As capitalism defeated socialism in Eastern Europe, the market displaced the state in the developing world. Robert Bates focuses on Kenya, a country that continued to grow while others declined in Africa, and criticizes the neo-classical turn in development economics. Attributing Kenya's exceptionalism to its economic institutions, Bates relates its subsequent economic decline to the change from the Kenyatta to the Moi regime--and the subsequent use of the power of economic institutions to redistribute rather than to create wealth.

Robert H. Bates undertook graduate studies of anthropology at Manchester University and economics at Stanford. Joining the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, he rose to full professor before leaving for the Luce Professorship at Duke in the early 1980s. He joined the faculty at Harvard in 1993. Bates has conducted field work in Zambia, Kenya, Ghana and the Sudan and traveled throughout much of West Africa as well. He has also conducted fieldwork in Colombia and Brazil, where he conducted research on the politics and economics of the international coffee industry. A consultant for the World Bank and USAID, Bates is also a member of the State Failure Task Force. He serves as a resource person for the Africa Economic Research Consortium and has for several years held a visiting professorship on the faculty of the economics department at Toulouse University.

1. The demand for revolution: the agrarian origins of Mau Mau; Appendix 1A. Kinship and stratification; 2. Material interest and political preference: the agrarian origins of political conflict; 3. Institutional structure, agricultural development, and political conflict; 4. From drought to famine: the dynamics of subsistence crises; Appendix 4A. The buying center program; 5. The politics of food crises; Appendix 5A. Famine: Meru, August 1984.