An Institutional Theory of Direct and Indirect Rule

Abstract

Most governance arrangements involve spatial units with highly unequal powers, for example, a feudal monarchy and its principalities, an empire and its colonies, a formal empire and an informal empire (or sphere of influence), a national government and its subnational entities, or a regional government and its local entities. In this situation, the dominant unit (A) usually enjoys some discretion about how to institutionalize its authority over the subordinate unit (B). An important element of this decision concerns how much authority should be delegated to the weaker unit. The authors simplify this dimension of governance along a continuum of “direct” and “indirect” styles of rule. Why, in some cases, does one find a relatively direct (centralized) system of rule and in others a relatively indirect (decentralized) system of rule? While many factors impinge on this decision, the authors argue that an important and highly persistent factor is the prior level of centralization existing within the subordinate unit. Greater centralization in B is likely to lead to a more indirect form of rule between A and B, all other things being equal. The authors refer to this as an institutional theory of direct/indirect rule. Empirical analyses of this hypothesis are applied to patterns of direct and indirect rule (1) during the age of imperialism and (2) across contemporary nation-states. The article concludes by discussing applications of the theory in a variety of additional settings.

Whitehall in the Caribbean? The legacy of colonial administration for post-colonial democratic development

“…For example, the contemporary literature on comparative politics has pointed to different developmental trajectories depending on whether territories were governed on the basis of 'direct rule' and 'indirect rule', especially in the case of British colonial rule (Gerring, Ziblatt, Van Gorp, & Arevalo, 2011;Lange, Mahoney, & vom Hau, 2008;Mahoney, 2010).…”

The Indigenous Roots of Representative Democracy

“…Under indirect rule, however, the colonial legal system would incorporate the indigenous legal structure. In our sample this measure unfortunately only exists for 20 former colonies, but because the form of colonial rule varied very systematically with the number of settlers (Lange 2004, 908;Gerring et al 2011, 388), we used our measures of settlement to predict the extent of indirect rule for the countries with missing values. While this is a crude measure of indirect rule, we should emphasize that we reach the same conclusion for the 20-country sample with Lange's original measure as with the imputed measure of indirect rule.…”

Why Adopt a Federal Constitution? And Why Decentralize? Determinants Based on a New Dataset

“…Gerring et al (2011) are interested in identifying the reasons for variation in the degree of "indirect rule" across countries. Their theory is not confined to the analysis of federalism but can also be applied to the degree of delegation chosen by kings, colonizers, and emperors.…”

“…Their main argument is that the more effective regional governments were before the formation of the current nation state, the higher the likelihood that indirect rule was installed, for example, by a federal constitutional order. In their empirical analysis, Gerring et al (2011) include variables that reflect up to seven alternative explanations, which they describe as "fairly commonsensical". The economic literature is usually confined to explaining variation in the level of fiscal decentralization, most frequently proxied with either the share of local government expenditure (or revenue) in total government spending (or revenue).…”