Is Africa Different? Historical Conflict and State Development

Dincecco, Mark; Fenske, James; Onorato, Massimiliano Gaetano

doi:10.1080/20780389.2019.1586528

Cited by 30 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…War may have made bigger empires as peripheral units banded together for collective defense, but rarely did this seem to result in the kinds of heavytaxing, infrastructurally strong states that emerged in Europe. Our story is also consistent with recent empirical research suggesting that pre-colonial warfare did not contribute to bureaucratically strong 'common interest' states in Africa (Dincecco et al, 2019;Osafo-Kwaako and Robinson, 2013), while it did in Asia and Europe.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

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War, interaction capacity, and the structures of state systems

Butcher

Griffiths

2020

Int. Theory

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How have the structures of state systems varied over time and space? We outline a game theoretic model of the decision by political units to accept offers of graded sovereignty from imperial centers. We conceptualize four types of sovereign bargains – tributary, informal extractive, suzerain, and departmental – as a function of whether a polity has external sovereignty and whether resources flow from the subordinate polity to the imperial center through transfers or direct extraction. We then specify the payoffs for these bargains and theorize how increasing interaction capacity and international competition shape the structure of state systems. We show how increasing interaction capacity is related to the transition from transfers to extraction while international competition plays a role only when interaction capacity is already high. We demonstrate the applicability of our model with case studies from low- and high-density environments during the early modern period, respectively: (1) The Oyo Empire of western Africa; (2) Mysore of south Asia.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Our story is also consistent with recent empirical research suggesting that pre-colonial warfare did not contribute to bureaucratically strong ‘common interest’ states in Africa (Osafo-Kwaako and Robinson 2013; Dincecco et al . 2019), while it did in Asia and Europe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

War, interaction capacity, and the structures of state systems

Butcher

Griffiths

2020

Int. Theory

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“…Empirical results, however, are not universally in favor of the argument. Whereas Arias (2013); Besley and Persson (2011); Dincecco and Prado (2012); Dincecco et al (2019) find support for the proposed view, findings of Chowdhury and Murshed (2016); Gennaioli and Voth (2015); Queralt (2016) cast a shadow on the arguments elaborated in Besley and Persson (2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The first empirical investigations were indeed in line with this line of reasoning. (Arias, 2013;Besley and Persson, 2011;Dincecco and Prado, 2012;Dincecco et al, 2019). Many of these findings, however, suffer from common problems highlighted by subsequent research.…”

Section: Previous Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marching to Good Laws: The Impact of War, Politics, and International Credit on Reforms in Ukraine

Kochnev

2020

SSRN Journal

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“…4 The first oil well was not tapped until 1859 (Black, 2012), and diamonds were not discovered in South Africa until 1866 (Ndumbe and Cole, 2005). 5 Dincecco et al (2019) show that historical warfare in sub-Saharan Africa is associated with the creation of specialinterest states whereas conflict in Asia and Europe is associated with the creation of common-interest states-the slave trade being an important distinguishing factor between these regions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Slave Trade and Conflict in Africa, 1400-2000

2019

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Can the slave trade explain Africa's propensity for conflict? Using variation in slave exports driven by the interaction between foreign demand shocks and heterogeneity in trade costs, we show that the slave trade increased conflict propensities in pre-colonial Africa and that this effect has persisted to the present. Moreover, we find empirical evidence suggesting two related mechanisms for this persistence-natural resources and national institutions. These results "decompress" history by connecting the short-run and long-run effects of the African slave trade.

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Is Africa Different? Historical Conflict and State Development

Cited by 30 publications

References 81 publications

War, interaction capacity, and the structures of state systems

War, interaction capacity, and the structures of state systems

Marching to Good Laws: The Impact of War, Politics, and International Credit on Reforms in Ukraine

The Slave Trade and Conflict in Africa, 1400-2000

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