The Franco-Congolese agreement to enshrine the corpse of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in a grand memorial tomb in Brazzaville (2006) has been decried by many observers as neo-colonial farce. This article interprets France's agenda to propose a ‘suave reconquest' of its former colonies, and...

The study of autocracies and weakly institutionalized countries is plagued by scarcity of information about the relative strength of different players within the political system. This paper presents novel data on the composition of government coalitions in a sample of fifteen post-colonial...

According to the author most African countries after independence opted for state owned enterprises in the export-producing sectors that led to inward-looking policies of economic development. He tries to show from case studies with data from 1960 to 1986 that this was the reason for poor...

This public expenditure review (PER) is an important exercise for Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), because the new government is under a tremendous pressure from the population to show that it can provide a better life. The perception and anecdotal evidence that the wealth in DRC is not...

This report is based on the work carried out during the second half of 2002 in close collaboration with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government. It is part of a full range of efforts undertaken since July 2001 by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the goal of which is...