The Measurement of Institutions and Instability in Democratic Republic of Congo, 1880–2010

Abstract

Abstract This article introduces a new database for property rights, political and civil rights, and political instability for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the 1880–2010 period. Following the methodology used by Fedderke et al. (2001) and Letete (2015), we compute de jure property, political, and civil rights indicators from archival information based on formal legislature (laws, ordinances-laws, decrees, ordinances) and de facto political instability indicators. Both the property rights and the political rights and civil liberties indexes experience significant declines during the Congo Free State and Mobutu’s dictatorship and more generally low values for most of the 1880–2010 period. This indicates that the history of institutions in the DRC has mostly been dominated by the prevalence of predatory institutions allowing for the extraction of resources for the benefit of the colonizers or the postindependence elite. The political instability index displays more volatility than the previous indexes. Due to the lack of administrative data for the DRC, we could not construct a lengthy series for it. However, an interesting pattern emerges from the graph of the political instability index. Despite several peaks and troughs, this index displays an increasing trend, which seems to suggest that the relatively unsuccessful attempts at democratization of the country have cost dearly in terms of foregone political stability.