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1. The Political Origins of the Africa's Economic Revival

Author:
Robert H. Bates and Steven Block
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Writing in the 1990's, William Easterly and Ross Levine famously labeled Africa a "growth tragedy." Less than twenty years later, Alwyn Young noted Africa's "growth miracle," while Steven Radelet less effusively pointed to an Africa that was"emerging" and noted its rising rate of economic growth, improving levels of education and health care, and increasing levels of investment in basic infrastructure: roads, ports, and transport. In this paper, we address Africa's economic revival. In doing so, we also stress the political changes that have taken place on the continent. Once notorious for its tyrants – Jean – Bedel Bokassa, Idi Amin, and Mobutu Sese Seko, to name but three – in the 1990s, Africa joined the last wave of democratization; self-appointed heads of state were replaced by rulers chosen in competitive elections. In this paper, we assert that the two sets of changes – the one economic and the other political – go together, and that, indeed, changes in Africa political institutions lent significant impetus to its economic revival.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Reform
Political Geography:
Africa

2. The Imperial Peace in Colonial Africa and Africa's Underdevelopment

Author:
Robert H. Bates
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
When praised at all, imperialism is most often commended for the peace it bestowed. By demobilizing armies, deposing marauding princes and subduing war-like states, European powers fashioned a half-century of political order. The question nonetheless arises: Should they be lauded for that? In this chapter, I view Africa's history through the lens of comparative history and argue that the imperial peace may have retarded Africa's development.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Imperialism, Post Colonialism, and Natural Resources
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

3. Public Policy, Price Shocks, and Conflict: Price Shocks and Civil War in Developing Countries

Author:
Robert H. Bates and Brett L. Carter
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Those who study the role of agriculture in the political economy of development focus on government policy choices on the one hand and the impact of price shocks on the other. We argue that the two should be studied together. We find that civil unrest (Granger) causes government policies, pushing governments in poor and medium income countries to shift relative prices in favor of urban consumers. We also find that while civil wars are related to food price shocks, when government policy choices are taken into account, the relationship disappears. We thus learn two things: Policies that placate urban consumers may inflict economic costs on governments, but they confer political benefits. And when estimating the relationship between price shocks and political stability, equations that omit the policy response of governments are misspecified.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Government, Markets, Political Economy, and Food

4. The New Institutionalism and Africa

Author:
Robert H. Bates, Steven Block, Ghada Fayad, and Anke Hoeffler
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
After briefly reviewing the new institutionalism, this article uses the history of political reform in Africa to test its key tenet: that power, if properly organized, is a productive resource. It does so by exploring the relationship between changes in political institutions and changes in economic performance, both at the macro- and the micro- level. The evidence indicates that political reform (Granger) causes increases in GDP per capita in the African subset of panels of global data. And, at the mIcro-level, it demonstrates that changes in national political institutions in Africa strongly relate to changes in total factor productivity in agriculture.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa

5. The Political Economy of Heterogeneous Development: Quantile Effects of Income and Education

Author:
Marcus Alexander, Matthew Harding, and Carlos Lamarche
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Does development lead to the establishment of more democratic institutions? The key to the puzzle, we argue, is the previously unrecognized fact that based on quantitative regime scores, countries over the past 50 years have clustered into two separate, very distinct, yet equally-common stages of political development—authoritarian states with low levels of freedom on one side an d democracies with liberal institutions on the other side of a bimodal distribution of political regimes. We develop a new empirical strategy—exploiting exogenous world economic factors and introducing new panel data estimators—that allows for the first time to estimate the effects of development as well as unobserved country effects in driving democracy at these different stages of political development. We find that income and education have the least effect on democracy when authoritarian regimes are consolidated and that only country effects, possibly accounting for institutional legacies, can lead to political development. Ironically, it is in highly democratic and wealthiest of nations that income and education start to play a role; however greater wealth and better educated citizenry can both help and hurt democracy depending again on what the country's institutional legacies are. Far from accepting the notion that much of the developing world is cursed by unchanging and poor long-run institutions, policy-makers should take note that with democratization we also see country-specific factors that in turn condition the difference income and education make for democracy.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Economics, Political Economy, and Third World
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, China, Asia, and Germany

6. Biofuels and Sustainable Development An Executive Session on Grand Challenges of the Sustainability Transition

Author:
Henry Lee, William C. Clark, and Michael Devereux
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Liquid biofuels can provide a much needed substitute for fossil fuels used in the transport sector. They can contribute to climate and other environmental goals, energy security, economic development, and offer opportunities for private companies to profit. If not implemented with care, however, biofuel production can put upward pressure on food prices, increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, exacerbate degradation of land, forests, water sources, and ecosystems, and jeopardize the livelihood security of individuals immediately dependent on the natural resource base. Guiding biofuel development to realize its multiple potential benefits while guarding against its multiple risks requires the application of a similarly diverse set of tailored policy interventions. Most session participants agreed that any single rule – such as production subsidies, a simple ban on biofuel production, or the immediate revocation of existing mandates for biofuel use – is too blunt an instrument, and will almost certainly do more harm than good.
Topic:
Development, Energy Policy, and Third World
Political Geography:
United States

7. Ethnicity, Capital Formation, and Conflict

Author:
Richard N. Cooper
Publication Date:
12-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
"Development" implies change over time. More specifically, the term implies that particular features of the society, the economy and the polity increase in magnitude with the passage of time.This essay treats development as the process of structural change. As societies develop, they transform: towns grow, industry expands, and per capita incomes rise as labor shifts from employment in agriculture to employment in industry (Kuznets 1966; Polanyi 1944; Chenery and Taylor 1968 ). One source of increased incomes is a growing stock of productive inputs and, in particular, of capital. As each worker gains access to an increased stock of capital, each becomes more productive and the level of output per capita rises. Another source is technical change. In industry, possibilities exist for increasing returns to scale and for complementarities that agriculture lacks. Labor employed in town gains access to technologies that are more productive than those in villages. The shift of employment from agriculture to industry and from village to town therefore results in a rise in per capita output.
Topic:
Development, Ethnic Conflict, and Migration
Political Geography:
Africa

8. The State in a Changing World: A Critique of the 1997 World Development Report

Author:
Devesh Kapur
Publication Date:
02-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In recent years, the World Bank has been at the vanguard in pressing for a circumscribed role for the State in developing countries. It therefore comes as somewhat of a surprise that the 1997 World Development Report (WDR - the World Bank's annual flagship publication), The State in a Changing World, underscores the continuing significance of the State in LDCs.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, Government, International Organization, and Third World