The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya

Burgess, Robin; Jedwab, Rémi; Miguel, Edward; Morjaria, Ameet; Miquel, Gerard Padró i

doi:10.3386/w19398

Cited by 132 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In fact, there is now considerable evidence that democratization, even in neopatrimonial contexts, can bring about expansions in civil rights and political freedoms (Lindberg, 2006;Edgell et al, 2017), the institutionalization of constitutional rule (Posner and Young, 2007), improvements in governance (Alence, 2004) and wider distributions of public goods and services (Stasavage, 2005;Burgess et al, 2015). Moreover, some have argued that patrimonialism may actually promote both democracy (Pitcher et al, 2009) and developmental governance (Crook, 1989;Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, 2012;Kelsall, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neopatrimonialism and Democracy: An Empirical Investigation of Africa's Political Regimes

Sigman

Lindberg

2017

SSRN Journal

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Gothenburg. We performed simulations and other computational tasks using resources provided by the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing (CRC) through the High Performance Computing section and the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre in Sweden, SNIC 2016/1-382 and 2017/1-68. We specifically acknowledge the assistance of In-Saeng Suh at CRC and Johan Raber at SNIC in facilitating our use of their respective systems. The indices of neopatrimonialism used in this paper will be available for public use in V-Dem's v8 dataset, set to be released in April 2018 at www.v-dem.net. AbstractOne of the most common adjectives used to describe democracy in sub-Saharan Africa is "neopatrimonial." Characterized by strong executives, pervasive clientelism and use of state resources for political legitimation (Bratton and van de Walle 1997), neopatrimonial democracy has been (controversially) associated with a range of (mostly undesirable) social, political and economic outcomes. This paper offers an empirical assessment of neopatrimonialism in Africa's political regimes. We show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, African regimes vary both quantitatively and qualitatively in their embodiment of neopatrimonial rule. Moreover, we find no clear evidence indicating that neopatrimonialism necessarily impedes the advancement or survival of democracy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neopatrimonialism and Democracy: An Empirical Investigation of Africa's Political Regimes

Sigman

Lindberg

2017

SSRN Journal

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“…Recent studies have exploited changes in the presidency to quantify the extent of ethnic favoritism in Kenya. Thereby, Kramon and Posner (2012) focus on educational attainments across individuals from different ethnic groups, and Burgess et al (2014) on road building across districts with different ethnic compositions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnic favoritism: An axiom of politics?

Luca

Hodler²,

Raschky

et al. 2018

Journal of Development Economics

133

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We investigate the prevalence and determinants of ethnic favoritism, i.e., preferential public policies targeted at the political leader's ethnic group. We construct a panel dataset of 2,022 ethnographic regions from 139 countries with annual observations from 1992 to 2012, and use nighttime light intensity as output measure to capture the distributive effects of a wide range of policies. We find robust evidence for ethnic favoritism: the political leaders' ethnographic regions enjoy 10% higher nighttime light intensity. We further find that ethnic favoritism is a global rather than Sub-Saharan African phenomenon, which is present in poor as well as rich countries; that political institutions have a weak effect on ethnic favoritism; that ethnic favoritism is most prevalent in ethnically fractionalized and segregated countries with long established polities; and that ethnic favoritism does not contribute to sustainable development. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Code: D720, R110, J150, O430.

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“…While the correlation between ethnic fragmentation and civil war is weak (Fearon and Laitin 2003), ethnic polarization (Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2005;Esteban, Mayoral, and Ray 2012), and inequality across and within ethnic lines (Huber and Mayoral 2014;Esteban and Ray 2011) correlates significantly with civil conflict. And a growing literature in political science (and recently in economics) shows the prevalence of ethnic politics, ethnic discrimination, and repression from the central government, and poor public goods provision across all parts of the continent (Posner 2005;Franck and Rainer 2012;Hodler and Raschky 2014;Luca et al 2015;Burgess et al 2015). Moreover, Wimmer, Cederman, and Min (2009) show that the likelihood of ethnic conflict increases when groups are excluded from national power.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

Michalopoulos

Papaioannou

2016

American Economic Review

286

167

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The predominant explanations on the deep roots of contemporary African development are centered around the influence of Europeans during the colonial period (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001Robinson , 2002Robinson , 2005, but also in the centuries before colonization when close to 20 million slaves were exported from Africa (Nunn 2008). Yet in the period between the ending of the slave trades and the beginning of the colonial rule, another major event took place that, according to the African historiography, had malicious long-lasting consequences. During the "Scramble for Africa," that starts with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and is completed by the turn of the twentieth century, Europeans partitioned Africa into spheres of influence, protectorates, and colonies. The borders were designed in European capitals at a time when Europeans had barely settled in Africa and had limited knowledge of local conditions. Despite their arbitrariness, boundaries outlived the colonial era.

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The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya

Cited by 132 publications

References 2 publications

Neopatrimonialism and Democracy: An Empirical Investigation of Africa's Political Regimes

Neopatrimonialism and Democracy: An Empirical Investigation of Africa's Political Regimes

Ethnic favoritism: An axiom of politics?

The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

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