The foregoing discussion has touched upon one of the more longstanding hypotheses for the weakness of postcolonial states, namely that western colonial rule undermined the development of state capacity (Amin 1972; Rodney 1972). This literature has suggested a wide variety of mechanisms, ranging from the deliberate policies of colonial rulers, to the disruption to indigenous institutions, to the accidental attributes of post-colonial states such as ethnic heterogeneity or territorial dispersion. Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002) maintain that areas ruled but not settled by Europeans were subject to “institutional reversal” as European powers established predatory regimes to exploit labor and natural resources and Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) argue the same with respect to the laborrich areas of meso-america, such as Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. This hypothesis is also supported in the findings of Melissa Dell (2010) regarding the mita in Bolivia and Peru. Though the labor and resource-extractive nature of colonial regimes may have entailed establishing a minimal layer of state capacity, it also meant that legal institutions were not extended beyond the colonial elite, and the failure of colonial institutions to establish legitimacy beyond this circle resulted in pervasive non-compliance, resistance, and insurgency outside of the metropole (Herbst 2002). James Mahoney (2010) similarly argues that in the former Aztec and Inca domains of Mexico, Bolivia and Peru, colonial authorities engaged in mercantilist restrictions of trade, ownership and economic participation, resulting in an entrenched patrimonial elite unable to extend rule of law or secure the legitimacy among the wider population.
Another argument against the colonial state comes from Lange (2009), who, following Mamdani (1996) argues that the reliance by colonial regimes upon strategies of indirect rule left local power brokers entrenched, and that this resulted in fragmented postcolonial regimes dependent upon distributing patronage to local stakeholders, unable to enforce regulatory compliance, taxation or administrative control in many areas of their territory. According to Lange, direct rule entailed the creation of bureaucratic states with extensive territorial reach, while indirect rule relied upon local intermediaries and led to patrimonial states. However, other authors have also sought to question the benefits of direct rule, in particular in former French colonies; Kwon (2011) contends that in Cambodia and Laos colonial state institutions had adverse effects on post-colonial state formation, while La Porta et al (1998) argue that French directly-ruled areas of Africa were left with less legitimate and effective institutions than indirectly-ruled British Africa; a theory tested by and Lee and Schultz (2011), who show higher public goods provision on the formerly British than the French side of the border in Cameroon. Likewise in the context of colonial India, where both direct and indirect patterns of governance prevailed, Iyer (2010) argues that areas under direct rule fared significantly worse during the post-colonial era than those in which indigenous institutions were preserved through the princely states, a hypothesis tested by identifying princely states that narrowly fell to direct rule following a lapse in royal succession.
Finally, a wide number of authors suggest that colonisation left unviable states, as colonial borders were drawn around vast territories following arbitrary fiat, without respect to prevailing ethnic boundaries or considerations of geographic governability. As a result, post-colonial states were shared among large numbers of ethnic groups, increasing the cost of collection action and requiring greater patronage in order to maintain governing coalitions (Alesina et al. 2004). In addition, the territorial span of the post-colonial state, above all in Africa, made the challenge of securing cooperation and administrative control over these groups even more difficult (Herbst 2002). Colonial regimes also deliberately exacerbated ethnic tensions: by relying on strategies of ‘divide and rule’ in order to create ‘favored’ ethnic groups, as in Rwanda (Mamdani 2002), or in India following the uprisings of 1857 (Varshney 2003), rulers made it more difficult to secure collective action from ethnic and sectarian minorities in the post-colonial era, requiring instead the distribution of rents (Keefer and Khemani 2004).
These varying arguments for the weakness of the post-colonial state can be summarized into three main categories, the limitation of scope, the displacement of indigenous state capacity, and the creation of unviable states.
i) The limitation of scope. Colonial regimes sought only to extract resources and tax, rather than provide public goods, fight wars, or implement a wide-ranging platform of societal transformation and behavioral regulation, in the fashion of post-revolutionary regimes. The colonial state was therefore a ‘thin’ state by design; a “gate- keeper” state based on the coast, with interest only in ruling and extracting natural resources rather than institutionbuilding (Cooper 2002). Colonial regimes did not establish, or seek to establish, the state’s presence outside of the administrative capital or those areas which contained valuable resources. Nor did colonial regimes generally invest in building tax infrastructure, such as registration of income or cadastres of land, opting instead for ’easier’ sources of revenue such as tariffs on trade or the use of commodity marketing boards (Bates 1981). Postcolonial regimes were left without ready sources of revenue, and without any means of accomplishing the ambitious transformative schemes of post-colonial leaders other than by resorting to the same distortionary apparatus and the recourse of international debt markets
ii) The displacement of indigenous capacity. Colonial regimes relied for their functioning on a cadre of administrative officers provided by the colonial core state. Therefore, on independence many post-colonial regimes found themselves facing a severe shortage of capable bureaucrats. This lack of administrative capacity has been reinforced by the tendency for post-colonial states to rely on their former colonial rulers and international donors and multilateral agencies for technical support, military defense, finances and soft loans, and in some cases, active suppression of threats to the ruling regime. The ready availability of soft loans and aid has hindered the responsibility to develop extractive fiscal capacity, while the availability of external technical support has inhibited the development of parallel bureaucratic capacities domestically (Easterly 2001, 2006).
iii) The creation of “unviable” states. Whereas European states formed endogenously to the conditions of state viability, i.e. geographic defensibility, ethnic cohesion, and access to resources, colonial regimes were formed arbitrarily by European powers with limited respect for existing ethnic boundaries or natural geographic conditions of governability. As a result, colonial regimes unintentionally left behind unviable states, either because ethnic fractionalization led to weak collective identities and clientelism (Alesina et al. 2004, Keefer and Khemani 2004), or because geographic conditions were unfavorable to territorial consolidation (Herbst 2000, Fearon and Laitin 2003).
