As Africa's role on the global stage is rising, so does the need to understand the shadow of history on the continent …'s economy and polity. We discuss recent works that shed light on Africa's colonial and precolonial legacies. The emerging corpus … Africa's post-independence maladies, we first review works that uncover the lasting legacies of colonial investments in …

nondemocracy to democracy, alters the distribution of de jure political power, but the elite can intensify their investments in de … we refer to as invariance. When the model is enriched to allow for limits on the exercise of de facto power by the elite … may survive, but choose economic institutions favoring the elite. The main ideas featuring in the model are illustrated …