Precolonial Political Centralization and Contemporary Development in Uganda

It is now widely recognized that political institutions have had a major influence on the nature and scope of economic development in broad historical terms Nunn 2009. Across the developing world there has been a large amount of attention given to the influence of colonial institutions in recent years, with a smaller but growing field of study demonstrating the impact of the precolonial period on postcolonial developments Hjort 2010; Green 2012; Jha 2013. In one recent example of this trend, several scholars have suggested that precolonial political centralization has had an impact on contemporary levels of development within Africa Gennaioli and Rainer 2007; Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2013; Fenske 2014; Alsan 2015; Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2015. Measuring precolonial centralization by using data from Murdock 1967, they show a robust positive correlation between the percentage of each country's population that is from a centralized ethnic group and outcomes such as light density at night, paved roads, immunization, literacy, and infant mortality rates.