Chiefs: Elite Control of Civil Society and Economic Development in Sierra Leone

Abstract

The lowest level of government in sub-Saharan Africa is often a cadre of chiefs who raise taxes, control the judicial system and allocate the most important scarce resource -land. Chiefs, empowered by colonial indirect rule, are often accused of using their power despotically and inhibiting rural development. Yet others view them as traditional representatives of rural people, and survey evidence suggests that they maintain widespread support. We use the colonial history of Sierra Leone to investigate the relationships between chiefs' power on economic development, peoples' attitudes and social capital. There, a chief must come from one of the ruling families recognized by British colonial authorities. Chiefs face less competition and fewer political constraints in chiefdoms with fewer ruling families. We show that places with fewer ruling families have significantly worse development outcomes today -in particular, lower rates of educational attainment, child health, and non-agricultural employment. But the institutions of chiefs' authority are also highly respected among villagers, and their chiefdoms have higher levels of "social capital," for example, greater popular participation in a variety of "civil society" organizations and forums that might be used to hold chiefs accountable. We argue that these results are difficult to reconcile with the standard principle-agent approach to politics and instead reflect the capture of civil society organizations by chiefs. Rather than acting as a vehicle for disciplining chiefs, these organizations have been structured by chiefs to control society.

Indirect Rule and State Weakness in Africa: Sierra Leone in Comparative Perspective

“…As we noted, typically only natives can grow permanent crops such as cocoa, palm or co¤ee. Acemoglu, Reed and Robinson (2014) show that strangers have weaker property rights than natives. This institution has clearly in ‡uenced the extent to which a national identity can emerge and can help explain why voting patterns in elections are still rooted in region and ethnicity and why soldiers in the army identify with their region or ethnicity, not with Sierra Leone.…”

“…Rural people in Sierra Leone have tended to be suspicious of reforms that might lead to 'natives' losing control of the chieftaincy and local institutions. 8 Acemoglu, Reed and Robinson (2014) argue that this also likely re ‡ects the speci…c investments that local people make in the patronage networks which have the paramount chief at the apex. It may also be the case that there are local institutions, such as secret societies like the Poro, that act as constraints on PCs (see Little, 1965Little, , 1966; moreover, rural Sierra Leoneans see themselves as having far more in ‡uence over these local institutions than they do over the central state.…”

“…They are able to extract rents and under-provide public goods. Acemoglu, Reed and Robinson (2014) argue that PCs in Sierra Leone are more powerful in situations where they face less competition and this occurs when there are fewer ruling families. They show, for example, that in chieftaincies with fewer ruling families the paramount chieftaincy is indeed concentrated in fewer families.…”

Exporting Democratic Practices: Evidence from a Village Governance Intervention in Eastern Congo

“…The colonial state re-inforced the power of village as well as chiefdom chiefs. Indeed, the Belgian administrators co-opted customary chiefs, and obtained taxes, labor, and other resources through them, in exchange for the support of the coercive apparatus of the colonial state (Hoffmann, 2014;Acemoglu et al, 2014b;Mamdani, 1996). After independence, village and chiefdom chiefs remained as a basis for public authority.…”

“…Third, we look for the degree of competition by which current chiefs acquired their position. Absence of competition to local chiefs has been described to be a major driver of chiefs' capture of communities and civil society (Acemoglu et al, 2014b). To measure the degree of competition, we identify villages where the village chief inherited his position from his father.…”