Working Paper No. 141 PRE-COLONIAL POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION AND CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT IN UGANDA by Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay and Elliott Green AFROBAROMETER WORKING PAPERS Working Paper No. 141 PRE-COLONIAL POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION AND CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT IN UGANDA by Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay and Elliott Green November 2012 Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay is Lecturer in Economics, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London. Email:
[email protected] Elliott Green is Lecturer in Development Studies, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. Email:
[email protected] Copyright Afrobarometer i AFROBAROMETER WORKING PAPERS Editor Michael Bratton Editorial Board E. Gyimah-Boadi Carolyn Logan Robert Mattes Leonard Wantchekon Afrobarometer publications report the results of national sample surveys on the attitudes of citizens in selected African countries towards democracy, markets, civil society, and other aspects of development. The Afrobarometer is a collaborative enterprise of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD, Ghana), the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), and the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy (IREEP) with support from Michigan State University (MSU) and the University of Cape Town, Center of Social Science Research (UCT/CSSR). Afrobarometer papers are simultaneously co-published by these partner institutions and the Globalbarometer. Working Papers and Briefings Papers can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format from www.afrobarometer.org. Idasa co-published with: Copyright Afrobarometer ii ABSTRACT The effects of pre-colonial history on contemporary African development have become an important field of study within development economics in recent years. In particular (Gennaioli & Rainer, 2007) suggest that pre-colonial political centralization has had a positive impact on contemporary levels of development within Africa at the country level.