ABSTRACT

In a series of pioneering works, Douglass North argues that the institutional innovations taking place in seventeenth-century England as a consequence of a modification of the balance of power between the Parliament and the Crown provided the conditions not only for economic growth, but also for the development of democratic institutions later on. Our article extends his analysis to the study of parliaments in African countries before and after independence. We find that countries in which parliaments were established prior to independence are more likely to have efficient democratic institutions today. We define a variable of interest, ‘parliamentary experience at independence’, and estimate its effect on a democracy index. Several sensitivity and robustness tests confirm our results that parliamentary experience at the time of independence is a determinant of democracy in African countries today. This corroborates North’s idea that history and institutions do matter.

摘要

道格拉斯·诺斯（Douglas North）在一系列开创性著作中认为，由于议会与政府之间权力平衡的改变，十七世纪英格兰发生的体制创新不仅为经济增长提供了条件，而且为后来民主机构的发展。我们的文章将他的分析扩展到独立前后非洲国家议会的研究。我们发现，在独立之前成立议会的国家今天更有可能拥有有效的民主体制。我们定义了一个感兴趣的变量，即“独立时的议会经验”，并估计了它对民主指数的影响。几项敏感性和鲁棒性测试证实了我们的结果，即独立时的议会经验是当今非洲国家民主的决定因素。这证实了诺斯认为历史和制度很重要的想法。