Behavior, religion, and socio-economic development: a synthesized theoretical framework

Abstract

Due to theoretical shortcomings, most of the literature that examines the impact of religion on economic well-being fails to distinguish between the religion and the religion constituents. Moreover, the current framework has a narrow focus on economic well-being, does not facilitate for empirical testing, and is troubled by the problem of endogeneity. This paper introduces a framework for the empirical and descriptive study of the impact of religion on socio-economic development. The framework introduced facilitates for the adoption of both inductive and deductive approaches, allowing one to operationalize and analyze the religion itself, to test whether it embodies any principles that might hinder development by facilitating for the construction of a quantitative measure, which seeks to differentiate between the religion and the behavior of its constituents, as well as facilitate for a descriptive study of the religion itself. An example of how to utilize the framework developed is provided for the case of Islam, where the concept of Mafsada, public harm, in the Maqasid of Shariah, the purpose of Islamic jurisprudence, is operationalized, alongside Adam Smith’s Worthless Fellow in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, to develop a composite measure whose corollaries represent behavior a worthless fellow might engage in and would subsequently lead to societal harm. These corollaries can also be adopted in an empirical study as independent variables. Moreover, Ibn Khuldon’s Theory of Development is also utilized along with Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic to facilitate for the study as to why Muslim countries are underdeveloped, and whether their poor development is attributable to Islam, or due to factors relating to culture, justice, politics, and others. This study utilizes a causal research design as it facilitates for better understanding the nature and the extent of the relationship between variables in poorly understood phenomena—behavior, religion, and how, and whether, they can impact development.