Robert H Bates
Biographic Data
| ID | 107492 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert H Bates |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert H |
| FAMILY NAME | Bates |
| SIGNATURE | BATES R H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1926-8114 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 92 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1343 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 89 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1941 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Toward a Political Economy of Development: A Rational Choice Perspective
The International Coffee Organization: An International Institution
Politics, Academics, and Africa
The roots of my fascination with politics and Africa run deep; so too does my need for clarity. The combination drove me into the professoriate. My research in Africa convinced me that modernization theory was wrong: The people I came to know in the field were sophisticated in their politics. Additional research convinced me that market-oriented approaches to political economy were wrong and that government intervention could lead to increases in…
When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa
The New Institutionalism
Africa's Development in Historical Perspective
This edited volume addresses the root causes of Africa's persistent poverty through an investigation of its longue durée history. It interrogates the African past through disease and demography, institutions and governance, African economies and the impact of the export slave trade, colonialism, Africa in the world economy, and culture's influence on accumulation and investment. Several of the chapters take a comparative perspective, placing Afri…
Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies
Following independence, most countries in Africa sought to develop, but their governments pursued policies that actually undermined their rural economies. Examining the origins of Africa’s "growth tragedy," Markets and States in Tropical Africa has for decades shaped the thinking of practitioners and scholars alike. Robert H. Bates’s analysis now faces a challenge, however: the revival of economic growth on the continent. In this edition, Bates p…
Revisiting African Agriculture: Institutional Change and Productivity Growth
Africa is largely agrarian, and the performance of agriculture shapes the performance of its economies. It has long been argued that economic development in Africa is strongly conditioned by politics. Recent changes in Africa’s political systems enables us to test this argument and, by extension, broader claims about the impact of political institutions on economic development. Building on a recent analysis of total factor productivity growth in …
The state of democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Africa experienced a wave of democratization over the past 20 years and this increase in democracy, we find, positively and significantly affects income per capita. Our dynamic panel data results suggest that countries only slowly converge to their long-run income values as predicted by current democracy levels, however. African countries may therefore be currently too democratic relative to their income levels. In keeping with this possibility, …
Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960-2000
A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability
Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two‐year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a simple specification. The model is accurate in forecasting the onsets of both violent civil wars and nonviolent democratic reversals, suggesting common factors…
Democracy in Africa: A Very Short History
When discussing governance in Africa, one must be circumspect when applying the term "democracy." One reason for doing so is because the term is imprecise. However, while differing in the attributes they posit and the qualifications they impose, those who write of democracy join in emphasizing its essential property: that it is a form of government in which political power is employed to serve the interests of the public rather than of those who …
The Role of the State in Development
This article studies the role of the state in development. It provides a review of the relevant literature and gives a distinctive argument that highlights areas suitable for empirical investigation. One of these areas is the politics that descend into predation, while the others turn developmental. It determines the conditions under which the provision of security and the creation of wealth become rational political acts. The article also discus…
When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa
In the later decades of the twentieth century, Africa plunged into political chaos. States failed, governments became predators, and citizens took up arms. In When Things Fell Apart, Robert H. Bates advances an exploration of state failure in Africa. In so doing, he not only plumbs the depths of the continent's late-century tragedy, but also the logic of political order and the foundations of the state. This book covers a wide range of territory …
The Logic of State Failure: Learning from Late-Century Africa
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the rate of civil war and state failure in Africa rose precipitously. In an effort to comprehend the reasons for the rapid rise of political disorder, the author advances a model that isolates the conditions under which rulers will serve as guardians and civilians disarm, arguing that these conditions specify a region within which political order and the state become possible. Using narrative material…
When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)
State Failure
State failure is characterized by government predation and the militarization of civic society. Drawing on data from the study of civil war, state failure, and violence, this article explores the roles of per capita income, ethnicity, and democratization. It argues that public revenues are more relevant to state failure than are private incomes; that several configurations of ethnic groups can lead to violence; and that state failure is far more …
The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960–2000
The period from 1960 to 2000 was one of remarkable growth and transformation in the world economy. Why did most of Sub-Saharan Africa fail to develop over this period? Why did a few small African economies succeed spectacularly? The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960–2000 is by far the most ambitious and comprehensive assessment of Africa's post-independence economic performance to date. Volume 1 examines the impact of resource …
Domestic interests and control regimes
When imposing a control regime, a government seeks to displace the market as the primary agency for governing the economy. Either by manipulating the structure or operation of markets, or by replacing private markets with public bureaucracies, it seeks to shape the way in which land, labor, and capital are allocated; commodities produced and distributed; services furnished; and incomes determined.
Lost Decades: Postindependence Performance in Latin America and Africa
Africa and Latin America secured independence from European colonial rule a century and half apart: most of Latin America by the 1820s and most of Africa by 1960. Despite the distance in time and space, they share important similarities. In each case independence was followed by political instability, violent conflict, and economic stagnation lasting for about a half-century. The parallels suggest that Africa might be exiting from a period of pos…
Democratic Transitions
Przeworski et al. (2000)challenge the key hypothesis in modernization theory: political regimes do not transition to democracy as per capita incomes rise, they argue. Rather, democratic transitions occur randomly, but once there, countries with higher levels of GDP per capita remain democratic. We retest the modernization hypothesis using new data, new techniques, and a three‐way rather than dichotomous classification of regimes. Contrary toPrzew…
Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
Political Institutions and Economic Policies: Lessons from Africa
Many assert that the economic problems of Africa possess political origins. In particular, they point to a lack of political accountability and argue that economic reform and the renewal of growth depend upon political reform and in particular upon the promotion of competitive electoral politics. Summarizing these arguments, this article formalizes and tests them, using both an African and global sample of data. While it finds support for the vie…
Legislative Politics in Latin America
This study, first published in 2002, explores legislative politics in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Instead of beginning with an assumption that these legislatures are either rubber-stamps or obstructionist bodies, the chapters provide interesting data and a fresh analytical approach to describe and explain the role of these representative bodies in these consolidating democracies. For each country the book provides three chapters dedicat…
Stuffing the Ballot Box: Fraud, Electoral Reform, and Democratization in Costa Rica
Stuffing the Ballot Box is a pioneering study of electoral fraud and reform. It focuses on Costa Rica, a country where parties gradually transformed a fraud-ridden political system into one renowned for its stability and fair elections by the mid-twentieth century. Lehoucq and Molina draw upon a unique database of more than 1,300 accusations of ballot-rigging to show that parties denounced fraud where electoral laws made the struggle for power mo…
Democratic Transitions
Przeworski et al. (2000)challenge the key hypothesis in modernization theory: political regimes do not transition to democracy as per capita incomes rise, they argue. Rather, democratic transitions occur randomly, but once there, countries with higher levels of GDP per capita remain democratic. We retest the modernization hypothesis using new data, new techniques, and a three‐way rather than dichotomous classification of regimes. Contrary toPrzew…
A Note on Taxation, Development, and Representative Government
Revenue-seeking governments may well find it to their advantage to strike bargains with citizens whose assets they seek to tax. To induce a greater willingness to pay taxes, they may defer to the citizens’ policy preferences. Such bargains may become more beneficial from the citizens’ point of view the more mobile the assets the citizens hold. These claims form the central themes of this paper
A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability
Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two‐year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a simple specification. The model is accurate in forecasting the onsets of both violent civil wars and nonviolent democratic reversals, suggesting common factors…
Ethnic Competition and Modernization in Contemporary Africa
It has been argued that modernization promotes potentially disintegrative forces in developing areas, and in particular, often gives rise to powerful ethnic groupings (for example, see Geertz, 1963; Melson and Wolpe, 1970; Huntington, 1968). In this article, we elaborate this hypothesis in the context of the developing nations of black Africa. We note that important competition can and do covary in contemporary Africa (Morrison and Stevenson, 197…
Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies
Following independence, most countries in Africa sought to develop, but their governments pursued policies that actually undermined their rural economies. Examining the origins of Africa’s "growth tragedy," Markets and States in Tropical Africa has for decades shaped the thinking of practitioners and scholars alike. Robert H. Bates’s analysis now faces a challenge, however: the revival of economic growth on the continent. In this edition, Bates p…
Contra Contractarianism: Some Reflections on the New Institutionalism
Organizing Violence
In stateless societies, coercion is privately provided; violence is employed to engage in, and to defend against, predation. At best, violence results in mere redistribution; being destructive, it more often results in a loss of social welfare. When organized, however, violence can be socially productive; it can be employed to defend property rights, thereby strengthening the incentives to engage in productive activity. To explore how violence ca…
Africa and the disciplines: The contributions of research in Africa to the social sciences and humanities
Cooperation by Design: Leadership, Structure, and Collective Dilemmas
We return to the analysis of cooperation among interdependent rational individuals. We emphasize the limited impact of iteration (or repeated play) and explore the possibility of an alternative: intervention by rational agents, whom we call leaders. We show that leadership is more significant for initiating cooperation than for sustaining it. In addition, we identify two features of organizations that are critical in determining a leader's abilit…
State Failure
State failure is characterized by government predation and the militarization of civic society. Drawing on data from the study of civil war, state failure, and violence, this article explores the roles of per capita income, ethnicity, and democratization. It argues that public revenues are more relevant to state failure than are private incomes; that several configurations of ethnic groups can lead to violence; and that state failure is far more …
Revisiting African Agriculture: Institutional Change and Productivity Growth
Africa is largely agrarian, and the performance of agriculture shapes the performance of its economies. It has long been argued that economic development in Africa is strongly conditioned by politics. Recent changes in Africa’s political systems enables us to test this argument and, by extension, broader claims about the impact of political institutions on economic development. Building on a recent analysis of total factor productivity growth in …
Risk and trade regimes: Another Exploration
An analysis of a small sample of countries shows that the higher the level of termsof-trade risk that a nation faces in international markets, the more likely it is to increase barriers. The analysis also shows that the greater the availability of social insurance programs mounted by a nation's government, the less likely it is to block free trade. In comparison with the small open economies of Western Europe, therefore, developing countries may …
Some Conventional Orthodoxies in the Study of Agrarian Change
The paper presents a critical review of two major approaches to the analysis of agrarian societies in light of evidence taken from the scholarly literature on Africa. The first approach posits the existence of "natural" societies; the second, of "peasant" societies. The existence of such "precapitalist" societies is often invoked to account for patterns of change in contemporary rural societies. The author argues that these approaches are overly …
Lost Decades: Postindependence Performance in Latin America and Africa
Africa and Latin America secured independence from European colonial rule a century and half apart: most of Latin America by the 1820s and most of Africa by 1960. Despite the distance in time and space, they share important similarities. In each case independence was followed by political instability, violent conflict, and economic stagnation lasting for about a half-century. The parallels suggest that Africa might be exiting from a period of pos…
Political Institutions and Economic Policies: Lessons from Africa
Many assert that the economic problems of Africa possess political origins. In particular, they point to a lack of political accountability and argue that economic reform and the renewal of growth depend upon political reform and in particular upon the promotion of competitive electoral politics. Summarizing these arguments, this article formalizes and tests them, using both an African and global sample of data. While it finds support for the vie…
Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade
Black Mineworkers in Central Africa: Industrial Strategies and the Evolution of an African Proletariat in the Copperbelt, 1911-1941
Toward a Political Economy of Development
Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa
This book addresses several of the classic questions in African Studies. In the pre-colonial era what were the sources of order in societies without states? And what were the origins of 'traditional' states in Africa? In the colonial period, what caused the divergent patterns of agricultural development? And what were the issues that drove the peasantry into the rebellions which brought an end to colonial rule? Since independence what has been th…
Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy
African and African American Studies
Community Versus Market: A Note on Corporate Villages
We return to the literature on collective villages and reexamine its central arguments. In doing so, we focus on an institution for allocating land that we call the Rule. As claimed by its advocates, the Rule secures land allocations that result in outcomes differing from those that would be achieved by markets. The outcomes are not constrained to be efficient. But the economic costs paid fail to secure the attainment of guarantees of subsistence…
Lessons from History, or the Perfidy of English Exceptionalism and the Significance of Historical France
Theories of development are derived from readings of history. Modern historical research challenges many of the basic beliefs about how economies develop. More specifically, recent research suggests that the lessons drawn from the history of industrialization in England are highly misleading. The article thus challenges the empirical foundations for much of classical and Marxian development theory
Agriculture in development: A coalitional analysis
The Logic of State Failure: Learning from Late-Century Africa
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the rate of civil war and state failure in Africa rose precipitously. In an effort to comprehend the reasons for the rapid rise of political disorder, the author advances a model that isolates the conditions under which rulers will serve as guardians and civilians disarm, arguing that these conditions specify a region within which political order and the state become possible. Using narrative material…
The state of democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Africa experienced a wave of democratization over the past 20 years and this increase in democracy, we find, positively and significantly affects income per capita. Our dynamic panel data results suggest that countries only slowly converge to their long-run income values as predicted by current democracy levels, however. African countries may therefore be currently too democratic relative to their income levels. In keeping with this possibility, …
Five Miles High
Input Structures, Output Functions, and Systems Capacity: A Study of the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia
Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity
Bates Robert H. Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity.. In: Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 10, n°40, 1970. pp. 546-561
A Simulation Study of a Crisis in Southern Africa
number of concerned lookers-on. Adding to the severity of the situation is the possibility of big-power involvement. With the outbreak of open hostilities in southern Africa, it is possible that the major powers would be seized by a crisis of brinkmanship. Even while failing to lead to war, such a crisis would threaten the modus vivendi which enables the big powers to regulate their conflicts and to forestall armed hostilities
Unions, Parties, and Political Development: A Study of Mineworkers in Zambia
Trade Union Membership in the Coppermines of Zambia: A Test of Some Hypotheses
Unions, Parties, and Political Development: A Study of Mineworkers in Zambia
Unions, Parties and Political Development: A Study of Mineworkers in Zambia
Ethnic Competition and Modernization in Contemporary Africa
It has been argued that modernization promotes potentially disintegrative forces in developing areas, and in particular, often gives rise to powerful ethnic groupings (for example, see Geertz, 1963; Melson and Wolpe, 1970; Huntington, 1968). In this article, we elaborate this hypothesis in the context of the developing nations of black Africa. We note that important competition can and do covary in contemporary Africa (Morrison and Stevenson, 197…
Determinants of the Rural Exodus in Zambia: A Study of Inter-Censal Migration, 1963-1969
R. H. Bates & B. W. Bennett — Facteurs déterminants de l'exode rural en Zambie : étude des migrations entre les recensements , 1963-1969. Utilisation de modèles mathématiques probabilistes en démographie sociale. Les équations utilisées retiennent cinq paramètres (sex ratio, taux de scolarisation, cheptel et habitat en dur par tête, pourcentage de mâles salariés), avec comparaison sur une base régionale. Les facteurs économiques (e.g. : cheptel) …
Rural Responses to Industrialization: A Study of Village Zambia
Rural Responses to Industrialization: A Study of Village Zambia
appear to believe that if a Head of State says that a new railway must be built, it will be, although the odds are that it will not be. There are very few inaccuracies, so far as can be determined, although I know of no evidence that Zambia actually shipped copper through Rhodesia after the border closure (the Zaire transit traffic to Rhodesia was permitted, of course, as is well known). And trans-African flights from Lagos to Nairobi certainly h…
The Politics of Change in a Zambian Community. George C. Bond
Politicians in Uniform
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Industrial and Urban Growth in the Third World
People in Villages: Micro-level Studies in Political Economy
Recent micro-level studies of rural communities in the developing areas address themselves to three basic issues: (1) What are the major external forces that determine the welfare of persons residing in rural areas? (2) How do peasants respond to these forces? (3) What ethical evaluations are to be made of the outcome of the encounter between peasant communities and the forces intruding upon them from their environment? By addressing these questi…
The Issue Basis of Rural Politics in Africa
Much of the literature on African politics still centers on the "glorious" period of the nationalist era; this paper is no exception. This paper is based on the supposition that further analysis of the politics of the nationalist era is appropriate because, it contends. there has been a lack of understanding of several of its essential features. \n \nThe paper will reexamine rural politics in the nationalist period and will do so by isolating for…
The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa
Agriculture in development: A coalitional analysis
Black Mineworkers in Central Africa: Industrial Strategies and the Evolution of an African Proletariat in the Copperbelt, 1911-1941
An Introduction to the Sociology of Rural Development.Norman Long
Food policy in Africa — political causes and social effects
Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa
This book addresses several of the classic questions in African Studies. In the pre-colonial era what were the sources of order in societies without states? And what were the origins of 'traditional' states in Africa? In the colonial period, what caused the divergent patterns of agricultural development? And what were the issues that drove the peasantry into the rebellions which brought an end to colonial rule? Since independence what has been th…
The Political Economy of West African Agriculture
Some Conventional Orthodoxies in the Study of Agrarian Change
The paper presents a critical review of two major approaches to the analysis of agrarian societies in light of evidence taken from the scholarly literature on Africa. The first approach posits the existence of "natural" societies; the second, of "peasant" societies. The existence of such "precapitalist" societies is often invoked to account for patterns of change in contemporary rural societies. The author argues that these approaches are overly …
Political science (71 works) · Economics (59 works) · Politics (54 works) · Law (46 works) · Sociology (34 works) · Geography (29 works) · Political economy (28 works) · Development economics (22 works) · Law (20 works) · Computer Science (16 works)