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Key Text The Distinctive Political Logic of Weak States

Author: W Reno
Date: 1998
Size: 29 pages

Summary

Why is warlord politics so prevalent in Africa? Why do African rulers persistently give only lip-service to good governance, and weaken the organs of government? This first chapter of a book on warlord politics in Africa examines the political logic of weak states. Donor attempts to build strong African states fail because rulers' power rests on outside factors not on the citizenry. Attempts to impose good governance as conditions of loans or aid rest on flawed assumptions about rulers' interests, and are subverted by local politics.

The transformation of weak states to warlord politics is at odds with donor models of the relation between markets and states. African rulers of weak states often choose alternatives to expected responses to global pressures. Strong states have political authority based on domestic revenue, popular acceptance, and commerce. Donors believe that addressing state collapse is done by building institutions, government capacity, and promoting free markets. But weak states are the result of Cold War political economy. Rulers possessed sovereignty by international agreement, not from internal legitimacy. In this continuing context, state bureaucracy fosters strong men who build rival power centres. Rulers facing this threat intentionally cripple the arms of the state, weakening the agencies donors perceive as vital, and governing through patronage networks. They depend on exploiting external resources and relationships, including aid. This means that:

Rulers are trapped in a politics of survival, in which the pursuit of stability and security undermines that of legitimacy.
Rulers have to provide for their essential allies. Large numbers of state officials who consume resources but do little to control rivals are jettisoned. These include teachers, health care workers, and others.
Reforms that cut state expenditure help rulers justify their attacks on domestic rivals.
As bureaucracy decays, informal networks invade wider spheres of economic activity and "criminalise" the state.
Markets are the basis of political power. These include gems, drugs, arms trading and money laundering. Commerce is militarised and violent.

Donors currently try to apply international standards of governance to weak African states in order to bring benefits to the poorest citizens, and build democratic, functioning states. This approach is flawed because it doesn't take into account the motives of and pressures on rulers. Understanding the political logic of warlordism will give donors a clearer picture of how aid is likely to be manipulated. Implications of this model (not stated by the author but deduced from the text) are that:

Analysis and understanding of country context must precede any state reconstruction efforts.
There needs to be research and analysis on how elites can be brought into the reform agenda. Aid conditionality clearly doesn't work in the way donors envisage.Donors need to understand and find ways of addressing the political issues of strengthening bureaucracy.

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Source: Reno, W., 1998, ‘The Distinctive Political Logic of Weak States’, in Warlord Politics and African States, Boulder, London, UK.
Author: Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/polisci/index.html