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The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies: An Introduction
Abstract
What are the causes and consequences of colonial rule? This introduction to the special issue “Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies” surveys recent literature in political science, sociology, and economics that addresses colonial state building and colonial legacies. Past research has made important contributions to our understanding of colonialism’s long-term effects on political, social, and economic development. Existing work emphasizes the role of critical junctures and institutions in understanding the transmission of those effects to present-day outcomes and embraces the idea of design-based inference for empirical analysis. The four articles of this special issue add to existing research but also represent new research trends: increased attention to (1) the internal dynamics of colonial intervention; (2) noninstitutional transmission mechanisms; (3) the role of context conditions at times of colonial intervention; and (4) a finer-grained disaggregation of outcomes, explanatory factors, and units of analysis.
... Consequently, plausibly exogenous shocks-such as external interventions-that impose changes in regime type can have long-lasting effects on the values and behavior of members of society (Aaskoven, 2022a). From the perspective of critical juncture scholarship, these changes may be viewed as aspects of new, self-reinforcing equilibria (Capoccia and Kelemen, 2007). 2 At the local level, regime shifts that suppress self-government can take place because of either imperialism (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017;Guardado, 2023) or centralized authoritarian rule (Simpser, Slater and Wittenberg, 2018). ...
... While this research strategy illuminates historical dynamics in particular cases, it provides limited insight into 3 Comprehensive reviews of this literature are provided in Abad and Maurer (2021), Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (2023), Cirone and Pepinsky (2022), Simpser, Slater andWittenberg (2018), andVoth (2021). For an overview that focuses on colonial legacies in particular, see De Juan and Pierskalla (2017). when and why legacies take hold, since published persistence studies are almost exclusively stories of "success" (i.e., instantiated legacies). ...
... The suppression of local self-government materializes in a wide variety of forms. It may occur after foreign conquest, as when a colonizing power installs officials from the metropole to directly administer a conquered territory (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017). It may also be the consequence of conflict dynamics internal to a nation-state, as in post-civil war settings when a victor installs overseers to rule over the territories of vanquished foes (Liu, 2022). ...
The suppression of local self-government is a common feature of imperial rule and centralized authoritarianism. Extant scholarship considers such interventions to be potentially legacy-producing. But under which circumstances do these denials of political autonomy lead to sustained changes in political behavior? We develop a novel framework that elucidates when suppression of local self-rule will or will not produce political legacies. Two factors are crucial: the duration of an intervention and the scope of repression. Enduring interventions characterized by encompassing repression are the most likely to generate persistent changes. Contrariwise, transient episodes characterized by limited repressiveness are unlikely to produce legacies. Given our theory's broad character, we conduct empirical analyses in two markedly different settings: Poland, which was split between three major empires, and Brazil, where a military regime installed appointed mayors in certain cities. Our results demonstrate that the suppression of local self-government has varying potential to create legacies.
... Consequently, plausibly exogenous shocks-such as external interventions-that impose changes in regime type can have long-lasting effects on the values and behavior of members of society (Aaskoven, 2022a). From the perspective of critical juncture scholarship, these changes may be viewed as aspects of new, self-reinforcing equilibria (Capoccia and Kelemen, 2007). 2 At the local level, regime shifts that suppress self-government can take place because of either imperialism (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017;Guardado, 2023) or centralized authoritarian rule (Simpser, Slater and Wittenberg, 2018). ...
... While this research strategy illuminates historical dynamics in particular cases, it provides limited insight into 3 Comprehensive reviews of this literature are provided in Abad and Maurer (2021), Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (2023), Cirone and Pepinsky (2022), Simpser, Slater andWittenberg (2018), andVoth (2021). For an overview that focuses on colonial legacies in particular, see De Juan and Pierskalla (2017). when and why legacies take hold, since published persistence studies are almost exclusively stories of "success" (i.e., instantiated legacies). ...
... The suppression of local self-government materializes in a wide variety of forms. It may occur after foreign conquest, as when a colonizing power installs officials from the metropole to directly administer a conquered territory (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017). It may also be the consequence of conflict dynamics internal to a nation-state, as in post-civil war settings when a victor installs overseers to rule over the territories of vanquished foes (Liu, 2022). ...
The suppression of local self-government is a common feature of imperial rule and centralized authoritarianism. Extant scholarship considers such interventions to be potentially legacy-producing. But under which circumstances do these denials of political autonomy lead to sustained changes in political behavior? We develop a novel framework that elucidates when suppression of local self-rule will or will not produce political legacies. Two factors are crucial: the duration of an intervention and the scope of repression. Enduring interventions characterized by encompassing repression are the most likely to generate persistent changes. Contrariwise, transient episodes characterized by limited repressiveness are unlikely to produce legacies. Given our theory's broad character, we conduct empirical analyses in two markedly different settings: Poland, which was split between three major empires, and Brazil, where a military regime installed appointed mayors in certain cities. Our results demonstrate that the suppression of local self-government has varying potential to create legacies.
... Other health policies aim to strengthen the healthcare system, for example the implementation of legislation and protocols to ensure the provision and quality standards of healthcare services. Some policy interventions have an indirect beneficial effect on population health through the reduction Figure 2 The Dahlgren and Whitehead model of social determinants of health of socio-economic inequalities, for example welfare state policies (52,53), and policies that address income inequalities (54,55). What is less clear, however, is whether and why countries vary in their pursuit of policy interventions, and why some governments are more committed to improve the health of their population than others. ...
... This thesis demonstrates a positive effect of a strong political affiliation to a Western country on population health in Caribbean states. The idea that a strong affiliation to a Western country largely outweighs its disadvantages in the modern age should not come as a surprise, as the broad literature of studies from the fields of political sciences, sociology and economics on this topic suggest (8)(9)(10)(55)(56)(57)(58)(59). In the words of McElroy and Mahoney, affiliated states "remain unwilling to trade the visible security, affluence and standard of living of affiliation for the less tangible but more costly rewards of autonomy" (60). ...
... The continuous involvement of Western countries in currently affiliates states, in contrast, may have plausibly resulted in the co-evolvement of good governance and state capacity alongside their continental territories. "Western" influences have been consequential in state building and state capacity in a multitude of countries, and hence, population health and economic development, probably by increasing "the scope of their policies as the resources at their disposal increased" (55). Over time, these institutional effects have cumulated into divergent development trajectories (62), which underlie the gap in economic performance and population health between politically sovereign and affiliated Caribbean states to the present day. ...
This thesis focuses on population health in the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao, as compared to the Netherlands and to other Caribbean states. It aims to provide a better insight into the health situation in the Dutch Caribbean, and the factors related to this health situation, in particular the role of the political context and health policy performance. In order to address this aim, we have made use of data that are derived from cross-sectional health surveys, mortality registration systems, harmonized international databases and country reports and cover theory from the fields of public health, medicine, political science, organization science, economics and sociology.
The main conclusion of this thesis is that the health of the Dutch Caribbean population is poorer than in the Netherlands and other politically affiliated Caribbean states. People in Aruba, and even more so in Curaçao, were more likely to die from causes that are considered avoidable in the presence of timely and effective healthcare and/or interventions in public health and prevention. This suggests that an important aspect contributing to the poorer health outcomes in the Dutch Caribbean is that the local governments have, so far, not optimally addressed their population’s health needs
... 51 Lintz 1982: 10 [48]. 52 For more detail on the issues of government party and democracy in South Korea, see Kimura 2002 [49]. 53 On the concept of "colonnaded," see, Flora 55 in which major political parties were established on the regional support base, swept through South Korean politics. ...
... Masaaki Kimura and Masahisa Hirooka. Kyoto: Minerva Shobo[52]. ...
This paper examined the process of and reasons for the authoritarianization of countries that newly obtained independence after World War II, to locate South Korean experience in the context. Concerning the authoritarianization of these countries, this study showed that it was affected deeply by their processes and characteristics of decolonization. Decolonization was a kind of revolution, so it broke the power balances between the states and societies of these countries. In the process, local elites lost their social and economic resources to rule their villages against states. Without powerful local elites, it is exceedingly difficult for opposition parties to find their own organizations that are strong enough to resist powerful administrative parties that monopolize strong state organizations. Decolonization also broke ideological power balances between the ruling parties and oppositions. In the process of decolonization, people had to find their new identities as members of new nation. Thus, the founding fathers of nations played this role as charismatic leaders. Ruling parties, as parties of charismatic leaders, also monopolize the ideologies of new nations. For democratization of their countries, oppositions had to have something to resist and win against ruling administrative parties with charismatic leaders. Therefore, oppositions must rely on ideology to resist and win against ruling parties. However, in the international situation of these countries, the ideological options along the traditional left–right axis are severely limited, meaning they need some new ideology for democratization. This is why the democratization of these countries often brings with it the rise of ideological parties of a new type, such as fundamentalism, regionalism, and new nationalism. This paper concludes that South Korean experience of authoritarianization and democratization is also a typical example of such newly independent states and the process was deeply affected by uniqueness of the process of decolonization.
... Interruptions of local self-government materialize in a wide variety of forms. They may emerge after foreign conquest, as when a colonizing power installs officials from the metropole to directly administer a conquered territory (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017). They may also be the consequence of conflict dynamics internal to a nation-state, as in post-civil war settings when a victor installs overseers to rule over the territories of vanquished foes (Liu, 2022). ...
... Comprehensive reviews of this literature are provided inAbad and Maurer (2021),Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (2023),Cirone and Pepinsky (2022),Voth (2021),and Simpser, Slater and Wittenberg (2018). For an overview that focuses on colonial legacies in particular, see DeJuan and Pierskalla (2017). ...
The suppression of local self-government is a common feature of imperial rule and centralized authoritarianism. Extant scholarship considers such interventions to be potentially legacy-producing. But under which circumstances do these denials of political autonomy lead to sustained changes in political behavior? We develop a novel framework that elucidates when suppression of local self-rule will or will not produce political legacies. Two factors are crucial: the duration of an intervention and the scope of repression. Enduring interventions characterized by encompassing repression are the most likely to generate persistent changes. Contrariwise, transient episodes characterized by limited repressiveness are unlikely to produce legacies. Given our theory's broad character, we conduct empirical analyses in two markedly different settings: Poland, which was split between three major empires, and Brazil, where a military regime installed appointed mayors in certain cities. Our results demonstrate that the suppression of local self-government has varying potential to create legacies.
... The first interpretation, echoing a utilitarian approach, uses this question as a cue to offer a costbenefit analysis. There are several legal-political accounts that list, quantify or measure the supposed advantages of colonialism (to the colonial metropoles and even, purportedly, to the colonies) in contrast to its injustices and perpetrated wrongs (see De Juan and Pierskalla 2017;Manning, 1974). From this lens, colonialism's injustices and violence are generally understood to ...
An (ongoing) interrogation of colonial wrongdoing is important for debates on decolonisation, restorative justice, racial and gender equality and global political and socio-economic equality. This article presents a theoretical study of colonialism’s legal-political injustices and aims to (re)turn the discussion on colonialism to the field’s most powerful insight, i.e. that of of epistemic violence and injustice. This article also suggests that the reach of this historical injustice went much further than the politics of autonomy, usurpation of territorial rights, political disenfranchisement and resource appropriation. To address the question of colonialism’s distinctiveness as a political mission, which has been discussed in recent debates within analytic philosophy, it argues that colonialism’s epistemic injustice, which denied the very existence and the traditions of the colonised, is the foundational and distinctive feature of colonialism as a political system and which drives its continued impact to this day.
... In most countries throughout the Global South, social policies, broadly defined as concerted measures to improve the social conditions of some over others regardless of their outcomes, were introduced when these territories were not nation states, but colonies that were subordinate to other imperial states (Schmitt, 2015;Bhambra, 2021Bhambra, , 2022. When seeking to understand the impact of colonialism on social policymaking, ideas, and institutions have been recognised as the key vehicles of colonial legacies, with less of a focus on actors (Mahoney, 2010;De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017). As a result, systematic, actor-centric approaches to understanding the origins of social policies in a colonial context are largely missing. ...
Social policy scholars seeking to understand the dynamics of social protection arrangements have advocated for an actor-centric approach. However, when seeking to understand the impact of colonialism on social policymaking, most scholars have focused not on actors but on ideas and institutions. To address this gap, this paper develops an actor-centric framework for understanding the introduction of social policies in colonial contexts. We identify and compare actor constellations of relevance to the introduction of social policies in two colonies of French West Africa that differ with respect to precolonial population density: Dahomey (present-day Benin), with a relatively high precolonial population density, and Côte d’Ivoire, with a relatively low precolonial population density. Despite evidence that precolonial population density can shape colonial strategies and policies, the results provide no supporting evidence that precolonial population density is a driver of meaningful variation in the introduction of social policies or in the composition of the actor constellations from which they originate. Instead, the results point to the key role of transnational and regional actors in the introduction of social policies in colonial contexts. They also highlight the domestic economic and societal arenas as sites where: i) heterogeneity emerges in the social policy actor constellations; and ii) local actors mediate tensions arising from imperially driven social transformations.
... My analysis speaks to contributions in the fields of comparative and international political economy (CPE and IPE). The lasting influence of imperial rule on societies has long been established by a prominent CPE literature strand (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2017). Among others, scholars have analyzed the distinct impacts of settler versus non-settler colonies (Acemoglu et al., 2001;Acemoglu et al., 2002;Easterly and Levine, 2016), the effects of imposed legal systems (La Porta et al., 1997), the importance of colonial legislatures Opalo, 2022;Paine, 2019), the consequences of slavery (Nunn, 2008), the legacies of bureaucracies and state building (Kantorowicz, 2022;, 11 exposure to centralized authority , the outcomes of colonial investments (Ricart-Huguet et al., 2021), the results of asymmetric economic relationships (Bruhn and Gallego, 2012;Kuipers, 2022), and the presence of missionaries (Lankina and Getachew, 2012). ...
For centuries, European history was characterized by a fundamental asymmetry. While interpolity relations on the continent were often relatively balanced—without any dominant power being able to permanently establish a hierarchical relationship to the other major powers—the relations between European states and polities in other world regions were generally hierarchical and exploitative, as manifested in colonialism and imperialism. How can we explain this difference? I argue that the symmetrical character of relationships among major European powers, particularly in the form of sustained and intense military and economic competition, was partly constitutive of the hierarchical relationships between those same powers and other parts of the world. Specifically, three mechanisms connect sustained rivalries to imperialism: (1) political elites' desire to improve their relative status/prestige through territorial gains, (2) pressure from public budget deficits that incentivized colonial exploitation, and (3) the creation of powerful interest groups in the form of navies and armies that favored imperialism. Moreover, when territorial conflict over colonies escalated, imperial expansion could ultimately feed back into interpolity competition in Europe. I demonstrate these dynamics through systematic analyses of the rivalries between England and France (1689-1815) and between Imperial Germany and Great Britain (1871/1897-1918).
... Furthermore, other scholars of liberal persuasion, such as Abernethy (2000), Acemoglu et al. (2000), Barnes (1971), and Hechter (2009); Ignatieff (2002); Juan and Pierskalla (2017), argued that profound gains were recorded during colonialism. The gains, according to Gilley (2017), include: opportunity of and access to formal education, modern health facilities, eradication of age-long culture of slavery and slave trade, infrastructural development and its ancillary employment opportunities, organized governance and administrative system, and women rights. ...
At the centre of African underdevelopment are slave trade and colonization. Expectedly, these two issues have been in the front burner of academic discourse, especially in Africa. While the literature is stuffed with forms and causes of colonialism, this current article contributes to the existing literature by interrogating the relationship between colonialism and some selected parts of Nigerian culture. The paper therefore examined the effects of colonialism on African culture, the relationship between colonisation and Nigeria’s cultural crisis, including the challenges it poses for her identity. Using descriptive analysis and evidence-based research method, the study found that certain aspects of valued Nigerian culture were being eroded, especially as it related to the role of purity in religion and marriage. Findings further showed that the enthusiastic assimilation of Western culture by the younger generation was suggestive of a culture whose future is on a knife-edge.
... As I have often stated since then, the reference to just a few research works, including the overview article of Juan and Pierskalla (Juan & Pierskalla, 2017), was clearly insufficient to substantiate that claim, even as a review of literature. To that end, I have subsequently generated what is in effect the missing bibliography for that single paragraph (Gilley, 2020b). ...
I respond to scholarly critiques of my 2017 article "The Case for Colonialism." I find that my critics mostly misread my article, used citations they had not read or understood, failed to adhere to basic social scientific principles, and imposed their own interpretations on data without noting the possibility of alternatives. I note that a failure to adhere to academic standards, the main charge levelled against my paper, is rife among those who have levelled such charges. The use of their critiques to impose professional penalties and punishments on me as a scholar bespeaks the fundamental problems of ideological monoculture and illiberal censorship in academia today. I conclude that the problems of most research on the colonial past are so deep-rooted that nothing short of a complete rewriting of colonial history with appropriate scientific conditions will suffice in most cases. The same is likely true of many other topics in the social sciences.
... We recognize that the current political status of these dependencies is in many aspects comparable to the colonial era, and could in fact be seen as a continuance of the asymmetrical power relationship with a former colonizer, as is regularly echoed in political rhetoric. 27,28 Contemporary literature points to the benefits of late colonialism largely outweighing its disadvantages, [29][30][31][32] while also demonstrating that Caribbean people in Western countries experience negative treatment based on their skin color, 33,34 and are disproportionally disadvantaged for factors that contribute to their health. 35,36 Considering the duality of these cultural dynamics, with sustainable development on one side, and social stigmatization on the other, it may then not be too surprising that the populations of many former colonies are hesitant to allow more 'Western' influences in their internal affairs, yet currently struggle to move forward as well. ...
Background:
In the Caribbean, life expectancy in politically independent territories has increasingly diverged from that of territories that remained affiliated to their former colonizers. Because these affiliated territories differ in degree of political independence, they are not all governed in the same way. We assessed whether differences in life expectancy trends between Caribbean dependencies and their Western administrators were related to their degree of political independence, and which causes of death contributed to divergence or convergence in life expectancy.
Methods:
Analysis of age-standardized death rates and decomposition of life expectancy differences between France, the Netherlands, UK, USA and their Caribbean dependencies by age and cause-of-death during the period 1980-2014.
Results:
Life expectancy differences between Western countries and their dependencies have generally increased for men and narrowed for women, but trends have been much more favorable in the French- than in the Dutch-administered territories. The strongest contributions to widening gaps in life expectancy between Western countries and their dependencies were from mortality from cardiovascular diseases (ischemic heart disease) and external causes (homicide and traffic accidents).
Conclusion:
Dependencies with a stronger political affiliation to a Western country experienced more favorable life expectancy developments than dependencies that had more autonomy during the 1980-2014 period. The underlying mortality differences with Western countries are largely comparable among Caribbean territories but differ in magnitude, most notably for cardiovascular disease and external causes. This suggests that increases in a territory's political autonomy impairs the diffusion of new knowledge and techniques, and/or reduces government's effectiveness in implementing policies.
... A vibrant literature examines the long-term effects of European colonialism by comparing postcolonial outcomesoften measured in recent decades-across countries with varied colonial experiences. Many examine effects of different colonial policies and institutions on economic development (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001;Banerjee and Iyer 2005;Engerman and Sokoloff 2011), democracy (Weiner 1987;Mamdani 1996;Lankina and Getachew 2012;Owolabi 2015;De Juan and Pierskalla 2017;Lee and Paine 2019), internal warfare (Reid 2012;Mukherjee 2017), and state capacity (Young 1994;Herbst 2014;Lee 2018). These scholars generally conclude that most types of colonial institutions and policies negatively affected long-term outcomes. ...
Extensive research suggests that European rule negatively affected political and economic development in their colonies. But did outcomes improve after colonial rule ended? Studying post–World War II independence cases, we statistically examine consequences of postwar decolonization—which includes both colonial autonomy and independence—for democracy, internal conflict, government revenue growth, and economic growth using two-way fixed-effects models. We find that democracy levels increased sharply as colonies gained internal autonomy in the period immediately before their independence. However, conflict, revenue growth, and economic growth did not systematically differ before and after independence. Accounting for varieties of colonial institutions or for endogenous independence timing produces similar results. Except for democratic gains, the overall findings—juxtaposed with existing research—suggest that, although European colonial empires created deleterious long-term effects, decolonization exhibited less pronounced political consequences than sometimes thought.
... Research that is careful in conceptualising and measuring controls, that establishes a feasible counterfactual, that includes multiple dimensions of costs and benefits weighted in some justified way, and that adheres to basic epistemic virtues often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit, as the literature review by Juan and Pierskalla shows. 16 Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowledge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions. 17 This leads to the second failure of anti-colonial critique. ...
... Research that is careful in conceptualising and measuring controls, that establishes a feasible counterfactual, that includes multiple dimensions of costs and benefits weighted in some justified way, and that adheres to basic epistemic virtues often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit, as the literature review by Juan and Pierskalla shows. 16 Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowledge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions. 17 This leads to the second failure of anti-colonial critique. ...
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What is the role of law in imperial state-building projects? We study this question of historical significance with an empirical focus on Russian arbitrazh (commercial) courts in Crimea. We document the increase in the number of disputes that involve the Russian state and strong pro-government favoritism in court decisions. We also find that arbitrazh courts are used as a check on local political elites. At the same time, our analysis establishes favoritism toward local businesses in disputes with Russian businesses. Most importantly, we highlight that this stick-and-carrot legal politics is not only imposed from above: Local judges who defected to Russia act more favorably than outsider judges appointed from Russia toward the Russian state and businesses, plausibly because local judges want to signal their loyalty. The implication is that imperial legal domination emerges not only through directives from the metropole but also through the everyday contributions of local imperial intermediaries.
This Element explores the significance of the Japanese wartime empire's occupation of Southeast Asia during World War Two for understanding the region's colonial legacies. It conceptualizes the occupation as a critical juncture that mediated the survival of American and European colonial institutions, and comparatively describes how, between 1940 and 1945, a wide variety of formal institutions for governing territories and people operated under the Japanese, who selectively kept or changed the existing arrangements of their Western predecessors, while sometimes introducing new ones altogether. The Japanese occupation, as such, generated different processes for transmitting pre-1940 colonial institutions into postwar and independent Southeast Asia. Building on new histories of the occupation, this Element offers an analytical framework that helps social scientists specify the mechanisms through which the long-run consequences of colonial institutions obtain in the context of Southeast Asia, while grappling more generally with what constitutes a meaningful rupture to historical continuity.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze and articulate how the influence of the third forces has affected African politics. Third forces divided African people using colonization of a special type. The objective of this article is to create an awareness of how the third forces had influenced a public riot and coup d'état in African countries. Secondly, the study shows how Western countries benefit if African countries are not united. The study also analyzes the financial aid provided by Western countries to the group of people who are fighting against democratic processes. The data relating to the topic and the problem that is addressed by this article was available on various platforms. Therefore, the conclusions and findings of this article are based on the secondary data that was collected on different platforms. The study concludes that the greediness of Western countries extends to Africa. They capitalize on African poverty and divide the African people and leaders.
Despite how significantly processes of decolonization have shaped contemporary political and social realities, their study remains marginal in the peace and security fields. Understanding historical legacies and how embedded they are in today’s peace and conflict structures is essential to the analysis of current conflicts. This article argues that by tracing dis/continuities in colonial relations, we can gain a better understanding of these contentious processes and of the marginalized positionalities they create. In doing so, much needed research on the ambiguities of these legacies and on who had a say in shaping historical events can be done without reiterating colonial power relations. Alongside its analysis of the Cameroonian internationalized decolonization process under a UN Trusteeship and of how it developed into the current Anglophone conflict, this article uncovers and explores the existing dilemmas in, and potential new avenues for security studies research on colonial dis/continuities using post- and decolonial theories. Its findings and discussion contribute widely to debates within post- and decolonial research, peace, security, and conflict studies.
The escalation of tensions in the global political arena is hardly a recent development. Presently, there’s a notable shift toward acknowledging the enduring impact of historical traumas such as slavery, World Wars, and colonialism on humans and nations. Colonialism dealt a significant blow to Africa, with the effects manifesting as trauma. Despite its colonial tragedy, a substantial body of literature recognizes the increasing agency of Africa. Thus, this study examines Africa’s evolving economic, political, and security tensions in light of its colonial history. It applies Postcolonial Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as theoretical and analytical lenses to examine the speeches of twelve (12) African leaders who participated in the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit. I explore the pattern of issues discussed by these leaders in terms of their indicative nature of postcolonial trauma and examine how the speeches demonstrate Africa’s agency within the international political landscape. The findings reveal that African leaders tie their current political, economic, and security situations in their country to the remnants of colonialism and imperialism. Fueled with resentments, these leaders are more inclined to distrust the West but maintain trust in Russia and its “strategic” partnership. Therefore, in asserting to their agency, the analysis indicates a shift toward Africa’s interdependency and desired participation in big power politics with “sincere” support from Russia. This study highlights a significant trend in Africa’s geopolitical landscape, examining how colonialism has shaped the region’s political dynamics and impacted its diplomatic aspirations in today’s multipolar world.
Whereas the literature on colonial legacies has flourished in recent years, relatively less attention has been paid to the origins of colonial institutions. What explains variation in the design of colonial institutions? Some scholars have stressed the importance of precolonial factors, arguing that institutions were designed to reflect the environmental and socio-political conditions that the colonizers encountered in the colonies. Others hold that policymaking reflected the colonial powers’ metropolitan identity and aims. We believe these literature have been insufficiently attentive to the colonial state and the political ideals of colonial bureaucrats. Drawing on evidence from British India and French Algeria, we show that land policy was shaped by intense competition between ideologically motivated officials, who disagreed over the uses and aims of state power. Theorizing the role of ideas allows us to explain variation in colonial policies across both space and time while highlighting the indispensability of qualitative methods of analysis.
Russia’s February 2022 intervention in Ukraine transformed the socioeconomic landscape for the Russian diaspora most profoundly since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Diaspora members have been labeled as a security risk and acting as Moscow’s “agents.” Since Russia’s militarized intervention in Ukraine, Kyiv and the European Union closed their borders with Russia, limiting the movement of people. In turn, this has severed families and longstanding sociocultural and economic ties with the homeland. However, Russia’s militarized intervention should not be treated in isolation from the preceding eight years of hostility with Kyiv and NATO which occurred predominantly in the “gray zone.” This paper explores language policy conditions in Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia that enabled Russia’s unconventional and militarized interventions. The paper argues that by rejecting ownership of the Russian language and assigning it to Moscow, Kyiv, Riga, and Tallinn weaponized language and empowered Russia’s “compatriots protection” policy. In other words, militarized deterrence against Russia has achieved limited success while the underlying factors enabling Moscow’s interventions remained outside the deterrence discussion. Thus in an era of gray zone conflict, deterrence must incorporate civilianized institution-building mechanisms. To prove this, the paper compares minority language policies and their connection to the intensity of Russia’s intervention.
The suppression of local self-government is a common feature of imperial rule and centralized authoritarianism. Extant scholarship considers such interventions to be potentially legacy-producing. But under which circumstances do these denials of political autonomy lead to sustained changes in political behavior? We develop a novel framework that elucidates when suppression of local self-rule will or will not produce political legacies. Two factors are crucial: the duration of an intervention and the scope of repression. Enduring interventions characterized by encompassing repression are the most likely to generate persistent changes. Contrariwise, transient episodes characterized by limited repressiveness are unlikely to produce legacies. Given our theory's broad character, we conduct empirical analyses in two markedly different settings: Poland, which was split between three major empires, and Brazil, where a military regime installed appointed mayors in certain cities. Our results demonstrate that the suppression of local self-government has varying potential to create legacies.
The formation of post-colonial states in Africa, and the Middle East gave birth to prolonged separatist wars. Exploring the evolution of these separatist wars, Yaniv Voller examines the strategies that both governments and insurgents employed, how these strategies were shaped by the previous struggle against European colonialism and the practices and roles that emerged in the subsequent period, which moulded the identities, aims and strategies of post-colonial governments and separatist rebels. Based on a wealth of primary sources, Voller focuses on two post-colonial separatist wars; In Iraqi Kurdistan, between Kurdish separatists and the government in Baghdad, and Southern Sudan, between black African insurgents and the government in Khartoum. By providing an account of both conflicts, he offers a new understanding of colonialism, decolonisation and the international politics of the post-colonial world.
This book explores the deep roots of modern democracy, focusing on geography and long-term patterns of global diffusion. Its geographic argument centers on access to the sea, afforded by natural harbors which enhance the mobility of people, goods, capital, and ideas. The extraordinary connectivity of harbor regions thereby affected economic development, the structure of the military, statebuilding, and openness to the world – and, through these pathways, the development of representative democracy. The authors' second argument focuses on the global diffusion of representative democracy. Beginning around 1500, Europeans started to populate distant places abroad. Where Europeans were numerous they established some form of representative democracy, often with restrictions limiting suffrage to those of European heritage. Where they were in the minority, Europeans were more reticent about popular rule and often actively resisted democratization. Where Europeans were entirely absent, the concept of representative democracy was unfamiliar and its practice undeveloped.
Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? Looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa, this book advances a novel answer to this question: communities are better able to coordinate around basic service delivery when their formal jurisdictional boundaries overlap with informal social institutions, or norms. This book identifies the precolonial past as the driver of striking subnational variation in the present because these social institutions only encompass the many villages of the local state in areas that were once home to precolonial polities. Drawing on a multi-method research design, the book develops and tests a theory of institutional congruence to document how the past shapes contemporary elite approaches to redistribution within the local state. Where precolonial kingdoms left behind collective identities and dense social networks, local elites find it easier to cooperate following decentralization.
Christian missions in colonial Africa have contributed significantly to the expansion of formal education and thereby shaped the continent’s long-term economic and political development. This paper breaks new ground by showing that this process depended on local demand for education. It is argued that disagreements over norms, and in particular the struggle over polygamy, which resulted from missions’ insistence on monogamy in traditionally polygamous areas, lowered African demand for education. Analyses of geocoded data from historical and contemporary sources, covering most of sub-Saharan Africa, show that the struggle is associated with worse educational outcomes today. Effects are not limited to formal attainments but carry over to informal outcomes, in particular literacy. The findings attest to considerable heterogeneity in missionary legacies and suggest that local conditions should be given greater consideration in future studies on the long-term consequences of colonial-era interventions.
Colonially inherited institutions are a key determinant of the regime type and economic outcomes of postcolonial countries. This study extends this claim to civil-military relations, arguing that former French colonies are especially likely to invest in structural coup-proofing. France created paramilitary units throughout its colonies for which many natives were recruited. After independence, these paramilitaries proved persistent and were consequently used to counterbalance the regular armed forces. In contrast, countries without existing paramilitary organizations had stronger militaries which deterred and even forcibly prevented structural coup-proofing. Quantitative tests using global data on coup-proofing and a paired comparison of civil-military relations in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana support the claim that former French colonies are more likely to heavily invest in counterbalancing. By showing how French colonial institutions provided post-independence governments with the opportunity to coup-proof, the study contributes to our understanding of civil-military relations as well as the institutional long-term effects of colonialism and foreign rule more generally.
Colonial investments impacted long-run political and economic development, but there is little systematic evidence of their origins and spatial distribution. Combining novel data sources, this article shows that colonial investments were very unequally distributed within sixteen British and French African colonies. What led colonial states to invest much more in some districts than others? The author argues that natural harbors and capes led some places to become centers of pre-colonial coastal trade, which in turn increased later colonial investments not only in infrastructure but also in health and education. Furthermore, distance from pre-colonial trading posts helps explain the diffusion of investments within each colony. The author finds limited support for alternative explanations such as natural resources and pre-colonial ethnic characteristics, including pre-colonial political centralization. These two findings suggest an economic origin for the regional and ethnic disparities observed in the colonial and contemporary periods.
How did political institutions emerge and evolve under colonial rule? This article studies a key colonial actor and establishes core democratic contradictions in European settler colonies. Although European settlers’ strong organizational position enabled them to demand representative political institutions, the first hypothesis qualifies their impulse for electoral representation by positing the importance of a metropole with a representative tradition. Analyzing new data on colonial legislatures in 144 colonies between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries shows that only British settler colonies—emanating from a metropole with representative institutions—systematically exhibited early elected legislative representation. The second hypothesis highlights a core democratic contradiction in colonies that established early representative institutions. Applying class-based democratization theories predicts perverse institutional evolution—resisted enfranchisement and contestation backsliding—because sizable European settler minorities usually composed an entrenched landed class. Evidence on voting restrictions and on legislature disbandment from Africa, the British Caribbean, and the US South supports these implications and rejects the Dahlian path from competitive oligarchy to full democracy.
This bibliography is intended to serve as a resource for students, scholars, and the general public interested in the contributions of Western colonialism to human flourishing. It covers most of the ways that the public good has been variously defined and selected statements for each dimension concerning colonial contributions. The intent is to bring together representative research findings concerning Western colonial contributions in order to encourage a more objective account of the subject than presently exists.
Did British colonial rule promote post-independence democracy? We provide evidence that the relationship follows a strong temporal pattern. Former British colonies were considerably more democratic than other countries immediately following independence, but subsequent democratic convergence has largely eliminated these differences in the post-Cold War period. Existing theories expounding superior British culture or alternative colonial institutions cannot account for divergent inheritances and diminishing legacies. To explain the time-varying pattern, we analyze European powers’ varying policy approaches to decolonization as well as changes in the international system. Britain more consistently treated competitive democratic elections as a prerequisite for gaining independence, leading to higher initial democracy levels. However, nascent democracies that lacked deep-rooted societal transformation faced challenges to democratic consolidation because of Cold War superpower competition. Later shifts in the international system toward promoting democracy further contributed to convergence by destabilizing colonially rooted dictatorships.
In evaluating the impact of colonialism on long-term political economy outcomes , scholars have focused on political institutions developed during colonial rule. I argue, in contrast, that the beginnings of long-term economic transformation pre-dated the colonial era, and were not driven by formal institutional changes. Centuries prior to the period of military annexation, European trading companies drew local economies into networks of long-distance maritime trade, transforming geographical and social patterns of economic organization. I use original archival data to study the impact of trading hubs built in India by the various European East India Companies before colonization. My analysis reveals a systematic and robust relationship between pre-colonial commercial developments and modern indicators of economic transformation, even after addressing a plethora of selection concerns. Overall, my evidence indicates that the pre-colonial commercial era was more significant than the colonial era in redirecting India's long-term development trajectories.
How do states build a security apparatus after violent resistance against state rule? This article argues that in early periods of state building two main factors shape the process: the macro-strategic goals of the state and administrative challenges of personnel management. These dynamics are studied in the context of the establishment of police forces in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia. The empirical analysis relies on information about the location of police stations and a near full census of police forces, compiled from the German Federal Archives. A mismatch is found between the allocation of police presence and the allocation of police personnel. The first was driven by the strategic value of locations in terms of extractive potential, political importance, and the presence of critical infrastructure, whereas the allocation of individual officers was likely affected by adverse selection, which led to the assignment of low-quality recruits to strategically important locations.
This article assesses the relative merits of the “reversal of fortune” thesis, according to which the most politically and economically advanced polities of the precolonial era were subject to institutional reversal by European colonial powers, and the “persistence of fortune” view, according to which early advantages in state formation persisted throughout and beyond the colonial era. Discussing the respective arguments, the article offers a synthesis: the effect of early state formation on development trajectories was subject to a threshold condition. Non-European states at the highest levels of precolonial political centralization were able to resist European encroachment and engage in defensive modernization, whereas states closest to, yet just below, this threshold were the most attractive targets for colonial exploitation. Since the onset of decolonization, however, such polities have been among the first to regain independence and world patterns of state capacity are increasingly reverting to those of the precolonial era.
This article investigates the long-term consequences of the printing press in the nineteenth century sub-Saharan Africa on social capital nowadays. Protestant missionaries were the first to import the printing press and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the geographic location and its characteristics, as well as the printing-, educational-, and healthrelated investments undertaken by the mission. We show that, within regions close to missions, proximity to a printing press is associated with higher newspaper readership, trust, education, and political participation.
This paper shows that a historical process that ended more than five centuries ago, the Reconquest, is very important to explain Spanish regional economic development down to the present day. An indicator measuring the rate of Reconquest reveals a heavily negative effect on current income differences across the Spanish provinces. A main intervening factor in the impact the Reconquest has had is the concentration of economic and political power in a few hands, excluding large segments of the population from access to economic opportunities when Spain entered the industrialization phase. The timing of the effect is consistent with this argument. A general implication of our analysis is that large frontier expansions may favor a political equilibrium among the colonizing agents that is biased toward the elite, creating the conditions for an inegalitarian society, with negative consequences for long-term economic development.
Using a unique data set on students from the first regional schools in colonial Benin, we investigate the effect of education
on living standards, occupation, and political participation. Since both school locations and student cohorts were selected
with very little information, treatment and control groups are balanced on observables. We can therefore estimate the effect
of education by comparing the treated to the untreated living in the same village, as well as those living in villages where
no schools were set up. We find a significant positive treatment effect of education for the first generation of students,
as well as their descendants: they have higher living standards, are less likely to be farmers, and are more likely to be
politically active. We find large village-level externalities—descendants of the uneducated in villages with schools do better
than those in control villages. We also find extended family externalities—nephews and nieces directly benefit from their
uncle’s education—and show that this represents a “family tax,” as educated uncles transfer resources to the extended family.
JEL Codes: N37, O15, J27.
Little is known about the extent and forces of urban path dependence in developing countries. Railroad construction in colonial Kenya provides a natural experiment to study the emergence and persistence of this spatial equilibrium. Using new data at a fine spatial level over one century shows that colonial railroads causally determined the location of European settlers, which in turn decided the location of the main cities of the country at independence. Railroads declined and settlers left after independence, yet cities persisted. Their early emergence served as a mechanism to coordinate investments in the post-independence period, yielding evidence for how path dependence influences development.
This article demonstrates historically and statistically that conversionary Protestants (CPs) heavily influenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world. It argues that CPs were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms, thereby creating the conditions that made stable democracy more likely. Statistically, the historic prevalence of Protestant missionaries explains about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania and removes the impact of most variables that dominate current statistical research about democracy. The association between Protestant missions and democracy is consistent in different continents and subsamples, and it is robust to more than 50 controls and to instrumental variable analyses.
Levels of development vary widely within countries in the Americas. We argue that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era, when colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country. We present evidence consistent with the view that “bad” activities (those that depended heavily on labor exploitation) led to lower economic development today than “good” activities (those that did not rely on labor exploitation). Our results also suggest that differences in political representation (but not in income inequality or human capital) could be the intermediating factor between colonial activities and current development.
Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson (2002) have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a Reversal of Fortune from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to both of their proxies for pre-modern income, namely urbanization and population density. First, an alternative measure of urbanization with more observations generates a positive (but not significant) correlation between pre-modern and contemporary income. Second, we show that their measure of population density as a proxy is highly flawed inasmuch as it does not properly measure density on arable land, and when corrected with better data the relationship is no longer robust. At best our results demonstrate a Reversal of Fortune only for the four neo-Europes of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States; at worst, we show no Reversal for other former colonies.
We examine the long-run consequences of the scramble for Africa among European powers in the late 19th century and uncover the following empirical regularities. First, using information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization, we show that borders were arbitrarily drawn. Apart from the land mass and water area of an ethnicity's historical homeland, no other geographic, ecological, historical, and ethnic-specific traits predict which ethnic groups have been partitioned by the national border. Second, using data on the location of civil conflicts after independence, we show that partitioned ethnic groups have suffered significantly more warfare; moreover, partitioned ethnicities have experienced more prolonged and more devastating civil wars. Third, we identify sizeable spillovers; civil conflict spreads from the homeland of partitioned ethnicities to nearby ethnic regions. These results are robust to a rich set of controls at a fine level and the inclusion of country fixed effects and ethnic-family fixed effects. The uncovered evidence thus identifies a sizable causal impact of the scramble for Africa on warfare.
Whereas traditional explanations of differences in long-run paths of development across the Americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion, we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth, human capital, and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions evolved over time. We argue, moreover, that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay in differences in the initial factor endowments (dating back to the era of European colonization). We document -- through comparative studies of suffrage, public land, and schooling policies -- systematic patterns by which societies in the Americas that began with more extreme inequality or heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatly advantaged members of elite classes (and disadvantaging the bulk of the population) by providing them with more political influence and access to economic opportunities. The clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous; economists need to learn more about where they come from to understand their relation to economic development. Our findings not only contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality across New World economies have persisted for centuries, but also to the study of processes of long-run economic growth past and present.
Two theoretical schoolsrationalist and constructivist approachesdominate the literature on policy and nstitutional change. They tend to focus the debate on the ontological understanding of human behavior and hence the logic behind change. The authors note that another dimension of changenamely, its scopeis treated unsatisfactorily in the literature due to a neglect of the level of abstraction used as a point of departure by different studies. Hence, the literature is littered with false debates couched in the language of ontological disagreement.Aregrouping of the literature into structure- and agency-based approaches will help to take for more systematic account of the levels of abstraction problem and therefore the varying measuring rods applied to assess the scope of change. The authors analytical focus runs orthogonal to the question of ontology and complements the dominant debate by allowing for a separation of different analytical dimensions in the study of political change.
Using a new database of islands throughout the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans we examine whether colonial origins affect modern economic outcomes. We argue that the nature of discovery and colonization of islands provides random variation in the length and type of colonial experience. We instrument for length of colonization using wind direction and wind speed. Wind patterns which mattered a great deal during the age of sail do not have a direct effect on GDP today, but do affect GDP via their historical impact on colonization. The number of years spent as a European colony is strongly positively related to the island's GDP per capita and negatively related to infant mortality. This basic relationship is also found to hold for a standard dataset of developing countries. We test whether this link is directly related to democratic institutions, trade, and the identity of the colonizing nation. While there is substantial variation in the history of democratic institutions across the islands, such variation does not predict income. Islands with significant export products during the colonial period are wealthier today, but this does not diminish the importance of colonial tenure. The timing of the colonial experience seems to matter. Time spent as a colony after 1700 is more beneficial to modern income than years before 1700, consistent with a change in the nature of colonial relationships over time.
In the last decade, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country's laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. We summarize this evidence and attempt a unified interpretation. We also address several objections to the empirical claim that legal origins matter. Finally, we assess the implications of this research for economic reform.
What explains states’ sub-national territorial reach? While large parts of the state-building literature have focused on national capabilities, little is known about the determinants of the unevenness of state presence at the sub-national level. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at early attempts at state building: it investigates the processes of state penetration in the former colony of German East Africa. Contrary to previous studies – which largely emphasized antecedent or structural factors – the current study argues that geographical patterns of state penetration have been driven by the state’s strategic imperative to solidify control over territory and establish political stability. The article tests these propositions using an original, geo-referenced grid-cell dataset for the years 1890 to 1909 based on extensive historical records in German colonial yearbooks and maps.
The growth of European colonial empires occurred during a period of intense international conflict. This article examines how the international position of colonial states altered the distribution of wealth within indigenous societies. Colonial administrators favored precolonial elites only if they were militarily and financially secure, a pattern that stems from balancing the advantages of working with these groups against their higher probability of revolt. This theory is tested using data on the wealth of Indian caste groups. In areas annexed at times of European war, precolonial elites are poorer than other groups, whereas they remain richer in areas annexed at other times and in indirectly ruled areas. These results appear not to stem from preexisting differences between regions. The results highlight the variable impact of colonialism within societies, and the importance of the international system in shaping colonial and postcolonial outcomes.
Why does sub-Saharan Africa exhibit the highest rates of gender inequality in the world? This article evaluates the contributions of Christian missionary societies in German East Africa to current socioeconomic gender inequalities in Tanzania. Previous studies ascribe a comparatively benign long-term effect of missionary societies, in particular of the Protestant denomination, on economic, developmental, and political outcomes. This article contrasts that perception by focusing on the wider cultural impact of the civilizing mission in colonial Africa. The analysis rests on a novel georeferenced dataset on German East Africa—based on digitized colonial maps and extensive historical records available in the German colonial archives—and the most recently available DHS-surveys. The results highlight the formative role of Catholic missionary societies in German East Africa in shaping gender inequalities currently witnessed in Tanzania.
This study utilizes regression discontinuity to examine the long-run impacts of the mita, an extensive forced mining labor system in effect in Peru and Bolivia between 1573 and 1812. Results indicate that a mita effect lowers household consumption by around 25% and increases the prevalence of stunted growth in children by around six percentage points in subjected districts today. Using data from the Spanish Empire and Peruvian Republic to trace channels of institutional persistence, I show that the mita's influence has persisted through its impacts on land tenure and public goods provision. Mita districts historically had fewer large landowners and lower educational attainment. Today, they are less integrated into road networks, and their residents are substantially more likely to be subsistence farmers.
The relationship between the extent of government revenue a government collects, primarily in the form of taxation, and its overall quality has increasingly been identified as a key factor for successful state building, good institutions, and—by extension—general development. Initially deriving from historical research on Western Europe, this process is expected to unfold slowly over time. This study tests the claim that more extensive revenue collection has long-lasting and positive consequences for government quality in a developmental setting. Using fiscal records from British colonies, results from cross-colony/country regression analyses reveal that higher colonial income-adjusted revenue levels during the early twentieth century can be linked to higher government quality today. This relationship is substantial and robust to several specifications of both colonial revenue and modern day government quality, and remains significant under control for a range of rivaling explanations. The results support the notion that the current institutional success of former colonies can be traced back to the extent of historical revenue extraction.
This article explores the origins of local governance in postcolonial contexts. Focusing on migrant communities in the Indonesian island of Java and the networks of elite political and economic relations that emerged under colonial rule, I develop a theory of social exclusion and competition that specifies the conditions under which trading minorities will forge cooperative relations with local political elites in the absence of well-functioning property rights institutions. These informal relationships under colonial rule affect contemporary economic governance. To clarify the importance of social exclusion rather than other factors that may differentiate colonial districts with large Chinese populations, I exploit variation in the settlement patterns of Chinese and Arab trading minorities in Java, which played comparable roles in the island’s colonial economy but faced different degrees of social exclusion. These findings contribute to recent work on colonialism and development, ethnicity and informal institutions, and the origins of democratic performance.
Does extraction increase the likelihood of antistate violence in the early phases of state-building processes? Although research has focused on the impacts of war on state building, the potential “war-making effects” of extraction have largely been neglected. The article provides the first quantitative analysis of these effects in the context of colonial state building. It focuses on the “Maji Maji” rebellion (1905-1907), the most substantial incidence of anticolonial violence in Eastern Africa. Analyses based on a new historical data set confirm the correlation between extraction and resistance. More importantly, they reveal that distinct strategies of extraction produced distinct outcomes. Although the intensification of extraction in state-held areas created grievances among the population, it did not drive the rebellion. Rather, the results indicate that the expansion of extractive authority threatened the interests of local elites and provoked effective resistance. This finding provides insights into the mechanisms driving the “extraction–coercion cycle” of state building.
What is the legacy of Japanese colonial rule in East Asia? In this article, I use a geographic regression discontinuity design to examine of the long-run effects of Japanese rule over northern China. I find that the Japanese colonization of northern China had a positive long-run effect on state institutions—with persistent increases in schooling, health, and bureaucratic density. I also find suggestive evidence that colonization led to increases in wealth, as measured by census data and nighttime luminosity. The positive legacy of Japanese colonization in northern China suggests that intense state building efforts can pay long-run dividends, even in the context of a brutal and extractive regime.
In recent times, social security has been one of the most popular instruments for promoting human development worldwide. Nearly all countries of the world have implemented some kind of social security legislation. While the emergence of social security in the OECD-world has been extensively analyzed, we know very little about the origins of social security beyond the OECD-world. By analyzing 91 Spanish, French, and British colonies, and former colonies from 1820 until the present time, this paper demonstrates that the colonial heritage is a crucial factor in explaining the adoption and form of social security programs in countries outside OECD-world.
We study the direct and spillover effects of local state capacity using the network of Colombian municipalities. We model the determination of local and national state capacity as a network game in which each municipality, anticipating the choices and spillovers created by other municipalities and the decisions of the national government, invests in local state capacity and the national government chooses the presence of the national state across municipalities to maximize its own payoff. We then estimate the parameters of this model using reduced-form instrumental variables techniques and structurally (using GMM, simulated GMM or maximum likelihood). To do so we exploit both the structure of the network of municipalities, which determines which municipalities create spillovers on others, and the historical roots of local state capacity as the source of exogenous variation. These historical instruments are related to the presence of colonial royal roads and local presence of the colonial state in the 18th century, factors which we argue are unrelated to current provision of public goods and prosperity except through their impact on their own and neighbors’ local state capacity. Our estimates of the effects of state presence on prosperity are large and also indicate that state capacity decisions are strategic complements across municipalities. As a result, we find that bringing all municipalities below median state capacity to the median, without taking into account equilibrium responses of other municipalities, would increase the median fraction of the population above poverty from 57% to 60%. Approximately 57% of this is due to direct effects and 43% to spillovers. However, if we take the equilibrium response of other municipalities into account, the median would instead increase to 68%, a sizable change driven by equilibrium network effects.
Why have some developing countries industrialized and become more prosperous rapidly while others have not? Focusing on South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria, this study compares the characteristics of fairly functioning states and explains why states in some parts of the developing world are more effective. It emphasizes the role of colonialism in leaving behind more or less effective states, and the relationship of these states with business and labor in helping explain comparative success in promoting economic progress.
Does the exclusion of ethnic groups cause civil war? Responding to widespread skepticism as regards the role of grievances in such explanations, recent research has used measures of ethnic groups' power access to show that excluded groups are especially likely to experience conflict. However, as pointed out by the several critics, such inferences may be undermined by endogeneity since states' decision to exclude could anticipate future conflict. In this paper, we attempt to overcome this potential threat to causal inference by instrumenting for political exclusion. Focusing on post-colonial states, we exploit differences in the colonial empires' approach to the ethnicity of colonized populations. As opposed to the French relatively ethnically "color blind'' approach, the British application of "selective indirect rule'' made peripheral groups more, rather than less, influential. Thanks to this mostly exogenous variation in terms of colonial strategies and group locations, we instrument for initial exclusion in post-colonial states, and use this variable as an explanation of internal conflict. Based on this identification strategy, we arrive at very clear results that confirm previous studies that explain ethno-nationalist conflict in terms of limited power access. If anything, this work has tended to underestimate the actual conflict-inducing impact of political exclusion.
We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as proxied by satellite images of light density at night. We document a strong association between pre-colonial ethnic political centralization and regional development. This pattern is not driven by differences in local geographic features or by other observable ethnic-specific cultural and economic variables. The strong positive association between pre-colonial political complexity and contemporary development also holds within pairs of adjacent ethnic homelands with different legacies of pre-colonial political institutions.
Among countries colonized by European powers during the past 500 years, those that were relatively rich in 1500 are now relatively
poor. We document this reversal using data on urbanization patterns and population density, which, we argue, proxy for economic
prosperity. This reversal weighs against a view that links economic development to geographic factors. Instead, we argue that
the reversal reflects changes in the institutions resulting from European colonialism. The European intervention appears to
have created an “institutional reversal” among these societies, meaning that Europeans were more likely to introduce institutions
encouraging investment in regions that were previously poor. This institutional reversal accounts for the reversal in relative
incomes. We provide further support for this view by documenting that the reversal in relative incomes took place during the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and resulted from societies with good institutions taking advantage of the
opportunity to industrialize.
We exploit di®erences in early colonial experience to estimate the e®ect of institutions on economic performance. Our argument is that Europeans adopted very di®erent colonization policies in di®erent colonies, with di®erent associated institutions. The choice of colonization strategy was, at least in part, determined by the feasibility of whether Europeans could settle in the colony. In places where Europeans faced high mortality rates, they could not settle and they were more likely to set up worse (extractive) institutions. These early institutions persisted to the present. We document these hypotheses in the data. Exploiting di®erences in mortality rates faced by soldiers, bishops and sailors in the colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries as an instrument for current institutions, we estimate large e®ects of institutions on income per capita. Our estimates imply that a change from the worst (Zaire) to the best (US or New Zealand) institutions in our sample would be associated with a ¯ve fold increase in income per capita.
Once taken as primordial givens, ethnic groups are now recognized to be historical constructions. The structure of ethnic cleavages needs to be viewed similarly. The contemporary landscape of linguistic divisions in Zambia, including the number of groups it contains, their relative sizes, and their spatial distribution, can be traced to specific policies implemented by the Northern Rhodesian colonial administration and its missionary and mining company allies. The structure of ethnic cleavages is a heretofore overlooked legacy of colonialism.
Why are some former colonies more democratic than others? The British Empire has been singled out in the debates on colonialism for its benign influence on democracy. Much of this scholarship has focused on colonialism's institutional legacies; has neglected to distinguish among the actors associated with colonialism; and has been nation-state focused. Our sub-national approach allows us to isolate the democracy effects of key actors operating in colonial domains — Christian missionaries — from those of colonial powers. Missionaries influenced democracy by promoting education; education promoted social inclusivity and spurred social reform movements. To make our case, we constructed colonial and post-colonial period district datasets of India, and conducted panel analysis of literacy and democracy variations backed by case studies. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom of the centrality of the effects of British institutions on democracy, instead also highlighting the missionaries’ human capital legacies.
This article discusses the importance of accounting for cultural values and beliefs when studying the process of historical economic development. A notion of culture as heuristics or rules-of-thumb that aid in decision making is described. Because cultural traits evolve based upon relative fitness, historical shocks can have persistent impacts if they alter the costs and benefits of different traits. A number of empirical studies confirm that culture is an important mechanism that helps explain why historical shocks can have persistent impacts; these are reviewed here. As an example, I discuss the colonial origins hypothesis (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, 2001), and show that our understanding of the transplantation of European legal and political institutions during the colonial period remains incomplete unless the values and beliefs brought by European settlers are taken into account. It is these cultural beliefs that formed the foundation of the initial institutions that in turn were key for long-term economic development.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
The conventional critique of institutional theory, and especially historical institutionalism, is that it is incapable of coping with change. We argue for the importance of political conflict as a means of initiating change in an institutionalist framework. In particular, conflict over ideas and the underlying assumptions of policy is important for motivating change. We demonstrate the viability of this argument with examples of institutional change.
This article provides a survey of a growing body of empirical evidence that points toward the important long-term effects that historic events can have on economic development. The most recent studies, using microlevel data and more sophisticated identification techniques, have moved beyond testing whether history matters and attempt to identify exactly why history matters. The most commonly examined channels include institutions, culture, knowledge and technology, and movements between multiple equilibria. The article concludes with a discussion of the questions that remain and the direction of current research in the literature.
To what extent do colonial public investments continue to influence current regional inequalities in French-speaking West Africa? Using a new database and the spatial discontinuities of colonial investment policy, this paper gives evidence that early colonial investments had large and persistent effects on current outcomes. The nature of investments also matters. Current educational outcomes have been more specifically determined by colonial investments in education rather than health and infrastructures, and vice versa. I show that a major channel for this historical dependency is a strong persistence of investments; regions that got more at the early colonial times continued to get more. (JEL H41, H54, N37, N47, 016)
We show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. Combining contemporary individual-level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today. Evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal. Examining causal mechanisms, we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual, such as cultural norms, beliefs, and values. (JEL J15, N57, Z13)
Cet article cherche a determiner a quels types d'evenements historiques s'applique l'analyse de path dependence. Selon l'A., il s'agit de sequences historiques au sein desquelles des evenements contingents mettent en mouvement des modeles institutionnels ou des chaines d'evenements ayant des proprietes deterministes. L'identification de la path dependence implique a la fois de relier un resultat a une serie d'evenements et de montrer en quoi ces evenements sont eux-memes des occurences contingentes ne pouvant etre expliquees par des conditions historiques prealables. Ces sequences historiques sont generalement de deux types : les sequences a auto-renforcement et les sequences reactives
Traditional approaches to institutionalization do not provide an adequate explanation of cultural persistence. A much more adequate explanation can be found in the ethnomethodological approach to institutionalization, defining acts which are both objective (potentially repeatable by other actors without changing the meaning) and exterior (intersubjectively defined so that they can be viewed as part of external reality) as highly institutionalized. Three levels of institutionalization were created in the autokinetic situation to permit examination of the effects of institutionalization on three aspects of cultural persistence: generational uniformity of cultural understandings, maintenance of these understandings, and resistance of these understandings to change. Three separate experiments were conducted to examine these aspects of cultural persistence. Strong support was found for the predictions that the greater the degree of institutionalization, the greater the generational uniformity, maintenance, and resistance to change of cultural understandings. Implications of these findings for earlier approaches to institutionalization are discussed.
This paper investigates the developmental legacies of British colonial rule. It draws on insight from qualitative case studies, which show that direct and indirect rule institutionalized very different states and thereby differentially affected postcolonial political development. The study proposes that these qualitative findings might provide insight into mechanisms underlying past statistical work on colonial state legacies. Using a variable measuring the extent to which 33 former British colonies were ruled through indirect legal-administrative institutions, the analysis finds that the extent of indirect colonial rule is strongly and negatively related to several different indicators of postcolonial political development while controlling for other factors. It therefore provides evidence that the present levels of political development among former British colonies have historical roots and have been shaped by the extent to which they were ruled either directly or indirectly during the colonial period.
The article features a temporal approach to analyzing the impact of Western colonialism on contemporary levels of democracy. We present a new data set with dates of colonization, independence, and a colonizing event for all former colonies and dependencies that are regarded as countries today (143 observations). Our data, as well as the existing literature, suggest that the very heterogeneous era of colonization should be divided into an early ‘mercantilist’ wave and a much later ‘imperialist’ wave with quite different characteristics. We show that there is a strong positive effect of colonial duration on democracy, an effect which turns out to be driven primarily by former British colonies and by countries colonized during the imperialist era.
Since Edward Leamer's memorable 1983 paper, "Let's Take the Con out of Econometrics," empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution. While Leamer's suggested remedy, sensitivity analysis, has played a role in this, we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs. The advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random assignment. We begin with an overview of Leamer's 1983 critique and his proposed remedies. We then turn to the key factors we see contributing to improved empirical work, including the availability of more and better data, along with advances in theoretical econometric understanding, but especially the fact that research design has moved front and center in much of empirical micro. We offer a brief digression into macroeconomics and industrial organization, where progress -- by our lights -- is less dramatic, although there is work in both fields that we find encouraging. Finally, we discuss the view that the design pendulum has swung too far. Critics of design-driven studies argue that in pursuit of clean and credible research designs, researchers seek good answers instead of good questions. We briefly respond to this concern, which worries us little.
This paper compares economic outcomes across areas in India which were under direct British colonial rule with areas which were under indirect colonial rule. Controlling for selective annexation using a specific policy rule, I find that areas which experienced direct rule have significantly lower levels of access to schools, health centers and roads in the post-colonial period. I find evidence that the quality of governance in the colonial period has a significant persistent effect on post-colonial outcomes.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and at a Conference on ‘What is Institutionalism Now?’ at the University of Maryland, October 1994. We would like to acknowledge the hospitality and stimulation that W. Richard Scott, the Stanford Center for Organizations Research, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences provided while the preliminary work for this paper was being done, and we are grateful to Paul Pierson for many helpful discussions about these issues. For written comments on this earlier draft, we are grateful to Robert Bates, Paul DiMaggio, Frank Dobbin, James Ennis, Barbara Geddes, Peter Gourevitch, Ian Lustick, Cathie Jo Martin, Lisa Martin, Paul Pierson, Mark Pollack, Bo Rothstein, Kenneth Shepsle, Rogers Smith, Marc Smyrl, Barry Weingast, and Deborah Yashar.
Artificial states are those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground. We propose and compute for all countries in the world two new measures how artificial states are. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other one measures how straight land borders are, under the assumption the straight land borders are more likely to be artificial. We then show that these two measures seem to be highly correlated with several measures of political and economic success.
We analyze the colonial land revenue institutions set up by the British in India, and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes. Areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investments and productivity in the post-independence period than areas in which these rights were given to the cultivators. These areas also have significantly lower investments in health and education. These differences are not driven by omitted variables or endogeneity problems; they probably arise because differences in historical institutions lead to very different policy choices.
This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection as well as empirical evidence on the effects of patent rights. Then, the second part considers the international aspects of IPR protection. In summary, this paper draws the following conclusions from the literature. Firstly, different patent policy instruments have different effects on R&D and growth. Secondly, there is empirical evidence supporting a positive relationship between IPR protection and innovation, but the evidence is stronger for developed countries than for developing countries. Thirdly, the optimal level of IPR protection should tradeoff the social benefits of enhanced innovation against the social costs of multiple distortions and income inequality. Finally, in an open economy, achieving the globally optimal level of protection requires an international coordination (rather than the harmonization) of IPR protection.
has garnered more than 9800 cites, and Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
Two examples of the prominence attained by research on colonialism in the last twenty
years: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson's "The Colonial Origins of
Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation" American Economic Review 91,
no. 5 (2000): 1369-1401 has garnered more than 9800 cites, and Mahmood Mamdani's
Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press 1996), more than 5700 cites on Google Scholar.
- Giovanni Capoccia
- R. Daniel Kelemen
Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel Kelemen, "The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory,
Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism," World Politics 59, no. 3
(April 2007): 342.