John Searle has developed a strong theory of how speech acts and agreements generate institutions. How is the general theory specified for political institutions? He, like Max Weber, suggests that a government monopoly of soldiers is a condition for the existence of political institutions....

In a study of land politics carried out from 2001 to 2005 in the two western provinces of South Africa, the Northern Cape and the Western Cape, a high degree of distrust was recorded between institutions in the provincial government. This article attempts to explain the distrust and how it...