Chapter 7 shifts focus to the citizen level in both countries, identifying how customary institutions impact smallholder land titling. It shows that titling is not an economic decision alone; it is also a strategic choice between engaging with the customary institution or the state. This updates conventional approaches to land titling, which assume that all citizens want state titles but are constrained by a lack of financial resources. The chapter elaborates the argument that institutions impact demand for state property rights by establishing different levels of customary privilege within a community. It then reveals common patterns within the diverse customary institutions in Zambia and Senegal, that smallholders with customary privilege are less likely to have titles. Two potential mechanisms are considered: increased tenure security and concern for collective costs. These findings suggest that customary institutions shape citizens’ engagement with the state through access to titles and privilege within the community.

The first chapter of the book introduces readers to the salience of land as a window into how political authority is constructed and negotiated in modern states. It previews the book’s central argument and situates it within scholarship on historical institutions, state building, and state–society relations. In addition, Chapter 1 presents the central cases and mixed methods empirical approach.

Chapter 5 examines the influence of customary institutions on land negotiations in Zambia, where chiefs are recognized by the state as custodians of land. The state’s recognition endows individual customary authorities with concentrated power over land titling decisions and gives them incentives to facilitate the state’s projects. However, official chiefs are members of heterogeneous customary institutions; some institutions generate ties of vertical accountability among their chiefs. A comparison of two institutions with hierarchical and nonhierarchical legacies in northern Zambia illustrates this mechanism. Statistical analyses of land titling rates across districts and among smallholder farmers support the argument that strong, hierarchical institutions make it harder to access title in their domains. This chapter shows that the official chieftaincy system did not erase the internal differences among institutions and, as a result, customary institutions continue to impact the expansion of state property rights.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the contemporary context of customary authority and control over land rights in Africa, while situating Zambia and Senegal within broader regional trends. It shows that institutional pluralism in land rights at the local level is widespread and provides necessary background on a key mechanism driving incremental shifts in the control over land: piecemeal land titling. The chapter traces the titling process in Zambia and Senegal, including how customary authorities use unofficial and official channels to exert agency. In addition, Chapter 2 introduces two alternative explanations for the uneven expansion of state control over land. It explains why we need new frameworks that examine the agency of citizens and customary authorities, and the ways in which institutions shape their responses to titling.

This book explores how customary institutions, citizens, and chiefs impact the expansion of state control over land, determining how state capacity grows and why it is spatially uneven. It shows that, by influencing how chiefs and citizens weigh competing incentives in their decisions, customary institutions can divert the outcomes intended by state policy or predicted by market forces. Local power dynamics and the agency of members of customary institutions are thus critical to understanding both the resilience of customary land tenure regimes and the continuing influence of customary institutions in citizens’ lives. Chapter 8 concludes the book by examining the broader implications of these findings for the contemporary role of customary institutions as intermediaries between citizen and state; the political determinants of property rights; and land titling policies.

Chapter 3 introduces a new theoretical model, which highlights the tensions between collective costs and concentrated benefits that make land titling political. Institutions matter because they shape how members perceive and are held accountable to these collective costs, including to the institution’s power base. After elaborating mechanisms by which institutions influence the decisions of chiefs and citizens, the chapter introduces the second element of the framework, that historical legacies impact the contemporary strength of customary institutions in Zambia and Senegal. This theory helps explain why two chiefs would have different responses to the same land deal, as a result of the institutions in which they are embedded. Similarly, it shows why citizens with high or low privilege in an institution would have different evaluations of titling. This framework creates expectations about how institutions impact aggregate patterns of land titling, which are elaborated and tested in Chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Chapter 6 investigates how customary institutions shape property rights in Senegal, where customary authorities have unofficial influence over land. A case study of land negotiations in northern Senegal illustrates how strong institutions, with hierarchical legacies, slow the erosion of customary land tenure by creating horizontal accountability among chiefs. The chapter then turns to the relationship between land titling and customary institutions throughout Senegal. Statistical analyses provide evidence that zones with hierarchical institutions have lower rates of land titling and stronger customary property rights institutions. This chapter provides further evidence that customary institutions contribute to long-term patterns of state building.