Colonial-era education can explain regional political inequality in Africa

Research shows that political elites tend to favour their home region when distributing resources. But what explains how political power is distributed across a country’s regions to begin with? Joan Ricart-Huguet draws on recent research to show that colonial-era education underpins the distribution of political power in post-colonial Africa

Why colonial investments persist more in Francophone than anglophone Africa

Comparisons of British and French colonialism in Africa have typically examined the legacy of institutions but ignored colonial public investments in health and education. New research into these investments finds they are better predictors of today’s development in Francophone than Anglophone Africa. As conflict and political instability has been similar between these two sets of countries, Anglophone Africa’s higher economic growth in recent decades is suggested as eroding the persistence of colonial investments

Taking it personally: the effect of ethnic attachment on preferences for regionalism

This article presents three related findings on regional decentralization. We use an original dataset collected in Uganda to establish, for the first time in a developing country context, that individuals have meaningful preferences over the degree of regional decentralization they desire, ranging from centralism to secessionism. Second, multilevel models suggest that a small share of this variation is explained at the district and ethnic group levels. The preference for regional decentralization monotonically increases with an ethnic group or a district’s average ethnic attachment. However, the relationship with an ethnic group or district’s income is U-shaped: both the richest and the poorest groups desire more regionalism, reconciling interest-based and identity-based explanations for regionalism. Finally, we show that higher individual ethnic attachment increases preferences for regionalism using fixed effects and a new matching method

Immigrant IBD Patients in Spain Are Younger, Have More Extraintestinal Manifestations and Use More Biologics Than Native Patients

BackgroundPrevious studies comparing immigrant ethnic groups and native patients with IBD have yielded clinical and phenotypic differences. To date, no study has focused on the immigrant IBD population in Spain. MethodsProspective, observational, multicenter study comparing cohorts of IBD patients from ENEIDA-registry who were born outside Spain with a cohort of native patients. ResultsWe included 13,524 patients (1,864 immigrant and 11,660 native). The immigrants were younger (45 +/- 12 vs. 54 +/- 16 years, p < 0.001), had been diagnosed younger (31 +/- 12 vs. 36 +/- 15 years, p < 0.001), and had a shorter disease duration (14 +/- 7 vs. 18 +/- 8 years, p < 0.001) than native patients. Family history of IBD (9 vs. 14%, p < 0.001) and smoking (30 vs. 40%, p < 0.001) were more frequent among native patients. The most prevalent ethnic groups among immigrants were Caucasian (41.5%), followed by Latin American (30.8%), Arab (18.3%), and Asian (6.7%). Extraintestinal manifestations, mainly musculoskeletal affections, were more frequent in immigrants (19 vs. 11%, p < 0.001). Use of biologics, mainly anti-TNF, was greater in immigrants (36 vs. 29%, p < 0.001). The risk of having extraintestinal manifestations [OR: 2.23 (1.92-2.58, p < 0.001)] and using biologics [OR: 1.13 (1.0-1.26, p = 0.042)] was independently associated with immigrant status in the multivariate analyses. ConclusionsCompared with native-born patients, first-generation-immigrant IBD patients in Spain were younger at disease onset and showed an increased risk of having extraintestinal manifestations and using biologics. Our study suggests a featured phenotype of immigrant IBD patients in Spain, and constitutes a new landmark in the epidemiological characterization of immigrant IBD populations in Southern Europe

The Unequal Political and Economic Legacy of Colonial Education in Africa

A wealth of research shows that presidents and even cabinet ministers disproportionately favor their home regions and districts. This phenomenon is variously called distributive politics, clientelism, or regional favoritism. But what explains how power is distributed across the districts of a country to begin with? Extant explanations of cabinet formation focus on bargaining—leaders allocate portfolios strategically—but fail to consider long-term factors. Leveraging novel data on the political elites of 16 former British and French colonies in East and West Africa, I find that some districts are represented in postcolonial governments (1960-2010) much more than others, even after adjusting for population (chapter 1). By combining historical records and geospatial data, I show that this regional political inequality derives from unequal colonial investments in primary education rather than from other investments, levels of development, ethnic characteristics, or pre-colonial factors. I argue that post-colonial ministers are partly a byproduct of civil service recruitment practices among European administrators, which focused on literacy. Early education shaped post-independence politics through colonial institutions. It helps explain elite production and reproduction. How did colonial states allocate their investments (chapter 2)? I show that geography led some places to become centers of pre-colonial coastal trade, which later increased colonial investments not only in infrastructure but also in health and education. The importance of alternative explanations such as natural resources, disease environment, or pre-colonial ethnic characteristics is surprisingly small. Although the context was highly extractive, pre-colonial commerce also helps explain the limited within-colony inland diffusion of non-extractive investments (education and health). Finally, I provide evidence that non-extractive colonial investments are positively associated with current economic development across districts in East and West Africa (chapter 3). I uncover the role of political elites as a missing link between early human capital investments and current development. Thus, political elites become a mechanism that bridges the literatures on colonial legacies and distributive politics. The two are usually disconnected, yet regional favoritism is embedded in longer processes of political elite formation. My results complement and, in some dimensions, upend our understanding of political and economic underdevelopment