The impacts of colonialism in Africa and Asia have never been compared in a systematic manner for a large sample of countries. This research survey presents the results of a new and thorough assessment of the highly diverse phenomenon -including length of domination , violence, partition, proselytization, instrumentalization of ethno-linguistic and religious cleavages, trade, direct investment, settlements, plantations, and migrationorganized through a dimensional analysis (political, social, and economic impacts). It is shown that while in some areas, colonial domination has triggered profound changes in economy and social structure, others have remained almost untouched.Keywords: Colonialism, political, economic and social impact s, Africa, AsiaThere is a stron g tradition of empirical-quantitativ e re search from a world systemsper spective (see, among other s, Bomschier and Chase-Dunn 1985). This research, howev er, has until recently been confined to indir ect mea suring of hi storicall y earlier factors, although it stresses theoreticall y the importance of long-term historical factors. According to Sanderson, world-systems analys is "tends to ignore the pre capitalist history of these societies [ ... ] this history often turns out to be of critical importance in conditioning the way in which any given society will be incorporat ed into the capitali st syst em and the effects of that incorporation" (Sanderson 2005: 188). For Kerbo (2005a: 430), scholarship has "yet to consider that East and Southeast Asian countries more generall y are somehow different from Latin American and African nations when it comes to important aspects of political economy that might interact with the affects of outside multin ational corporate investment. " In this regard, the article by Lenski and Nolan (1984) had opened up a new avenue of research: the lon g-term effects of social-evolutionary development levels on th e modem /postcolonial econom y and society. This re search, how ever, suffered from a rather small sample and a rudimentary classification of countries into two categories of "industrializing horticultural" and "agr icultural. "

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We present a new dataset with 15

The current literature on the politics of social policy has two major shortcomings: health care reforms are undertheoretized and research on Anglophone Africa tends to neglect health reforms. To tackle this, a case study on Kenya presents (failed) re-forms such as universal or categorical free health care or the introduction of health insurance and the expansion of its coverage. The case study clearly shows that there is no single theoretical explanation of social policy reforms or their failure. Rather, there are different combination of factors at work in Kenya.

With social security provisions in Kenya remaining under-reported in the more recent literature, this overview covers recent reforms in key areas of the country's social security system. In the health sector and in old-age pension provision social security is still mainly workerist (biased toward those in formal employment), and attempts to expand coverage have had limited effect only -cash transfer programmes, for instance, have been expanded but in practice they do not universally cover the entitled categories. Thus, although the Kenyan social security system now has a considerable propoor social assistance component it remains biased toward those in formal employment, to the benefit of the highest income quintile.