ADJUS-120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Atlantic Slave Trade, Authoritarianism, Rent-Seeking

• School: Diablo Valley College
• Department: Administration Of Justice
• Course: ADJUS-120
• Professor: Kukunis

Document Summary

Introduction: africa is poor as their citizens have bad interlocking economic and political incentives, property rights are insecure and very inefficiently organized, markets do not function well, states are weak and political systems do not provide public goods. 2 political centralization and state formation: political centralization evolved much later in africa than elsewhere and i a more fragmented way creation of centralized states is a political process of institution building. Move from a stateless society to one with a state and political centralization is a key process in generate economic growth: w/o a state society cannot generate public goods (law and order), legal system, education. Key factor behind the transition to sustained economic growth in early modern europe was the reform of the state in a non-absolutist non-patrimonial direction. Transition never happened in large parts of africa and evidence suggests that while the transition was taking place in western europe, absolutism and patrimonialism were persisting in africa and maybe intensifying.