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Photograph 2: Colonel Robert Langley (left) with a mounted police escort. SOURCE Photograph by Noel Redman kindly made available by M.R.B. Williams. 67
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The article presents a new research agenda which links the composition of the British colonial administrations in the mid-20th century with the economic development of former colonies. It presents the first findings taken from the biographical records of over 14,000 senior colonial officers which served in 46 colonies between 1939 and 1966. Legal t...
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This study aims to describe the development of madrasa education system in African continent. It also explores the development of madrasa in Taraba State, Nigeria. This research used a descriptive method. The results showed that in African continent, madrasa institutions had their historical developments, financial support and how British colonial...
Citations
... The economic literature broadly acknowledges that institutions matter for development (cf. North 1990;Rodrik et al. 2004;Acemoglu and Robinson 2010;Boettke and Fink 2011;Barton 2015;Seidler 2016;Tylecote 2016;Almeida 2018;Gambus and Almeida 2018;Seidler 2018). This is not only a theoretical assertion but influences the practice of development cooperation. ...
... First, development programs have to be adapted to a specific context. Transferring blueprints to developing countries cannot provide solutions for complex problems (Rodrik 2008;Andrews 2013;Andrews and Bategeka 2013;Seidler 2016 and. Even within a country, flexible solutions are needed to fit local conditions. ...
This paper investigates the role of local development consultants, which are described as cultural interpreters, in promoting institutional reforms in Tanzania and Uganda. The empirical analysis seeks to answer the question how cultural interpreters translate new formal institutions into a specific context. The results show that they adapt their training programs to the specific context in order to ensure successful implementation. Furthermore, they have to consider how the participants of the training perceive the newly introduced institutions. The way in which they communicate with the participants is a central factor to ensure the application of new concepts. JEL Codes: O22, O17, B59
... There are reports of individual colonial officers who used their authority to single-handedly deviate from the British model and tailor institutions compatible to local conditions, but a systematic study of their impact is still missing(Seidler, 2016). available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. ...
Institutional reforms in developing countries often involve copying institutions from developed countries. Such institutional copying is likely to fail, if formal institutions alone are copied without the informal institutions on which they rest in the originating country. This paper investigates the role of human actors in copying informal institutions. At independence, all British African colonies imported the same institution intended to safeguard the political neutrality of their civil services. While the necessary formal provisions were copied into the constitutions of all African colonies, the extent to which they were put into practice varies. The paper investigates the connection between the variation in the legal practice and the presence of British colonial officers after independence. A natural experiment around compensation payments to British officers explains the variation in the number of officers who remained in service after independence. Interviews with retired officers suggest that the extended presence of British personnel promoted the acceptance of imported British institutions among local colleagues.
... In the literature on policy transfers the terms 'translation' (Campbell, 2006: 510), 'bricolage' (De Jong, 2013) and 'assemblage' (Lendvai and Stubbs, 2009) are used, partly to explain why a transferred policy from one country may look substantially different in another country (Stone, 2017: 10). In the institutional literature, 'tailoring' has recently been coined to describe efforts of creating a better fit in the receiving country (Seidler, 2016). The two bodies in the literature differ on how human agency is modeled. ...
... British standards in practically everything from the qualification of local personnel to the standards in housing construction (Tanganyika, 1954:17;Burr 1985:130). Yet, they are reports that institutional adaptation occurred in places -sometimes unnoticed by superior officers in the colonial capital (Seidler, 2016). With this research agenda in mind, the article begins with the background knowledge necessary to interpret with the data. ...
Did individual British officers determine the institutional development of former colonies? The article presents a new research program into institutional reform and economic development based on a newly established dataset of over 14,000 biographical entries of senior colonial officers in 54 British colonies between 1939 and 1966. The rich data permit a new methodological approach towards the question of how institutions are copied into countries with a radical focus on the individual actors involved in the institutional reforms before independence. The article discusses fundamental background information on the British colonial service in the 20 th century and presents first preliminary analyses from within the new research agenda.
The status of teaching and research on public administration in Africa countries, in many respects, remains a vestige of the colonial era and this is reflected in the epistemologies that underpin the design of the curricula and pedagogies adopted. They have been further shaped by the injunctions of neoliberalism and conditionalities of donor aid which promote normative northern models of public administration. Recognising this reality African scholars and others have, for some time, advocated for transformative models of policy formulation and governance which more accurately reflect African contexts. Commencing with an analysis of the historical factors that shaped state formation and administrative practices in post-colonial Africa, this article broadly examines how public policy and governance are taught and researched in African institutions. It also reflects on the challenges which confront African academics in developing curricula and in conducting research which is relevant to their national contexts. In so doing, it considers ways in which scholars might retain the essence of key theoretical precepts whilst adapting them to local contexts. It also argues for a stronger pan-African focus in the development of teaching materials and in conducting research which traverses linguistic and geographic boundaries.
This bibliography is intended to serve as a resource for students, scholars, and the general public interested in the contributions of Western colonialism to human flourishing. It covers most of the ways that the public good has been variously defined and selected statements for each dimension concerning colonial contributions. The intent is to bring together representative research findings concerning Western colonial contributions in order to encourage a more objective account of the subject than presently exists.
