Research

We systematically document for the first time that African societies were not politically organized on the basis of ethnicity in the pre-colonial period. The 763 ethnic groups documented in Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas have stood as the basic unit of analysis in social science research of Africa. Yet in 1880 there were probably 45,000 independent polities which were rarely organized on ethnic lines. Moreover, at most 2% of these could be classified as states. We argue that the main reason for this extreme political decentralization was that African societies were deliberately organized to stop centralization emerging. In this they were successful. We point out some key aspects of African societies that helped them to manage this equilibrium. We also emphasize how the organization of the economy was subservient to these political goals.

Building a strong and effective state requires revenue. Yet, in many low-income countries, citizens forego engaging with the state because of vulnerability to opportunistic demands by state agents. We study two randomized interventions in Kinshasa, DRC designed to empower citizens: one provided information about statutory payment obligations and another offered protection from abusive officials. Testing predictions from a model, we examine the effects of empowerment not only on citizen payment amounts (intensive margin effects) but also on whether citizens start making formal payments, or any payments, to the state (extensive margin effects). We find that protection, but not information had clear extensive margin effects, increasing the share of citizens making formal payments and engaging with the state in the first place. Overall, we show how empowering citizens can help countries transition away from a low-tax, high-informality equilibrium.

In Africa, missionaries used schooling to gain adherents. We study how historical missionary activity shaped long-run education and political development across regime types. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to Catholic missionaries generated by their territorial administration system. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that proximity to historical diocese headquarters generally led to an increased presence of Catholic missionaries, as well as long-term positive effects on Catholic identity and educational outcomes. The effects on political outcomes vary by regime type. Only individuals exposed to greater historical missionary activity in open anocracies—relative to those in democracies and closed anocracies—are more likely to participate in politics. Moreover, they are also the only ones who are more engaged, supportive of democratic institutions, and disenchanted with the state of democracy and incumbent in their countries.

How are rural towns governed in a context of fragility? This paper provides descriptive evidence to describe and quantify urbanization and the local organization of the state in 67 rural towns in four provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We present rich data on urbanization, state and local governance, taxation, public good provision, and citizens’ perceptions of governance. Three stories emerge. First, rural towns are growing, boasting high levels of ethnic diversity, and local trust, but are still largely agrarian and with unclear property rights. Second, a recent decentralization reform has been poorly implemented ten years on. Less than half the towns have a state administrator, no local elections took place, and revenue sharing is limited. Third, the governance goals of the reform remain largely unfulfilled. We observe a lack of democratic accountability, high levels of corruption, and an acute gap in financing. Finally, we find that these governance challenges are not correlated with levels of urbanization, implementation of the reforms, or levels of state capacity.

This study presents a new economic perspective on state-building based on a case study in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s hinterland. We explore the implications for the state of considering rebels as stationary bandits. When the state, through a military operation, made it impossible for rebels to levy taxes, it inadvertently encouraged them to plunder the assets of the very citizens they previously preferred to tax. When it negotiated with rebels instead, this effect was absent, but negotiating compromised the state’s legitimacy and prompted the emergence of new rebels. The findings suggest that attempting to increase taxation by a weak state in the hinterland could come at the expense of safety in the medium term and of the integrity of the state in the long term.

How does the local memory of past repression affect whether individuals fight for, or rebel against, the government perpetrator? We theorize how information about past repression is transmitted across generations over time to shape long-run patterns of loyalty and rebellion toward the state. We assess this argument by studying how the legacies of the 1845–1849 Irish Famine affected the decisions of subsequent generations of Irishmen to fight for or against Britain. Leveraging data on over 150,000 Irish combatants, we show that individuals in places more severely affected by the Famine fought in the pro-British Irish Militia and the WW1 British military at lower rates. By contrast, they rebelled against Britain at higher rates. Additional quantitative analysis provides evidence consistent with the theoretical argument: constituencies more severely affected by the Famine voted for the pro-Irish and anti-British Sinn Fein party at higher rates. Our paper demonstrates how the local memory of past repression can play a crucial role in shaping long-run patterns of conflict participation behavior.

How does the central state interact with local actors in providing public goods? I study the effect of state capacity on local governance in sub-Saharan Africa, which I argue depends on whether traditional village chiefs are integrated in the country’s constitution. I use distance to administrative headquarters as a measure of state capacity and estimate a regression discontinuity design around administrative boundaries. If chiefs are not integrated then the state and chiefs compete with each other, working as substitutes. That is, a stronger state undermines the power of chiefs. If traditional chiefs are integrated, then the two work as complements. A stronger state then increases the power of chiefs. I show that these relationships are crucial to understand the effect of the capacity of the state on local economic development.

Despite the past centuries’ economic setbacks and challenges, are there reasons for optimism about Africa’s economic prospects? We provide a conceptual framework and empirical evidence that show how the nature of African society has led to three sets of unrecognized “latent assets.” First, success in African society is talent driven and Africa has experienced high levels of perceived and actual social mobility. A society where talented individuals rise to the top and optimism prevails is an excellent basis for entrepreneurship and innovation. Second, Africans, like westerners who built the world’s most successful effective states, are highly skeptical of authority and attuned to the abuse of power. We argue that these attitudes can be a critical basis for building better institutions. Third, Africa is “cosmopolitan.” Africans are the most multilingual people in the world, have high levels of religious tolerance, and are welcoming to strangers. The experience of navigating cultural and linguistic diversity sets Africans up for success in a globalized world.

This paper shows that the expansion of a weak state can increase citizens’ demand for state governance and displace existing actors. We study a reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that extends state authority, via a population threshold, to small towns previously governed by traditional chiefs. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that state expansion increased citizens’ demand for the state even when such an expansion is fraught. Towns above the population threshold have more state appointed personnel, public goods provision, and state security personnel, but little improvements in capacity or infrastructure. State expansion also leads to increased conflict between the state and traditional chiefs, especially around property rights. Citizens increasingly turn to the state when resolving disputes, make more tax payments and bribe payments. This increased demand for the state comes at the expense of demand for traditional authority. In public goods games citizens affected by state expansion are more likely to contribute to the common pool when hearing messages from state officials while citizens in unaffected villages react to messages by traditional leaders. Our results suggest that a weak state can extend its capacity and capture society via political competition.

Armed groups governing civilian populations face a challenge: coercion alone is insufficient, as effective rule requires legitimacy. Historically, armed rulers have often used indirect rule. Delegating authority to local elites with legitimacy encourages compliance but risks collusion. Using a village-level panel of 249 armed-rule episodes across 106 villages in eastern DRC (1990–2016), we examine when armed groups delegate to customary chiefs. We find that legitimacy matters most for unobservable governance tasks, that collusion risks shape reliance on legitimate chiefs differently for domestic versus foreign factions, and that indirect rule is transitional as armed groups progressively build their own capacity.

Poor local public service delivery is common across the Global South. We argue that the short-term unobservability of investments to improve service delivery combine with adverse selection to weaken incentives for politicians to make such investments. While audits that certify investments can mitigate this monitoring problem, the certification process’s effectiveness can be undermined by corruptible politicians and certifiers. We test this argument using a Mexican program designed to certify service delivery investments, where certifications are self-assessed by municipal governments and validated by corruptible third-party institutions. Difference-in-differences estimates show that the program did not ultimately improve municipal public service delivery on average. Consistent with our model, this effect is only positive when the third party is unlikely to be corruptible and when the likelihood that the incumbent is not corruptible in producing the service is large. These findings highlight the challenges in improving service delivery and the importance of incentive-compatible monitoring.