Precolonial centralisation, foreign aid and modern state capacity in Africa
Tobias Broich, Adam Szirmai & Kaj Thomsson
#2015-025
In this paper, we empirically explore the determinants of bureaucratic
capacity in contemporary Africa. We connect the aid-governance
literature with the historical, political economy and anthropological
literature on African state formation. Our Ordinary Least Squares (OLS)
results show that there is a positive and statistically significant
relationship between precolonial centralisation and bureaucratic quality
in Africa from the mid-1990s onwards. Before the mid-1990s there is no
such relationship. We also find that the often negative and
statistically significant effect of aid dependence on bureaucratic
capacity disappears, once we control for precolonial centralisation. The
OLS results survive a set of robustness tests, including the addition of
several control variables and instrumental variable estimation using a
variety of instruments suggested in previous research. As the colonial
period is slowly fading, the influence of precolonial political
institutions on modern state capacity is reasserting itself. Our results
provide further evidence for the importance of precolonial
centralisation in our understanding of present day economic and
political developments on the continent.
Key words: Africa, Foreign Aid, Precolonial Centralisation, State
Capacity
Discipline: Development Economics, Political Economy, Political and
Economic History
JEL Classification: F35, H10, N47, O11, O55, Z13