Religious Minorities and Public Good Provision in 19th and early 20th Century Egypt

Abstract

This paper asks why do ethno-religious minorities succeed at providing extensive public services? Evidence in political economy suggests that ethno-religious diversity undermines public service provision. We argue instead that competition created through foreign influence in education, between missionaries and ethno-religious minorities can enhance non-state public service provision by minorities if they face an existentialist threat. Egyptian Coptic Christian elites engaged in rapid development of modern schooling in the 19th and early 20th century as a backlash to missionaries’ efforts to convert their followers through school provision. Employing original dataset of modern Egyptian schools (1825 – 1913) we show that competition created by missionaries affected the provision of Coptic schools. American Protestant missionaries that held the most active conversion program caused a higher increase in the provision of Coptic schools in comparison with other missionary groups. We then employ a dynamic difference-in-difference design to further investigate this relationship. Exploiting the timing of introduction of missionary schools in Egyptian villages we highlight the competition initiated through the supply of missionary schools, leads to a significant increase of Coptic modern schools.