The Dark Side of the Reformation: State-Building in the Age of Religious Competition

Abstract

The Protestant Reformation is typically associated with normatively desirable political and economic outcomes. In this paper, we argue that the weakened legitimacy of the Catholic Church created a window for strong rulers to secularize Church property. This shifted the power balance toward rulers as against society and negatively affected parliamentary institutions and economic development. The paper complements previous studies by documenting a darker side to the Protestant Reformation, at least in the short run.

Keywords: State formation, state-building, reformation, economic development, representative institutions, democracy

JEL Classification: N40, N43, O10