Institutions (and generosity) matter
SPECIAL POST: James Robinson wins the Nobel Prize in Economics
I decided to walk around the lobby one final time. It was January 2019, and I was in San Francisco for the annual ASSA meetings. I had already circled the lobby twice looking for a familiar face. I saw no one that I recognised. All in me wanted to head off back to the safety of the hotel room where I could enjoy the freedom, to poetically misquote the late Kris Kristofferson, of having nothing left to do.
But I had more to do. Yes, I was there to present a paper (together with Igor Martins, since published in Explorations) and, yes, I would also attend sessions full of brilliant papers by some of the leading economists. But those things were secondary to my main mission: to meet people who would help get our research into good journals.
See, one of the rules of the game is that networks matter. Having great ideas or presenting well-researched papers is important, sure, but the academic world is structured by relationships, rules, and norms – we might call them formal and informal institutions. These networks determine who gets published, who collaborates, and ultimately, who succeeds.
Which is why I decided to turn for another lap of the lobby. And as I turned, a man came across the hallway straight in my direction. It took me a while to notice that it was James Robinson, and then he was next to me, greeting me as if we were old friends and asking me how things were in Stellenbosch and that he’d like to visit again soon. No, wait, why don’t I come to Chicago instead, he asked: ‘Yes, yes, let’s organise this for November.’
James hardly knew me. We met twelve years earlier, when I had just completed my Master’s in Economics at Stellenbosch and he was in town to attend our first economic history workshop. All I remember was that it was a cold and miserable day. I think I might have presented a paper on ship traffic, but that was unimportant: what mattered more was that James Robinson – of Why Nations Fail-fame – was sharing his ideas about African development. And it was riveting.
Five years later Stellenbosch hosted the World Economic History Congress, a giant bet by the International Economic History Association on our fledgeling group of economic historians. James kindly agreed to be our keynote. Again, I don’t remember much of the conference – we were battling the cold, again – but I do remember a very special citation in the keynote’s address to my PhD research.
That was the last time we had met in person until he walked up to me in San Francisco. He deserves a Nobel just for that.
Today, James Robinson, alongside his co-authors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Their groundbreaking work on the role of institutions in shaping economic prosperity has had a transformative impact on the field, shedding light on why some countries flourish while others remain stagnant. This follows the economic historian Claudia Goldin’s Nobel last year. I will reflect on their contributions and what these awards mean for economic history in a later post.
For now, I want to express my deep gratitude for James’s profound impact on my career and the careers of my colleagues at LEAP. James was willing to write a wonderful blurb for my book: ‘This is the first book to bring Africa in from the margins and place it centrally into the big narratives of world economic history. The subject will never be the same again.’ He’s also served as a referee on many applications.
During my visit in November 2019, I met several brilliant people, including a promising PhD student, Jonathan Schoots. After completing his degree, Jonathan joined us at Stellenbosch as a postdoc and is now collaborating with me on a project at Lund University. In a meaningful full-circle moment, Jonathan and I interviewed James for our third podcast, which will be released in the coming weeks. (You can listen to the Our Long Walk podcast wherever you find your podcasts.)
April this year, James was again in Stellenbosch, this time to receive an honorary doctorate. Below is his acceptance speech.
I’m very honoured to receive this degree.
I am interested in the economic and political history of Africa. I have been researching it for 30 years.
But the first time I ever had the courage to stand up and actually talk about it was in July 2007 in Stellenbosch at a seminar organized by Sophia du Plessis.
Sophia and I were drawn together by our joint obsession with Botswana and have since collaborated on the representation of women in African traditional political institutions.
Johan Fourie, now a professor in the economics department, was a student who attended then.
I’m embarrassed to think what I said, and I’ve sworn them to silence, but it was a turning point in my career.
The philosopher David Hume once said that there’s a huge difference between someone telling you about something and you actually experiencing it yourself.
That’s my experience of researching in Africa and it’s why I’ve benefited so much from my relationship with Stellenbosch.
Now I send my PhD students to come and work in leap, the laboratory for the economics of Africa’s past.
Your work here is revolutionising the study of the economic history of Africa and I hope I can play a role in the future in scaling that up and taking it everywhere in the continent.
The motto of the city of Gaborone, Botswana’s capital is ‘a bag of locusts is better carried by many people’. I find that a very African sentiment. Let’s all work together to further the intellectual life and the pathbreaking research that you’ve initiated here at Stellenbosch.
The following day, he gave a seminar on ‘Wealth in People’, his latest project aimed at understanding Africa’s unique political and social institutions. James explored how African societies, instead of accumulating material wealth, focused on building social networks and relationships, which played a central role in maintaining political stability. He emphasised that this system, while successful in preventing power from becoming centralised, also left these societies vulnerable to external forces like colonialism. Profound and provocative, blending multiple disciplines, but also magnanimous and hopeful, qualities that are deserving of the greatest scientific prize.
Thank you for your institution-building contribution at Stellenbosch, James, and congratulations on this remarkable achievement.
‘Institutions (and generosity) matter’ was first published on Our Long Walk.
I have my doubts about the conclusion of James Robinson, namely (to paraphrase) that Africa was not underdeveloped but differently developed by 1880. We, obviously, know less about the Germanic culture and polity before they made contact with the Romans than wat we know about the Africans in 1880, but maybe the Germanic barbarians were also only 'differently developed'.
I read Daron's book Why Nations Fail when it first came out. Very thorough provoking.