Colonial Education, Political Elites, and Regional Political Inequality in Africa

Political elites tend to favor their home region when distributing resources. But what explains how political power is distributed across a country’s regions to begin with? Explanations of cabinet formation focus on short-term strategic bargaining and some emphasize that ministries are allocated equ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative political studies 2021-12, Vol.54 (14), p.2546-2580
Main Author: Ricart-Huguet, Joan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Administrators
Cabinet
Civil service
Colonialism
Inequality
Political elites
Political power
Postcolonialism
Recruitment
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Summary:Political elites tend to favor their home region when distributing resources. But what explains how political power is distributed across a country’s regions to begin with? Explanations of cabinet formation focus on short-term strategic bargaining and some emphasize that ministries are allocated equitably to minimize conflict. Using new data on the cabinet members (1960–2010) of 16 former British and French African colonies, I find that some regions have been systematically much more represented than others. Combining novel historical and geospatial records, I show that this regional political inequality derives not from colonial-era development in general but from colonial-era education in particular. I argue that post-colonial ministers are partly a byproduct of civil service recruitment practices among European administrators that focused on levels of literacy. Regional political inequality is an understudied pathway through which colonial legacies impact distributive politics and unequal development in Africa today. JEL: F54, I26, N37, N47
ISSN:0010-4140
1552-3829
DOI:10.1177/0010414021997176