Journal articles
"Between God and Nation: The Colonial Origins of Democracy Support in British Africa" (with Dean Dulay)
Studies in Comparative International Development, forthcoming [PREPRINT] [DATA]
Popular support is important to the emergence and survival of democracy. In this paper we study how church-state relations in former British Africa shaped long-run support for democracy. We argue that shared national identity was the basis for incentive alignment, facilitating cooperation over educational policy between church and state and leading to long-lasting support for democracy. Employing geospatial analyses of historical missions data and contemporary social survey data from 19 former British African colonies, we find that areas with missions originating from Britain exhibit better educational outcomes and greater support for democracy than areas that had non-British missions. Furthermore, areas with British Protestant missions show greater support for democracy than British Catholic missions, suggesting that Protestantism supplements the benefits of shared nationhood between mission and state. Our findings add nuance to scholarship on the colonial origins of democracy by highlighting the interdependent legacies of church and state.
Access to education and health care are core development goals of the United Nations since its inception. Today, almost all countries have education and health systems in place. In former colonies, the historical roots of these systems can often be traced back to colonial times. In this article, we argue that spending on social services for the local population was seen as a necessary condition to expand the trade-based colonial economy especially in the initial stage of social services dating back to the interwar period. Using novel data on health and education expenditure in 35 former British and French African colonies during the height of their empires (1919–39), we show that trade volumes account for a large share in the variance of expenditure on education but not health services, and that present-day expenditures partly reflect these patterns. Our results suggest that similar mechanisms are at play within the two empires and differences between them are in degree rather than in kind.
"International Inequality and Demand for Redistribution in the Global South"
Political Science Research and Methods, 12(2), 407-415, 2024 [DOI]
Despite considerable progress, inequality between countries remains at staggering levels. However, we know surprisingly little about demand for international redistribution in the Global South. This is unfortunate as it hinders our understanding of the pressures governments experience to cooperate internationally. Therefore, this paper studies perceptions of international inequality and attitudes towards international aid, an important instrument for redistribution, in Kenya, a major recipient of aid. It features an SMS-based survey experiment, in which respondents are treated with information about international income differences. It is found that most respondents underestimate these differences and that providing accurate information lowers inequality acceptance. However, this does not translate into demand for aid. The findings question often-made assumptions about the popularity of aid and call for further investigation of other internationally redistributive policies.
"License to Educate: The Role of National Networks in Colonial Empires" (with Carina Schmitt)
World Development, 169, 2023 [DOI]
Colonial Africa was shaped by a variety of European actors. Of foremost importance in the educational sector were both colonial governments and Christian mission societies. While their activities and long-term implications are often analyzed in isolation, few systematic studies investigate relationships between them. However, it is well-known that underfunded colonial governments supported mission societies, who used schools to attract new converts, as low-cost educational providers. In this paper, we argue that mission societies that shared national ties with colonial governments benefited from increased support and engaged in more extensive educational activities. Using new historical data on Protestant mission societies from the interwar period in Africa, we demonstrate that national alignment between mission societies and colonizer’s identity in British Africa was associated with more primary schools and higher enrolment. We discuss and explore potential channels underlying this dynamic, including financial support for missionary activities as well as the granting of access to more favourable locations. Our findings show that national networks are an important but understudied aspect of colonial empires. Furthermore, analyzing the early expansion of education provides insights on the causal links often assumed by studies focused exclusively on long-term effects.
"The Colonial Struggle over Polygamy: Consequences for Educational Expansion in sub-Saharan Africa"
Economic History of Developing Regions, 37(1), 27-49, 2022 [DOI]
Featured in The Conversation Africa
Christian missions in colonial Africa have contributed significantly to the expansion of formal education and thereby shaped the continent’s long-term economic and political development. This paper breaks new ground by showing that this process depended on local demand for education. It is argued that disagreements over norms, and in particular the struggle over polygamy, which resulted from missions’ insistence on monogamy in traditionally polygamous areas, lowered African demand for education. Analyses of geocoded data from historical and contemporary sources, covering most of sub-Saharan Africa, show that the struggle is associated with worse educational outcomes today. Effects are not limited to formal attainments but carry over to informal outcomes, in particular literacy. The findings attest to considerable heterogeneity in missionary legacies and suggest that local conditions should be given greater consideration in future studies on the long-term consequences of colonial-era interventions.
Christian missions played an essential role for European colonial empires, often entering territories before European powers officially claimed control. While interactions between governmental and religious actors and their long-term consequences have been subject to earlier studies, little is known about the temporal dynamics of colonization. This paper uses new historical data (1792–1924) to provide a detailed quantitative account of the modern missionary movement in Africa and to estimate the causal impact of the continent's colonization on the missionary empire. The results show that colonization tripled the number of missions entering a territory. In more restrictive colonies, it was primarily national missions from the colonizer's metropole whose presence was boosted. Furthermore, foreign missions lost ground in locations that were of high religious import. The findings attest to State–Church synergies in colonies and demonstrate the importance of national linkages. They improve our understanding of how colonial and missionary empires expanded and have important implications for the study of colonial and missionary legacies.
The study of societal and institutional change has greatly benefited from a growing number of studies exploring sub-national variation in colonialism and its legacies. One vibrant stream in this literature focuses on the role of Christian missionaries in European empires. However, advances are often hampered by the quality and scarcity of available historical data. In this paper, we introduce a new geospatial dataset of Catholic and Protestant mission stations in colonial Africa that offers a more complete picture than currently used data sources. We illustrate the greater coverage our data provides and demonstrate its utility by replicating the effect of missions on the expansion of formal education, one of the most established legacies of Christian missionaries.
"Caught in the Middle! Wealth Inequality and Conflict over Redistribution" (with Hanna Lierse, Davy-Kim Lascombes)
Social Justice Research, 35, 2022 [DOI]
A vast literature documents that wealth inequality has risen throughout advanced democracies, especially the accumulation of wealth among the rich. Yet, instead of increasing wealth redistribution, governments have done the seemingly opposite. Key to understanding why democratic governments do not increase wealth redistribution in times of rising inequalities is to shed light on the public’s preferences. In this paper, we map the public’s redistributive preferences in fourteen countries based on new survey data. We show that traditional socioeconomic cleavages in preferences for wealth redistribution are undermined by diverging mobility expectations. People who expect to climb up the wealth distribution, mostly lower wealth groups, are less supportive of redistribution than people with high stakes of major wealth losses, mainly upper wealth groups. We show that future expectations among the rich and the poor have a highly moderating role for the class conflict over wealth redistribution. Moreover, the middle class, the decisive group in democracies, is highly unresponsive to future prospects. The findings suggest that the middle class does not have much to lose or to win, and therefore, wealth redistribution is of low salience among this group.
"Significant Others? Social Groups, Income Expectations, and Redistributive Preferences"
Social Science Research, 100, 2021 [DOI]
While inequality between individuals is known to be an important determinant of redistributive preferences, research on inequality between groups has increased only recently. This paper argues that individuals infer income expectations from the economic standing of their social group, in particular groups based on characteristics determined at birth, such as sex, race, or parents class. High group incomes can lead individuals to oppose redistribution, even if they are currently poor. Analyses of US survey data from 1978 to 2014 support this argument. The uncovered effects on preferences exceed those of individual income by more than three times in magnitude.
Widespread unawareness and indifference arguably contribute to growing inequalities. However, previous studies have paid little attention to the applicability of these arguments over time. This paper demonstrates that perceptions of inequality and their effects on attitudes towards inequality and redistribution can change considerably. Using social survey data from the United States (1987–2009), it is shown that perceptions of income inequality do not have the same effect on attitudes throughout the period under study. Perceptions of opportunity inequality, which have received less attention in prior studies, produce more stable results. Accounting for and explaining such changes is necessary to advance research on inequality and public opinion.
"Mind the Income Gaps? Experimental Evidence of Information's Lasting Effect on Redistributive Preferences"
Social Justice Research, 33(2), 2020 [DOI] [PDF] [DATA]
Featured in The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage [PDF]
Individuals reject economic inequality if they believe it to result from unequal opportunities. This paper argues income gaps between groups determined at birth, based on sex, race, or family background, can serve people as an indication of unequal opportunities. Findings from a survey experiment show Americans underestimate these gaps. When confronted with accurate information, participants correct their perceptions and adjust redistributive preferences. A follow-up survey finds these effects to last for over one year. In sum, this paper contributes to political economy scholarship that links individual preferences to objective characteristics of the income distribution. Focusing on income gaps offers new ways to explore the political consequences of structural economic change.
Parameter coefficients from non-linear models are inherently difficult to interpret, and scholars frequently opt for computing and comparing predicted probabilities for variables of interest. In an influential article, Hanmer and Ozan Kalkan (2013) discuss the two most common approaches, the average case respectively observed values approach, and make a strong case for the latter. In this paper, I propose a further refinement of the observed values approach for the purpose of computing predicted probability changes. This refinement concerns the use of counterfactual values for the independent variable of interest. I demonstrate that accounting for non-linearities with regards to the variable of interest is important to avoid estimation biases. I also discuss the implications of this insight for estimating average treatment effects from observational data.
"Promoting Renewable Electricity Generation in Emerging Economies" (with Doris Fischer)
Energy Policy, 56, 2013 [DOI]
China, India, and South Africa have recognized the importance of renewable electricity for their future development. In this paper, we investigate the experience of the three countries in applying generation-based policies to promote renewable electricity. We show that they have developed approaches that deviate from what the European experience suggests as successful. With a special focus on feed-in tariffs and auction-based tariffs, our comparison highlights the importance of policy choice and policy design specifications in meeting specific objectives. All three emerging economies face the necessity to promote electricity from renewable energies while keeping electricity prices low. Hence, they experiment with policies and design options, and arrive at country specific solutions. Despite applying different policy instruments and designs that put strong emphasis on low cost solutions, all three countries seem able to reach their ambitious deployment targets.
Chapters
"Political Economy of Inequality" (forthcoming)
Matthew Maguire, Graham Wilson (eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Business and Government, Edward Elgar [PREPRINT]
Over the past decades, inequality has been on the rise in most countries around the world, CEO pay has skyrocketed, and the global 1% control an ever larger share of the world's economic resources. To counter this trend, governments can implement redistributive policies, domestically and internationally. However, government redistribution rarely keeps up with growing inequalities, even in democracies, where large parts of the population stand to benefit. This entry provides some explanations for this apparent paradox by shedding light on the dominant political economy dynamics, emphasizing how the interests of businesses and the rich pose a delicate challenge to the reduction of inequality.
"Colonial Legacies of Social Policy" (with Joan Ricart-Huguet) (forthcoming)
Armando Barrientos, Matthew Carnes, Huck-Ju Kwon, Herbert Obinger, Leila Patel, Carina Schmitt (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Policies in the Developing World, Oxford University Press [PREPRINT]
Most contemporary nation states were, at one point or another, part of European colonial empires. Today, former colonial powers remain heavily involved in countries they once controlled, exerting influence through a variety of economic, political and social channels. One such channel is international aid. In this chapter I explore how colonial models, especially indirect rule in the case of the British Empire and centralization and assimilation strategies in the case of the French empire, affect (1) policy priorities in aid, in particular social protection, and (2) what actors are involved in the distribution of aid. To do so, I rely on a new dataset by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that allows for a more disaggregated analysis of aid flows than data used in earlier studies. While this chapter provides first evidence of colonial legacies in contemporary international aid, it also identifies divergences from colonial models. Explaining both is an important task for further research.
This chapter depicts the main results of this book volume in a synthesized way. It elucidates the role played by external actors in social protection in the Global South, from colonialism to international aid in the light of the findings of this book volume. All chapters are summarized with regard to the types of external actors involved, how they exert their influence over time, what their main objectives and preferences with regard to social protection look like and in what ways their influence is conditioned, limited or translated by national factors. Subsequently, we discuss and critically evaluate the findings along several dimensions such as methodological approaches, geographical scope and generalizability of results. A final section provides an outlook on potential future avenues for research.
"Implementing Green Industrial Policy" (with Anna Pegels)
In A.Pegels (ed.), Green Industrial Policy in Emerging Economies, 2014, Routledge: London [LINK]
Working Papers
"Women on a Mission: Protestant Legacies of Gender Equality in Africa?" (with Felix Meier zu Selhausen)
African Economic History Network Working Paper No. 72, 2023 [LINK]
Christian missions, especially Protestants missions, have been shown to advance long-run education outcomes and gender equality in Africa. However, the mechanisms behind this benign legacy and the contribution of missionary women, who constituted more than half of all Western mission staff, are not well-understood. We compile a new extensive data set on the locations of missions in colonial Africa, including the gender composition of their staff. In combination with contemporary survey data on one million respondents in 29 African countries, we provide evidence of missions' equalizing effects with regards to education and a wide range of female agency outcomes. We document that Protestant missions left no more benign legacy than Catholics, questioning the Protestant exceptionalism highlighted by prior studies. We also document a strong association between missionary women and girls' school enrollment in colonial times but find no evidence of any lasting gendered effects. Post-independence expansion of public education and the secularization of school curricula may have offset persistence of Africa's earliest centers of female education.
"Introducing COLDAT: The Colonial Dates Dataset"
SOCIUM SFB 1342 WorkingPapers, 2019(2) [LINK] [DATA]
Featured in Our World in Data
Book Reviews
"Risk Inequality and Welfare States: Social Policy Preferences, Development, and Dynamics. By Philipp Rehm"
The Journal of Politics, 79(1), January 2017, e13-e14 [DOI]
"Poverty Amid of Plenty in the New India. By Atul Kohli"
Acta Oeconomica, 63(4), November 2013, 528-33 [DOI]
"Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It. By Morten Jerven"
Society & Economy, 35(2), June 2013, 268-71 [DOI]
Media
"Mission education left an uneven legacy: an analysis of 26 African countries"
The Conversation, 24.7.2021 [LINK]
"Interview über Coronabonds: 'Das hat eine politische Dimension'"
Weser Kurier, 30.3.2020 [LINK]
"Here’s how Democratic candidates can change American opinion when talking about inequality"
The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage, 17.10.2019 [LINK] [PDF]