This book argues that development strategies have thus far failed in
Western Africa because the many challenges afflicting the area have yet
to be explored and understood from the perspective of institutional
resources. With a particular focus on three countries on the bend of the
Upper West African coast - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - this book
offers a theory to account for the nature of these institutional
elements, to test deductions against evidence, and finally to propose a
reset for rural development policy to make fuller use of local
institutional resources. Based on quantitative analysis and eight years
of multidisciplinary field research, this volume features several
large-scale RCTs in the domain of rural development, local governance,
and nature conservation. The authors address one of the biggest topics
in agricultural and development economics today: the structural
transformation of poor, agrarian economies, and they do so through the
important and unique lens of institutions.