Why Precolonial Centralization Predicts Conflict While Diverse Authority Spurs Development

Why Precolonial Power Still Matters

Martha Wilfahrt investigates a puzzling contradiction in the literature on Africa’s precolonial past: some studies find that areas that hosted centralized precolonial polities enjoy better long-run outcomes, while others find the opposite. This paper asks whether differences in the internal organization of precolonial states help explain these divergent legacies and why some historical polities are associated with contemporary conflict while others correlate with development.

New Dataset of 19th-Century African Polities

Wilfahrt introduces an original, systematically coded dataset of precolonial African states from the nineteenth century and develops a typology of statehood that distinguishes degrees of political centralization and the distribution of authority within polities. The dataset is designed to link historical variation in state structure to modern outcomes across African regions.

How the Question Is Tested

Using the new typology, the paper compares areas that hosted highly concentrated polities with those where authority was more dispersed. The analysis examines associations between these historical forms of statehood and contemporary measures of civil conflict and development, employing statistical tests that relate historical classifications to modern outcomes while accounting for geographic and contextual variation.

What the Analysis Shows

• Areas where political power was highly concentrated in precolonial polities are associated with higher prevalence of civil conflict today.
• By contrast, regions where political authority was more diverse show lower levels of contemporary conflict.
• Development indicators display a largely inverse pattern: dispersed precolonial authority is linked with more favorable development outcomes, while highly centralized legacies tend to correlate with worse development measures.

What This Means for Comparative State-Building

The findings challenge a single-story view of precolonial legacies in Africa by showing that the internal structure of historical polities conditions long-term outcomes. The paper’s dataset and typology offer new tools for scholars studying state-building, institutional persistence, and the historical roots of conflict and development in Africa.

The dataset and its results point to novel pathways for research on how variations in precolonial governance shape contemporary political and economic dynamics, encouraging more nuanced comparative work rather than treating African state formation as uniform.