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The New Political Economy
of Colonialism
THOMAS B. PEPINSKY
Abstract
The new political economy of colonialism is an interdisciplinary field that unites
economists, political scientists, and sociologists interested in the nature and contemporary legacies of colonialism. It is distinctive in its reliance of quantitative data,
its close attention to causal identification, and its focus on deriving novel theoretical insights using standard tools in positive political economy. This essay traces the
development of the new political economy of colonialism over the past 20 years and
identifies exciting new contributions in this rapidly developing and interdisciplinary
field.
INTRODUCTION
The new political economy of colonialism is an interdisciplinary field that
studies the nature of colonial rule and its contemporary effects. Uniting the
fields of economic history, political economy, comparative politics, and historical sociology, scholars working in this field explore central questions in
the social sciences, ranging from the origins of global economic inequality
and the determinants of institutional quality to the social and political legacies of colonial rule for local communities. Although colonialism and its consequences have has long been topics of study across the social sciences, the
new political economy of colonialism is distinctive in its reliance of quantitative data, its close attention to causal identification, and its focus on deriving
novel theoretical insights using standard tools in mainstream political science
and economics. This field of study offers fresh and exciting perspectives on
the historical origins of the contemporary world order, and also new and critical perspectives on existing understandings of colonialism and its legacies.
Because the new political economy of colonialism is a growing modern
field, the state of the art is rapidly changing and the field’s agenda for inquiry
remains fluid. This essay reviews some of the foundational works in this
field, focusing on several “new classics” which have shaped the field before
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
turning to more recent contributions. It concludes by suggesting directions
for future research and outlining some issues that lurk on the horizon,
including geographic biases, declining yields of high-quality quantitative
data, and its relationship to other literatures.
FOUNDATIONAL WORKS IN THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF COLONIALISM
The political economy of colonialism has been a topic of analysis since
at least Lenin (1916/1939). The new political economy of colonialism,
employing the methodological of positive political economy, dates to the
1990s. Economics provided foundational works: Acemoglu, Johnson, and
Robinson (2001), Hall and Jones (1999), La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer,
and Vishny (1998), and Sokoloff and Engerman (2000). Cross-national in
nature, these works exploit the differences across colonial societies to explain
why some countries are more or less unequal, more or less poor, or more or
less productive. Notably, none of these articles is actually about colonialism,
with the possible exception of Acemoglu et al. (2001) Rather, the intensity of
colonial settlement, the legacy of Western European languages (Hall & Jones)
or legal traditions (La Porta et al., 1998), and the settlement of the New World
(Sokoloff and Engerman) each provide a window into the fundamental
determinants of contemporary political economies. This is a hallmark of
the new political economy of colonialism, exploiting the research design
opportunities afforded by variation in the modalities European colonialism
as an exogenous influence on modern political economies.
While these works differ in critical ways, together they each challenge an
alternative framework for understanding global variation in material prosperity that focuses on geographic and resource endowments (Diamond, 1997;
Hibbs & Olsson, 2004; Sachs & Warner, 1995). There is now a rich literature, too large to summarize here, that adjudicates among the institutions
versus endowments approaches. Yet the central insight of these new classics by economists is that colonialism played a central role in determining
the long-run evolution of national political economies (see Nunn, 2007 for an
extensive review).
Foundational works in the new political economy of colonialism by political scientists tend to have a more narrow empirical scope (often national
or regional) and cover a wider range of the substantive topics that occupy
political scientists. These include the evolution of property rights regimes
(Firmin-Sellers, 1995, 2000) and the legacies of colonial borders on postcolonial ethnic politics (Miguel, 2004; Posner, 2003, 2004). Unlike the economics
research cited previously, these works do not seek to explain variation in
political phenomena around the world (although more recent research does;
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
3
see in the following sections). However, they benefit from a more targeted
focus on the politics of colonial rule in concrete cases, and are therefore able
to draw more targeted inferences about how the nature of colonialism catalyzed political and economic processes that have observable effects today.
If there is a single theme that underlies this broad body of research in political science and economics, it is that colonialism must be understood as the
foundational moment in the development of modern political economies.
Exactly what colonialism did is a subject of dispute, as are the exact consequences today. Those disputes have animated this interdisciplinary field
over the past two decades.
RECENT ADVANCES
The cutting edge of the new political economy of colonialism consists of
extensions and critiques of previous literatures, a renewed push toward
microlevel research by economists and for cross-national research by political
scientists, and greater focus on the colonial experience outside of Africa.
Critiques of existing work have involved both attempts to adjudicate
among different perspectives on the origins of economic prosperity (Acemoglu & Johnson, 2005) as well as extensions (e.g., Feyrer & Sacerdote, 2009)
and critiques. Albouy (2012) critiques the reliability of the colonial mortality
data that underlie Acemoglu et al.’s (2001) signature contribution and finds
that former’s results are weaker when using more comparable data in
order to reduce measurement error. Fails and Krieckhaus (2010) attribute
most of the explanatory power of settler mortality to the “British clones”
of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Putterman and
Weil (2010), by contrast, extend the study of colonial-era migration and its
effects on contemporary political economies by focusing on the stock of all
migrants, not just settlers from the metropole, within a given postcolonial
state. Another stream of research, while not pitched as a direct critique
of foundational works, looks toward precolonial institutions, particularly
in Africa (Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2013, 2014). If the legacies of
precolonial institutions dominate the effects of colonial institutions, then
this may render the focus on colonialism itself a distraction, especially if
precolonial conditions explain variation in colonial institutions themselves
(making colonial rule epiphenomenal). Still other extensions look to human
genetic diversity as an alternative fundamental cause of development
(Ashraf & Galor, 2013; Spolaore & Wacziarg, 2009) or claim that the effects
of colonialism amount to a temporary deviation from a long-run pattern in
which early-early developers enjoyed greater technological and economic
development than later developers such as Western Europe (Chanda &
Putterman, 2007). In this way, literature within the new political economy
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of colonialism that investigates the “deep” origins of modern political
economies has become one of several frameworks to organize cross-national
research on the causes of long-run economic performance.
Cross-national work has also continued apace on noneconomic outcomes,
linking colonial-era processes such as religious conversion and the slave
trade to a wealth of contemporary outcomes. Woodberry (2012) draws on
classic Weberian arguments about the Protestant ethic as well as a range of
other arguments from political sociology and finds that regions with more
Protestant missions in the 1920s are more democratic today (see also Lankina
& Getachew, 2012). Nunn (2010) links religious conversion in colonial Africa
to religious beliefs today. Paralleling Michalopoulos and Papaioannou,
Hariri (2012) finds evidence that precolonial political forms both shaped the
development of colonial institutions and contemporary political institutions.
Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) show that African peoples whose ancestors
were targeted by slavers display less trust than others whose ancestors
were less victimized by the slave trade. A range of further extensions and
refinements to these studies is possible.
Other important contributions have adopted creative microlevel research
designs in order to chart the long-run effects of colonialism, leveraging variation in colonial policy across regions or groups of people, or across people
living on either side of an artificial national border. Banerjee and Iyer (2005)
link variation in colonial land tenure systems in India to investment and
productivity today. Berger (2009) argues that differences in tax institutions
across colonial Nigeria affect the quality of local government in contemporary Nigeria. Dell (2010) shows how forced labor institutions enacted under
Spanish rule in Bolivia and Peru have affected downstream public goods
provision today, with knock-on effects on child development and household
consumption. Jha and Wilkinson (2012) show that combat experience from
the British colonial army in WWII affected patterns of local violence during
the partition of India. Lee and Schultz (2012) exploit the fact that portions
of Cameroon were colonized by the British and the French to estimate the
effects of different national types of colonialism on public goods provision.
Jha (2013) shows that precolonial Hindu–Muslim relations have shaped
civil institutions and violence over the long run. Naritomi, Soares, and
Assunção (2012) link the structure of local economies in the colonial era to
contemporary local institutional quality in Brazil. Pepinsky (2014) examines
how Dutch policies toward Chinese and Arab trading minorities shaped
local political–business relations and contemporary economic governance in
Java. Bhavnani and Jha (2013) argue that trade shocks affected local demand
for democratic self-government in the last years of British India.
As is apparent from the scattershot collection of topics and world regions
contained in the previous paragraph, these contributions all each fall
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
5
squarely within the new political economy of colonialism, but they do not
(yet) form a coherent body of knowledge about colonialism itself. Instead,
they shed light on specific historical events and processes from the colonial
era to demonstrate, as Nunn (2007, p. 66) observes, “exactly how and why
specific historic events can continue to matter today.”
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The motivating premise of the new political economy of colonialism, from the
new classics of the 1990s through until today, is that colonialism was foundational for understanding modern political economies. This insight—long
accepted in other parts of the academy as the received wisdom when studying postcolonial societies—is the subject of greater analytical, theoretical, and
empirical scrutiny through the methodologies of positive political economy.
The new political economy of colonialism’s greatest strength is its development of a shared vocabulary and common epistemological position through
which to build a progressive and cumulative research program.
Given the rapid growth of this already interdisciplinary field, one area
where scholars might choose to direct their energies would be to seek
intellectual bridges between the positive political economy approaches of
the new political economy of colonialism and other disciplines, including
the softer social sciences, history, even area studies, and postcolonial studies.
Most work on colonialism, after all, is done through the lens of postcolonial
studies (for one recent critique of this field, see Chibber, 2013). Despite the
promise of such engagement with other fields, this will remain a relatively
low priority because of the massive epistemological gulfs between positive
political economy and the intellectual traditions that dominate other academic fields. Greater exchange with qualitatively or historically oriented
social scientists may be possible, however, and I outline some of these in the
following sections.
More productive paths forward for the new political economy of colonialism are extensions that reconcile human diversity, geographical
endowments, precolonial societies, and colonial processes in a comprehensive framework; that expand the empirical scope of microlevel research
designs beyond Africa; that pay more attention to the inner workings
of colonialism itself; and that further integrate qualitative insights into a
fundamentally quantitative field in order to generate more credible research
designs and uncover new sources of identification and inferential leverage.
Integrating human diversity, geographical endowments, precolonial
societies, and colonial processes into a single analytical framework would
mean a more exacting conceptual understanding of how these four potential
determinants of long-run development interact with one another. The modal
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
approach in recent work consists of testing explanations against one another,
but there is no reason to expect that only one of these families of explanations
is correct. Nor is there much profit in asserting that one is “more fundamental” than any other, except for in one sense: If colonial settlement (say) is
“the fundamental” cause of long-run institutional development, then it can
be an instrument for institutions in a model of the effects of institutions on
development. However, if colonial settlement just reflects (say) geography
or human diversity, and these directly affect development over the long run,
then settlement does not satisfy the exclusion restriction. As instrumental
variables’ approaches are an essential tool in the new political economy
of colonialism, such tensions are unavoidable. The way forward will be to
think creatively about how the potentially multiple causal pathways linking
“deep origins” to contemporary political economies can complement one
another, or substitute for one another, while retaining the clarity that
carefully specified empirical models of long-run development provide.
Future research will also profit from expanding the empirical scope of the
new political economy of colonialism. Table 1 presents a tally of the total
number of quantitative papers appearing in general journals in economics,
political science, and sociology, as well as specialized journals in applied
economics, economic history, comparative politics, political economy, and
international relations, between 1993 and 2013, that covered colonialism in
some respect.1
The results are a clear evidence of a regional bias in existing work: Among
regional studies, Africa dominates, while among country studies, India is
greatly overrepresented, followed by former British and French colonies in
sub-Saharan Africa. The explanation for such a focus is almost certainly linguistic, as English language archives and statistical sources make the former
British colonies relatively easier to study than the East Indies, the Middle
East, or Mozambique. The same is true for the large body of colonial data
in French—and it is therefore puzzling that so little work focuses on Latin
America. The paucity of research outside of these contexts is a problem for
the new political economy colonialism insofar as it fails to capture the full
diversity of the colonial experience in different world regions.
It is also possible that researchers will face a declining yield of high-quality
historical data. Undoubtedly, the crop is far from exhausted, but careful
work will be needed to uncover these new sources. This further recommends
research in those countries and world regions whose contributions to the
new political economy of colonialism remain disproportionately small, for
1. The papers were coded by a team of eight research assistants from Cornell University. Our working
definition of “covering colonialism” was broad and inclusive, as was our definition of “quantitative,”
in order to capture the full breadth of literature which might fall under the new political economy of
colonialism.
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
7
Table 1
Quantitative Analyses of Colonialism by Country or Region,
1993–2013
Empirical Scope
Global
170
Regional
Africa
Asia
British colonies
East Asia
French colonies
Islamic World
Italian colonies
Japanese colonies
Latin America
South Asia
Southeast Asia
Country
43
1
8
2
3
1
1
1
7
1
1
Algeria
Australia
Brazil
Britain
Cameroon
Canada
China
Congo
Cuba/Indonesia
Guyana/Barbados
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Jamaica
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kenya/Tanzania
Korea
Malaysia/Fiji
Mali
Mauritius
Morocco
New Zealand
New Zealand/Uruguay
Nicaragua/Costa Rica
Peru/Bolivia
Philippines/Taiwan
Sao Tome and Principe/Cape Verde
Senegal
Sierra Leone
South Africa
Taiwan
Taiwan/Korea
United States
Zambia
1
5
1
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
21
6
1
1
1
3
1
5
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
4
1
2
14
1
it is likely that the most useful untapped historical data will be found there,
even if it is maintained in Arabic, Manchu, or Vietnamese.
Finally, we return to the possibility of further integrating qualitative
insights from established literatures on comparative politics and political
economy. This does not mean abandoning the quantitative methods or the
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
focus on identification, which are hallmarks of the new political economy of
colonialism. Rather, it means following the suggestions of Morck and Yeung
(2011) to see in qualitative and historical accounts the types of research
design opportunities that will generate credible estimates of causal parameters. Some versions of this exist already: Michalopolous and Papaioannou
(forthcoming), for example, do acknowledge both Bates (1983) and Herbst
(2000) as providing the intellectual motivation for the claim that state power
decreases with distance to the capital. Other major qualitative works with
obvious relevance for the new political economy of colonialism include
Kohli (2004) on the colonial origins of bureaucracies, Mahoney (2010) on
economic development in Spanish America, and Tudor (2013a, 2013b) on
the partition of India and Pakistan. Integrating the new political economy of
colonialism with more traditional social scientific approaches to colonialism
and its consequences represents a fruitful avenue for inquiry.
REFERENCES
Acemoglu, D., & Johnson, S. (2005). Unbundling institutions. Journal of Political Economy, 113, 949–995.
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2001). The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review, 91,
1369–1401.
Albouy, D. (2012). The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical
investigation: Comment. American Economic Review, 102, 3059–3076.
Ashraf, Q., & Galor, O. (2013). The ’Out of Africa’ hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development. American Economic Review, 103,
1–46.
Banerjee, A., & Iyer, L. (2005). History, institutions, and economic performance: The
legacy of colonial land tenure systems in India. American Economic Review, 95,
1190–1213.
Bates, R. H. (1983). Modernization, ethnic competition, and the rationality of politics
in contemporary Africa. In D. Rothchild & V. A. Olunsorola (Eds.), State versus
ethnic claims: African policy dilemmas. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Berger, D. (2009). Taxes, institutions and local governance: Evidence from a natural experiment in Colonial Nigeria. Working paper, Department of Government,
University of Essex.
Bhavnani, R. & Jha, S. (2013). Forging a non-violent mass movement: Economic
shocks and organizational innovations in India’s struggle for democracy. Working
paper, Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Chanda, A., & Putterman, L. (2007). Early starts, reversals and catch-up in the process
of economic development. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 109, 387–413.
Chibber, V. (2013). Postcolonial theory and the specter of capital. New York, NY: Verso.
Dell, M. (2010). The persistent effects of Peru’s Mining Mita. Econometrica, 78,
1863–1903.
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
9
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York, NY:
Norton.
Fails, M. D., & Krieckhaus, J. (2010). Colonialism, property rights and the modern
world income distribution. British Journal of Political Science, 40, 487–508.
Feyrer, J., & Sacerdote, B. (2009). Colonialism and modern income: Islands as natural
experiments. Review of Economics and Statistics, 91, 245–262.
Firmin-Sellers, K. (1995). The politics of property rights. American Political Science
Review, 89, 867–881.
Firmin-Sellers, K. (2000). Institutions, context, and outcomes: Explaining French and
British Rule in West Africa. Comparative Politics, 32, 253–272.
Hall, R. E., & Jones, C. I. (1999). Why do some countries produce so much more
output per worker than others? Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 83–116.
Hariri, J. G. (2012). The autocratic legacy of early statehood. American Political Science
Review, 106, 471–494.
Herbst, J. (2000). States and power in Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hibbs, D. A., & Olsson, O. (2004). Geography, biogeography, and why some countries
are rich and others are poor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 101, 3715–3720.
Jha, S. (2013). Trade, institutions, and ethnic tolerance: Evidence from South Asia.
American Political Science Review, 107, 806–832.
Jha, S., & Wilkinson, S. (2012). Does combat experience foster organizational skill?
Evidence from ethnic cleansing during the partition of South Asia. American Political Science Review, 106, 883–907.
Kohli, A. (2004). State-directed development: Political power and industrialization in the
global periphery. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. (1998). Law and finance.
Journal of Political Economy, 106, 1113–1155.
Lankina, T., & Getachew, L. (2012). Mission or empire, word or sword? The human
capital legacy in postcolonial democratic development. American Journal of Political
Science, 56, 465–483.
Lee, A., & Schultz, K. A. (2012). Comparing British and French Colonial Legacies:
A discontinuity analysis of Cameroon. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 7,
365–410.
Lenin, V. I. (1916/1939). Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism. A popular outline.
New York, NY: International Publishers.
Mahoney, J. (2010). Colonialism and postcolonial development: Spanish America in comparative perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Michalopoulos, S., & Papaioannou, E. (2013). Pre-colonial ethnic institutions and contemporary African development. Econometrica, 81, 113–152.
Michalopoulos, S., & Papaioannou, E. (2014). National institutions and subnational
development in Africa. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(1), 151–213.
Miguel, E. (2004). Tribe or nation? Nation building and public goods in Kenya versus
Tanzania. World Politics, 56, 328–362.
Morck, R., & Yeung, B. (2011). Economics, history, and causation. Business History
Review, 85, 39–63.
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Naritomi, J., Soares, R. R., & Assunção, J. J. (2012). Institutional development and
colonial heritage within Brazil. Journal of Economic History, 72, 393–422.
Nunn, N. (2007). The importance of history for economic development. Annual
Review of Economics, 1, 65–92.
Nunn, N. (2010). Religious conversion in colonial Africa. American Economic Review
Papers and Proceedings, 100, 147–152.
Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). The slave trade and the origins of mistrust in
Africa. American Economic Review, 101, 3221–3252.
Pepinsky, T. B. (2014). Colonial migration and the origins of governance: Theory and
evidence from Java. Working paper, Department of Government, Cornell University.
Posner, D. N. (2003). The colonial origins of ethnic cleavages: The case of linguistic
divisions in Zambia. Comparative Politics, 35, 127–146.
Posner, D. N. (2004). The political salience of cultural difference: Why Chewas and
Tumbukas are allies in Zambia and adversaries in Malawi. American Political Science Review, 98, 529–545.
Putterman, L., & Weil, D. N. (2010). Post-1500 population flows and the long-run
determinants of economic growth and inequality. Quarterly Journal of Economics,
125, 1627–1682.
Sachs, J. D. & Warner, A. M. (1995). Natural resource abundance and economic
growth. National Bureau of Economic Research Working paper No. 5398.
Sokoloff, K. L., & Engerman, S. L. (2000). Institutions, factor endowments, and
paths of development in the New World. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14,
217–232.
Spolaore, E., & Wacziarg, R. (2009). The diffusion of development. Quarterly Journal
of Economics, 124, 469–529.
Tudor, M. (2013a). Explaining democracy’s origins: Lessons from South Asia. Comparative Politics, 45, 253–272.
Tudor, M. (2013b). The promise of power: The origins of democracy in India and autocracy
in Pakistan. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Woodberry, R. D. (2012). The missionary roots of liberal democracy. American Political
Science Review, 106, 244–274.
THOMAS B. PEPINSKY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Thomas B. Pepinsky (PhD, Yale) is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Government and an Associate Director of the Modern Indonesia Project
at Cornell. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics
and international political economy, with a focus on emerging markets
in Southeast Asia. He is the author of Economic Crises and the Breakdown
of Authoritarian Regimes: Indonesia and Malaysia in Comparative Perspective
(Cambridge University Press, 2009), as well as articles in the American
Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
11
Studies Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Journal of East Asian Studies, World
Development, World Politics, and other venues.
http://tompepinsky.com.
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Misra
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-
The New Political Economy
of Colonialism
THOMAS B. PEPINSKY
Abstract
The new political economy of colonialism is an interdisciplinary field that unites
economists, political scientists, and sociologists interested in the nature and contemporary legacies of colonialism. It is distinctive in its reliance of quantitative data,
its close attention to causal identification, and its focus on deriving novel theoretical insights using standard tools in positive political economy. This essay traces the
development of the new political economy of colonialism over the past 20 years and
identifies exciting new contributions in this rapidly developing and interdisciplinary
field.
INTRODUCTION
The new political economy of colonialism is an interdisciplinary field that
studies the nature of colonial rule and its contemporary effects. Uniting the
fields of economic history, political economy, comparative politics, and historical sociology, scholars working in this field explore central questions in
the social sciences, ranging from the origins of global economic inequality
and the determinants of institutional quality to the social and political legacies of colonial rule for local communities. Although colonialism and its consequences have has long been topics of study across the social sciences, the
new political economy of colonialism is distinctive in its reliance of quantitative data, its close attention to causal identification, and its focus on deriving
novel theoretical insights using standard tools in mainstream political science
and economics. This field of study offers fresh and exciting perspectives on
the historical origins of the contemporary world order, and also new and critical perspectives on existing understandings of colonialism and its legacies.
Because the new political economy of colonialism is a growing modern
field, the state of the art is rapidly changing and the field’s agenda for inquiry
remains fluid. This essay reviews some of the foundational works in this
field, focusing on several “new classics” which have shaped the field before
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
turning to more recent contributions. It concludes by suggesting directions
for future research and outlining some issues that lurk on the horizon,
including geographic biases, declining yields of high-quality quantitative
data, and its relationship to other literatures.
FOUNDATIONAL WORKS IN THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF COLONIALISM
The political economy of colonialism has been a topic of analysis since
at least Lenin (1916/1939). The new political economy of colonialism,
employing the methodological of positive political economy, dates to the
1990s. Economics provided foundational works: Acemoglu, Johnson, and
Robinson (2001), Hall and Jones (1999), La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer,
and Vishny (1998), and Sokoloff and Engerman (2000). Cross-national in
nature, these works exploit the differences across colonial societies to explain
why some countries are more or less unequal, more or less poor, or more or
less productive. Notably, none of these articles is actually about colonialism,
with the possible exception of Acemoglu et al. (2001) Rather, the intensity of
colonial settlement, the legacy of Western European languages (Hall & Jones)
or legal traditions (La Porta et al., 1998), and the settlement of the New World
(Sokoloff and Engerman) each provide a window into the fundamental
determinants of contemporary political economies. This is a hallmark of
the new political economy of colonialism, exploiting the research design
opportunities afforded by variation in the modalities European colonialism
as an exogenous influence on modern political economies.
While these works differ in critical ways, together they each challenge an
alternative framework for understanding global variation in material prosperity that focuses on geographic and resource endowments (Diamond, 1997;
Hibbs & Olsson, 2004; Sachs & Warner, 1995). There is now a rich literature, too large to summarize here, that adjudicates among the institutions
versus endowments approaches. Yet the central insight of these new classics by economists is that colonialism played a central role in determining
the long-run evolution of national political economies (see Nunn, 2007 for an
extensive review).
Foundational works in the new political economy of colonialism by political scientists tend to have a more narrow empirical scope (often national
or regional) and cover a wider range of the substantive topics that occupy
political scientists. These include the evolution of property rights regimes
(Firmin-Sellers, 1995, 2000) and the legacies of colonial borders on postcolonial ethnic politics (Miguel, 2004; Posner, 2003, 2004). Unlike the economics
research cited previously, these works do not seek to explain variation in
political phenomena around the world (although more recent research does;
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
3
see in the following sections). However, they benefit from a more targeted
focus on the politics of colonial rule in concrete cases, and are therefore able
to draw more targeted inferences about how the nature of colonialism catalyzed political and economic processes that have observable effects today.
If there is a single theme that underlies this broad body of research in political science and economics, it is that colonialism must be understood as the
foundational moment in the development of modern political economies.
Exactly what colonialism did is a subject of dispute, as are the exact consequences today. Those disputes have animated this interdisciplinary field
over the past two decades.
RECENT ADVANCES
The cutting edge of the new political economy of colonialism consists of
extensions and critiques of previous literatures, a renewed push toward
microlevel research by economists and for cross-national research by political
scientists, and greater focus on the colonial experience outside of Africa.
Critiques of existing work have involved both attempts to adjudicate
among different perspectives on the origins of economic prosperity (Acemoglu & Johnson, 2005) as well as extensions (e.g., Feyrer & Sacerdote, 2009)
and critiques. Albouy (2012) critiques the reliability of the colonial mortality
data that underlie Acemoglu et al.’s (2001) signature contribution and finds
that former’s results are weaker when using more comparable data in
order to reduce measurement error. Fails and Krieckhaus (2010) attribute
most of the explanatory power of settler mortality to the “British clones”
of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Putterman and
Weil (2010), by contrast, extend the study of colonial-era migration and its
effects on contemporary political economies by focusing on the stock of all
migrants, not just settlers from the metropole, within a given postcolonial
state. Another stream of research, while not pitched as a direct critique
of foundational works, looks toward precolonial institutions, particularly
in Africa (Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2013, 2014). If the legacies of
precolonial institutions dominate the effects of colonial institutions, then
this may render the focus on colonialism itself a distraction, especially if
precolonial conditions explain variation in colonial institutions themselves
(making colonial rule epiphenomenal). Still other extensions look to human
genetic diversity as an alternative fundamental cause of development
(Ashraf & Galor, 2013; Spolaore & Wacziarg, 2009) or claim that the effects
of colonialism amount to a temporary deviation from a long-run pattern in
which early-early developers enjoyed greater technological and economic
development than later developers such as Western Europe (Chanda &
Putterman, 2007). In this way, literature within the new political economy
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of colonialism that investigates the “deep” origins of modern political
economies has become one of several frameworks to organize cross-national
research on the causes of long-run economic performance.
Cross-national work has also continued apace on noneconomic outcomes,
linking colonial-era processes such as religious conversion and the slave
trade to a wealth of contemporary outcomes. Woodberry (2012) draws on
classic Weberian arguments about the Protestant ethic as well as a range of
other arguments from political sociology and finds that regions with more
Protestant missions in the 1920s are more democratic today (see also Lankina
& Getachew, 2012). Nunn (2010) links religious conversion in colonial Africa
to religious beliefs today. Paralleling Michalopoulos and Papaioannou,
Hariri (2012) finds evidence that precolonial political forms both shaped the
development of colonial institutions and contemporary political institutions.
Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) show that African peoples whose ancestors
were targeted by slavers display less trust than others whose ancestors
were less victimized by the slave trade. A range of further extensions and
refinements to these studies is possible.
Other important contributions have adopted creative microlevel research
designs in order to chart the long-run effects of colonialism, leveraging variation in colonial policy across regions or groups of people, or across people
living on either side of an artificial national border. Banerjee and Iyer (2005)
link variation in colonial land tenure systems in India to investment and
productivity today. Berger (2009) argues that differences in tax institutions
across colonial Nigeria affect the quality of local government in contemporary Nigeria. Dell (2010) shows how forced labor institutions enacted under
Spanish rule in Bolivia and Peru have affected downstream public goods
provision today, with knock-on effects on child development and household
consumption. Jha and Wilkinson (2012) show that combat experience from
the British colonial army in WWII affected patterns of local violence during
the partition of India. Lee and Schultz (2012) exploit the fact that portions
of Cameroon were colonized by the British and the French to estimate the
effects of different national types of colonialism on public goods provision.
Jha (2013) shows that precolonial Hindu–Muslim relations have shaped
civil institutions and violence over the long run. Naritomi, Soares, and
Assunção (2012) link the structure of local economies in the colonial era to
contemporary local institutional quality in Brazil. Pepinsky (2014) examines
how Dutch policies toward Chinese and Arab trading minorities shaped
local political–business relations and contemporary economic governance in
Java. Bhavnani and Jha (2013) argue that trade shocks affected local demand
for democratic self-government in the last years of British India.
As is apparent from the scattershot collection of topics and world regions
contained in the previous paragraph, these contributions all each fall
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
5
squarely within the new political economy of colonialism, but they do not
(yet) form a coherent body of knowledge about colonialism itself. Instead,
they shed light on specific historical events and processes from the colonial
era to demonstrate, as Nunn (2007, p. 66) observes, “exactly how and why
specific historic events can continue to matter today.”
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The motivating premise of the new political economy of colonialism, from the
new classics of the 1990s through until today, is that colonialism was foundational for understanding modern political economies. This insight—long
accepted in other parts of the academy as the received wisdom when studying postcolonial societies—is the subject of greater analytical, theoretical, and
empirical scrutiny through the methodologies of positive political economy.
The new political economy of colonialism’s greatest strength is its development of a shared vocabulary and common epistemological position through
which to build a progressive and cumulative research program.
Given the rapid growth of this already interdisciplinary field, one area
where scholars might choose to direct their energies would be to seek
intellectual bridges between the positive political economy approaches of
the new political economy of colonialism and other disciplines, including
the softer social sciences, history, even area studies, and postcolonial studies.
Most work on colonialism, after all, is done through the lens of postcolonial
studies (for one recent critique of this field, see Chibber, 2013). Despite the
promise of such engagement with other fields, this will remain a relatively
low priority because of the massive epistemological gulfs between positive
political economy and the intellectual traditions that dominate other academic fields. Greater exchange with qualitatively or historically oriented
social scientists may be possible, however, and I outline some of these in the
following sections.
More productive paths forward for the new political economy of colonialism are extensions that reconcile human diversity, geographical
endowments, precolonial societies, and colonial processes in a comprehensive framework; that expand the empirical scope of microlevel research
designs beyond Africa; that pay more attention to the inner workings
of colonialism itself; and that further integrate qualitative insights into a
fundamentally quantitative field in order to generate more credible research
designs and uncover new sources of identification and inferential leverage.
Integrating human diversity, geographical endowments, precolonial
societies, and colonial processes into a single analytical framework would
mean a more exacting conceptual understanding of how these four potential
determinants of long-run development interact with one another. The modal
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
approach in recent work consists of testing explanations against one another,
but there is no reason to expect that only one of these families of explanations
is correct. Nor is there much profit in asserting that one is “more fundamental” than any other, except for in one sense: If colonial settlement (say) is
“the fundamental” cause of long-run institutional development, then it can
be an instrument for institutions in a model of the effects of institutions on
development. However, if colonial settlement just reflects (say) geography
or human diversity, and these directly affect development over the long run,
then settlement does not satisfy the exclusion restriction. As instrumental
variables’ approaches are an essential tool in the new political economy
of colonialism, such tensions are unavoidable. The way forward will be to
think creatively about how the potentially multiple causal pathways linking
“deep origins” to contemporary political economies can complement one
another, or substitute for one another, while retaining the clarity that
carefully specified empirical models of long-run development provide.
Future research will also profit from expanding the empirical scope of the
new political economy of colonialism. Table 1 presents a tally of the total
number of quantitative papers appearing in general journals in economics,
political science, and sociology, as well as specialized journals in applied
economics, economic history, comparative politics, political economy, and
international relations, between 1993 and 2013, that covered colonialism in
some respect.1
The results are a clear evidence of a regional bias in existing work: Among
regional studies, Africa dominates, while among country studies, India is
greatly overrepresented, followed by former British and French colonies in
sub-Saharan Africa. The explanation for such a focus is almost certainly linguistic, as English language archives and statistical sources make the former
British colonies relatively easier to study than the East Indies, the Middle
East, or Mozambique. The same is true for the large body of colonial data
in French—and it is therefore puzzling that so little work focuses on Latin
America. The paucity of research outside of these contexts is a problem for
the new political economy colonialism insofar as it fails to capture the full
diversity of the colonial experience in different world regions.
It is also possible that researchers will face a declining yield of high-quality
historical data. Undoubtedly, the crop is far from exhausted, but careful
work will be needed to uncover these new sources. This further recommends
research in those countries and world regions whose contributions to the
new political economy of colonialism remain disproportionately small, for
1. The papers were coded by a team of eight research assistants from Cornell University. Our working
definition of “covering colonialism” was broad and inclusive, as was our definition of “quantitative,”
in order to capture the full breadth of literature which might fall under the new political economy of
colonialism.
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
7
Table 1
Quantitative Analyses of Colonialism by Country or Region,
1993–2013
Empirical Scope
Global
170
Regional
Africa
Asia
British colonies
East Asia
French colonies
Islamic World
Italian colonies
Japanese colonies
Latin America
South Asia
Southeast Asia
Country
43
1
8
2
3
1
1
1
7
1
1
Algeria
Australia
Brazil
Britain
Cameroon
Canada
China
Congo
Cuba/Indonesia
Guyana/Barbados
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Jamaica
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kenya/Tanzania
Korea
Malaysia/Fiji
Mali
Mauritius
Morocco
New Zealand
New Zealand/Uruguay
Nicaragua/Costa Rica
Peru/Bolivia
Philippines/Taiwan
Sao Tome and Principe/Cape Verde
Senegal
Sierra Leone
South Africa
Taiwan
Taiwan/Korea
United States
Zambia
1
5
1
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
21
6
1
1
1
3
1
5
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
4
1
2
14
1
it is likely that the most useful untapped historical data will be found there,
even if it is maintained in Arabic, Manchu, or Vietnamese.
Finally, we return to the possibility of further integrating qualitative
insights from established literatures on comparative politics and political
economy. This does not mean abandoning the quantitative methods or the
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
focus on identification, which are hallmarks of the new political economy of
colonialism. Rather, it means following the suggestions of Morck and Yeung
(2011) to see in qualitative and historical accounts the types of research
design opportunities that will generate credible estimates of causal parameters. Some versions of this exist already: Michalopolous and Papaioannou
(forthcoming), for example, do acknowledge both Bates (1983) and Herbst
(2000) as providing the intellectual motivation for the claim that state power
decreases with distance to the capital. Other major qualitative works with
obvious relevance for the new political economy of colonialism include
Kohli (2004) on the colonial origins of bureaucracies, Mahoney (2010) on
economic development in Spanish America, and Tudor (2013a, 2013b) on
the partition of India and Pakistan. Integrating the new political economy of
colonialism with more traditional social scientific approaches to colonialism
and its consequences represents a fruitful avenue for inquiry.
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Naritomi, J., Soares, R. R., & Assunção, J. J. (2012). Institutional development and
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Africa. American Economic Review, 101, 3221–3252.
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THOMAS B. PEPINSKY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Thomas B. Pepinsky (PhD, Yale) is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Government and an Associate Director of the Modern Indonesia Project
at Cornell. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics
and international political economy, with a focus on emerging markets
in Southeast Asia. He is the author of Economic Crises and the Breakdown
of Authoritarian Regimes: Indonesia and Malaysia in Comparative Perspective
(Cambridge University Press, 2009), as well as articles in the American
Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International
The New Political Economy of Colonialism
11
Studies Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Journal of East Asian Studies, World
Development, World Politics, and other venues.
http://tompepinsky.com.
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