The resurgence of traditional authority is one of the most striking developments in Africa in the last couple of decades. While many independence-era politicians and scholars saw chiefs as a roadblock to development and a vestige of the past, which the process of modernisation would make irrelevant, the Third Wave of democratisation has actually increased the position and salience of traditional authority in Africa. Instead of undercutting seemingly undemocratic chiefs or kings, democratic leaders devolved further power to them since the 1990s. This renaissance of traditional authority and its coexistence with democracy is puzzling in many respects; it also raises concern whether unelected chiefs can play a positive role in democratic politics. Kate Baldwin's masterful book answers these questions, by providing a compelling explanation of the logic of traditional leaders' resurgence in contemporary Africa.

Baldwin argues that in the context of weak states politicians need traditional leaders to facilitate the provision of local public goods. Because many public goods in Africa require the participation of the public in their co-production, chiefs can play a crucial role by helping mobilise community input. If politicians' re-election prospects depend on their ability to deliver local results, chiefs' assistance in the provision of public goods is highly valuable, turning them into what Baldwin calls ‘development brokers’. Instead of undermining democracy, Baldwin makes the case that traditional leaders actually might be good for democracy by improving politicians' responsiveness to their communities.

This highly sophisticated book makes essential reading for anyone interested in traditional authority, development and democracy in Africa. It provides a new understanding of the role of chiefs in democratic Africa. Focusing on the case of Zambia, it uses a vast array of data, from archival research, surveys and survey experiments, to interviews with chiefs and politicians. This is meticulous mixed-methods research at its best. Baldwin provides convincing evidence that Zambian chiefs play a crucial role in facilitating the provision of public goods at the local level. For example, she shows that in communities where a chief's death occurs, resulting in a several-month period without a chief in charge, the production of local goods, such as school buildings and boreholes, suffers. Communities which experienced a chief's death in a previous five-year period have significantly fewer such goods.

Throughout the book, Baldwin pits her development-broker view of chiefs against the vote-broker model. In doing so, she might be exaggerating the degree to which these two roles of chiefs are rivalrous when these tasks could be in many cases complementary. In particular, in adjudicating between these two views of chiefs, she suggests that if chiefs act as development brokers we should see higher provision of local public goods, whereas when they act as vote brokers we would expect the opposite (p. 81). But why should chiefs acting as vote brokers lead to lower provision of local public goods? In many cases throughout Africa, in which chiefs or other local leaders engage in electoral politics, chiefs demand from politicians the provision of wells, renovation of places of worship, or promises of roads, in addition to personal benefits for themselves.

My single point of criticism underscores how remarkable Baldwin's book is. The Paradox of Traditional Chiefs in Democratic Africa represents exemplary scholarship in an extremely readable and engaging format, with a broad appeal to a cross-disciplinary audience.