The Comparative Economics of Globalisation and Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of globalisation on governance in 40 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period of 2000-2019, with particular emphasis on income levels (low income versus middle income), legal origins (English common law versus French civil law), landlockedness (landlocked versus unlandlocked), resource wealth (oil-rich versus oil-poor) and political stability (stable versus unstable). The empirical evidence is based on fixed effects regressions in order to control for the unobserved heterogeneity. Political, economic, social, and general globalisation variables are used, while three bundled governance indicators are also employed to assess five main hypotheses. From baseline findings, while all globalisation dynamics negatively affect political governance, only political and social globalisation dynamics have a negative incidence on economic governance. Social and general globalisation dynamics positively affect institutional governance. The hypotheses that higher income, English common law, unlandlocked, oil-poor, and politically-stable countries are associated with higher levels of globalisation-driven governance, are valid, invalid, and partially valid contingent on the globalisation and governance dynamics.