Provides a critical but sympathetic overview of the literature on developmental states.

Challenges existing models and introduces an alternative, supply-side, and state-centered theory of coercive distribution.

This Element explores the association between political democracy and population health. It reviews the rise of scholarly interest in the association, evaluates alternative indicators of democracy and population health.

This Element engages with recent attempts by economists and political scientists to rigorously estimate impacts of missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that, although these efforts contribute to more accurate assessments of the 'true' effects of missionary presence, they also have a tendency to present Christian involvement in the region as a largely apolitical process, that was relatively unaffected by the rapidly evolving geopolitical and socio-cultural contexts of the colonial period. Countering this trend, this Element illustrates aspects of missionary behavior that were...