Regional competition in African countries finds expression in tensions, debates, and competition over policy. Regional economic tensions in African countries tend to find expression in four persistently salient issue areas: (a) demand for redistributive policies and social policy, (b) region- and sector-specific development and regulatory policies, (c) land policy, where redistributive tensions and conflicts arise in the building of national land markets, and (d) issues around state structure and design (the territorial division of powers and prerogatives, as under federalism or decentralization). In most countries, regional cleavages trump class-like or interpersonal income inequalities as a driver of national contestation over issues of policy and collective choice. A 2x2 matrix predicts “regional preferences for decentralization and redistribution” based on a region’s relative economic standing and its political alignment with the center. South Africa, where regional inequality is lower and nationalizing institutions are stronger, is an outlier: Redistributive social policy is more developed than it is anywhere else in Africa, and the issue of national land market integration is less salient than it is in many African countries.

Regional interests and tensions are manifest in regional bloc voting in multiparty elections (1990s–2010s). We present an electoral geography analysis of constituency-level voting in presidential elections in twelve countries from 1990 to 2015 (44 elections). We describe the economic attributes of the electoral blocs using forty rounds of DHS surveys for geocoded education and ethnicity data, nighttime luminosity, historical maps of producer regions, and raster data for population densities and contemporary crop production profiles. Most electoral blocs arise in rural regions that are wealthier, better educated, more densely populated, and more deeply incorporated into the national economy than other rural areas. Most are specialized in high-value export crops (or traded food crops.) Some have nonagricultural production profiles as labor-exporting or mining regions. Most coalesce within provincial-level administrative units. Almost all are multiethnic. The evidence is consistent with the argument that state institutions work to channel politics arising from uneven economic development into the national political arena. Microlevel mechanisms contributing to this outcome are related to interests, organizations, ideology, and actions of political agents and coalition-builders.

This chapter explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role of systemic political instability and violence combined with challenges to state legitimacy. Regional divides and lack of market integration continue to influence in a critical and all-encompassing manner. Finally, the way in which the interests of the elite and donor influence have affected progress in the agriculture sector suggests the need for concerted reorientation in existing strategies, policies, and priorities. This is reinforced by future challenges, including the extractive industry; population growth and internal migration; national and international markets; climate change; and COVID-19. We highlight the need to place the future of agriculture in Mozambique within a long-term perspective, focusing on the adoption and stabilisation of an institutional framework aimed at increasing agricultural productivity and preserving the environment.

After 2012, Prime Minister Abe prioritized agricultural reform as a signature objective of the structural reform, or “third arrow,” component of Abenomics. But while the Abe reforms have enhanced competitive market signals in the farm sector and accelerated the long-term political decline of conservative LDP politicians, farm bureaucrats, and Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) – the “farm lobby” – in the policy process, the lobby remains a significant obstacle to more sweeping change. To illustrate these points and the ongoing tug-of-war between neoliberal reformers and the farm lobby, this chapter explores some of the successes and failures of the government’s agricultural agenda against the backdrop of a deepening demographic and economic crisis in the countryside.

Chapter 5 evaluates the claim that climate change caused the Syrian conflict and concludes that ultimately political factors were more important than a climate-induced drought in the buildup to the uprising. While some international scholars attribute the Syrian uprising to a climate-induced drought, the chapter finds that domestic sources point to a different conclusion: Political context was more significant than water scarcity from drought in worsening the human security of the vulnerable populations of Syria, paving the way for the Syrian uprising. This conclusion is based on an analysis of the sources of Syria’s environmental, economic, and social vulnerabilities following the 2006–2010 drought and an earlier 1998–2001 drought, which reveals a vulnerability nexus in the northeast of Syria. The region was experiencing high levels of poverty and unemployment, high dependence on the agricultural sector and water scarcity, and poor soil quality from unsustainable practices. Together with increased corruption, these factors made the region disproportionately vulnerable to the impact of drought. Ultimately, the government’s poor water and agricultural policies pushed a weather event into a crisis, which could have been avoided or mitigated with sound policies.

In this chaper, I examine the relationship between landholding inequality, interventions in agricultural markets, and the stability of authoritarian regimes. I construct measures of the size of rents that are generated by agricultural market distortions. I show that both forms of agricultural rents are much smaller than those originating from oil revenues. I then go on to estimate a series of models of authoritarian regime durability. I test whether landed elites are threatening to authoritarian regimes, and concentrations of landholdings are associated with a greater risk of regime collapse. I find a weak positive relationship between landholding inequality and the likelihood of collapse. I look at the relationship between agricultural rents and regime durability. I find that rents that accrue to the state have no effect on the probability of regime collapse. Rents accruing to agricultural producers, however, do have a significant interactive effect on regime stability. Where landholding inequality is high, regimes that distribute greater rents to the agricultural sector are significantly less likely to break down.

In the conclusion, I discuss the contribution of the book and its implications for the study of authoritarian regimes, development, and democratization. In the long run, government policies that tax the agricultural sector lead to rural poverty, urbanization, and political instability. On the other hand, regimes that implement pro-farmer policies increasing agricultural prices are more likely to lock their countries into a long-run development trajectory that significantly decreases the risk of political instability and authoritarian regime collapse. By bolstering the incomes of rural farmers they mitigate poverty, slow rural-urban migration, promote economic growth, and decrease inequality. Rulers confronted with significant threats from both large concentrations of urban food consumers and landed elites cannot effectively use agricultural policy to address rural-urban conflict, because measures that are in the interests of the rural sector run invariably counter to those of the urban sector. These leaders are thus faced with unique challenges to their rule and a high likelihood of political instability. One likely outcome of this situation is a military dictatorship.

In this chapter, I lay out a theory of agricultural policymaking and political stability under authoritarian and democratic governments. From this theory, I derive a series of empirical hypotheses on policy outcomes and the consequences of agricultural policy for regime stability, which I will go on to test in the remainder of the book.

In this chapter, I explore the link between government food taxes and urban unrest. I analyze an event dataset on social and political disorder in cities across the developing world matched to cross-national data on consumer food taxes between 1965 and 2009. I estimate panel regressions of the effect of food taxes on unrest. I find no simple relationship between food policy and political instability in cities. However, when the effects of food taxes are allowed to vary by political regime type, I find that higher taxes are significantly associated with greater levels of unrest under anocracy. I also estimate instrumental variables regressions that exploit exogenous variation in the composition of a country's agricultural sector to identify the causal effect of food taxes on unrest. The results of these models align with those of the panel regressions. I find that higher food taxes are significantly correlated with greater unrest, but only under anocracies, which combine a lack of democratic accountability with a relatively permissive political opportunity structure.

In this chapter, I model agricultural policy outcomes across countries. I do so using cross-national data on agricultural market distortions, regime typ,e and structures, which are indicators of the strength of rural and urban interests. I show that democracies support agriculture more than authoritarian regimes, on average. I look at the effects of urbanization, inequality, and unequal distributions of landholdings on agricultural support. I find that urbanization is associated with less support for agriculture under dictatorship, particularly in Asia. Inequality is associated with declining support for agriculture in democracies, particularly in Latin America and high-income countries, but not in Africa. Landholding inequality is correlated with greater support for agriculture under dictatorship, particularly in Latin America and Asia.

I use a case study of Imperial Germany to probe the causal mechanisms explored cross-nationally in previous chapters. I examine the political causes and consequences of a protectionist shift in agricultural policy that took place in the late 1870s in Imperial Germany and significantly increased domestic food and agricultural produce prices. I analyze an original dataset on the characteristics of German electoral districts, delegates to the Reichstag, and their voting patterns on the protectionist bill. High levels of landholding inequality in German electoral districts were correlated with disproportionate representation of aristocratic landowners and rural conservatives in the Reichstag, while urban interests had little influence. Subsequent gains from the protectionist trade policy fell disproportionately on areas dominated by the Prussian aristocracy and characterized by higher levels of landholding inequality. Agricultural policy thus played a key role in ensuring the aristocracy's political support for the authoritarian government.

The introduction lays out the scope and contribution of the book. I begin by arguing that the problem of agricultural policymaking plays a central role in debates on the relationship between development, democratization, and authoritarian politics. One of the most salient and contentious social cleavages to be managed in developing nations is not between the rich and the poor, or the middle class and the state. It is between cities and the countryside, and it plays itself out in markets for agricultural produce and food. I briefly outline the book’s central argument: that agricultural policies are a trade-off between rural interests, who prefer higher prices, and urban interests, who prefer lower prices. This trade-off is made under different rules depending on regime type, and in particular based on the structural threats posed to each sector under authoritarianism. By manipulating prices for agricultural commodities and food, authoritarian governments can co-opt threatening groups to supporting their regime and mitigate the risk of political instability. I outline the structure of the book's chapters.

In this chaper, I trace in detail the causal mechanisms linking landholding inequality, agricultural policy, and regime stability in Malaysia from 1969-1980. I analyze an original, constituency-level dataset on the correlates of support for the ruling Alliance at the 1969 parliamentary election. I show that landholding inequality was correlated with support for the Alliance. However, rice-growing areas abandoned the Alliance for the opposition in 1969. This important shift in mass politics led to contentious developments within the elite, which significantly strengthened rural, Malay interests in the ruling coalition. In the course of the next year, a major restructuring of the Malaysian economy was begun, an important component of which was a pro-rural agricultural policy reform, which increased the incomes of Malay rice farmers. This policy played an important role in placating rural interests and heading off their demands for a complete reorganization of the political system. Thus, the power shift within the ruling coalition led to a more rural-biased policy, which in turn ensured regime stability.