Political structure as a legacy of indirect colonial rule: Bargaining between national governments and rural elites in Africa

Abstract

Alliances between national governments and rural elites are observed in post-colonial Africa. In such alliances, the national governments preserve rural-elite authority formed during the colonial era and cede their resources and prerogatives to the rural elites. This paper develops a model of bargaining between a national government and a rural elite, in which the bargaining power of the national government is endogenously explained by the ability of the rural elite to compel obedience from rural residents. Since indirect colonial rule is a significant source of the rural-elite control over residents, the result implies that cross-regional variations in colonial policies lead to variations in the feature of post-colonial alliances between African national governments and rural elites.

The Influence of Farmers’ Clan Networks on Their Participation in Living Environment Improvement during the Time of Transition in Traditional Rural China

“…On the one hand, in the context of the continuation of traditional village governance and democratic villager autonomy, the clan network and the village chief authority represent the informal and formal authority of village governance, respectively [22] Some scholars argue that with economic development and social transformation, traditional rural areas will gradually transform into modern rural areas where clan networks no longer influence the level of village public services [23]. However, some have thought that ethnic diversity is related to the lower provision of some public goods and to the higher provision of others.…”

“…Agriculture 2023, 13, 1055 2 of 22 For example, the Chinese government issued the Three-Year Action Plan for Rural Living Environment Improvement in February 2018, which states that the wishes of the villagers should be respected and that the priorities and standards of remediation should be reasonably determined according to the needs of the villagers. Similarly, the Five-Year Action Plan on Improving Rural Living Environment (2021-2025) and Action Plan on Rural Construction presented that the government should stimulate farmers' willingness to take the initiative and ensure their participation in decision-making on living environment improvement projects.…”

People or Preservation? How Electoral Accountability Reduces Human Cost in South Africa’s National Parks

“…Instead, historical land preservation policy can be better explained through a common dynamic wherein systems of governmental accountability tend to respond to economic elites, not the laypeople that typically make up the rural and subsistence communities that are negatively affected by NPAs (Gilens, 2012;Diop, 2012;Mizuno, 2016). This issue becomes apparent by examining public opinion toward preservation, such as Infield's (1988) study, in which positive attitudes toward NPAs increase in correlation with an increase in affluence and education levels.…”