When Politicians Cede Control of Resources: Land, Chiefs, and Coalition-Building in Africa
When Politicians Cede Control of Resources: Land, Chiefs, and Coalition-Building in Africa
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当政客放弃对资源的控制时：非洲的土地、酋长和联盟建设
DOI：
10.5129/001041514810943036
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发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Kate Baldwin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kate Baldwin
1 为什么政客会把分配关键资源的权力让给社区领袖？本文探讨了为什么许多非洲政府将土地分配权让给非选举产生的传统领导人。现有文献表明，传统领导人的权力是殖民时期的残余，由于国家能力薄弱而尚未消除，我认为，与此相反，非洲政客经常选择将权力下放给传统领导人，作为动员非族裔选举支持的一种手段。我使用包含非洲大约 180 个次国家地区的新数据集来测试这一论点的解释力；该数据集是通过将调查数据与环境、人类学和历史数据相结合而构建的。文章发现，历史和地理限制并不能完全解释向酋长下放权力的模式，能够动员政治上不结盟的族群选举支持的传统酋长在土地分配方面被赋予了更大的责任。对每个国家土地立法随时间变化的分析对横断面分析进行了补充，这表明竞争性选举的前景往往会引发将权力下放给酋长的决定。 1 我要感谢 Wonbin Cho、Jesse Ribot、Ale x Scacco、Matt Winters、Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro 以及普林斯顿大学 CSDP 研讨会的参与者提供的有用反馈和讨论。所有的错误都是我自己造成的。
1 Why would politicians give up power over the alloca tion of critical resources to community leaders? Th is article examines why many African governments have ceded power over the allocation of land to non-elec t d traditional leaders. In contrast to the existing li terature, which suggests traditional leaders’ power is a hangover from the colonial period that has not been eli minated due to weak state capacity, I argue that Af rican politicians often choose to devolve power to tradit ional leaders as a means of mobilizing electoral su pport from non-coethnics. I test the explanatory power of this argument using a new data set including approximately 180 sub-national regions in Africa; t he data set was constructed by combining data from surveys with environmental, anthropological and his tor cal data. The article finds that historical and geographic constraints do not fully explain pattern s in the devolution of power to chiefs, and that tr ditional chiefs in a position to mobilize electoral support from politically unaligned ethnic groups are given greater responsibility over the allocation of land. The cro ss-sectional analysis is complemented by an analysi s of changes in land legislation across time in each cou ntry, which shows that the prospect of competitive elections often triggers decisions to devolve power to chiefs. 1 I would like to thank Wonbin Cho, Jesse Ribot, Ale x Scacco, Matt Winters, Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro and p articipants in the CSDP seminar at Princeton University for hel pful feedback and discussions. All mistakes are my own.