We show that current levels of democracy in Africa are linked to the nature of its independence movements. Using different measures of political regimes and historical data on anti-colonial movements, we find that countries that experienced rural insurgencies tend to have autocratic regimes,...

What are the causes and consequences of human development? In the twenty years since the publication of the first Human Development Report (HDR), political scientists have invested a great deal of time and effort into answering this question. So what do we know? In this paper we seek to review...