Parliamentary experience and contemporary democracy in Africa: A Northian view

Résumé 0

In a series of pioneering works, Douglass North argues that theinstitutional innovations taking place in seventeenth-centuryEngland as a consequence of a modification of the balance ofpower between the Parliament and the Crown provided theconditions not only for economic growth, but also for thedevelopment of democratic institutions later on. Our articleextends his analysis to the study ofparliaments in Africancountries before and after independence. We find that countriesin which parliaments were established prior to independence aremore likely to have efficient democratic institutions today. Wedefine a variable of interest, ‘parliamentary experience atindependence’, and estimate its effect on a democracy index.Several sensitivity and robustness tests confirm our results thatparliamentary experience at the time of independence is adeterminant of democracy in African countries today. Thiscorroborates North’s idea that history and institutions do matter.