CIAO DATE: 12/2011
October 2011
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
After briefly reviewing the new institutionalism, this article uses the history of political reform in Africa to test its key tenet: that power, if properly organized, is a productive resource. It does so by exploring the relationship between changes in political institutions and changes in economic performance, both at the macro- and the micro- level. The evidence indicates that political reform (Granger) causes increases in GDP per capita in the African subset of panels of global data. And, at the micro-level, it demonstrates that changes in national political institutions in Africa strongly relate to changes in total factor productivity in agriculture.
Resource link: The New Institutionalism and Africa [PDF] - 350K