ABSTRACT
In describing what he calls the “inflationary spiral of coercion and vio lence" in W est Africa, Zolberg illustrates both the full range of political resources and the use of such resources in exchange. The political institu tions and infrastructure left by the W est African colonial regimes provided for competition and the adjustment of conflicting interests through elec toral processes, with votes manifesting legitimacy and the currency of sup port. The statesmen who first occupied the top authority roles in the new regimes sought to maintain their positions and their power by various means: they employed social pressure as a means of manipulating social status and co-optation as a means of judiciously sharing authority. How ever, as the means employed did not effectively contain the growing de mand for authority, these statesmen turned increasingly to the use of their most effective remaining resource, coercion. Once electoral means of ob taining authority were blocked by the regime, anti-statesmen turned in-
1 Zolberg (1966:87). See also Chapters III and IV.
