DOES GLOBALIZATION PROMOTE GOOD GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA? An Empirical Study across 51 Countries

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of globalization on governance in 51 African countries for the period 1996–2011. Four bundled governance indicators and four globalization (political, economic, social, and general) variables are used. The empirical evidence is based on instrumental variable quantile regressions. The motivation for using this estimation technique is that blanket governance–globalization policies are not likely to succeed unless they are contingent on initial levels of governance and tailored differently across countries with low, intermediate, and high levels of governance. The following findings are presented. First, globalization does, in fact, appear to promote good governance. Second, for the most part, the effect of globalization is higher in terms of magnitude in the bottom quantiles of the political, institutional, and general governance distributions. Third, the impact of globalization is overwhelmingly higher in terms of magnitude in the top quantiles of the economic governance distribution.