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Abstract
Global demands for raw materials and local processes have led to increases in land values in many African countries. Why do ruling elites in African countries respond in disparate ways to similar opportunities for the accumulation of wealth and power provided by these increases in land values? Some strengthen institutions that secure property rights in land. Others undermine existing institutions that secure property rights in land. I combine the way people use land---extract benefits from land---and the extent of their power to explain divergent institutional responses to rising land values. Actors involved in productive land use tend to prefer secure property rights institutions and where they have the capacity build such institutions. Those involved in extracting value from land in unproductive ways favor insecure property rights institutions and tend to weaken property rights institutions where they have the capacity to do so. A key insight of this dissertation is that people extract benefits from resources in different ways that are facilitated by different institutional structures. We thus need to understand how they use resources in order to grasp why they chose different institutional structures in the face of similar opportunities to profit from resources. I employ a qualitative research method that combines field interviews, archival research, participant observation and reviews of secondary literatures. I examine six cases from three countries---Botswana, Ghana and Kenya---using both spatial and temporal modes of comparing national and subnational political entities. The theory of resource use laid out here advances theorizing on the emergence and transformation of property rights institutions and also provides us with a broad framework through which we can examine institutions created to govern resources beyond land, like timber, diamonds in societies beyond those studied in this work.
