IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/rp2009-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Botswana as a Role Model for Country Success

Author

Listed:
  • James Robinson

Abstract

I argue that the economic success of Botswana can be explained by the historical development of its institutions which is related to the trajectory of the Tswana states over the past 200 years. These institutions created a much more stable and accountable government than elsewhere in Africa after independence with the desire and incentive to adopt good economic policies. There are two main lessons from this experience. The first is how successful an African economy can become using simple orthodox well-understood policies.

Suggested Citation

  • James Robinson, 2009. "Botswana as a Role Model for Country Success," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2009-40, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2009-40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/RP2009-40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart & Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, 1999. "Governance matters," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2196, The World Bank.
    2. Philippe Aghion, 2005. "Growth and Institutions," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 3-18, March.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2008. "Income and Democracy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 808-842, June.
    4. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2009. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671422, November.
    5. World Bank, 2007. "World Development Indicators 2007," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 8150.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    7. James A. Robinson & Q. Neil Parsons, 2006. "State Formation and Governance in Botswana," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 15(1), pages 100-140, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abdullahi Ahmed & Andrew Hulten, 2014. "Financial Globalization in Botswana and Nigeria: A Critique of the Thresholds Paradigm," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 177-203, June.
    2. Jonathan Munemo, 2022. "Do African resource rents promote rent-seeking at the expense of entrepreneurship?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1647-1660, March.
    3. Naudé, Wim, 2010. "Development Progress in sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 007, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Sylvain Dessy & Stéphane Pallage & Désiré Vencatachellum, 2012. "The Political Economy of Social Inclusion," Cahiers de recherche 1202, CIRPEE.
    5. Seidler, Valentin, 2011. "Colonial legacy and institutional development: The cases of Botswana and Nigeria," ÖFSE-Forum, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE), volume 52, number 52.
    6. Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2011. "Terms of Trade and Growth of Resource Economies: A Tale of Two Countries," CSAE Working Paper Series 2011-09, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    7. Wim Naudé, 2010. "Development Progress in sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-007, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elias Papaioannou & Gregorios Siourounis, 2008. "Democratisation and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1520-1551, October.
    2. Cervellati Matteo & Fortunato Piergiuseppe & Sunde Uwe, 2012. "Consensual and Conflictual Democratization," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-51, December.
    3. Baland, Jean-Marie & Moene, Karl Ove & Robinson, James A., 2010. "Governance and Development," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4597-4656, Elsevier.
    4. Robinson, James A., 2010. "Elites and Institutional Persistence," WIDER Working Paper Series 085, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Braunfels, Elias, 2016. "Further Unbundling Institutions," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 13/2016, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    6. Sunde, Uwe & Fortunato, Piergiuseppe & Cervellati, Matteo, 2011. "Democratization and Civil Liberties: The Role of Violence During the Transition," CEPR Discussion Papers 8315, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Lilyan E. Fulginiti, 2010. "What comes first, agricultural growth or democracy?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(1), pages 15-24, January.
    8. Gundlach, Erich & Paldam, Martin, 2009. "A farewell to critical junctures: Sorting out long-run causality of income and democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 340-354, September.
    9. Mogens Justesen & Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2013. "Institutional interactions and economic growth: the joint effects of property rights, veto players and democratic capital," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 449-474, December.
    10. John W. Dawson, 2007. "The Empirical Institutions-Growth Literature: Is Something Amiss at the Top?," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 4(2), pages 184-196, May.
    11. Kabbashi M. Suliman, 2016. "The Political Economy of Fiscal Institutions and Macroeconomic Management in Sudan," Working Papers 1044, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2016.
    12. Aguirre, Alvaro, 2016. "The risk of civil conflicts as a determinant of political institutions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 36-59.
    13. Wafa Ghardallou & Dorsaf Sridi, 2020. "Democracy and Economic Growth: a Literature Review," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(3), pages 982-1002, September.
    14. Licht, Amir N. & Goldschmidt, Chanan & Schwartz, Shalom H., 2007. "Culture rules: The foundations of the rule of law and other norms of governance," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 659-688, December.
    15. Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone & Andrea Tesei, 2012. "Oil Price Shocks, Income, and Democracy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(2), pages 389-399, May.
    16. Marta Guerriero, 2019. "Democracy and the Labor Share of Income: A Cross-Country Analysis," ADB Institute Series on Development Economics, in: Gary Fields & Saumik Paul (ed.), Labor Income Share in Asia, chapter 0, pages 151-176, Springer.
    17. Aguirre, Alvaro, 2019. "Rebellions, Technical Change, and the Early Development of Political Institutions in Latin America," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 65-89.
    18. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A. & Yared, Pierre, 2009. "Reevaluating the modernization hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1043-1058, November.
    19. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2005. "From Education to Democracy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 44-49, May.
    20. James Robinson, 2010. "Elites and Institutional Persistence," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-085, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic development; Economic policy; Government accountability; Public administration;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2009-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.