Precolonial States Predict Ethnic Wars and Coups in Africa

This article explains why rates of ethnic violence vary across postcolonial African countries. The central claim is that ethnic groups organized as a precolonial state (PCS) intensified interethnic tensions after independence. In insecure postcolonial regimes, leaders faced a tradeoff: form inclusive coalitions and risk insider coups, or exclude other groups and risk outsider rebellions.

📌 New Evidence on Precolonial State Legacies

Originally compiled data on precolonial African states are matched to ethnic-group–level outcomes to trace violence from independence through 2013. Statistical models across multiple specifications examine how historical statehood shapes the likelihood of coups and civil wars.

🔎 Key Findings

• Ethnic groups that were organized as a PCS are more likely to be associated with coup activity because their historically rooted advantages often enabled access to central power.
• Other ethnic groups in countries that contain a PCS fight civil wars more frequently than ethnic groups in countries without a PCS, consistent with strategic incentives for ethnopolitical exclusion.
• These relationships hold across a range of model specifications and controls for alternative explanations.
• Strikingly, through 1989, 30 of 32 ethnic group–level major civil war onsets occurred in countries that included a PCS group.

💡 Why It Matters

Historical statehood matters for contemporary conflict: the legacy of precolonial political organization alters elite strategies and shapes whether postcolonial violence takes the form of coups or civil wars. Accounting for the presence of precolonial states improves understanding of where and why different kinds of ethnopolitical violence emerge.