Does Community-Driven Development Improve Inclusiveness in Peasant Organizations? – Evidence from Senegal

Peasant upheavals are studied from the perspective offered by the selective incentives solution to Olson's collective action problem. This article presents much evidence from three different forms of peasant struggles—everyday forms of peasant resistance, unorganized rural movements, and organized peasant rebellions—that demonstrates the widespread existence of selective incentives. Questions about the causes and consequences of selective incentives are then examined. First, what are the conditions under which peasant struggles emphasize material selective incentives rather than nonmaterial altruistic appeals? The level of selective incentives in any peasant upheaval is a function of demand and supply considerations. Peasants demand selective incentives. The suppliers include one or more dissident peasant organizations, the authorities, and the allies of both. A political struggle ensues as the suppliers compete and attempt to monopolize the market. Second, what are the conditions under which the pursuit of material self-interest hurts rather than helps the peasantry's collective cause? Selective incentives supplemented by ideology can be effective; selective incentives alone are counterproductive.These questions and answers lead to the conclusion that the selective incentives solution reveals much more about peasant upheavals than simply that peasants will often be concerned with their own material self-interest. It is therefore important to study the following three aspects of peasant collective action: the dilemma peasants face, or how peasant resistance is in the interest of all peasants but in the self-interest of none; the paradox peasants face, or that rational peasants do solve their dilemma (for example, with selective incentives) and participate in collective action; and the irony peasants face, or that self-interest is both at the root of their dilemma and at the foundation of a solution to their paradox.

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Modernization and Development Potential of Traditional Grass Roots Peasant Organizations

Directions of Change ◽

10.4324/9780429048500-5 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 121-139

Author(s):

Michael Cernea

Keyword(s):

Development Potential ◽

Grass Roots ◽

Peasant Organizations

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The Rise of the Bankers’ Alliance

Why Not Default? ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691180106.003.0011 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 147-157

Author(s):

Jerome Roos

Keyword(s):

Fiscal Discipline ◽

Mexican State ◽

State Apparatus ◽

Peasant Organizations

This chapter details how the growing dependence of the Mexican state on credit contributed to the rise of a domestic “bankers' alliance” made up of financial elites and orthodox technocrats who gradually found their position strengthened as the crisis deepened, allowing them to effectively sideline the national-popular wing of Mexico's one-party regime. The strengthened position of these groups led to the steady internalization of fiscal discipline into the Mexican state apparatus, ensuring continued debt servicing and a cooperative stance vis-à-vis foreign creditors even in the absence of outright external impositions. This turn toward compliance was eased by the fact that popular opposition to continued debt servicing remained relatively muted due to the cooptation of the main labor and peasant organizations and the absence of powerful popular mobilizations against austerity.

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