Debates on the causes of Indonesia's recent democratic decline have mostly focused on institutional, political and attitudinal–behavioural causes. By bringing the rural political economy dimension into this conversation, this article presents another picture of the illiberal turn in Indonesian democracy. Specifically, it examines the implications of elite control over land and coal resources on democratic quality. Based on in-country fieldwork materials and relevant secondary data, it analyses instances of episodic repression, the contraction of democratic spaces and the corrosive effects of coal-fuelled intra-elite clientelism by looking at the elite control of land resources and the influence of political and economic elites benefitting from the coal industry in elections and the broader political arena. Finally, it also discusses the capitulation of key agrarian social movement actors to state interests and its impact on the movement's ability to resist democratic regression. This elaboration shows how the current contour of elite control over rural resources contributes to the declining quality of Indonesian democracy.

Farmland investments have attracted numerous entrepreneurs and companies to Africa in the past two decades. However, acquiring, retaining, and exploiting large-scale landholdings is more complicated than it seems. Investors need to persuade governments and populations of their anticipated benefits and limit dissenting voices when they emerge. Focusing on a contested land project in Senegal, Gagné develops the concept of “repertoires of control” to analyze the different performances of power that companies deploy to assert and legitimize their land claims. She argues that to survive, companies must continually adapt these performances to changes in the political environment of their host countries.

The role of power over people and over land is an important issue in West Africa, with important implications for relationships between commoners and elites. Along with conquest, slave raiding, marriage, and procreation, control over land has enhanced the ability of chiefs and other elites to gain control over people, thus increasing their production and reinforcing social hierarchy and centralization of power. This article utilizes oral evidence and European documentary sources to examine the importance of the concept of “wealth-in-people” for understanding the significance of land in African societies. By focusing on the Gambia region, where both paddy and upland rice farming were practiced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the article contributes empirical observations to support the argument that control over both land and people played a central role in the accumulation of wealth in many African societies.