Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

was not just blind luck, however. It was once again a result of the interplay between the existing institutions, shaped by the institutional drift of the Tswana people, and the critical juncture brought about by colonialism. The three chiefs had made their own luck by taking the initiative and traveling to London, and they were able to do this because they had an unusual degree of authority, compared with other tribal leaders in sub-Saharan Africa, owing to the political centralization the Tswana tribes had achieved, and perhaps they also had an unusual degree of legitimacy, because of the modicum of pluralism embedded in their tribal institutions.
    Another critical juncture at the end of the colonial period would be more central to the success of Botswana, enabling it to develop inclusive institutions. By the time Bechuanaland became independent in 1966 under the name Botswana, the lucky success of chiefs Sebele, Bathoen, and Khama was long in the past. In the intervening years, the British invested little in Bechuanaland. At independence, Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world; it had a total of twelve kilometers of paved roads, twenty-two citizens who had graduated from university, and one hundred from secondary school. To top it all off, it was almost completely surrounded by the white regimes of South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia, all of which were hostile to independent African countries run by blacks. It would have been on few people’s list of countries most likely to succeed. Yet over the next forty-five years, Botswana would become one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Today Botswana has the highest per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa, and is at the same level as successful Eastern European countries such as Estonia and Hungary, and the most successful Latin American nations, such as Costa Rica.
    How did Botswana break the mold? By quickly developinginclusive economic and political institutions after independence. Since then, it has been democratic, holds regular and competitive elections, and has never experienced civil war or military intervention. The government set up economic institutions enforcing property rights, ensuring macroeconomic stability, and encouraging the development of an inclusive market economy. But of course, the more challenging question is, how did Botswana manage to establish a stable democracy and pluralistic institutions, and choose inclusive economic institutions, while most other African countries did the opposite? To answer this, we have to understand how a critical juncture, this time the end of colonial rule, interacted with Botswana’s existing institutions.
    In most of sub-Saharan Africa—for example, for Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe—independence was an opportunity missed, accompanied by the re-creation of the same type of extractive institutions that existed during the colonial period. Early stages of independence would play out very differently in Botswana, again largely because of the background created by Tswana historical institutions. In this, Botswana exhibited many parallels to England on the verge of the Glorious Revolution. England had achieved rapid political centralization under the Tudors and had the Magna Carta and the tradition of Parliament that could at least aspire to constrain monarchs and ensure some degree of pluralism. Botswana also had some amount of state centralization and relatively pluralistic tribal institutions that survived colonialism. England had a newly forming broad coalition, consisting of Atlantic traders, industrialists, and the commercially minded gentry, that was in favor of well-enforced property rights. Botswana had its coalition in favor of secure procedure rights, the Tswana chiefs, and elites who owned the major assets in the economy, cattle. Even though land was held communally, cattle was private property in the Tswana states, and the elites were similarly in favor of well-enforced property rights. All this of course is not denying the contingent path of history. Things would have turned out very differently in England if parliamentary leaders and the new monarch had attempted to use the Glorious Revolution to usurp power. Similarly, things could have turned out very differently in Botswana, especially if it hadn’t been sofortunate as to have leaders such as Seretse Khama, or Quett Masire, who decided to contest power in elections rather than subvert the electoral system, as many