Property and Political Order in Africa
Land Rights and the Structure of Politics

This book analyzes the politics of land and the use of natural resources in Africa.

Catherine Boone (Author)

9781107649934, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 February 2014

438 pages, 3 b/w illus. 13 maps 12 tables
22.6 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.59 kg

'The overarching argument of Catherine Boone's book is that land conflicts lie at the core of political competition in Africa. Land tenure is not an epi-phenomenon that political scientists (or others) can afford to dismiss. Land conflicts - and property - are at the heart of the structuration, and differentiation, of political institutions and governance in Africa. Moreover, even if attention seems to have shifted from rural to urban development in recent years, the book claims that civil conflict mainly takes place in the rural areas, and, as importantly, a major part of the electorate lives in rural areas, wherefore the connections between livelihood, property, tenure regimes, and political institutions are central for political analysis. This is the kind of text with which one would feel entirely comfortable on a syllabus. It is up to date, it is comprehensive, and the methodology is explicit and effective. I would definitely recommend it to students.' Christian Lund, Professor of Development, Resource Management and Governance, University of Copenhagen

In sub-Saharan Africa, property relationships around land and access to natural resources vary across localities, districts and farming regions. These differences produce patterned variations in relationships between individuals, communities and the state. This book captures these patterns in an analysis of structure and variation in rural land tenure regimes. In most farming areas, state authority is deeply embedded in land regimes, drawing farmers, ethnic insiders and outsiders, lineages, villages and communities into direct and indirect relationships with political authorities at different levels of the state apparatus. The analysis shows how property institutions - institutions that define political authority and hierarchy around land - shape dynamics of great interest to scholars of politics, including the dynamics of land-related competition and conflict, territorial conflict, patron-client relations, electoral cleavage and mobilization, ethnic politics, rural rebellion, and the localization and 'nationalization' of political competition.

1. Introduction: property regimes and land conflict: seeing institutions and their effects
Part I. Property Rights and the Structure of Politics: 2. Land tenure regimes and political order in rural Africa
3. Rising competition for land: redistribution and its varied political effects
Part II. Ethnicity: Property Institutions and Ethnic Cleavage: 4. Ethnic strangers as second-class citizens
5. Ethnic strangers as protected clients of the state
Part III. Political Scale: Property Institutions and the Scale and Scope of Conflict: 6. Land conflict at the micro-scale: family
7. Chieftaincy: the local state as arena of redistributive conflict
8. Land conflict at the national scale
Part IV. Multiparty Competition: Elections and the Nationalization of Land Conflict: 9. Winning and losing politically allocated land rights
10. Zimbabwe in comparative perspective
Conclusion: property regimes in political explanation.

Subject Areas: Comparative law [LAM], Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP]