Subnational administrative units are fundamental to territorial states and their political topography, but we know little on how their borders are designed. I argue that indirect rulers engage in preservation by ethnically aligning administrative borders, which empowers peripheral actors. In contrast, centralizing governments disrupt ethnic groups and their ability for collective action by splitting groups (dismemberment) and/or creating diverse units (suffocation). I test this argument by studying colonial administrative unit designs in Sub-Sahara Africa. I contrast indirect with more direct colonial rule and use new historical data on administrative borders and ethnic geography. Modelling subnational borders with a probabilistic spatial partition model, I find strong positive associations with ethnic boundaries. These effects are stronger under indirect British compared to more direct French rule, which realized more extensive ethnic dismemberment but not suffocation. The paper sheds light on colonial administrative unit designs, thus highlighting the potential for unit endogeneity more broadly.
Abstract
Subnational administrative units are fundamental to territorial states and their political topography, but we know little on how their borders are designed. I argue that indirect rulers engage in preservation by ethnically aligning administrative borders, which empowers peripheral actors. In contrast, centralizing governments disrupt ethnic groups and their ability for collective action by splitting groups (dismemberment) and/or creating diverse units (suffocation). I test this argument by studying colonial administrative unit designs in Sub-Sahara Africa. I contrast indirect with more direct colonial rule and use new historical data on administrative borders and ethnic geography. Modelling subnational borders with a probabilistic spatial partition model, I find strong positive associations with ethnic boundaries. These effects are stronger under indirect British compared to more direct French rule, which realized more extensive ethnic dismemberment but not suffocation. The paper sheds light on colonial administrative unit designs, thus highlighting the potential for unit endogeneity more broadly.