Abstract
The conventional wisdom blames colonialism as the root cause of violence in Africa, but at the expense of analytical clarity about the context of collective violence over common land. This article uses qualitative data and Elinor Ostrom’s perspective on governing the commons to analyze collective violence over common land in an African community. It finds that the absence of certain design principles strikes at the root of the violence in the African case. Exploring the less understood intricacies enriches analytical clarity about the conditions that lend themselves to sustaining the commons and gaining the compliance of generation after generation of resource users with property rights institutions for governing the commons.
Highlights
Scholarship has shown that the seeds of African violence lie in “the sociological and political mess which white colonialism created in Africa” (Mazrui 2008, 37), but at the expense of analytical clarity about the context of collective violence over common land
The dominant view that the seeds of African violence “lie in the sociological and political mess which white colonialism created in Africa” (Mazrui 2008, 37)
Scholarship has greatly compromised analytical clarity by blaming “the sociological and political mess which white colonialism created in Africa” as the root of violence on the continent (Mazrui 2008, 37)
Summary
Scholarship has shown that the seeds of African violence lie in “the sociological and political mess which white colonialism created in Africa” (Mazrui 2008, 37), but at the expense of analytical clarity about the context of collective violence over common land. [values by the Ife and the Modakeke] (DP2), minimal recognition by the Ife of the rights (DP7) of the Modakeke to organize landowning families [collective choice arrangements] (DP3), and the nesting of the landowning interests of the Modakeke in the dominant institutional arrangements (DP8) The absence of these conditions, consistent with a prediction by McGinnis and Ostrom (1996), impelled the Modakeke to dismiss as fundamentally unfair and illegitimate the prevailing land user definition [the Modakeke as tenants and the Ife as landowners] (DP1), monitoring (DP4) and sanctioning [eviction of the Modakeke from Ile-Ife] (DP5) rules, and conflict resolution mechanisms [tenant status or eviction for the Modakeke] (DP6). This research provides rich evidence on the poorly understood context of the violence situation through a review of the colonial sources of African violence, before explaining how Elinor Ostrom’s design principles help disambiguate the analytical obscurity surrounding the violence
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