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Replication Data for: Critical Junctures: Independence Movements and Democracy in Africa

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Critical Junctures: Independence Movements and Democracy in Africa
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IVILML
 
Creator Garcia-Ponce, Omar
Wantchekon, Leonard
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description We show that current levels of democracy in Africa are linked to the nature of its independence movements. Using different measures of political regimes and historical data on anti-colonial movements, we find that countries that experienced rural insurgencies tend to have autocratic regimes, while those that faced urban protests tend to have more democratic institutions. The association between the type of independence movement and democracy is statistically significant for the post-Cold War period and robust to a number of potential confounding factors and sensitivity checks. We provide evidence for causality in this relationship by using an instrumental variables approach and a difference-in-differences design with fixed effects. Furthermore, we adjudicate between two potential mechanisms and find support for a behavioral path dependence hypothesis. Urban protests enabled participants to develop norms of peaceful political behavior, which provided cultural bases for liberal democracy. In contrast, armed rebellions generated behavioral patterns that perpetuated political exclusion and the use of violence as a form of political dissent.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Democracy
Insurgency
Social movements
 
Date 2023-05-09
 
Contributor Garcia-Ponce, Omar
 
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