Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route whereby Protestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify social practices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in current NGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists interested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offers valuable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation. Its success was rooted first, in colonial missionaries’ ability to enforce new ways of life on small exemplary communities; second, in local adaptations (African prophetic movements, Pentecostalism) that deepened and widened the social reach of congregational principles; and third in the incentives Protestantism created for propagating the congregational form.

中文翻译：

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移植制度创新：比较撒哈拉以南非洲非政府组织和传教士新教的成功

本文将传教士新教和非政府组织 (NGO) 视为跨国制度创新的载体，比较了它们在遥远社会中建立自我维持机构的成功与失败。传教新教和非政府组织的相似之处在于它们试图在亲属、血统和种族团结形式之外建立正式的组织。将机构作为创造组织社会生活的集体能力的方式，我们追溯了新教传教士在非洲建立公理会的途径，并确定了使这一事业取得成功但在当前非政府组织试图改变组织生活的尝试中相对缺乏的社会实践。对制度转型感兴趣的社会学家在很大程度上忽视了这一点，公理会的历史提供了关于激进体制创新条件的宝贵社会学经验。它的成功首先植根于殖民传教士在小型模范社区推行新生活方式的能力；第二，在地方适应（非洲先知运动、五旬节主义）中，深化和扩大了公理会原则的社会影响；第三是新教为传播会众形式而创造的激励措施。五旬节主义）深化和扩大了会众原则的社会影响；第三是新教为传播会众形式而创造的激励措施。五旬节主义）深化和扩大了会众原则的社会影响；第三是新教为传播会众形式而创造的激励措施。