Goist, Mitchell, and Florian G. Kern. "Traditional institutions and social cooperation: Experimental evidence from the Buganda Kingdom." Research & Politics 5, no. 1(2018)

A number of studies have analyzed traditional political institutions as having significant influence over constituents because they are perceived as legitimate political actors inmost weak states. These traditional actors play a role in mobilizing local communities. Goist and Kern argue that the link between traditional institutions and collective mobilization is not understood, for example in linking traditional institutions with local public goods provision. Their study seeks to find out the casual mechanisms by which contemporary traditional institutions affect social cooperation. The study looks at the Buganda kingdom in Uganda and argues that the traditional leaders act as influential local actors and development actors who leverage their position to provide public goods to their constituents.

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De Kadt, Daniel, and Horacio A. Larreguy. "Agents of the regime? Traditional leaders and electoral politics in South Africa." The Journal of Politics 80, no. 2 (2018):382-399.

Traditional leaders perform cultural, legal, economic and social roles. Some scholars argue that chiefs use their authority to provide votes to the highest bidder. Thus, chiefs indirectly influence electoral behavior of their dependents. Other scholars argue that chiefs have the incentive to support any politician who would guarantee their survival and bring resources to their local communities. DeKadt and Larreguy argue that chiefs are generally strategic actors who would align themselves with political parties that will best serve their interests only when they (chiefs) feel the politicians are electorally credible. Chiefs would rather trade off votes of their dependents with incumbent elites who have better access to resources than opposition parties who do not. They do this to ensure developmental outcomes for their dependents because their legal legitimacy and economic security has been weakened due to modern democracy. DeKadt and Larreguy further argue that as South Africa switched from apartheid to democratic regime, so did chiefs switch from being agents of apartheid to agents of the ANC government. The authors term this relationship between the traditional authority and political elites as ‘political quid pro quo’’.

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Bond, George Clement. "New Coalitions and traditional chieftainship in Northern Zambia: The Politics of Local government in Uyombe1." Africa, 45,no. 4 (1975): 348-362.

This paper looks at the persistence of traditional leadership as a basis of local government through the process of political change and of maintaining political boundaries between central government and other political units. The study sought to find out how the new form of traditional authority came about as a result of political change that produced a new party-based rural elite in Uyombe, a small chiefdom in the northern province of Zambia. The author argues that Zambia, just like other African countries lacked the financial strength to train personnel for civil service and rural institutions. Rural elites were recruited into the civil service along with educated urban elite. These rural elites, usually from smaller ethnic populations, were strategically given civil service posts which counteracted the regional and ethnic interests of the larger political units. Thus, these rural elites were able to leverage their bargaining power and gain temporary control of local government and transformed it into a more representative and effective unit of administration which was oriented toward rural economic development.

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Beall, Jo, and Mduduzi Ngonyama. "Indigenous institutions, traditional leaders and elite coalitions for development: The case of Greater Durban, South Africa." (2009). Crisis States Research Centre Working Papers Series 2 (55). Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

Chieftaincy is the most common form of indigenous institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. This study examined the role of traditional leaders in Greater Durban area of KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. The study sought to find out why some traditional leaders successfully participate in inclusive elite coalitions and what roles they played in facilitating institutional arrangements alongside other political actors to create a hybrid political order.

Baldwin, Kate, and Pia Raffler. "Traditional Leaders, Service Delivery, And Electoral Accountability." Decentralized Governance and Accountability(2019):61-90

The article examines the effect of traditional leadership on the provision of goods and services for the local populace, in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors note that traditional leadership is relatively powerful in countries like Ghana and Botswana whilst they have little or no power in countries such as Madagascar and Tanzania. Most recently, they have become informal administrators and intermediaries between their communities and larger state institutions. Using Ghana as an example, the authors argue that new forms of chieftaincies keep emerging as chiefs are not only confined to rural spaces but are also involved in modern governance and as local elites as governments work with chiefs to administer services as dispute resolution. The authors further argue that the two reasons why traditional leadership keeps resurging are first, socio-cultural and political significance of chiefs as representatives of their ethnic communities and second, their intermediary position as power brokers. In Ghana the state has mingled chieftaincy with the larger political system which makes the state a propounder of the chieftaincy system. Thus, the process of state formation involves changes in the roles of elite’s and changes in sources of power, leading to a situation where the basis of power of local elites becomes intertwined with or depends on the state. In communities where the chiefs are deemed stronger or influential or connected to public or elected officials, they are likely to receive more public goods. Sometimes the status of the traditional leaders depends on the state. Other times, chiefs can be so powerful in their local communities that they can leverage that power to determine political votes and in turn negotiate for improved service delivery for their communities.

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Balán, Pablo, Augustin Bergeron, Gabriel Tourek, and Jonathan L. Weigel. "Local Elites as State Capacity: How City Chiefs Use Local Information to Increase Tax Compliance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo." American Economic Review 112, no. 3 (2022): 762-97.

The authors question whether local and traditional elites are an impediment or an asset to development of a state, and whether local elites can collaborate with the state to improve on governance and public service delivery especially in fragile states. The paper investigates the relationship between local elites and the state as it seeks to raise revenue through taxation.