Two decades ago, the verdict of failure was well-nigh universal; the very concept of “state failure” derived from the predicament facing most African states at the time. The striking diversity of state itineraries since 1990 produces a variety of outcomes in terms of political form, developmental performance, and quality of governance, ranging from the relatively positive in Ghana, Namibia, or Tanzania to the anarchy of Somalia. Overall, in economic terms, prospects seemed somewhat improved. Since 2000, African economies have fared better than any time since the 1960s. In 2008, the IMF forecast that subSaharan African economic growth would slow to 6% after several years of a higher figure; though the global recession undermined this estimate, African countries fared better in resisting the crisis than advanced economies.4 Although a semiauthoritarian drift has gained momentum in recent years, the political opening produced by the 1990s democratization surge is far from being erased.
There remains an underlying volatility to African politics that requires acknowledgment in anyone’s overall conclusions. Zimbabwe in 1997 ranked high on most criteria of effective governance; from that point forward, the situation deteriorated, rapidly from 2000, relegating the country for a time to the failed-state category. The political alternation in Kenya produced by the 2002 elections brought hopes of a renovated polity cleansed of the culture of corruption and impunity, a dream tarnished by the growing evidence that only the beneficiaries changed and dashed by the ethnic violence triggered by the disputed 2007 balloting.5 Madagascar was the first state to qualify for the American Millenium Challenge Grants, a reward earned by competent and democratic governance. By 2009, the model performance had been compromised by the spectacle of a proliferating mercantile empire accumulated by President Marc Ravolamanana.6 The sudden 2009 overthrow of the constitutional order by a thirty-three-year-old mayor of Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, unhinged politics, cut off access to most foreign aid, and isolated the country. Most dramatic of all, three game-changing events in 2011 altered the African political landscape: the “Arab spring” and the overthrow of seemingly impregnable long-ruling autocrats by street action in Tunisia and Egypt; the ouster by international action of rulers in Ivory Coast and Libya, supporting internal insurgent challenge to Laurent Gbagbo’s usurpation and the Muammar Qadhafy’s forty-two-year dictatorship; and the first successful secession in South Sudan after more than three decades of armed revolt. Equally unexpected was the 2012 military intervention in Mali, ousting a seemingly democratic regime and accompanied by rebel occupation of the north.
Not all African polities are subject to this degree of volatility. Indeed, there has been a striking stability of political orders in the southern portions of the continent (except for Zimbabwe), as well as the small offshore island states (save for Comoros). Elsewhere, a substantial number of countries that may have known episodes of turbulence have had stable if perhaps only semidemocratic regimes over an extended period: Ghana, Senegal, Benin, Tanzania, and Mozambique come to mind. Still, my concluding reflections are tempered both by the divergent pathways of the last two decades and the possibility of abrupt change in any individual case.
In the closing subjective observations that follow, I focus only on the segment of the total picture that has been the subject of this volume: state politics, pathways, and performance, especially those dimensions that have been at the center of my previous work. By extracting this dimension both from the international domain of a globalizing world in which Africa occupies a subordinated position and the complex sociopolitical processes of ground-level life I necessarily offer only a selective and partial portrait.
COLONIAL STATE LEGACY
The first question that arises is the extent to which postcolonial politics are shaped by the legacy of the colonial state. In 1994, I wrote in The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective that “a genetic code for the new states of Africa was already imprinted on its embryo within the womb of the African colonial state.”7 The essence of the legacy was what Achille Mbembe termed the principe autoritaire: the arbitrary discipline of the subject by a state that “aspires to the exercise of a symbolic hegemony over indigenous societies signified by its claim to a monopoly of legitimate vision” and that incorporates into that exercise of power a vocation of “modernizing the nation and civilizing the society.”8 The developmental ideology assimilated into reason of state in the final colonial period and given new urgency by the successor elites appeared to require a command government staffed by an educated ruling caste convinced of its superior knowledge. New political superstructure directed by the triumphant nationalist leaders was bolted onto the sturdy frame of colonial autocracy. The voice briefly available to the subject at the decolonization moment was extinguished by single-party monopolies constructed to concentrate all national energies on combatting the legendary demons of poverty, ignorance, and disease. In many silent ways, the mentalities and routines of the colonial state were absorbed into the quotidian action of its postcolonial successor.
The reproduction of this dimension of colonial state legacy was fundamental to the physiognomy of the first postindependence generation of polities. Its overarching common attributes far outweighed any differences that might be detected in regimes issuing from different colonial powers.9 Nonetheless, in a few cases institutional discontinuities resulting from failures in orderly decolonization impacted colonial state heritage. In the small number of cases where liberation armies directly succeeded to power and the colonial establishment evaporated at independence (Algeria, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola), the dynamic was different and military institution more central, but the authoritarian practices of the colonial state were reproduced in new form. The Belgian adventure in instant decolonization examined in chapter 3 produced immediate state failure, though once Mobutu consolidated power in 1965 the bula matari colonial state model clearly inspired the new order. Other variant cases include the three Arab states whose precolonial bureaucratic armature was modified but not dissolved under colonial rule—Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco—where imperial legacy mingles with an older state heritage. South Africa is also an outlier, having an essentially colonial relationship with the African majority even as it functioned as a liberal constitutional state for its white minority; a far more autonomous society and economy resulted. For most states in the early independence years, however, the overall commonality of colonial state legacy stands out.
The authoritarian patterns and practices of rule inherited from the colonial state had one offsetting merit: their usefulness as tools of governing. Most of the African colonial states had achieved impressive developmental momentum in the last imperial decade, and by the 1950s, they had effective institutions of rule as well. Thus, new rulers had at their disposition a functioning governmental infrastructure. In the small number of countries where the colonial administrative hold was especially weak (Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros), the principe autoritaire joined to a feeble state was a prescription for an ailing postcolonial polity. Another dimension of imperial legacy worthy of note is that the colonial state bequeathed a disarmed population, and so the new states inherited a Weberian monopoly on the means of coercion.
The ambitions of the independence generation of rulers went far beyond those of the colonizer. Chapters 2 and 5 examine the emergence by the 1970s of what I have termed a project to build an integral state. Government command of the economy expanded through nationalizations of colonial enterprises and parastatal management of most extractive and other industries, as well as agricultural marketing. The seeming unencumbered dominance over civil society was enforced by comprehensive instruments of social control through single parties and administrative encadrement, an atmosphere of fear sustained by a pervasive security apparatus, and state monopoly over print and other media.
Embedded within the integral state project were certainly elements of the colonial state legacy. However, novel practices emerged. Personalization of power by the ruler was common currency. In i
nstitutional terms, this was expressed as presidentialism visible from early independence days in the form of the unitary executive. However, the formal hierarchies of command could not be maintained except by establishing more personal linkages to influential intermediaries. In the clientelistic networks thus emerging, loyalty was exchanged for material advantage. The formal structures of sovereign state command could not suffice; parallel webs of prebendal linkage were needed to underwrite ruler authority. In short, the would-be integral state was completed—and ultimately subverted—by its growing neopatrimonial nature.
At the summit, the ruler required a clientele encompassing the regional and ethnic diversity of society. At the base, affinity of locality, clan, or ethnicity shaped the chain of linkages. In contrast to the formal structures of the state, the neopatrimonial networks were inherently unstable. The sorts of rewards the ruler could dispense to his clientele were usually in kind and necessarily finite: a government position, contracts, commissions on foreign investments, diversion of other state resources, land or other property subject to presidential allocation. Thus the ruler had reason to maintain some uncertainty among his clients as to the permanence of the prebends; he could not afford to retain all aspirant clients. He would drive some out, but the possibility of a reversal of fortune might be dangled before them. This disaffection, communicated to the following as a marginalization of the group, might well spread to their ethnic clientele.
The growing reliance on neopatrimonialism as instrument of rule was a postcolonial innovation. Although it reinforced the hand of long-standing rulers, it also corroded the formal institutions of the state. By the 1980s, the predatory nature of neopatrimonial rule became increasingly prevalent, reflected in the scale of corruption. In turn, the capacity of the state to sustain its social provisions and basic services became constrained, subverting its legitimacy.10
In sum, the explanatory power of colonial legacy, initially compelling, becomes less central as time goes by. The half century of postcolonial existence now matches the historical duration of effective colonial rule; a dwindling number of Africans have a personal recollection of “being colonized.”11 Although I retain the “postcolonial” descriptor in this work, in a 2004 article I queried its continuing pertinence:
New historical experience reshapes social memory and begins to obscure the colonial past . . . Deeper continuities with pre-colonial social and political patterns, and novel experiences of coping with the realities of state decline in recent decades, combine to close a set of parentheses around the post-colonial as a defining condition[,] . . . [which are] progressively overwritten by new defining events, political practices and agendas. The tides of globalization wash over the continent, depositing sedimentary layers of social exposure and economic impact. The rise of significant diaspora populations from many countries produces novel forms of international linkage. As these many processes work their way into institutional forms, political patterns, and social memory, the explanatory power of the post-colonial label erodes.12
COMPARING AFRICAN STATE PERFORMANCE WITH OTHER REGIONS
One last element in the colonial legacy problematic merits exploration: its comparative dimension. In my African colonial state volume I argue for the distinctiveness of the imperial institutions of rule on the continent in comparison with their counterparts in other world regions. Although colonial occupation in Africa occurred in a more compressed time frame than in Asia, Latin America, or the Caribbean, its social, cultural, and economic impact was unusually intense. Beginning and ending later, the technologies of domination in communications and weaponry facilitated erection of a more elaborated apparatus of hegemony. The historical artificiality of the territorial units issuing from colonial partition far exceeded that of other postimperial states and yielded an especially complex ethnicity; in colonized Asia, for example, except for Indonesia and the Philippines, the units of sovereignty were grounded in historicized identities. Perhaps only nineteenth-century Latin America compares in possessing a colonial legacy steeped in authoritarian practice whose adaptation to independence posed intractable difficulties to the successor states. Without exception the independent Latin American states were plagued by instability, punctuated by episodes of military or caudillo dictatorship; only a few achieved stable democratic forms in the first century of independence.
The single instance of imperial rule implemented by a dense, penetrative occupation of the subject population whose autocratic legacy over time translated into dynamic developmental states is Japan, particularly in Korea and Taiwan. Japanese administration in these territories involved a thorough bureaucratic implantation, in whose structures large numbers of the subject populace found places in the lower echelons. Although the harshness of Japanese rule generated intense Korean nationalist antagonism (though much less in Taiwan), extensive educational and economic infrastructure intended to permanently link the colonized territories to the imperial center well served the developmental purposes of successor states. A systematic land registration facilitated postwar land reforms that analysts have identified as key economic propellants.13
Beyond the issue of colonial legacy, a few other comparative reflections may be offered. The disappointments of postcolonial African state performance by developmental measures weighs the more heavily on rulers and citizens by the unfavorable contrast with other developing regions. Since the 1980s, the East Asian developmental state has had seductive allure. An influential school of analysis has taken form, stressing the embedded autonomy enjoyed by a highly trained bureaucracy as a key to dynamic management of a capitalist economy under state leadership.14 By the late 1980s, a group of senior African policy advisors were drawn to searching examination of the Korean experience, hoping for an epiphany; although they concluded that “nothing suggests that the social and political regimes” in Africa are “much different from [those in] other countries,” the possibilities of the African state replicating the capacities of their East Asian counterparts are slim.15 Only South Africa is a remote candidate.
The emergence of China as a different emblem of extraordinary state-led economic success provides a new lodestar. The explosive growth rates once the economic reforms beginning in 1978 had taken hold draw envious glances, and the deepening Chinese engagement in African infrastructure and mineral extraction offers an attractive alternative to the traditional donor community imposition of human rights and democratic practice as conditions for receiving assistance. Authoritarian market socialism with Chinese characteristics is not for the moment an export commodity, but the giant loans and investments devoid of accompanying lessons in good governance is welcome in many capitals.
Africans correctly point out that the comparison with East Asian “tigers” is not entirely fair. Their ascent is partly the result of their having some advantages not available to Africa: the large early flow of American aid to South Korea and Taiwan, the huge resources flowing into the region as a consequence of the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and an already educated population. A deep tradition of stateness, a homogeneous and supportive cultural heritage, and a large entrepreneurial class were also facilitative factors, reinforcing a performing state. More to the point might be a comparison to other developing countries, whose political systems and social environments more closely resemble the African context. The authors who have most systematically endeavored such comparison are Atul Kohli and Peter Lewis.16
Of the four countries selected by Kohli as regional paradigmatic cases (South Korea, India, Brazil, and Nigeria), South Korea is, in terms of developmental performance, in a class by itself, Nigeria is clearly at the bottom, and India and Brazil are in between. India is riven by the world’s most complex array of cultural divisions of religion, language, and caste and is subject to regular episodes of communal violence. The initial socialist engagement mingled with the imperatives of coping with cultural complexity to produce a regulatory state and a mediocre growth record: the “license raj” superintending the “Hindu rate of
growth.” Persistent low-intensity Maoist Naxalite insurgency, ongoing since 1967, now impacts rural zones in a half-dozen Indian states and has a presence in several others.17 On the eve of the surprise emergence of India as a politico-economic giant on the global stage at the turn of the twenty-first century, leading specialists, while admiring the capacity of India to hold together in a democratic frame, arrived at pessimistic conclusions about developmental prospects. Paul Brass perceived “a decline of authoritative institutions in Indian politics[,] . . . the ever-declining effectiveness and the ever-increasing corruption of the bureaucracy, and the demoralization of the police and other state security forces and their direct involvement at times in the perpetration rather than control of violence.”18 Kohli concluded that the highly interventionist state was beset by “growing incapacity” and “relative ineffectiveness.”19 Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph note that the Indian state “directly controls a significant proportion of physical and financial capital and employs a majority of workers in the organized economy” and is thus position “to serve itself and, like other self-interested actors, to be a source of exploitation and injustice.”20 The future, once again, is another country; economic reforms that were implemented in the 1990s have elevated India’s developmental prospects, and a newly energized private sector has emerged that responds to the opportunities at the same time that the state preserves democratic structures. The reservoirs of bureaucratic skill and competence, especially at the summit, have come to the fore, even if slothful and venal habits at the base have persisted.
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