Decolonization, Property Rights and Language Conflicts

Arbeitspapier

We model political contestation over school language policy, within linguistic communities where weak property rights protection leads to high decentralized expropriation. We show that improvements in governance institutions that facilitate property rights protection might exacerbate such language conflicts, even as they reduce the chances of persisting with educational indigenization, while, paradoxically, increasing the net social benefit from doing so. Our findings offer explanations of why languages and cultures of the colonizers continue to play a dominant role in the educational systems of most post-colonial developing societies, and why early post-independence attempts at cultural-linguistic indigenization were either reversed or slowed down subsequently. The main policy implication of our analysis relates to the connection it establishes between property rights protection and the welfare consequences of educational indigenization: such indigenization may improve social welfare when weak institutions lead to weak property rights protection, but reduce it otherwise.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 10998

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions ; Development Planning and Policy: General ; Cultural Economics: Public Policy
• Subject: production and expropriation ; linguistic communities ; language policy ; language conflict ; linguistic autarchy ; linguistic globalization ; property rights

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dasgupta, Indraneel ; Neogi, Ranajoy Guha
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2017

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/170982
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET