TY - BOOK ID - 103616991 TI - Precolonial Legacies in Postcolonial Politics : Representation and Redistribution in Decentralized West Africa PY - 2022 SN - 1009286188 100928617X 100928620X 1009286196 PB - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Decentralization in government KW - Postcolonialism. KW - Group identity KW - Local government KW - Public administration KW - Elite (Social sciences) KW - Political aspects KW - Political activity. KW - Local administration KW - Township government KW - Subnational governments KW - Administrative and political divisions KW - Collective identity KW - Community identity KW - Cultural identity KW - Social identity KW - Identity (Psychology) KW - Social psychology KW - Collective memory KW - Post-colonialism KW - Postcolonial theory KW - Political science KW - Decolonization KW - Centralization in government KW - Devolution in government KW - Government centralization KW - Government decentralization KW - Government devolution KW - Central-local government relations KW - Federal government KW - Elites (Social sciences) KW - Leadership KW - Power (Social sciences) KW - Social classes KW - Social groups KW - Administration, Public KW - Delivery of government services KW - Government services, Delivery of KW - Public management KW - Public sector management KW - Administrative law KW - Public officers KW - Postcolonialism KW - Political activity UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:103616991 AB - Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? Looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa, this book advances a novel answer to this question: communities are better able to coordinate around basic service delivery when their formal jurisdictional boundaries overlap with informal social institutions, or norms. This book identifies the precolonial past as the driver of striking subnational variation in the present because these social institutions only encompass the many villages of the local state in areas that were once home to precolonial polities. Drawing on a multi-method research design, the book develops and tests a theory of institutional congruence to document how the past shapes contemporary elite approaches to redistribution within the local state. Where precolonial kingdoms left behind collective identities and dense social networks, local elites find it easier to cooperate following decentralization. ER -