Land and Property Institutions:
Endogenous Origins and Equilibrium Effects
Catherine Boone
Professor of Government and International Development
London School of Economics
Abstract
The idea of the state in Africa as institutionless underlies much contemporary theorizing about African politics. The term "neopatrimonialism" - widely employed in the comparative politics literature to describe African political systems - implies lack of institutionalization, centralization of power in the hands of a supreme ruler, and government through personalized, shifting networks. The counterpart of this idea is institution-less conceptualization of society, and most importantly perhaps, of rural society, which accounts for 50-90% of the total population of almost all African states. This paper reverses this image of structure-less states and societies. It focuses on rural land tenure institutions and argues that they are the product of institution-building strategies of Africa's modern rulers, both colonial and postcolonial. Africa's rulers are seen here as strategic actors who have sought to impose political order in the countryside in order to govern, and to remain in power. As strategic actors, they have been subject to the disciplines of rule and revenue, power and resistance, and cost and benefit, both political and economic. And like all rulers, they have pursued institution-building and state-building strategies that are shaped by the societies they seek to govern. Contemporary land tenure institutions are one outcome of this process. This analysis of land institutions builds on strands of the New Institutional Economics that have been influential in comparative politics since the 1990s. It is also largely consistent with revisionist colonial and postcolonial historiographies that see law and institutions as the products of conflict, negotiation, and contract between central rulers, local elites and leaders, and ordinary people. The final section of the paper turns to the question of institutional effects, arguing that land institutions shape state structure and processes, patterns of political group formation and mobilization, and land conflict dynamics.
Keywords
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Africa
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Neopatrimonialism
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Land-tenure
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Institution
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Rural society
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