Migration, Aid, and Independence

Independence, whether violent or peaceful, has received extensive academic and policy attention. Numerous scholars have explored its effects on various substantive domestic and international outcomes such as state capacity, social cohesion, economic growth, international trade. Despite its identified effect on these outcomes, the literature has not focused on the role independence plays on aid politics as well as the movement of people across and within borders, which creates an additional burden for many new states in the post-World War II era. Independence gained violently might at first sight be thought as particularly likely to generate migration and to negatively affect development. However, we argue that this this is likely to change in the long-term due to the connection of violent independence to state-making and nationmaking processes. Our quantitative analysis of migration, covering all countries in the post-World War II era, indicates that the causal processes at work explain the connections between independence, migration, aid, and development.