give little guidance as to who initiates conflict, what the stakes turn out to be, who gains and loses, and with what consequences.
Gill attempts to fill in the blanks with an eclectic mix of standard narrative histories, anecdotes, statements of position from documents issued by episcopal conferences, and ecological inference from religious statistics. The discussion of Protestant growth, and the case studies of on Chile and Argentina rely for the most part on standard histories, and are generally well done if based on a narrow range of sources. The results are not very powerful, although "the data do provoke the suspicion that a systematic relationship is at work" (109). Throughout, the author underscores the importance of competition, which "furnished the wake-up call the Church needed to realize that poverty and repression were serious problems that demanded more than temporary acts of charity. More than just a wake up call, however, Protestant advances also provided the motivation to do something about these problems." (120) This statement ignores much of the history of change in the theory and practice of religion over the religious discourse over the last half century. The central empirical issue in this book is whether or not the Church (that is, the Catholic episcopal hierarchy as manifested in its bishops' conferences) did not did not oppose authoritarian governments and did or did not support progressive, popular social movements. Gill asserts that all previous accounts of these issues are inadequate: inductive, excessively reliant on case studies, and more focused on the variables such as poverty, repression and internal church reform than on the decisional processes of church leaders, which the author holds to be the critical dependent variable. Calls for more systematic methodology notwithstanding, as noted the author relies in practice on a loose collection of sources including standard narrative histories (both for general issues and specific countries), statistics on religious competition, which boil down to growth numbers for different churches, general social and economic statistics, which are used to test rival hypotheses about correlates of church growth, and interviews.
The final chapter on "The Institutional Limits of Catholic Progressivism" is curious. The author correctly notes general trends in the Catholic church (dating from the onset of the Papacy of John Paul II) to constrain and where possible to suppress progressive views and initiatives on the part of church leaders and active members. This is unobjectionable, but Gill does not let the matter rest here. He admonishes liberationist Catholics on the incorrectness of their views: "Actually", he writes, "considering that the church's universal mission is to evangelize all people (i.e. maximize parishioners), being all things to all people is a reasonable strategy, not to mention one of St. Paul's recommendations. Exclusively favoring one social sector over another will undoubtedly alienate the unfavored group and in the presence of religious pluralism may lead to their conversion away from Catholicism" (174). Such editorializing is out of place, and misreads what is at issue not only in general Church strategies, but also in the ongoing debate between liberationist and other positions. Evangelizing all peoples is not the same as "maximizing parishioners" and anyway, the notion that opting for the poor benefits one group exclusively over another is an tired accusation that utterly fails to stand up to scrutiny. The claim to be all things to all people at all times is what requires careful social and political scrutiny. The liberationist position itself arose out of efforts to put that claim to systematic test in theory and in practice.
Gill's argument relies on narrowly drawn assumptions about individual psychology, and puts great stock in the free rider problem as a key to the difficulties of sustaining religious (or indeed any) organization. Such positions ignore the dynamics of collective action, and obscure the extent to which involvement in the group itself is part of the reward for action. They also fail to acknowledge the power of ideas and moral suasion in bringing and holding groups together. Difficulties of this kind are well known in work in the rational choice vein. More surprising to this reader is the weakness of the data presented. Often the information is simply not there, and the author speculates. Thus, "Although it is impossible to measure, it is likely that in some cases the Church's pastoral outreach to the poor and concomitant opposition to the military slowed the number of defections to Protestantism. As the poor became more involved in church activity through CEBS and other organizations, or by directly benefiting from humanitarian assistance, they were likely to gain a new respect for the church and deepen their ties to Catholicism. (184) This assertion is simply not supported by readily available evidence of various kinds drawn from studies in Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Chile not to mention comparative works.
Rational choice concepts have inspired fruitful research on religion. Recent work on supply side interpretations of US. and European religious history and on the dynamics of church growth by authors like Finke or Iannacone demonstrate the potential power of this approach. Rendering Unto Caesar makes important claims about the utility of bringing this body of thought to bear on the effort to explain change in Latin America, but in the last analysis, more is promised than is delivered.