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

postindependence government and by the relatively inclusive institutions of the Tswana tribes in the same way as heterogeneity in Britain, for example, between the English and the Welsh, has been modulated by the British state. The Botswanan state did the same. Since independence, the census in Botswana has never asked about ethnic heterogeneity, because in Botswana everyone is Tswana.
    Botswana achieved remarkable growth rates after independence because Seretse Khama, Quett Masire, and the Botswana Democratic Party led Botswana onto a path of inclusive economic and political institutions. When the diamonds came on stream in the 1970s, they did not lead to civil war, but provided a strong fiscal base for the government, which would use the revenues to invest in public services. There was much less incentive to challenge or overthrow the government and control the state. Inclusive political institutions bred political stability and supported inclusive economic institutions. In a pattern familiar from the virtuous circle described in chapter 11 , inclusive economic institutions increased the viability and durability of inclusive political institutions.
    Botswana broke the mold because it was able to seize a critical juncture, postcolonial independence, and set up inclusive institutions. The Botswana Democratic Party and the traditional elites, including Khama himself, did not try to form a dictatorial regime or set up extractive institutions that might have enriched them at the expense of society. This was once again an outcome of the interplay between a critical juncture and existing institutions. As we have seen, differently from almost anywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa, Botswana already had tribal institutions that had achieved some amount of centralized authority and contained important pluralistic features. Moreover, the country had economic elites who themselves had much to gain from secure property rights.
    No less important, the contingent path of history worked in Botswana’s favor. It was particularly lucky because Seretse Khama and Quett Masire were not Siaka Stevens and Robert Mugabe. The former worked hard and honestly to build inclusive institutions on the foundations of the Tswanas’ tribal institutions. All this made it more likelythat Botswana would succeed in taking a path toward inclusive institutions, whereas much of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa did not even try, or failed outright.
T HE E ND OF THE S OUTHERN E XTRACTION
    It was December 1, 1955. The city of Montgomery, Alabama, arrest warrant lists the time that the offense occurred as 6:06 p.m. James Blake, a bus driver, was having trouble, he called the police, and Officers Day and Mixon arrived on the scene. They noted in their report:
    We received a call upon arrival the bus operator said he had a colored female sitting in the white section of the bus, and would not move back. We … also saw her. The bus operator signed a warrant for her. Rosa Parks (cf) was charged with chapter 6 section 11 of the Montgomery City Code.
    Rosa Parks’s offense was to sit in a section of the Cleveland Avenue bus reserved for whites, a crime under Alabama’s Jim Crow laws. Parks was fined ten dollars in addition to court fees of four dollars. Rosa Parks wasn’t just anybody. She was already the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, which had long been struggling to change the institutions of the U.S. South. Her arrest triggered a mass movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, masterminded by Martin Luther King, Jr. By December 3, King and other black leaders had organized a coordinated bus boycott, convincing all black people that they should not ride on any bus in Montgomery. The boycott was successful and it lasted until December 20, 1956. It set in motion a process that culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the laws that segregated buses in Alabama and Montgomery were unconstitutional.
    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a key moment in the civil rights movement in the U.S. South. This movement was part of a series of events and changes that finally broke the mold in the South and led toa fundamental change of institutions. As we saw in chapter 12 , after the Civil War, southern landowning elites had managed to re-create the extractive economic and political institutions that had dominated the South before the Civil War. Though the details of these institutions