Most of the widely used indicators of institutions have been criticised for the lack of objectivity in their construction and for their coverage of short time periods, especially for African countries. New objective indicators of de jure property rights, de jure political and civil rights, and de facto political instability over a long time horizon have been recently launched for a number of former African British colonies, using the leximetrics method. This paper proposes comparable indicators of institutions for a former African French colony, Senegal. De jure indicators are coded based on written regulations, laws and constitutions for the period 1819-2010. Our de facto measure of political instability is based on reported events collected from different sources. Data from such a long time horizon provide an opportunity to understand the Senegal’s path of development from the early time of the colonisation until today.
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