Precolonial Legacies and Institutional Congruence in Public Goods Delivery

Abstract

Scholars have long identified political bias in the way African politicians distribute state resources. Much of this literature focuses on the role of group identities, mainly ethnicity, and partisanship. This article shifts the focus to local governments, which have become increasingly important players in basic social service provision, and argues that public goods allocation under democratic decentralization is intimately shaped by historical identities. Specifically, the author highlights the role of identities rooted in the precolonial past. To explain this, she articulates a theory of institutional congruence, arguing that greater spatial overlap between formal institutional space and informal social identities improves the ability of elites to overcome local coordination problems. Looking to the West African state of Senegal, the author deploys a nested analysis, drawing on interviews with rural Senegalese elites to understand how the precolonial past shapes local politics today via the social identities it left behind. She also tests the argument with a unique, geocoded data set of village-level public goods investments in the 2000s, finding that areas that were once home to precolonial states distribute goods more broadly across space. These patterns cannot be explained by ethnic or electoral dynamics. Two brief examples from on-the-line cases illuminate how the presence of precolonial identities facilitates local cooperation. The article thus calls into question the tendency to treat identities as static over time, highlighting the interactive relationship between institutions and identities while drawing attention to emerging subnational variation in local government performance following decentralization reforms across the developing world.

Precolonial States and Development: Evidence from Agriculture in Africa

“…The findings support a growing literature linking contemporary economic development to state capacity transmitted from pre-colonial political institutions (Herbst 2014;Boone 2003; Acemoglu and Robinson 2010; Gennaioli and Rainer 2007;Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2013;Wilfahrt 2018;Lowes et al 2017). We find that, despite destructive influence of centuries of the transatlantic slave trade and European imperialism, Africa's remarkably rich tradition of pre-colonial states, empires, and kingdoms exerted an important impact on long-term political and economic development.…”

The Origins of Colonial Investments in Former British and French Africa

“… 4 See also Gennaioli and Rainer (2007), Michalopoulos and Papaioannou (2013), and Wilfahrt (2018). These findings are consistent with Diamond's (2012) claim that ‘the most important factor behind [good institutions] is the historical duration of centralized government’.…”

The Long-Run Consequences of The Opium Concessions for Out-Group Animosity on Java

“…Looking at colonial Mexico, for instance, Alberto Diaz-Cayeros shows how the introduction of the encomienda, an institution in which whole communities were "entrusted" to the colonists, led indigenous communities to erect barriers that have led to the long-run consequences of heightening the political salience of their ethnic indigeneity. 14 In another case, also from Latin America, Jenny Guardado shows that when the Spanish crown auctioned off colonial governorships, those regions with greater extractive potential fetched "higher prices and worse buyers," and in the long run, this contributed to the regions' 11 Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2013;Wilfahrt 2018. 12 Kohli 1994Mahoney 2010.…”