The Institutional Legacy of African Independence Movements∗ Leonard Wantchekon† Omar García-Ponce‡ This draft: September 2011 Abstract We show that current cross-country differences in levels of democracy in Africa originate in most part from the nature of independence movements. We find that countries that experienced anti- colonial "rural insurgencies" (e.g., Cameroon and Kenya) tend to have autocratic regimes, while those that experienced "urban insurgencies" (e.g., Senegal and Ghana) tend to have democratic institutions. We provide evidence for causality of this relationship by using terrain ruggedness as an instrument for rural insurgency and by performing a number of falsification tests. Finally, we find that urban social movements against colonial rule facilitated post-Cold War democratization by generating more inclusive governments and stronger civil societies during the Cold War. More generally, our results indicate that democratization in Africa may result from the legacy of historical events, specifically from the forms of political dissent under colonial rule. ∗We are grateful to Karen Ferree, Elisabeth Fink, Romain Houssa, David Lake, Nathan Nunn, Kaare Strom, David Stasavage, Devesh Tiwari, and seminar participants at Georgetown, UCSD, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Univer- sity of Namur, Université de Toulouse, and APSA Annual Meeting 2011 for helpful comments and suggestions. Excellent research assistance was provided by Nami Patel, Laura Roberts, Rachel Shapiro, Jennifer Velasquez, and Camilla White.The usual caveat applies. †Department of Politics, Princeton University.
[email protected] ‡Department of Politics, New York University.
[email protected] 1 1Introduction Modernization theory remains one of the most intense and open research questions in the social sciences.