Social science research has long credited the emergence of politically centralized states with the development of institutions that enhance public good provision and better development outcomes, as well as allowing for the ability to fight wars, collect taxes, conduct international trade, manage natural resources, and otherwise respond to the demands of both state leaders and the populace. Variations in political centralization, from statism to democracy, have resulted in economic institutions that take different approaches to resource allocation and wealth accumulation, but all these states take an economic approach motivated by collective outcomes over local community effects.
According to this Western and Asian (Eurasian) view of the world, Africa, which historically did not develop large, bureaucratized states, is a relative failure. This new paper offers a different tack. Rather than judging African outcomes against Eurasian standards, the authors review the pre-colonial status of African polities: the political organization of a society, encompassing its government, laws, and institutions, ranging from nation states (including a multinational polity like the European Union) to highly localized, subnational entities to find that the lack of state-building in Africa was intentional, and that African polities prioritized local community effects over collective goals. By this measure, African political organization was a success.
The lack of state-building in Africa was intentional … African polities prioritized local community effects over collective goals. By this measure, African political organization was a success.
This broad, and radical, observation necessarily obscures much detail, and a perusal of the full paper will amply reward the reader. For this brief, we will summarize the authors’ contributions, culminating in their observations about the economic effects of pre-1880 African political organization.
Following a literature review which emphasizes that many mechanisms of African political organization are missing from mainstream research, the authors estimate the number of pre-colonial polities to find that:
- In 1880, there were about 45,000 polities across Africa. (See accompanying map.) Fewer than 1% of these polities were ethnically based, and no more than 2% were state-like in their structure. Roughly 44% of Africa’s population resided in state-like polities.
- In a novel analysis, the authors provide an explanation for why African societies eschewed collective states. It is not, per much of the literature, that African polities lacked certain factors that would have otherwise allowed them to build Eurasian-style states. Rather, the authors show that Africans rejected such Eurasian notions of statehood, choosing instead to construct a non-Western path into modernity that favored local community over collective outcomes. By this measure, Africa succeeded.
- That said, this choice had unintended consequences on three counts, including the way that Africa entered the slave trade on the supply side as demand for slaves in America increased. Africa’s decentralized political system meant that there was no cooperative interaction between African polities regarding slave supply, which led to a collectively disastrous outcome. Second, local polities were vulnerable to colonial expansion, both militarily and via policies of divide and rule. And third, the political geography of Africa made it difficult to build effective post-colonial nation states, which led to economic decline, corruption and patrimonialism: a form of rule where a leader treats the state as personal property, governing through loyalty, kinship, and client-patron networks rather than objective laws, blurring public and private spheres to reward supporters and maintain power , as well as institutional path dependence: a theory where early choices or events in a society’s history “lock in” certain institutional paths, making it difficult to switch to alternatives later due to accumulated investments, interdependencies, and inertia. Essentially, this means that history matters in shaping present and future structures. It explains why institutions (like laws, political systems, or social norms) persist, even when seemingly outdated, because past decisions create path-dependent structures that resist change. .
- African societies were flexible in their treatment of outsiders and strangers, which helped balance inter-polity relations among the 45,000 local units, and which had implications for the nature, incidence, and consequences of conflict on the continent.
- Of note, the authors study 114 languages outside of Africa and 114 within Africa and find that 92 out of 114 (82%) African languages use the same word for “stranger” and “guest.” Only one non-African language, Hawaiian, uses the same word for the two concepts. (See accompanying map.) The authors conjecture that the connection between stranger and guest is more than linguistic, and that along with a willingness to accept stranger kings and a lack of territorial aggression, emerged from a historic equilibrium of mobility and migration.
- Finally, regarding the economy, the authors’ analysis reveals how the focus on maintaining local autonomy necessarily precluded the development of market forces among and within African polities. Likewise, competition and innovation, key components of a market-based economy, were hampered; on the other hand, so was the development of wealth concentration and powerful political authority. There was heterogeneity among polities, but broadly speaking, there were no factor markets: factor markets are where the factors of production (land, labor, and capital) are bought and sold, distinct from product markets where finished goods are sold; firms are the buyers (demanding inputs like workers, raw materials) and households are typically the suppliers (selling their labor or land), with prices like wages, rent, and interest determining income distribution and resource allocation in the economy (land, labor, and capital) in pre-colonial Africa. Also, land was typically owned by kinship groups. Access to land was granted via one’s kinship group, which also provided jobs. These institutions were kept in place by norms, practices and values.
This novel analysis not only flips the script on our understanding of pre-1880 African political development but also reveals how these otherwise successful local polities were ultimately vulnerable to the pernicious effects of the expansion of European mercantile capitalism: mercantile capitalism was an early stage of capitalism (roughly 1500-1800) focused on accumulating wealth through buying, selling, and trading goods, rather than mass production, with merchants acting as intermediaries between producers and markets to profit from price differences. It relied on controlling trade routes, securing colonies for resources, and maximizing exports over imports (mercantilism) to build national wealth, laying groundwork for later industrial capitalism by generating capital for investment in production. , the slave trade, and colonialism. These effects are not mere historic artifacts; their effects still burden Africa today.