The Colonial Origins of State Failure: Indirect Rule and Political (Under)Development in Italian Africa

Salih Noor, Northwestern University

This paper examines the effects of Italian colonialism on long-run political development in former Italian Africa, i.e., Eritrea, Somalia, and Libya. Through comparative-historical methods that involve cross-case comparison, contextualized within-case process tracing, and counterfactual analysis, I find that Italian colonialism has a negative effect on postcolonial state-building and democratization in Somalia and Libya. Both countries experienced state disintegration and aborted democratization during transitions from authoritarian regimes, and have since grappled with efforts to reconstitute the state and reimagine the national community in the face of rampant clan/tribal factionalism and protracted civil wars. Eritrea, by contrast, represents a case of successful state-building and national integration in Africa because of a rupture with the colonial legacy caused by a critical juncture of a prolonged war of independence. The findings suggest that the institutional legacy of Italian colonialism—i.e, weak states, deep social cleavages, and exclusionary political institutions—reproduces itself through a negative-feedback mechanism. Unless critical events during the postcolonial period cause a rupture with the "historical causation" of colonialism, it leads to path-dependent political development that persists through three channels: Patrimonial postcolonial states, social fragmentation, and political authoritarianism. The paper offers, on the one hand, an empirical explanation for puzzling outcomes in Libya and Somalia, and on the other hand, makes crucial theoretical contributions to studies of colonialism and its legacies for state capacity, ethnic conflict, and democracy in Africa.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 196. Postcolonial Development: Legacies and Strategies