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"This book challenges assumptions that poor post-colonial economic performance is always a direct product of colonialism by reconsidering the Belgian Congo (1908-1959) as a developmental state. The book demonstrates that despite the colonial system's economic exploitation and extraction, brutality, excessive taxation, and inequities, the Belgian Congo achieved successes in developing the economy in a short period of time. The Belgian Congo was able to achieve this by investing its higher rates of fiscal revenue in political stability, physical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. By reconsidering the Belgian colonial state as a developmental state, this book encourages scholars to adopt a more nuanced analysis of African history. Considering state capacity and state autonomy as key features of a developmental state, the book demonstrates that colonial state managers in the Belgian Congo were able to supply these public goods that sustained economic growth for decades. Whilst in no means glorifying colonialism or the atrocities that were conducted during the Belgian occupation, the book nonetheless outlines how different forms of capitalism were deployed to further economic development in the country. In contrast, predatory state managers of the Congo Free State (1885-1908) and post-colonial kleptocrats (1960-2018) have squandered Congo's natural resources with disastrous economic and social consequences. Contrasting the Belgian Congo with colonies of settlement and other colonies of extraction, this book encourages researchers and students to reconsider the dominant narratives within colonial history, development, and African Studies"--

"This book challenges assumptions that poor post-colonial economic performance is always a direct product of colonialism by reconsidering the Belgian Congo (1908-1959) as a developmental state. The book demonstrates that despite the colonial system's economic exploitation and extraction, brutality, excessive taxation, and inequities, the Belgian Congo achieved successes in developing the economy in a short period of time. The Belgian Congo was able to achieve this by investing its higher rates of fiscal revenue in political stability, physical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. By reconsidering the Belgian colonial state as a developmental state, this book encourages scholars to adopt a more nuanced analysis of African history. Considering state capacity and state autonomy as key features of a developmental state, the book demonstrates that colonial state managers in the Belgian Congo were able to supply these public goods that sustained economic growth for decades. Whilst in no means glorifying colonialism or the atrocities that were conducted during the Belgian occupation, the book nonetheless outlines how different forms of capitalism were deployed to further economic development in the country. In contrast, predatory state managers of the Congo Free State (1885-1908) and post-colonial kleptocrats (1960-2018) have squandered Congo's natural resources with disastrous economic and social consequences. Contrasting the Belgian Congo with colonies of settlement and other colonies of extraction, this book encourages researchers and students to reconsider the dominant narratives within colonial history, development, and African Studies"--

"This book challenges assumptions that poor post-colonial economic performance is always a direct product of colonialism by reconsidering the Belgian Congo (1908-1959) as a developmental state. The book demonstrates that despite the colonial system's economic exploitation and extraction, brutality, excessive taxation, and inequities, the Belgian Congo achieved successes in developing the economy in a short period of time. The Belgian Congo was able to achieve this by investing its higher rates of fiscal revenue in political stability, physical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. By reconsidering the Belgian colonial state as a developmental state, this book encourages scholars to adopt a more nuanced analysis of African history. Considering state capacity and state autonomy as key features of a developmental state, the book demonstrates that colonial state managers in the Belgian Congo were able to supply these public goods that sustained economic growth for decades. Whilst in no means glorifying colonialism or the atrocities that were conducted during the Belgian occupation, the book nonetheless outlines how different forms of capitalism were deployed to further economic development in the country. In contrast, predatory state managers of the Congo Free State (1885-1908) and post-colonial kleptocrats (1960-2018) have squandered Congo's natural resources with disastrous economic and social consequences. Contrasting the Belgian Congo with colonies of settlement and other colonies of extraction, this book encourages researchers and students to reconsider the dominant narratives within colonial history, development, and African Studies"--

Scholars have advanced the idea of environmental scarcity to explain the Tuaregs' rebellions in West Africa. However, most governments in the Sahel tend to view the Tuaregs' rebellions as acts of terrorism so they can benefit from US assistance against its global war on terror. Using two case studies, Mali and Niger, this paper contends that the Tuaregs' rebellions are the result of not only grievances from political exclusion and the neglect of the Sahelian governments to develop the Tuaregs' zones, but also the result of fixed colonial borders that have negatively affected Tuaregs' cultural values and livelihood. The Malian and Nigerien governments should find means to resolve these rebellions quickly because Islamic and terrorist groups are taking an active interest in the Sahel, providing social services to a large destitute population that these governments have neglected. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract.The debate on the relationship between economic performance (sustained economic growth, saving and investment) and democracy remains unsettled. This article provides a critical review of the arguments by relying on the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle. A generalized method of moments (GMM) using 37 African countries from 1960 to 1998 reveals a close relationship among indicators of economic performance but no relationship between economic performance and democracy. Co-integration and vector error correction models contradict GMM results, however. Democracy fosters investment in eight countries, enhances saving in three other countries and sustains economic growth in five. Therefore, single country analyses using appropriate methodologies seem warranted to avoid putting forth ecological fallacies with detrimental policy implications.Résumé.Le débat sur la relation entre performance économique (croissance économique soutenue, épargne et investissement) et démocratie est encore loin d'être clos. Cet article fait une analyse critique des thèses en présence en se basant sur le paradoxe de Feldtsein-Horioka. L'analyse de 37 pays africains de 1960 à 1998 utilisant la méthode des moments généralisée (MMG) démontre un lien étroit entre les divers indicateurs de performance économique, mais aucun lien entre ceux-ci et la démocratie. Cependant, la cointégration et les modèles vectoriels à correction d'erreurs contredisent les résultats basés sur la MMG. En effet, la démocratie favorise l'investissement dans huit pays, encourage l'épargne dans trois autres pays, et soutient la croissance économique dans cinq pays. Il semble justifié, par conséquent, de recourir à des analyses individuelles par pays utilisant des méthodologies appropriées pour éviter des erreurs écologiques aux répercussions néfastes sur la politique économique.

Foreign military intervention has had a profound impact on post-colonial African history and politics. Interventions have destabilized borderlands, overthrown governments, and taken a devastating toll on populations. Emizet F. Kisangani and Jeffrey Pickering advance a new theoretical framework and combine quantitative, qualitative, and historical methods to shed fresh light on these important but understudied events. Their detailed analysis brings understanding to supportive and hostile interventions and to interventions by former colonial states, non-colonial foreign actors, and African countries. Kisangani and Pickering also analyse military incursions into ungoverned territories and lands engulfed in civil war. Showcasing a variety of examples from the Second Congo War to the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, the book offers a rich and accessible examination of military intervention on the continent.

Cabinet governments are the most prevalent form of democratic rule and studies of cabinet government duration are common. These studies tend to focus on the domestic influences associated with cabinet longevity, not the impact that foreign policy decisions may have. We begin to address this gap in the literature by analyzing the effect that one particularly visible foreign policy decision, the initiation of a foreign military intervention, has on cabinet duration. We argue that the consequential decision to send troops abroad and possibly into harm's way holds the potential to reset a country's policy agenda. Such a reset can, in turn, prove beneficial for cabinet longevity. In Cox proportional survival analyses of 563 cabinets from 26 European countries between 1946 and 2008, we find that foreign military intervention does have a significant impact on government duration. Governments that dispatched soldiers overseas on supportive or neutral missions lasted significantly longer than those that did not, even after controlling for numerous alternative explanations of cabinet duration. Research on cabinet stability would thus benefit from looking beyond the domestic conditions commonly associated with longevity. The impact of foreign policy decisions should be considered as well.

This article argues that military intervention by traditional members of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has a significant impact on the development aid given to target states. This seemingly innocuous thesis contributes to two literatures. First is the literature on foreign aid, which examines a long list of donor and recipient state variables to explain assistance patterns. It has yet to analyze the signal that DAC military intervention sends about the importance of specific recipient states, however. Second is the literature on foreign policy substitutability, which maintains that increasing the resources allotted to one change-inducing foreign policy tool often reduces the resources available for other tools. Using interrupted time-series panel-corrected standard error estimates of 120 recipient countries from 1960 to 2004, we find that aid flows from traditional DAC donors rise significantly when one or more of their members dispatch soldiers in support of a target government, but gradually recede after troops depart. The opposite pattern holds for interventions that oppose the target government. These outcomes suggest that studies of foreign aid should consider donor state military actions as an additional explanatory variable, and that policymakers may at times view foreign aid and military intervention as complementary rather than competing foreign policy tools.