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Key Text W(h)ither the State?

Author: P Chabal and J-P Daloz
Date: 1999
Size: 13 pages (20 MB)

Summary

To what extent can existing conceptualisations of the state in sub-Saharan Africa contribute to an understanding of the exercise of power as it is empirically observed? This chapter from the book 'Africa Works: Disorder as a Political Instrument' argues that the state in Africa was never properly institutionalised because it was never properly emancipated from society. This is due to both historical and cultural factors. It concludes that the weak character of the state in Africa may be more perennial that has hitherto been envisaged.

There is little consensus on the nature of the state in Africa, even on the fact that it is both poorly emancipated and very largely patrimonial. If in some cases it is merely a mirage, in most others it is in productive symbiosis with society. If we start from the empirical realities of contemporary Africa, the paradigm that emerges is the political instrumentalisation of disorder - that is, the profit to be found in the weak institutionalisation of political practices. The state is both vacuous and ineffectual. The failure of the state to be emancipated from society has profoundly limited the scope for 'good government' in sub-Saharan Africa. Equally, such a poorly institutionalised state has not had the means to seriously spur sustainable economic growth on the continent.

Nevertheless, the very weakness and inefficiency of the state has been profitable to African elites. The development of political machines and the consolidation of clientelistic networks within the formal political apparatus have been enormously advantageous.

We should be prepared to consider that the informalisation of politics in Africa might prove a defining feature of its socio-political order for the foreseeable future.

There may be an inbuilt bias against the institutionalisation of the state.
Indeed, the current patrimonial and prebendal practices of political elites are satisfactory, at least from the micro-sociological perspectives of the individuals and communities they serve.
In such circumstances, the momentum for reform is unlikely to arise from civil society.
The legitimacy of African political elites derives from their ability to nourish the clientele on which their power rests. It is therefore imperative for them to exploit governmental resources for patrimonial purposes.

There is thus a critical contradiction at the heart of the present political condition of sub-Saharan Africa.

Proper institutionalisation of the state would obviate the need continuously to have to display the substance of one's power.
If political domination became embodied in the recognised juridical universe of the bureaucratic state political elites would no longer have to justify their prominence through the fulfilment of their patrimonial duties.
What this would mean, however, is that they would have to accept both the supremacy of institutions over individuals and the temporary nature of their political eminence.
The severity of the current economic crisis in Africa is unlikely to favour the institutionalisation of the state. Political elites, bereft of the means of their patrimonial legitimacy, urgently seek the resources that the informalisation of politics might generate.
Such heightened competition is apt to bring about greater disorder, if not violence.
Conversely, it is likely that the elites will use the reforms, brought in by the so-called transition to democracy, to secure both renewed legitimacy and access to the new assets that the liberalisation of the continent's economies makes available.

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Source: Chabal and Daloz, 1999, ‘W(h)ither The State?’, Chapter 1 in Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument’, African Issues, James Currey, Oxford