POLI 319 Lecture 11: Poli324
13 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Politics of Developig Areas/Africa
African Politics from a comparative perspective
A faraway place where good people go hungry, bad people run government, and
chaos and anarchy are the norm – George Alagiah
Binyavanga Wainaina (ow to write about Africa
• In your text treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with
rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are
starving.
Causality?
• Conflates cause with effect in political analysis
• How do we explain authoritarian rule?
Undermines effective international intervention
• Overlooks root causes
o Land conflicts; poverty
• Limited view of consequences
o Sexual violence as bargaining tool
• State power
o Increases authoritarianism
o Obscures political and economic divergence and growth
▪ Economist 2013
▪ Rise in labour productivity; lower inflation and debt, boom in
middle class; infrastructural investment
Common themes addressed in the course
• Key challenges for Africa
o The search for stable and legitimate governments
o Quest for unity within heterogeneity
o Struggle for economic development, poverty and public health
Providing a political analysis to understanding Africa
• Key elements to keep in mind
o Political power
o Resource distribution
o Causes of conflict and conflict resolution
o Africa is both unique and similar to other regions
o Conceptual tools to be utilized
▪ Theories of the state
▪ Civil society
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ Role of the international system
The Historical context
Pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial legacies are key
• Pre-colonial legacies
o Centralized empires and small stateless societies
o Islam and Christianity evident
o Legacy of the slave trade important
• Colonial rule and the scramble for Africa
o New civil and military administrations
▪ New centralized forms of bureaucratic authority
Historical inheritance
7 primary legacies of colonialism
1. Artificiality of political boundaries after the Berlin congress (1884-85)
2. Multiplicity of societies and predating colonialism
a. Ghana, Mali, Songhai
b. Segmentary societies
i. No leadership structures
3. Economic weakness
a. Cash cropping, primary commodity exports: taxation, forced labour
4. External dependence
a. Vulnerable to external shocks
5. Rise of small, western-educated elite
a. Western education/Christianity
6. Fragile state institutions/authoritarian
7. Absence of shared political culture
Post-independence
Diverse political trajectories
• Conservative single party systems (Senegal)
o Negotiated peacefully
• Populist authoritarian rule (Tanzania/Guinea)
o Ideologically inspired leadership
• Radical revolutionary regimes (Mozambique)
o Armed struggle in settler regimes
Modernization theory
• Economics: industrialization, growth focus
• Society: individual mobility over communal identities
• Politics: liberal democracy
o Traditional-modern dichotomy
o Political parties
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Critique?
• Scholarly critique
o Western bias; teleological bias
o Society centered
o Neglect of working of state bureaucracy
▪ Patron client ties and networks
o Neglect of anti-colonial ideologies; Pan-Africanism; racial justice
o Ignored international system/DEPENDENCE
Dependency/underdevelopment schools (1970s)
• Historical: class conflict on a global scale
• Economics: underdevelopment result of unequal exchange
• Society: dominant classes vs. masses
• Politics: alliance of elites in the core and periphery
Critique
• Neglect of African autonomy
• The character of the state
• Culture/nationalism/ethnicity neglected
• Overly pessimistic
• Obscured variations and change?
• Apolitical?
Statist approach (1980s-90s) (or it is all about leadership)
• Politics
o Assumes the African state is autonomous
o Focus on leadership
o Patron-client relations
o Personal rule
• Critique
o Obscured the nature of the state in Africa
o Neglected state-society relations
o Critique of political science on African in general (Hyden, p.23)
o Top down analysis
o Neglect of informal politics and economies
So we need a new synthesis that accounts for
• Complexity of state-society relations
• Focus on
o Civil society
o The state
o The international system combined
▪ Historical, cultural, ecological and international factors all
important
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
