Coup-Proofing via Capital Relocation

Jeff Jacobs

Introduction

Several previous studies have found robust relationships between spatial properties of a country’s capital city and that country’s propensity for conflict and misgovernance.

Perceptions of this linkage also have an effect on “coup-proofing” decisions made by national governments. A recent BBC interview with Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang, for example, highlighted this as a factor behind his decision to relocate the capital city:

It’s the remoteness of Oyala that makes it so appealing to President Obiang. In a rare interview he described how rebels had recently plotted a seaborne assault on his palace in the current capital, Malabo. ‘We need a secure place for my government and for future governments. That’s why we have created Oyala, to guarantee the government of Equatorial Guinea.’ (Sackur 2012)

This case is far from exceptional, as an even more recent Washington Post article points out with respect to Myanmar’s decision to move its capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw:

Analysts have described the decision as motivated by a desire to secure the military’s seat of power from any threat of protests or invasions. (Berger 2021)

Most of these studies, however, are based on observations of conflict events. In this study, we study the more fundamental variable of a capital’s distance from the population centroid of the country.

Literature Review

Campante, Do, and Guimaraes (2019) analyzes the relationship between the location of a capital city and the degree of conflict and misgovernance in a given country. Their two key findings are that:

Conflict is more likely to emerge (and dislodge incumbents) closer to the capital

and

Isolated capitals are associated with misgovernance.

This first finding is illustrated in Figure 1

Figure 1

Methodology

The population centroids we use herein might require some explanation, since the term “centroid” can be ambiguous.

Here, the population centroids are drawn from Hall et al. (2019)

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

Here we plot the base GIS objects we’re analyzing: the location of each capital city (in purple) and each population centroid (in yellow).

Source: Article Notebook

We then construct an area-normalized measure of capital-centroid distance \(\text{dist}^{\textsf{AN}}\), using the formula

\[ \text{dist}^{\textsf{AN}}_i = \text{dist}_i / \sqrt{\text{area}_i}. \]

A plot of this measure by country looks as follows:

Hypothesis Testing (Regression)

geounit	iso_a3	OBJECTID	ID_0	NAME_ENGLI	NAME	dist	area	scaled_dist	total_score	geometry	centroid	capital
Tanzania	TZA	227	227	Tanzania	Dar es Salaam	324758.1 [m]	885800	345.0580 [m]	0.007	MULTIPOLYGON (((33.90371 -0…	POINT (36.5813 -5.612844)	POINT (39.2664 -6.798067)
Canada	CAN	42	42	Canada	Ottawa	1410811.7 [m]	8788700	475.8902 [m]	0.001	MULTIPOLYGON (((-122.84 49,…	POINT (-92.673 51.33108)	POINT (-75.70196 45.41864)
United States of America	USA	244	244	United States	Washington, D.C.	1227411.4 [m]	9147420	405.8269 [m]	0.022	MULTIPOLYGON (((-122.84 49,…	POINT (-91.24719 39.43566)	POINT (-77.01136 38.9015)
Kazakhstan	KAZ	117	117	Kazakhstan	Nur-Sultan	227074.6 [m]	2699700	138.2009 [m]	0.010	MULTIPOLYGON (((87.35997 49…	POINT (69.7252 49.45229)	POINT (71.42777 51.18113)
Uzbekistan	UZB	246	246	Uzbekistan	Tashkent	168011.1 [m]	440653	253.0985 [m]	0.005	MULTIPOLYGON (((55.96819 41…	POINT (67.77264 40.30358)	POINT (69.26882 41.30383)
Papua New Guinea	PNG	175	175	Papua New Guinea	Port Moresby	289887.1 [m]	452860	430.7714 [m]	0.025	MULTIPOLYGON (((141.0002 -2…	POINT (146.2921 -7.014699)	POINT (147.1925 -9.464708)

Discussion

Conclusion

Our evidence indicates that the spatial dynamics of conflict differ from the spatial dynamics of misgovernance. Whereas

References

Berger, Miriam. 2021. “Myanmar’s Military Built a New Capital as a Haven for Power. Other Countries Have Tried That, Too.” Washington Post, February. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/06/myanmars-military-built-new-capital-haven-power-other-countries-have-tried-that-too/.

Campante, Filipe R., Quoc-Anh Do, and Bernardo Guimaraes. 2019. “Capital Cities, Conflict, and Misgovernance.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 11 (3): 298–337. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20170111.

Hall, Ola, Maria Francisca Archila Bustos, Niklas Boke Olén, and Thomas Niedomysl. 2019. “Population Centroids of the World Administrative Units from Nighttime Lights 1992-2013.” Scientific Data 6 (1): 235. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0250-z.

Sackur, Stephen. 2012. “Equatorial Guinea: Obiang’s Future Capital, Oyala.” BBC News, December. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20731448.