know this took place in the context of intensified inter-city
warfare, and it seems likely that opposition and rebellion
within the cities, perhaps led by different factions of the
elite, overthrew the institution.
Though the extractive institutions that the Mayas created
produced sufficient wealth for the cities to flourish and the
elite to become wealthy and generate great art and
monumental buildings, the system was not stable. The
extractive institutions upon which this narrow elite ruled
created extensive inequality, and thus the potential for
infighting between those who could benefit from the wealth
extracted from the people. This conflict ultimately led to the
undoing of the Maya civilization.
W HAT G OES W RONG ?
Extractive institutions are so common in history because
they have a powerful logic: they can generate some limited
prosperity while at the same time distributing it into the
hands of a small elite. For this growth to happen, there must
be political centralization. Once this is in place, the state—
or the elite controlling the state—typically has incentives to
invest and generate wealth, encourage others to invest so
that the state can extract resources from them, and even
mimic some of the processes that would normally be set in
motion by inclusive economic institutions and markets. In
the Caribbean plantation economies, extractive institutions
took the form of the elite using coercion to force slaves to
produce sugar. In the Soviet Union, they took the form of the
Communist Party reallocating resources from agriculture to
industry and structuring some sort of incentives for
managers and workers. As we have seen, such incentives
were undermined by the nature of the system.
The potential for creating extractive growth gives an
impetus to political centralization and is the reason why
King Shyaam wished to create the Kuba Kingdom, and
likely accounts for why the Natufians in the Middle East set
up a primitive form of law and order, hierarchy, and
extractive institutions that would ultimately lead to the
Neolithic Revolution. Similar processes also likely
underpinned the emergence of settled societies and the
transition to agriculture in the Americas, and can be seen in