How did Botswana break the mold? By quickly
developing inclusive economic and political institutions
after independence. Since then, it has been democratic,
holds regular and competitive elections, and has never
experienced civil war or military intervention. The
government set up economic institutions enforcing property
rights, ensuring macroeconomic stability, and encouraging
the development of an inclusive market economy. But of
course, the more challenging question is, how did
Botswana manage to establish a stable democracy and
pluralistic institutions, and choose inclusive economic
institutions, while most other African countries did the
opposite? To answer this, we have to understand how a
critical juncture, this time the end of colonial rule, interacted
with Botswana’s existing institutions.
In most of sub-Saharan Africa—for example, for Sierra
Leone and Zimbabwe—independence was an opportunity
missed, accompanied by the re-creation of the same type
of extractive institutions that existed during the colonial
period. Early stages of independence would play out very
differently in Botswana, again largely because of the
background created by Tswana historical institutions. In
this, Botswana exhibited many parallels to England on the
verge of the Glorious Revolution. England had achieved
rapid political centralization under the Tudors and had the
Magna Carta and the tradition of Parliament that could at
least aspire to constrain monarchs and ensure some
degree of pluralism. Botswana also had some amount of
state centralization and relatively pluralistic tribal institutions
that survived colonialism. England had a newly forming
broad coalition, consisting of Atlantic traders, industrialists,
and the commercially minded gentry, that was in favor of
well-enforced property rights. Botswana had its coalition in
favor of secure procedure rights, the Tswana chiefs, and
elites who owned the major assets in the economy, cattle.
Even though land was held communally, cattle was private
property in the Tswana states, and the elites were similarly
in favor of well-enforced property rights. All this of course is
not denying the contingent path of history. Things would
have turned out very differently in England if parliamentary
leaders and the new monarch had attempted to use the
Glorious Revolution to usurp power. Similarly, things could