Transcript Precolonial Centralization, Foreign Aid and Modern State Capacity

“2nd International Conference on Sustainable Development in Africa”,
26th-27th November, 2015, Dakar, Senegal
Precolonial Centralization, Foreign Aid and
Modern State Capacity in Africa
Broich, T., Szirmai, A., & K. Thomsson (2015)
UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series No. 2015-025. UNU-MERIT: Maastricht, The Netherlands
Tobias Broich
[email protected]
UNU-MERIT/Maastricht Graduate School of Governance
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MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION
What are the determinants of bureaucratic capacity
in contemporary Africa?
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NOVELTY
• Connecting the aid-governance literature with the historical, political
economy and anthropological literature on African state formation
• Positive, statistically significant and highly robust relationship between
precolonial centralization and state capacity in Africa from mid-1990s
onwards, while before the mid-1990s there is no such relationship
• For recent years, the estimated negative effect of aid on state capacity
disappears once we include precolonial centralization
• Instrument for precolonial centralization at the national level using a
national TseTse Fly Suitability Index (TSI)
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BUREAUCRATIC QUALITY
(Definition)
• Considered a key component of state capacity
• State with an effective public administration
• “Weberian bureaucracy which is structured along impersonal,
technocratic, hierarchical lines. Its written records provide a strong
institutional memory, and its personnel has formal salaries, relies on
standard operating procedures and knowledge-based rules, and
answers to superiors who (ideally) take decisions according to
impersonal, technocratic criteria” (Bräutigam, 2008, p. 15).
• Data: International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) rating from PRS Group
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BUREAUCRATIC QUALITY (Descriptive Statistics)
Country
Average
Bureaucratic Quality,
1984-2014
Country
Change in
Bureaucratic Quality,
1984-2014
High performing countries
South Africa
Kenya
Namibia*
Botswana†
Ghana
Zimbabwe
Gabon
Morocco
Tunisia
2.83
2.39
2.36
2.24
2.18
2.14
2.13
2.09
2.00
Ghana
Botswana†
Gambia‡
Guinea
Namibia*
Uganda
Ethiopia†
Guinea-Bissau‡
Malawi
2.50
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
2.00
1.50
1.50
1.50
Egypt
1.97
Niger†
1.50
Low performing countries
Zambia
Ethiopia†
Tanzania
Sudan
Sierra Leone†
Togo
DRC
Somalia†
Liberia
Mali
0.98
0.78
0.75
0.74
0.48
0.44
0.38
0.16
0.00
0.00
Gabon
Morocco
Angola
Zimbabwe
Cameroon
Senegal
Togo
South Africa
Cote d'Ivoire
-0.17
-0.42
-0.50
-0.83
-0.92
-1.00
-1.00
-2.00
-3.00
Note: † refers to period 1985-2014; ‡ refers to period 1986-2014; * refers to period 1990-2014.
Source: Own calculations based on data from the PRS Group’s International Country Risk Guide (ICRG)
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FOREIGN AID
(Definition)
• Aid dependence: annual total ODA disbursements by DAC donors in
current dollars divided by the annual GDP in current dollars of the
respective recipient country.
• Data:
– DAC-ODA disbursements from the OECD/DAC database
– GDP data from Maddison (2010) and World Development Indicators
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FOREIGN AID (Descriptive Statistics)
Average
ODA/GDP (%),
1984-2014
Country
Country
Average
ODA/GDP (%),
1984-2014
Somalia
24.02
Libya
0.07
Liberia
21.70
Tunisia
0.10
Mozambique
19.44
South Africa
0.17
Sao Tomé and Principe
19.40
Algeria
0.25
Guinea-Bissau
18.69
Nigeria
0.73
Cape Verde
16.76
Mauritius
0.94
Source: Own calculations based on OECD DAC International Development Statistics and World Development Indicators
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PRECOLONIAL CENTRALIZATION
(Definition)
• Captures the degree of political complexity on the continent
in precolonial times
• Highly centralized ethnic groups have developed a form of government with large,
territorially integrated political entities (e.g. centralized authority, administrative
machinery, and judicial institutions)
• Fragmented ethnic groups have been traditionally organized in a multitude of small
and fragmented, political entities, often lacking any political integration above the
local village (e.g. cleavages of wealth and no sharp divisions of rank or status)
• Prime examples of highly centralized groups: Ashante (Ghana), Kaffa (Ethiopia),
the Luba (DRC) or the Yoruba (Nigeria)
• Data: Precolonial centralization index from Gennaioli and Rainer (2007)
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PRECOLONIAL CENTRALIZATION (Descriptive Statistics)
Country
Comoros
Lesotho
Swaziland
Burundi
Algeria
Egypt
South Africa
Rwanda
Tunisia
Zimbabwe
Libya
Botswana
Malawi
Mauritania
Mozambique
Ethiopia
Morocco
Zambia
Benin
Senegal
Tanzania
Namibia
Ghana
DRC
Centralization
1
1
1
0.995
0.990
0.990
0.990
0.982
0.980
0.965
0.940
0.893
0.861
0.858
0.844
0.843
0.810
0.743
0.695
0.694
0.669
0.664
0.651
0.649
Country
Angola
Uganda
Togo
Niger
Sudan
Congo Republic
Madagascar
Nigeria
Gambia
Guinea
Chad
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Guinea-Bissau
Equatorial Guinea
Kenya
Central African Republic
Djibouti
Mali
Cote d’Ivoire
Somalia
Gabon
Sierra Leone
Liberia
AVERAGE (non-weighted)
Centralization
0.635
0.634
0.622
0.582
0.576
0.536
0.505
0.478
0.426
0.406
0.384
0.338
0.316
0.214
0.211
0.172
0.144
0.133
0.115
0.082
0.034
0.011
0.008
0
0.587
Note: The precolonial political centralization index measures the share of the Non-European population that had centralized
political institutions before colonization. Source: Gennaioli and Rainer (2007)
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METHODOLOGY
Static Analysis
𝐵𝑄𝑖,2014 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∗ 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑖 + 𝛽′2 ∗ 𝑋𝑖,𝑡 + 𝜀𝑖
Dynamic Analysis
∆𝐵𝑄𝑖,84−14 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∗ 𝐵𝑄𝑖,84 + 𝛽2 ∗ 𝐴𝑖𝑑 𝐷𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑖,84−13 + 𝛽′3 ∗ 𝑋𝑖,84−13 + 𝜀𝑖
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EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS (OLS Results for Static Analysis)
INTERMEZZO No. 1
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INTERMEZZO No. 2
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EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS (OLS Results for Dynamic Analysis)
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ROBUSTNESS CHECKS
(2SLS Estimation)
• Instrument for Precolonial Centralization
– We construct a “national” TseTse fly suitability index (TSI)
based on previous work by Alsan (2015)
• Instruments for Foreign Aid
– Population size captures the strategic interests of donor countries
– Initial development level, proxied by GDP per capita, captures
needs-based preferences and altruistic motives of aid
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ROBUSTNESS CHECKS (2SLS for Static Analysis)
ROBUSTNESS CHECKS (2SLS for Dynamic Analysis)
INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS
• Previous aid-governance literature failed to control for deeper historical
determinants of contemporary institutional quality.
• With the arrival of colonialism on the African continent, new colonial institutions
were superimposed on pre-existing precolonial institutions.
• The postcolonial institutions resulting from colonial state legacies were often
incongruent with precolonial systems.
• In the early years of independence, the colonial institutions had a strong influence
on bureaucratic institutions and capabilities.
• As years passed, the temporary colonial influences faded and precolonial institutions
reasserted their importance and increasingly shaped bureaucratic quality.
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CONCLUSION
• Empirical Results
– Providing further evidence for the importance of precolonial centralization in
our understanding of present day economic and political developments on the
continent (Gennaioli & Rainer, 2007; Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2013,
2014, 2015; Osafo-Kwaako & Robinson, 2013).
• Limitations
– A large fraction of the variance of the dependent variables is still unaccounted for
– Lumping all African countries together
• Further research
– Explore channels and mechanisms more rigorously
– Future fieldwork and case studies
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APPENDIX
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Bureaucratic Quality Index
• Definition: “Institutional strength and quality of the bureaucracy that tends to
minimize revisions of policy when governments change. In low-risk countries,
the bureaucracy is somewhat autonomous from political pressure.”
• The indicator is part of the ICRG rating system that assesses countries based on
political, economic and financial sources of risk
• Bureaucratic Quality is part of the political risk component
• The ICRG staff collects political information and financial and economic data,
converting these into risk points for each individual risk component on the basis of
a consistent pattern of evaluation.
• The political risk assessments are made on the basis of subjective analysis of the
available information, while the financial and economic risk assessments are made
solely on the basis of objective data.
– Bureaucratic Quality is a subjective indicator
• More information on the ICRG risk rating:
Handbook of country and political risk analysis/ Llewellyn D Howell.
5th ed. East Syracuse, NY: PRS Group, 2013.
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Ethnographic Atlas / Precolonial Centralization
• Part of the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967) – a database of around
60 variables describing the social, economic and political traits of 1,270 ethnic
groups around the world
• Data summarizes the information of a multitude of individual field-studies done
between 1850 and 1950
• Murdock pinpointed every ethnic group to the earliest period for which satisfactory
data existed to avoid the accumulative effects of contacts with European
• In Africa, Murdock’s goal was to describe ethnic groups in the period immediately
preceding the massive European colonization of the late 19th-early 20th century
• Gennaioli and Rainer (2006) call African indigenous institutions as measured by
his data “precolonial”
• Around 25% of the data come from the period 1850-1900;
around 55% of the data come from the period 1900-1930;
around 20% of the data come from the period 1930-1950.
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Construction of Precolonial Centralization Index
• Murdock’s “Jurisdictional Hierarchy Beyond the Local Community Level” index.
• It describes the number of political jurisdictions above the local level for each ethnicity.
• The index is an ordered variable, ranging from 0 to 4.
– A zero score indicates stateless societies “lacking any form of
centralized political organization.”
– A score of 1 designates petty chiefdoms;
– A score of 2 is associated with paramount chiefdoms;
– A score of 3 or 4 refers to ethnic groups that were part of large states.
• An ethnic group is defined as “centralized” if it has 2, 3, or 4 jurisdictional levels
above the local community
• An ethnic group is defined as “fragmented” if it has “only” 0 or 1 jurisdictional levels
above the local community
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DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
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Aid Dependence and Precolonial Centralization
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Aid Dependence and Precolonial Centralization
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National TSI Index
Country
Equatorial Guinea
Gabon
Liberia
Congo Republic
Cameroon
Cote d'Ivoire
Sierra Leone
Central African Republic
Mozambique
Benin
Democratic Republic of Congo
Togo
Ghana
Guinea
Somalia
Botswana
Libya
Nigeria
Uganda
Angola
Egypt
Chad
TSI
1.475
1.403
1.123
1.015
0.986
0.978
0.850
0.815
0.807
0.754
0.725
0.601
0.541
0.526
0.489
0.369
0.329
0.285
0.283
0.278
0.050
-0.244
Country
Namibia
Algeria
Sudan
Guinea-Bissau
Burkina Faso
Malawi
Kenya
Zambia
Eritrea
Tanzania
Niger
Burundi
Mauritania
Rwanda
Zimbabwe
Mali
Senegal
Ethiopia
Swaziland
Morocco
Tunisia
South Africa
TSI
-0.329
-0.345
-0.352
-0.378
-0.390
-0.420
-0.430
-0.434
-0.482
-0.530
-0.692
-0.729
-0.822
-0.875
-0.956
-0.963
-0.994
-1.021
-1.131
-1.205
-1.265
-2.708
Notes: The TseTse Suitability Index has originally been constructed for African ethnic groups at
the regional level (Alsan, 2015). African ethnic groups from Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti,
Gambia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Sao Tomé and Principe and Seychelles were not
included in the analysis.
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Summary statistics for the level analysis
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Summary statistics for the level analysis (continued)
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Summary statistics for the dynamic analysis, 1984-2014
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Summary statistics for the dynamic analysis, 1984-1995
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Summary statistics for the dynamic analysis, 1996-2014
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INFERENTIAL STATISTICS
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Aid Dependence and Change in Bureaucratic Quality,
1984-1995 and 1996-2014, OLS estimates
Aid Dependence, Precolonial Centralization and Change in Bureaucratic Quality
controlling for initial conditions, 1996-2014, OLS estimates
Precolonial Centralization and State Capacity in 1986, OLS estimates
Aid Dependence, Precolonial Centralization and
Change in Bureaucratic Quality, 1996-2014, OLS estimates
Aid Dependence, Precolonial Centralization and Change in Bureaucratic Quality
controlling for initial conditions, 1996-2014, OLS estimates
Aid Dependence, Precolonial Centralization and
Change in Bureaucratic Quality, 2SLS estimates