The political and economic evolution of countries such as Nigeria and Congo challenge the conclusions of Mancur Olson’s (1993, 2000) stationary bandit model. In this paper I argue for the necessity of an alternative model where the balance of political power and the distribution of income are endogenous. Such a model is developed in this paper as a game played between a ruler who has to decide the distribution of income and a group of agents/citizens who can communicate through a network.