Culture, Governance, and Economic Performance: An Explorative Study with a Special Focus on Africa

Abstract

Existing studies show that national cultures influence governance and economic performance, but sub-Saharan Africa is sparsely covered in international comparative culture studies, and the existing studies suffer from a western bias. This present study aims to fill this void, by focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and introducing an African bias. A research instrument was developed by means of a Delphi study among African scholars. Analysis of the data from six African countries and eight countries from Europe, Asia and the Americas, reveals eight cultural dimensions, three of which are strongly correlated to Hofstede's power distance and individualism-collectivism. Strong correlations between four of the eight dimensions of culture and indicators of the quality of governance are found. Three of the other dimensions correlate significantly with indicators of economic performance. The findings strongly suggest that a number of the cultural dimensions identified are relevant for governance and economic performance.