(29 janvier) l’ancien constitutionnalisme, le pouvoir, la société

Manuel Litalien

The precarious Balance

Naomi Chazan & Donald Rothchild

Politics and society in Contemporary Africa

                                                Naomi Chazan

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Introduction

 Contemporary Africa, Chapter 2

Chapter 5

 The Precarious Balance, State and Society in Africa

Conclusion 

Bibliographie

Africa and its Challenges to Political Theories

How can Africa be studied? What political process came out of the postcolonial period? To answer these questions, Naomi Chazan concentrated her observations around elements such as institutions, regimes and pattern of State-society. In order to grasp the whole complexity of the African situation, this report will first summarise the author’s thoughts to follow with a more critical analysis. Chazan forward a different typology than the one suggested by Jean-François Médard’s.[1] The latter was inspired by Weber’s neo-patrimonialism and patrimonialsm to study new social classes in postcolonial Africa as well as historical diversities of the African countries. Therefore, Médard and Chazan  agree on the plurality of scenarios existing within the geographical boundaries left by colonial occupation. Médard argue that strangers often see one aspect of the reality.[2] This paper will underling other perspectives in order to grasp another piece of the African socio-political reality.

 Let us begin with Contemporary Africa, Chapter 2 and 5. The basic concepts of contemporary African politics are the state, social groups, ethnicity, and class.[3] Chapter 2 focuses on “the consolidation and alteration of formal government institutions”.[4] Clearly, the state is a critical actor in the public arena. Which could here be related to the three types of néo-institutional approach as discuss in the text of Hall and Taylor.[5]

   Beside these different elements of analysis stand three conceptual approach, namely the organic, the configuration and finally the interactive approach. Her book operates a constant shift between the last three conceptual approach, as each of them has its strong and weak points. Precisely, the state for chazan is not the only actor accountable for African politics. In the organic approach, several themes have been underlined in order to understand the state: 1) the notion of state as a structure of domination 2) the idea of the state as a unitary actor separated (autonomous) from society 3) the concept of state as fulfilling certain functions. These themes takes for granted the centrality of the state in the independence period. In this approach, stress is put on the state to explain socio-economic phenomena. The weak points is that the view of the state is “incomplete and somewhat mechanistic”.[6] The state often takes anthropomorphic qualities. As for the configuration approach, it provides a “framework in which social groups forms and in which certain types of political action” are made possible or limited. Thus, state institutions affects not only the types of political issues raised, but how they are resolved. Here state structures tells the parameters of social action. The last but not the least, the interactive approach. She points out that it builds on the insight of the two other approaches. In this case, the social structure becomes the main focus. Implied as social structures are: specific groups, their strategies and their rules. The approach seeks to understand how the interactions between state institutions and social groups are having an impact on public institutions as well as social formations of any kind. The unity of the state becomes less assertive with the interactive approach. In sum, these three approaches are used to investigate state structure, economic and political institution to better understand the connection between institution in the public domain. This on order to get a clear picture of the specificity pertaining to the African countries.

 The first phase of postcolonial period is what Chazan called Concentration of State Power. The foundations of African states is being here looked upon as the colonial legacy. There, she raises two aspects of decolonization, respectively devolution of the administrative apparatus and the transfer of the political apparatus. “After independence, African leaders received structures of control but lack of power base.”[7] The pluralist institutions created by the colonisation were molded in a centralised authoritarian colonial context. This issue has also been treated in Bertrand Badie’s book L’État importé.[8] Therefore the problem they were used to face reflected the concerns of the colonial designers. This lead to reorganisation of the public institutions and concentrating power at the centre. At this point, the system of domination replaced the institutional networks of the colonial period.[9] The first postcolonial period saw the consolidation of state institutions, power concentration and power diffusion. In that period, the state had tenuous power and legitimacy and very little authority.[10]

 The second phase is the Elaboration of State Power. During the 60s and 70s, to the reorganisation of government structure succeeded new form of public administration, coercive apparatus, legal order and political institutions. Administration can be summarise as follow, growth of bureaucratic in African states. The expansion of parastatals (state enterprise). Proliferation of state-owned enterprise, which proved to be inefficient. Civil servants and government emerged as a new dominant class in postcolonial period. The expansion of the administration happens to highlight the frailty of the institutions in most of African states.

The Coercive apparatus relates to the elaboration of state power, as such the process of militarization. This resume to the growth of enforcement agencies, like the police. The military and the police are all symbol of independence. Then the question of military cohesion appeared. The military became an essential branch of formal sovereign structures. The relation between decision-maker and armed forced had an impact on the social environment. As a consequence, it could undermine the very state which built it.

 The legal order : generally the legal system was built on two foundation, the customary law which was different to every localities. The second was the set of institution, such as courts of appeal. Here is also the important question of the constitution. Court began to be a mean to contest traditional authority, for example in the case of land disagreement. Their were also cases of confrontation between the court and the government over civil rights. This does not mean that the court was excluded from political favouritism.

 The last element is what the author calls the Political machinery. The first two decade after independence, the subordination of the political apparatus, so the political manoeuvre was under the constraint to the executive. Legislature had little voice in decision-making. Later, the single party-system which was created shortly after independence was taking new distinct forms. The party became a medium for political communication and a legitimating device. This lead opening to the multiparty system. It was measure with success only in Mauritius and Namibia. The problem is that most African government lacked well-defined popular foundation. Chazan calls it the state crisis of legitimacy before the tribunal of African pluralism.[11]

 So to conclude on this second phase called the Elaboration of State Power, “the process of administrative proliferation and political enfeeblement made lots of African institutions weak.[12] This brings us to the third phase: Reconsideration of State power. Late 70s and early 80s, this was a time of organisational crisis. The crisis was a characteristic of the state-society relations for Chazan. The situation had numerous reasons: 1) regime change lead population uncertain, 2) the extensive nature of the administration and coercive apparatus, 3) government institution used public funds for enrichment of their civil servants, politicians and supporters, 4) abuse of public office (elite fighting for their piece of pie), 5) institutions inability to fulfil small basic task. Again, state institution crisis were not experience to the same degree in all African countries.

 What has been under study lately is the centralised statism that marked the first decade of independence. Lots of authoritarian regime still persisted through the 90s, but most of the countries agreed to review their structure of the public sphere and institutional adjustment. The weakness of the government has been identified: “scarcity of resources, politicised patterns of social differentiation, over expanded state structures, insufficient state legitimacy, inadequate state power, and the lack of adaptation of alien institution to local conditions.”[13] Other external and internal factors have come to play an important role. Example, support plans from foreign donors, IMF and World Bank. New opening to participatory opportunities, for example political oppositions. This meant allowing greater competition in the political arena. Meanwhile, with progress, anarchy is still a threat.[14]

 Chapter 5 is the author’s typology methods. She explains the lens through which African politics can be analysed. Again, this is far more nuance than the analysis proposed by Jean-Fraçois Médard. Here is a typology of 6 regimes: Administrative-hegemonic, Pluralist, Party-mobilising, Party-centralist, Personal-coercive and Populist. It attempts to illustrate the political realities of the African countries between 1951 and 1999.

  She starts with the Administrative-hegemonic regimes. They relate to three key institutions: the executive, the bureaucracy and the coercive apparatus. Here, policy decision revolves around the leader and his close advisers. The bureaucracy carries out mainly specific technical and professional decisions. As for the coercive apparatus, the military are more generally under control.[15] As this type of regime seems to be exclusionary, major actors are involved in the decision-making process. For example, Policy makers, Interest group leaders (ethnic, regional, class, occupational and gender) can be found co-operating with governmental institutions. Here, state resources and states office are being use to construct a state managerial class. This type of regime has been marked by the solidity of the dominant class. The Administrative-hegemonic regime has been known to encourage foreign investment, but in the same time, poor redistribution of resource. Conflict has arisen mainly within the elite or among factions organised by members of the ruling class.[16] Apparently, this regime has acquired certain degree of stability through flexibility and response to the dominant class and ethnic forces. For example: Kenya, Zair (under Mobutu) and Morocco. But again, the author reminds us that within the Administrative-hegemonic regime exist varying degree of stability. Some regime are more competitive than others. For example, strife-ridden administrative competitive regimes (Nigeria), and patrimonial-administrative regimes (Togo, Liberia, Congo). 

  Lets know turn to the Pluralist regimes. The relationship between public bodies has been based on separation of power, as well as multiparty political institutions and representative structures. The political agenda has focus on pursuing interest-group involvement and autonomous non-governmental activities. The notion of check-and balance has been retained, resulting in a loosely organised political context where centralised political structures is not as apparent as in the administrative regime. The political inclusion has brought more concern with local issues.[17] Yet this type of regime has not succeeded in maintaining themselves in Africa. The workability of the pluralist regime has proven to be very few : Botswana, Mauritius, Senegal, Namibia. Unfortunately, pluralist regimes have been associated mainly with clientelism and elite privilege. In the 1990s, African regimes had to open up because of mass protest.

 Our third regime is the Party-Mobilising regime. It is said to have elements of the Pluralist and Administrative-hegemonic regimes. All Party-Mobilising regime has reflected the “organisational preferences of founding fathers with strong socialist predispositions”.[18] Socialist predispositions were mainly until the 1990s. Here the public institutions rested on the combination of strong one-party domination with bureaucratic expansion under the control of an executive president. Here, the politico-administrative pattern of institutionalisation encouraged the centralisation of power around the leader and the party. The coercive device has proven to be the consolidation of party-state control. Here the social control has been gain through heavy national and party identification and affiliation. The Party-Mobilising regime depends heavily on ideology and has promoted unity and uniformity in their political discourse. These regimes have a mixed history of independence, in some cases strong social organisation was present, as it was the case with Uganda and Ghana. This type of regime has become virtually extinct in the 1990s.

Party-Centralist regimes are also quite distinct form of regime since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their traits are mainly extensive central control and direction. They have been less tolerant to the local social force demands and they also have been quite reluctant with external actors. Some of the countries that could here be put forward are Angola, Benin, Mozambique. The unity party goes above the administrative structures and in some countries the military’s presence too pronounced. This type of regime usually rejects state-society relations, although some exception can be found.[19] Violent rebellion has been a constant concern also. The Party-Centralist regime was engage in state-owned institution.

Personal-Coercive Regimes can be associated with the connection between a strong leader and the coercive apparatus. The bureaucracy, the political machinery, the court system all have been subjugated by the leader and the military force. All exchanges have been regularised, as in dictatorial regime. These regimes have limited the ability to gain access to public institutions. In Liberia, for example, the strategy was absolutist control. Personal-Coercive Regimes have not fared well in postindependence Africa.

Populist Regimes on the other hand, has emerged in the 1980s and responded to unpredictable dictatorial trends. For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). It sought to reconstruct public institutions and its interrelation with social groups. It sought to introduce a direct popular voice in policy making and to limit the independence of the bureaucracy. Populist regimes relies on the concept of social inclusion defined in none elite terms. The main concern has been to mobilise popular support and limit the elite’s privilege. Here the key concern was regulating states economic enterprise. Unfortunately, these regimes have proven to be transitory to Hegemonic-administrative forms.

In sum, after enumerating her typology the author explains how these forms of regimes are fluid and requires, from the observer, to analyse the way decisions are being taken and implemented. The response to the decision, as to what action it evokes, also reveals the political process.     

The next text also by Chazan is The Precarious Balance, State and Society in Africa. This part will focus on her Chapter 5, where she seeks to explain patterns of state-society. Her arguments evolves around two elements: incorporation and disengagement. She starts off be stipulating how hard it is to grasp realities with limitation of existing framework of analysis. By such, she explains the limitation of the State-centric approaches. The unit of analysis for these approaches is the state. It has stressed the importance of the state as a historical actor and a key agent of macropolitical processes. It looks at the political process from the top down. Their object of analysis is the social and economic trends. So, the present situation and conditions would be explain in terms of state, state policy and reactions to state actions. Clearly these approaches have an anthropomorphic view of the state as an entity.

 Recently, the state autonomy and state failure have directed the attention on economic deterioration and decline. Therefore the state-centric approaches have proven to be far less useful than the Society-based approaches. They highlight survival strategies in changing economics and political circumstances. Therefore focussing more on the internal dynamic of socio-economic. These Society-based approaches allow to explore the identities of specific social groups. The analysis is from bottom up, contrary to the State-centric approaches. Here the unit of analysis is specific social group or local communities. The level of analysis is clearly the micro collectivity. The object of analysis is the socio-economic process as well as political dynamics. Explanations of the current African situation are in terms of social predilection, action and behaviour. Likewise, the danger of macro analysis was to over generalise, here at the micro level, the danger is to minimise or even to ignore the state activities. Delimiting overlapping manifestations of social and political action has also been a major concern. State is no longer view as the centre stage of shifting social relation.[20]

 Overall, African politics defies the neat, clear-cut classification. The images of African politics today are disparate. Chazan speaks of the relativity of the state-society relations, which has to be recognise officially. So, State-society becomes a dependent and independent variable to the political process. The state is no longer recognised as having an entity on its own.[21] From this it is easy to deduce that power, politics and control are no longer “coterminous” with the “state”.[22] This leads us to identify varieties of states and degree of stateness on the African continent. Why for example, some states have problem attaining their goal?

 To analyse this perspective, Chazan turns to the dimension of Incorporation and disengagement. What are the Substantive Dimensions, the human dimensions, the spatial dimensions and the symbolic dimensions? In the substantive dimensions, the state is view as a “public bureaucracy or administrative apparatus who is responsible in maintaining external security, internal order, economic activity and ideological-cultural cohesion.”[23] The author puts an emphasis on informal and nonformal economy. The result of failure comes from governments, inadequate and irrelevant policies, eager incentives, poor distribution mechanisms and rampant inefficiency and corruption. This has altered production and limited accumulation. So the result is a parallel economy between the informal and nonformal. The author observed the economic separation of the state and social groups. After, she relates informal economy to “smuggling”.

“It is activities that are supposedly controlled by the state but… either evade this control or involve illegal use of state position… the nonformal economy (which ignores the state and operates beyond its each) is beginning to emerge.”[24]

The parallel economy is also a result of the state engagement in the market or the frailties of state economic structures. It is marked by the quest for self-reliance. Local communities function without governments.[25]

             The most tangible economic disengagement of the state is measurable: it is the physical escape from its territory. This is outward migration pursued by either skilled professionals or rural manual labour. Chazan interprets it as a process of economic incorporation and disengagement between the state and society. The state is beyond state control and is a challenge to the validity of the political power structure. Efforts have been made on this issue by engaging large portion of their population to the political and economical sphere. Highlighting local cultural properties has been one other aspect of the situation.

             The Human Dimensions could be characterise as the relation between specific groups and those who occupy state office. It centres on the organisation of the actors within, alongside and beyond public institutions. The human axis of the state-society is concern with the notion of the state as an entity, which embodies the structure of the human interactions.[26] Here the concerns are about the emergence of new classes and their impact on society. Nevertheless, class relations lack cohesive structure in Africa. Soft “state” is a direct result of a situation where “no class is really in control and dominant enough to ensure reproduction of a given macro-economic system”.[27] Institutions are seen as an important way toward class formation. The ethnicity here is also another way to look at the social process, since they have been effective in the extraction of state resource. Chazan mentions the possibility that ethnicity autonomy will eventually become counter-integrative. So we have ethnicity and class as a tool to the variety of social organisation. Religious groups, state managers and women are also key agents. Africa’s distinction between private and public is precisely founded in terms of household (private) and state (public) division. The human dimensions allow to examine dynamic that would otherwise be left out in a state-centric view.

 Spatial Dimensions takes on the geographical aspect. The location of the various activities of specific groups. The state here is define as the key arena for decision making and social interchange. Although, formal geographical boundaries of the states are still matters of conflict, the territorial concept is a major aspect in analysing power issues. Spatial facet of incorporation and disengagement shed lights on where power is held in the political process.[28] Here, the smallest unit of exchange would be the household and the village community. Each of them has their domestic and international contacts. She studies the settings of the new process of social differentiation, political participation and capitalist growth. That is very well represented by the new increase in urbanisation. She mentions regions and geographically defined cultural entities as key loci of activity and interaction. One can firmly argue that the boundaries of African state are highly porous. In this context of fluidity; boundaries are being redefine and social, economic and cultural spaces reorganised.[29]

 Symbolic Dimensions deals with the problem of identity. Here the state plays a normative role of binding values. Relations between social groups and the state can be viewed in terms of utility or identity. The identification with the state is subjective and can have profound historical connections other than with shared memories. Africa has strong historical roots that predate by far the colonial period. However, the history of the contemporary African states are not so well grounded. Therefore, unity and common consciousness are what she identifies as a “myth” which belongs to the domain of ideologies. This is precisely what she refers to as a normative model of construction. Some of these models are there to maintain the position and status of the ruling elites.[30] Her conclusion on this matter is that many groups that links with each other and with the state do so because they think it is worthwhile. New modes of interactions are giving ways to new ideologies. Integration is about identity, organisation, consciousness and action, “including a range of relationships between a sense of difference and the state or political whole”.[31]

 In sum, attachment to social groups and state structure have moved along substantive, human, spatial and symbolic lines. Actual movements within and outside the state-society have allowed to rethink the notion of state, statehood and stateness. The study offered by Chazan is a major attempt to delineate the state-society relation. The nature of the African states is a result of the rhythm of the relations between social entities, public institutions and officials.[32] Leaders’ organic view of the state is giving away to a more locally define interactive notion of statehood. So, the patterns of incorporation and disengagement have had many different kinds, depending on the time, the location, and the entity involved. Politics are principally an ongoing process in Africa that will need further attention.

 Chazan’s work is deeply concerned with the complexity of the African political realities. One gets the impression her works gives justice to that complexity by giving us new means of comparison. Her typology attempts to classify the distinctions inherent to the African states by shifting from the macro to the micro analysis. Yet the reader has a strong feeling she emphasises the micro perspective with her state-society focus. It shows her unity of references in relation to her ontological approach of the African countries.[33] The author’s work is far from being simple because of her desire to embrace so many aspects of the political African realities. Meanwhile, her thorough introspection of the socio-political sphere allows the readers to go beyond models previously read in the text of Jean-François Médard: États d’Afrique noire and the notion of patrimonialsim and néo-patrimonialsm of Max Weber.

REFERENCES

BADIE, Bertrand, L‘état importé, Essai sur l’occidentalistaion de l’ordre politique, France, éd. : Fayard, 1992, 334 p.

BÉLANGER, André-J., « Épistémologues de la science politique à vos marques! », Épistémologie de la science politique, Québec, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1998

CHAZAN, Naomi, The Precarious Blance, State and Society in Africa, London, Boulder Westview Press, 1988, 357 p.

CHAZAN, Naomi, Politics and Society in Cotemporary Africa, 3^rd Edition, Boulder, Colo. : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999, 543 p.

HALL, Peter A., TAYLOR, C.R., « La science politique et les trois néo-institutionnalismes », Revue française de science politique, vol. :47, n.o.3-4, juin-août, 1997

HERMET, Guy, Le Passage à la démocratie, Paris, Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1996, 129 p.

MÉDARD, Jean-François, L’état néo-patrimonial en Afrique noire, Paris, éd. : Karthala, 1991