British colonial rule correlates positively with democracy levels at independence; changes in the international system during the Cold War eliminated the British advantage

British colonialism and democracy: Divergent inheritances and diminishing legacies. Alexander Lee, Jack Paine. Journal of Comparative Economics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2019.02.001

Highlights
•    British colonial rule correlates positively with democracy levels at independence.
•    British colonial rule is not strongly associated with democracy levels thirty years after independence.
•    Britain tailored decolonization policies to individual colonies’ democratic development.
•    Changes in the international system during the Cold War eliminated the British advantage.

Abstract: Did British colonial rule promote post-independence democracy? We provide evidence that the relationship follows a strong temporal pattern. Former British colonies were considerably more democratic than other countries immediately following independence, but subsequent democratic convergence has largely eliminated these differences in the post-Cold War period. Existing theories expounding superior British culture or alternative colonial institutions cannot account for divergent inheritances and diminishing legacies. To explain the time-varying pattern, we analyze European powers’ varying policy approaches to decolonization as well as changes in the international system. Britain more consistently treated competitive democratic elections as a prerequisite for gaining independence, leading to higher initial democracy levels. However, nascent democracies that lacked deep-rooted societal transformation faced challenges to democratic consolidation because of Cold War superpower competition. Later shifts in the international system toward promoting democracy further contributed to convergence by destabilizing colonially rooted dictatorships.