Did British Colonialism Promote Democracy? Divergent Inheritances and Diminishing Legacies*

Many scholars have argued that British colonial rule promoted post-independence democracy, but there has been considerable debate over the robustness of this result and its causes. We show that this relationship follows a strong temporal pattern. Although former British colonies were considerably more democratic than other countries immediately following independence, subsequent convergence in democracy levels has eliminated these differences in the post-Cold War period. Neither pre-colonial traits, geographical and policy variation among British colonies, nor post-colonial influences drive these results, while existing British colonialism-democracy theories do not provide a compelling explanation for change over time. We argue that divergent policy approaches to decolonization by European powers contributed to this pattern.