ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 argues that the existence of many veto players and large winning coalitions in Belgium and the colony helped to supply the colony with physical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. The first colonial policy was a big push in physical infrastructure by the implementation of the “Great Works” project in the 1920s that attracted Belgian investments and helped the early process of import substitution industrialization in Leopoldville and mining industrialization in Elizabethville-Katanga. Both towns expanded with different backward and forward linkages in their economic environment. The state also institutionalized universal primary education and established many professional and training programs to respond to the growing demand for skilled labor from the private sector. In addition, the state, missionaries, and private companies built vast networks of healthcare facilities because they all believed that healthy workers meant high productivity and hence high returns. The second major colonial policy was a flexible ten-year plan of economic development in the 1950s that added more public goods and carried out social policies that created a welfare system similar to what was being developed in Belgium. The supply of public goods not only industrialized the Belgian Congo in a short period, but it also sustained economic development.
