Found 577 Documents across 58 Pages (0.049 seconds)
  1. Political centralization in pre-colonial AfricaOsafo-Kwaako, Philip - Journal of Comparative Economics, 2013 - 4 Hypotheses

    This article investigates commonly accepted theories that purport to explain political centralization and investigate their relevance to sub-Saharan Africa. The leading ideas for the formation of political centralization using a worldwide sample include population density, inter-state warfare, and trade. However, the authors reported these factors are not predictive of the sub-Saharan Africa sample. The authors suggest that the lack of agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa may have stunted population density therefore inhibiting political centralization and that Africa’s poor economic performance is, in part, due to lack of political centralization.

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  2. Pre-colonial ethnic institutions and party politics in AfricaAmodio, Francesco - Journal of Comparative Economics, 2022 - 3 Hypotheses

    This article investigates the degree of political centralization in pre-industrial and the political competitive outcomes in 15 modern-day Sub-Sahara African countries. The authors first report that pre-colonial centralization decreases political competitiveness in modern day countries, advocating that traditional power structures play a role in modern day politics. The authors then use light-density as a proxy for regional development and test developmental outcomes based on political centralization and competitiveness. They report pre-colonial centralization positively affected regional development and suggest this could be due to more centralized institutions increasing the capacity of chiefs to mobilize voters, in turn lowering political competition and increasing the accountability of elected officials. Many controls are introduced.

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  3. History and Ethnic Conflict: Does Precolonial Centralization Matter?Ray, Subhasish - International Studies Quarterly, 2019 - 1 Hypotheses

    Using a self selected sample of 33 ex British colonies and the Ethnic Power Relations database, the author sampled 170 ethnic groups from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to test for association between precolonial state formation, colonial state building tactics, and modern ethnic conflicts. The author theorized that ethnic groups that were centrally governed before the colonial period were less likely to be recruited to colonial security forces, leaving them out of the picture during the formation of the independence movement and the formation of a post-colonial regime. This in turn is theorized to lead to greater contemporary armed conflict against the regime from which they were excluded.

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  4. Precolonial ethnic institutions and contemporary African developmentMichalopoulos, Stelios - Econometrica, 2013 - 1 Hypotheses

    The researchers test the relationship between political complexity among African pre-colonial ethnic institutions and contemporary economic performance (using light-density data as a proxy). Their tests yield a robust positive association even after controlling for multiple alternative geographic, cultural, and economic variables, which they interpret as underscoring the ongoing importance of ethnic-specific institutions in shaping economic activity in contemporary Africa.

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  5. Ethnic violence in Africa: destructive legacies of pre-colonial statesPaine, Jack - International Organization, 2019 - 3 Hypotheses

    This study investigated the difference in rates of violence of precolonial states and stateless ethnic groups in postcolonial Africa. The author hypothesized ethnic groups of precolonial states (PCS) would experience more violence, (i.e. coup attempts and civil wars) than non-PCS groups. The author suggested that because of PCS countries’ inability to allow rival ethnic groups into power positions in addition to the extra power PCS groups gained under colonial rule may lead to more violence.

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  6. Military deterrence in history: a pilot cross-historical surveyNaroll, Raoul - , 1974 - 11 Hypotheses

    This book takes a cross-cultural, cross-historical approach to the study of military deterrence. Political, economic, and geographic correlates are considered, particularly military and diplomatic strategy. Several hypotheses are tested and some are supported.

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  7. Behavioural variation in 172 small-scale societies indicates that social learning is the main mode of human adaptationMathew, Sarah - Proc. R. Soc. B, 2015 - 8 Hypotheses

    Inter-group variation is greater in humans than in any other animal, and scholars continue to debate the cause of this diversity. Two competing explanatory models of human variation emphasize either (1) ecological differences and "evoked" culture or (2) population-level effects of cultural transmission. The former emphasizes mechanisms that operate within a single generation, while the latter emphasizes cumulative cultural history operating over many generations. To test these competing models, the authors measured the relative power of ecological variables as compared to culture history to predict behavioral variation in 172 western North American tribes. Culture history is subdivided into culture phylogeny (based on language phylogeny) and spatial distance.

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  8. How the international slave trade underdeveloped AfricaWhatley, Warren - The Journal of Economic History, 2022 - 4 Hypotheses

    The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how international slave trade spread the institution of slavery throughout Africa, resulting in long-term effects of the continent’s income and political centralization. The author first estimated the travel time to slave ports from each society in the Ethnographic Atlas to determine predicting factors for the adoption of slave trade in African societies. The author reported that societies with high exposure to slave capture in the past were more likely to have the custom of slavery and the custom of polygyny. The author further suggested that slavery institutions emerged in West Africa through local, politically centralized aristocratic systems while emerging in East Africa through the preservation of wealth within the nuclear family over generations.

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  9. The origins of the economy: a comparative study of distribution in primitive and peasant economiesPryor, Frederic L. - , 1977 - 39 Hypotheses

    Considerable disagreement exists in regard to the origin and distribution of economic phenomena such as money, slavery, markets, exchange, and imbalanced transfers. Here the author utilizes a worldwide cross-cultural sample of 60 pre-industrial "societies" to empirically test many economic hypotheses, with a focus on distributional mechanisms and institutions.

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  10. Drivers of geographical patterns of North American language diversityCuelho, Mario Tulio Pacheco - Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2019 - 8 Hypotheses

    The authors examine multiple ecological variables as possible predictors of language diversity in North America using path analysis, mechanistic simulation modelling, and geographically weighted regression. They conclude that many of the variables do not predict language diversity, but rather are mediated by population density. The authors also find that the variables' ability to predict is not universal across the continent, but rather more regional.

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