Beneath the political surface of Africa's authoritarian regimes, there were forces at work that sowed the political landscape with multitudinous opportunities for conflict. The economies of Africa's rural communities rendered them politically expansionary, and therefore generated competing claims for land. Solongas political orderreigned at the national level, and so long as the incumbent regimes could marshal the resources with which to purchase or to compel political restraint, the resultant conflicts could be contained. When states began to fail, however, local conflicts then acquired national significance. They offered opportunities to politicians seeking to consolidate political followings, and as national elites were drawn to parochial disputes, Africa's rural citizens, in search of political champions, flocked about them. When political order declined in late-century Africa, it therefore did soprecipitously. Competition between local communities thus increased the costs of governing by authoritarian regimes and the pace with which they subsequently collapsed.

Rural Dynamics

To apprehend the forces at play, consider a family and its choice of where to settle. The family will naturally choose to farm the highest-quality land, where its efforts will result in the greatest return. Alternatively, by working such lands, it can secure sufficient food to feed itself at least effort. Now let another family arrive and the population increase. This family must choose between being the second family to settle on the highest-quality land or the first to settle on the land of the next-best quality. Where it settles depends upon the relative magnitude of the output that it can secure in the two locations. For purposes of argument, assume that the differential in land quality is such that this second family, as did the first, secures a higher return to its labor in the highest-quality land. It will then choose to locate adjacent the first family. As the cycle repeats itself over time, a settlement will therefore grow in the lands of higher quality.

A second pattern will also emerge, however: a trickle of settlers to the periphery. Because of diminishing returns, as more families crowd onto the lands of high quality, the increment in production that results from each additional unit of labor declines. New arrivals will therefore eventually find it more attractive to be the first to settle on the lands of lesser quality rather than to be the last to settle on lands of superior quality. There therefore begins a process of dispersal in the settlement pattern.