Elliott Green
Biographic Data
| ID | 3710280 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elliott Green |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elliott |
| FAMILY NAME | Green |
| SIGNATURE | GREEN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0942-5756 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 260 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Political Business Cycles and Democratization: Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa
The literature on Political Business Cycles (PBCs) has suffered from two limitations, namely a dominant focus on government policies rather than outcomes that could influence voter behaviour, and a lack of attention to the relationship between PBCs and democratization. Using multiple fine-grained data on objective and subjective outcomes we examine the nature of PBCs in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region which has experienced substantial levels of demo…
Explaining ethno-regional favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa
Explaining inter‐ethnic marriage in Sub‐Saharan Africa
We use Demographic and Health Survey data to undertake the largest ever examination into the causes of inter‐ethnic marriage in contemporary Sub‐Saharan Africa and document a number of novel findings. First, we show that inter‐ethnic marriage rates are high, at 19.4% on average, vary significantly across countries and are rising over time. Second, we show that individual variables associated with modernization such as urbanization, literacy/educa…
The Politics of Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Recent literature suggests that African Presidents tend to target co-ethnics with patronage, especially in non-democracies. Coupled with evidence on the role of incentives in driving ethnic identity change, I propose that a change in the ethnic identity of the President should lead to an increase in the proportion of people identifying with the President’s ethnic group. I use survey data from fourteen African countries with Presidential transitio…
Exchange on the quantitative measurement of ethnic and national identity
In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the use of quantitative techniques in the study of ethnicity and nationalism, without, however, a sufficient amount of reflection on how these techniques have contributed to our understanding of ethnic and national identities. As such, in this exchange three sets of authors answer questions about the degree to which it is possible to use quantitative data to measure ethnic and national id…
Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
The process by which people transfer their allegiance from ethnic to national identities is highly topical yet somewhat opaque. This article argues that one of the key determinants of national identification is membership in a ‘core’ ethnic group, orStaatsvolk, and whether or not that group is in power. It uses the example of Uganda as well as Afrobarometer data to show that, when the core ethnic group is in power (as measured by the ethnic ident…
Ethnic favouritism in Kenyan education reconsidered: When a Picture Is Worth More Than a Thousand Regressions
Does a leader's ethnicity affect the regional distribution of basic services such as education in Africa? Several influential studies have argued in the affirmative, by using educational attainment levels to show that children who share the ethnicity of the president during their school-aged years have higher attainment than their peers. In this paper we revisit this empirical evidence and show that it rests on problematic assumptions. Some model…
Elliott Green: Public goods and national identification
Industrialization and ethnic change in the modern world
Despite the large recent attention given to ethnicity within the social sciences, the sources of modern ethnic change have remained opaque. Drawing upon social theory from Marx and Gellner, I argue here that industrialization incentivizes ethnic homogenization by lowering the relative value of land. Using carbon emissions per capita as a proxy for industrialization, I show that cross-country changes in ethno-linguistic fractionalization between 1…
Taking it Personally: The Effect of Ethnic Attachment on Preferences for Regionalism
Precolonial Political Centralization and Contemporary Development in Uganda
It is now widely recognized that political institutions have had a major influence on the nature and scope of economic development in broad historical terms Nunn 2009. Across the developing world there has been a large amount of attention given to the influence of colonial institutions in recent years, with a smaller but growing field of study demonstrating the impact of the precolonial period on postcolonial developments Hjort 2010; Green 2012; …
Decentralization and Development in Contemporary Uganda
There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the last quarter-century. In particular the current government has introduced a five-tiered local government structure, decentralized both fiscal and political p…
Dreams and Nightmares of Nationhood: The Obi Igwara Special Memorial Event to mark 50 Years of Decolonization in Africa, 1960–2010
Explaining African ethnic diversity
The consequences of ethnic diversity in Africa have been widely noted. However, the sources of this diversity remain unexplained, which is surprising in light of Africa’s high level of ethnic diversity as well as its large internal variation. Here I show that ethnic diversity in Africa is a result of its tropical location, the pre-colonial slave trade, the colonial creation of large states, and low levels of urbanization, and that my results are …
The Reversal of Fortune Thesis Reconsidered
Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a ‘Reversal of Fortune’ from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to both of their proxies for pre-modern income, namely urbanisation and population density. More specifically, an alternative measure of urbanisation with more obse…
The Political Demography of Conflict in Modern Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has shifted from having a low population density and no population growth in the 19th century to an extremely high population growth today. I argue here that an important cause behind contemporary civil conflict has been this rapid demographic shift. Specifically, I show that low population densities in Africa historically contributed to communal land rights and the creation of large states. In the postcolonial era, however, th…
Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa
On the Size and Shape of African States1: On the Size and Shape of African States
African states are both unusually large and well known for having artificial borders created during the colonial period. While African state size and shape have been previously shown to be correlated with negative development outcomes, no one has heretofore examined the origins of either phenomenon. Here, I show that African state size and shape are not arbitrary but are rather a consequence of Africa's low pre-colonial population density, whereb…
The political economy of nation formation in modern Tanzania: Explaining stability in the face of diversity
Tanzania's success in nation formation and ethnic conflict prevention is a striking refutation of the prevalence of state failure across post-colonial Africa. However, the Tanzanian case has heretofore never been examined in comparative perspective. This article reviews the existing set of literature claiming to explain Tanzanian exceptionalism – focusing, in particular, on ethnic diversity, nation-building and ethnic conflict management policies…
State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
State-building in Africa has long been a concern of scholars and policymakers. The subject is particularly fascinating because of the large and quick shift from a continent largely populated by small states and acephalous societies in the precolonial era to one partitioned among European powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and then to one in which four dozen new sovereign countries were created upon independence. For decades the ong…
Political opposition and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa
This special issue takes a closer look at the role and meaning of political opposition for the development of democracy across sub-Saharan Africa. Why is it that room for political opposition in most cases is severely limited? Under what circumstances has the political opposition been able to establish itself in a legitimate role in African politics? To answer these questions this special issue focuses on the institutional settings, the nature an…
Decentralization and political opposition in contemporary Africa: Evidence from Sudan and Ethiopia
A growing literature in political science has examined the impact of democratization on decentralization without much attention, however, to how decentralization influences political opposition movements. In order to help fill this gap, in this contribution I examine two case studies of decentralization in Africa, namely Sudan's experiment with decentralization in the 1970s and Ethiopia's more recent experience with decentralization since the 199…
Patronage as Institutional Choice: Evidence from Rwanda and Uganda
An increasingly large literature on patronage and clientelism has developed within political science in recent years.Yet this body of scholarship has heretofore failed to develop theories that explain variation in patronage allocation across countries.Here I develop such a theory based on the logic of institutional choice, whereby political leaders allocate patronage in accordance with the political threats they face.Specifically, I argue that pa…
Ethnicity and Nationhood in Precolonial Africa: The Case of Buganda
While recent historical scholarship has attempted to read back the existence of nations into medieval Europe, a similar revisionism has yet to take place amongst scholars of Africa. Here I take up the case of Buganda, a precolonial kingdom on the northern edge of Lake Victoria in what is now central Uganda. I show that Buganda in the mid-19th century fits various definitions of both ethnic groups and nations, while its neighbors largely do not. T…
Patronage, District Creation, and Reform in Uganda
Patronage, District Creation, and Reform in Uganda
Explaining African ethnic diversity
The consequences of ethnic diversity in Africa have been widely noted. However, the sources of this diversity remain unexplained, which is surprising in light of Africa’s high level of ethnic diversity as well as its large internal variation. Here I show that ethnic diversity in Africa is a result of its tropical location, the pre-colonial slave trade, the colonial creation of large states, and low levels of urbanization, and that my results are …
Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
The process by which people transfer their allegiance from ethnic to national identities is highly topical yet somewhat opaque. This article argues that one of the key determinants of national identification is membership in a ‘core’ ethnic group, orStaatsvolk, and whether or not that group is in power. It uses the example of Uganda as well as Afrobarometer data to show that, when the core ethnic group is in power (as measured by the ethnic ident…
On the Size and Shape of African States1: On the Size and Shape of African States
African states are both unusually large and well known for having artificial borders created during the colonial period. While African state size and shape have been previously shown to be correlated with negative development outcomes, no one has heretofore examined the origins of either phenomenon. Here, I show that African state size and shape are not arbitrary but are rather a consequence of Africa's low pre-colonial population density, whereb…
Exchange on the quantitative measurement of ethnic and national identity
In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the use of quantitative techniques in the study of ethnicity and nationalism, without, however, a sufficient amount of reflection on how these techniques have contributed to our understanding of ethnic and national identities. As such, in this exchange three sets of authors answer questions about the degree to which it is possible to use quantitative data to measure ethnic and national id…
The Politics of Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Recent literature suggests that African Presidents tend to target co-ethnics with patronage, especially in non-democracies. Coupled with evidence on the role of incentives in driving ethnic identity change, I propose that a change in the ethnic identity of the President should lead to an increase in the proportion of people identifying with the President’s ethnic group. I use survey data from fourteen African countries with Presidential transitio…
Patronage as Institutional Choice: Evidence from Rwanda and Uganda
An increasingly large literature on patronage and clientelism has developed within political science in recent years.Yet this body of scholarship has heretofore failed to develop theories that explain variation in patronage allocation across countries.Here I develop such a theory based on the logic of institutional choice, whereby political leaders allocate patronage in accordance with the political threats they face.Specifically, I argue that pa…
Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa
Decentralization and political opposition in contemporary Africa: Evidence from Sudan and Ethiopia
A growing literature in political science has examined the impact of democratization on decentralization without much attention, however, to how decentralization influences political opposition movements. In order to help fill this gap, in this contribution I examine two case studies of decentralization in Africa, namely Sudan's experiment with decentralization in the 1970s and Ethiopia's more recent experience with decentralization since the 199…
Decentralization and Development in Contemporary Uganda
There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the last quarter-century. In particular the current government has introduced a five-tiered local government structure, decentralized both fiscal and political p…
Precolonial Political Centralization and Contemporary Development in Uganda
It is now widely recognized that political institutions have had a major influence on the nature and scope of economic development in broad historical terms Nunn 2009. Across the developing world there has been a large amount of attention given to the influence of colonial institutions in recent years, with a smaller but growing field of study demonstrating the impact of the precolonial period on postcolonial developments Hjort 2010; Green 2012; …
The political economy of nation formation in modern Tanzania: Explaining stability in the face of diversity
Tanzania's success in nation formation and ethnic conflict prevention is a striking refutation of the prevalence of state failure across post-colonial Africa. However, the Tanzanian case has heretofore never been examined in comparative perspective. This article reviews the existing set of literature claiming to explain Tanzanian exceptionalism – focusing, in particular, on ethnic diversity, nation-building and ethnic conflict management policies…
Ethnicity and Nationhood in Precolonial Africa: The Case of Buganda
While recent historical scholarship has attempted to read back the existence of nations into medieval Europe, a similar revisionism has yet to take place amongst scholars of Africa. Here I take up the case of Buganda, a precolonial kingdom on the northern edge of Lake Victoria in what is now central Uganda. I show that Buganda in the mid-19th century fits various definitions of both ethnic groups and nations, while its neighbors largely do not. T…
Political opposition and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa
This special issue takes a closer look at the role and meaning of political opposition for the development of democracy across sub-Saharan Africa. Why is it that room for political opposition in most cases is severely limited? Under what circumstances has the political opposition been able to establish itself in a legitimate role in African politics? To answer these questions this special issue focuses on the institutional settings, the nature an…
Industrialization and ethnic change in the modern world
Despite the large recent attention given to ethnicity within the social sciences, the sources of modern ethnic change have remained opaque. Drawing upon social theory from Marx and Gellner, I argue here that industrialization incentivizes ethnic homogenization by lowering the relative value of land. Using carbon emissions per capita as a proxy for industrialization, I show that cross-country changes in ethno-linguistic fractionalization between 1…
The Political Demography of Conflict in Modern Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has shifted from having a low population density and no population growth in the 19th century to an extremely high population growth today. I argue here that an important cause behind contemporary civil conflict has been this rapid demographic shift. Specifically, I show that low population densities in Africa historically contributed to communal land rights and the creation of large states. In the postcolonial era, however, th…
Explaining ethno-regional favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa
Ethnic favouritism in Kenyan education reconsidered: When a Picture Is Worth More Than a Thousand Regressions
Does a leader's ethnicity affect the regional distribution of basic services such as education in Africa? Several influential studies have argued in the affirmative, by using educational attainment levels to show that children who share the ethnicity of the president during their school-aged years have higher attainment than their peers. In this paper we revisit this empirical evidence and show that it rests on problematic assumptions. Some model…
Elliott Green: Public goods and national identification
Taking it Personally: The Effect of Ethnic Attachment on Preferences for Regionalism
Dreams and Nightmares of Nationhood: The Obi Igwara Special Memorial Event to mark 50 Years of Decolonization in Africa, 1960–2010
Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa by Daniel N. Posner
Seminar Overview
Seminar Overview
Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa by Daniel N. Posner
No peace no war: An anthropology of contemporary armed conflicts - Edited by Paul Richards
Ethnicity and Nationhood in Precolonial Africa: The Case of Buganda
While recent historical scholarship has attempted to read back the existence of nations into medieval Europe, a similar revisionism has yet to take place amongst scholars of Africa. Here I take up the case of Buganda, a precolonial kingdom on the northern edge of Lake Victoria in what is now central Uganda. I show that Buganda in the mid-19th century fits various definitions of both ethnic groups and nations, while its neighbors largely do not. T…
Patronage, District Creation, and Reform in Uganda
Coethnicity: Diversity and the dilemmas of collective action, by James Habyarimana, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner, and Jeremy M. Weinstein
The negative consequences of ethnic diversity on African development have been a very popular topic for social scientists in recent years, with a flood of articles linking diversity and low economic growth, conflict, inequality, and poor public goods provision. Yet none of this scholarship attempted to investigate the mechanism by which diversity harms development – or not, at least, until the four authors reviewed here launched a project in Ugan…
The political economy of nation formation in modern Tanzania: Explaining stability in the face of diversity
Tanzania's success in nation formation and ethnic conflict prevention is a striking refutation of the prevalence of state failure across post-colonial Africa. However, the Tanzanian case has heretofore never been examined in comparative perspective. This article reviews the existing set of literature claiming to explain Tanzanian exceptionalism – focusing, in particular, on ethnic diversity, nation-building and ethnic conflict management policies…
State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
State-building in Africa has long been a concern of scholars and policymakers. The subject is particularly fascinating because of the large and quick shift from a continent largely populated by small states and acephalous societies in the precolonial era to one partitioned among European powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and then to one in which four dozen new sovereign countries were created upon independence. For decades the ong…
Political opposition and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa
This special issue takes a closer look at the role and meaning of political opposition for the development of democracy across sub-Saharan Africa. Why is it that room for political opposition in most cases is severely limited? Under what circumstances has the political opposition been able to establish itself in a legitimate role in African politics? To answer these questions this special issue focuses on the institutional settings, the nature an…
Decentralization and political opposition in contemporary Africa: Evidence from Sudan and Ethiopia
A growing literature in political science has examined the impact of democratization on decentralization without much attention, however, to how decentralization influences political opposition movements. In order to help fill this gap, in this contribution I examine two case studies of decentralization in Africa, namely Sudan's experiment with decentralization in the 1970s and Ethiopia's more recent experience with decentralization since the 199…
Patronage as Institutional Choice: Evidence from Rwanda and Uganda
An increasingly large literature on patronage and clientelism has developed within political science in recent years.Yet this body of scholarship has heretofore failed to develop theories that explain variation in patronage allocation across countries.Here I develop such a theory based on the logic of institutional choice, whereby political leaders allocate patronage in accordance with the political threats they face.Specifically, I argue that pa…
The Reversal of Fortune Thesis Reconsidered
Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson have claimed that the world income distribution underwent a ‘Reversal of Fortune’ from 1500 to the present, whereby formerly rich countries in what is now the developing world became poor while poor ones grew rich. We question their analysis with regard to both of their proxies for pre-modern income, namely urbanisation and population density. More specifically, an alternative measure of urbanisation with more obse…
The Political Demography of Conflict in Modern Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has shifted from having a low population density and no population growth in the 19th century to an extremely high population growth today. I argue here that an important cause behind contemporary civil conflict has been this rapid demographic shift. Specifically, I show that low population densities in Africa historically contributed to communal land rights and the creation of large states. In the postcolonial era, however, th…
Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa
On the Size and Shape of African States1: On the Size and Shape of African States
African states are both unusually large and well known for having artificial borders created during the colonial period. While African state size and shape have been previously shown to be correlated with negative development outcomes, no one has heretofore examined the origins of either phenomenon. Here, I show that African state size and shape are not arbitrary but are rather a consequence of Africa's low pre-colonial population density, whereb…
Dreams and Nightmares of Nationhood: The Obi Igwara Special Memorial Event to mark 50 Years of Decolonization in Africa, 1960–2010
Explaining African ethnic diversity
The consequences of ethnic diversity in Africa have been widely noted. However, the sources of this diversity remain unexplained, which is surprising in light of Africa’s high level of ethnic diversity as well as its large internal variation. Here I show that ethnic diversity in Africa is a result of its tropical location, the pre-colonial slave trade, the colonial creation of large states, and low levels of urbanization, and that my results are …
Decentralization and Development in Contemporary Uganda
There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the last quarter-century. In particular the current government has introduced a five-tiered local government structure, decentralized both fiscal and political p…
Precolonial Political Centralization and Contemporary Development in Uganda
It is now widely recognized that political institutions have had a major influence on the nature and scope of economic development in broad historical terms Nunn 2009. Across the developing world there has been a large amount of attention given to the influence of colonial institutions in recent years, with a smaller but growing field of study demonstrating the impact of the precolonial period on postcolonial developments Hjort 2010; Green 2012; …
Taking it Personally: The Effect of Ethnic Attachment on Preferences for Regionalism
Elliott Green: Public goods and national identification
Industrialization and ethnic change in the modern world
Despite the large recent attention given to ethnicity within the social sciences, the sources of modern ethnic change have remained opaque. Drawing upon social theory from Marx and Gellner, I argue here that industrialization incentivizes ethnic homogenization by lowering the relative value of land. Using carbon emissions per capita as a proxy for industrialization, I show that cross-country changes in ethno-linguistic fractionalization between 1…
Ethnicity, National Identity and the State: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
The process by which people transfer their allegiance from ethnic to national identities is highly topical yet somewhat opaque. This article argues that one of the key determinants of national identification is membership in a ‘core’ ethnic group, orStaatsvolk, and whether or not that group is in power. It uses the example of Uganda as well as Afrobarometer data to show that, when the core ethnic group is in power (as measured by the ethnic ident…
Ethnic favouritism in Kenyan education reconsidered: When a Picture Is Worth More Than a Thousand Regressions
Does a leader's ethnicity affect the regional distribution of basic services such as education in Africa? Several influential studies have argued in the affirmative, by using educational attainment levels to show that children who share the ethnicity of the president during their school-aged years have higher attainment than their peers. In this paper we revisit this empirical evidence and show that it rests on problematic assumptions. Some model…
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Economics (19 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Development economics (15 works) · Geography (13 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (12 works)