This chapter gathers together the threads of the argument. It highlights the impact of changes in key variables – the level of public revenues and the elite's rate of discount – arguing that sharp, exogenous shocks helped to drive their value into ranges that threatened the underpinnings of political order. That these changes took place in an environment richly endowed by nature meant that the payoffs to the incumbent elites from defection could rapidly become more attractive than those to good governance. In the context of Africa's resource endowments, the value of these variables needed to alter but little before predation became more attractive than stewardship, thus leading to choices that triggered state failure.

The changes in the values of these variables resulted in part from the impact of previous choices: the forging of authoritarian political institutions and the choice of control regimes. It also resulted from sharp external shocks, the first economic recession, resulting from the rise of energy prices, and the second political, resulting from the geo-political realignment that followed the end of the Cold War.

The Decline of Public Revenues

In late-century Africa, governments faced a decline in public revenues, resulting from past policy choices, changes in the global economy, and the predatory behavior of political elites.