This study clarifies the meaning of clientelism and documents its extent in sub-Saharan Africa—a region that political scientists and policy makers often view as especially clientelistic. It proposes an understanding of clientelism as personal contact between citizens and politicians in which citizens request selective rather than public goods in exchange for political loyalty. It then suggests that assessments of clientelism in Africa are sensitive to the amount of information about personal contact that surveys provide. Closed-ended Afrobarometer surveys suggest that personal contact is mostly clientelistic, whereas the original open-ended questionnaires employed in an original survey from Niger suggest that the bulk of citizen requests are programmatic. Leveraging detail in Nigeriens’ qualitative accounts of visiting and calling politicians, the highly personalized contact of Nigeriens can be understood as an adaptation to limits on impersonal contact, not a sign that politicians are circumventing formal channels of communication in order to distribute patronage under the table.

This article is about self-defense movements in Burkina Faso, with an emphasis on the interplay of political pragmatics and cultural representation in public debate. It examines how two different self-defense movements—the dozos and the koglweogos—articulate tradition and politics with respect to locally organized self-defense in present-day Burkina Faso. In addition to a description of these movements, this comparative study of self-defense movements adds the important dimension of political rivalry and antagonism between the movements under study. First, it demonstrates how the state has tried to contain self-defense movements. Second, the emergence of koglweogos is analyzed with respect to public debate, as well as the state’s attempts to contain the movement bureaucratically. Third, it describes how dozos and koglweogos seek to assert public authority in “the new Burkina Faso” that has taken shape since the fall of Blaise Compaoré in October, 2014. More specifically, this article is devoted to the conflictual relationship between the dozos and the koglweogos that was publicly enacted in late 2016 and early 2017. Self-defense movements must not only be locally and traditionally legitimate, but they also need to be responsible actors in the national political space. Hence, “performing tradition, while doing politics” simultaneously represents the political containment and the cultural legitimacy of the self-defense movements.

Indigenous Lessors and Non-native Tenants: Land at Stake and Political Engagement in Cameroon

Is there more to Chad than the murderous idiosyncrasies of an improbable state which shares with its neighbors the vicissitudes of drought, famine, and environmental bankruptcy? The question is not merely rhetorical. In order to bring the present conflicts and confusions within the realm of comparative discourse, the uniqueness of the Chadian crisis must be assessed against its generic traits. To those of us who once debated whether Zaire was a unique or an extreme case, the issue has a familiar ring, and it carries intimations of inconclusiveness that may well apply to other states, including Chad.

All states are, in one way or another, unique and Chad in more ways than one. Its uniqueness goes far beyond its sudden emergence as a strategic pawn in a desert war among proxies. With its national territory semi-partitioned, its northern half under Libyan occupation and its southern flank threatened by rebel activity; with a government in exile comprising no less than eleven factions at the latest count, some in open warfare with others, some appealing to Libya for continued military support, and others perpetually casting about to form an anti-Libyan coalition; with a central government overwhelmingly dependent on outside donors for military, economic, and financial aid but, nonetheless, highly sensitive to attempts at external manipulation; with a capital city in shambles, an infrastructure thoroughly inadequate for the tasks of rehabilitation and national reconstruction, and anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 refugees living in neighboring states—what other state can make as many claims to being unique in coping with, or surrendering to, the blows of adversity?

By tracing the Rwandan state’s “mundane sights”—everyday forms of presence and monitoring—the article sheds light on the historical development and striking continuities in “interactive surveillance” across a century of turbulent political change. It considers three emblematic surveillance technologies—the institution of nyumbakumi, the identity card, and umuganda works (and public activities more broadly)—which, despite their implication in genocide, were retained, reworked, and even bolstered after the conflict ended. The article investigates what drives the observed continuity and “layering” of social monitoring over time, highlighting the key role played by ambiguity and ambivalence in this process. The research expands the concept of political surveillance, moving away from the unidirectional notion of “forms of watching,” and questions any easy distinctions between visibility and invisibility in the exercise of power or its subversion.

On returning to power following the coup d’etat of December 31, 1981, Flight-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings set two major goals: the restoration of power to the people and the waging of a “holy war” against corruption. In line with these objectives, he suspended the constitution, banned political parties, detained party leaders, and took a number of extra-legal actions. Almost immediately questions began to surface about the prospects of the regime’s impact on Ghana’s long civil liberties tradition. This essay will examine the basis for these fears and assess whether or not they might be justified. An attempt is made to do this by placing the Ghanaian civil liberties situation in a broader comparative context, seeking in this way to give a balanced perspective on this subject.

During the first week in August 1972 General Idi Amin Dada, President of the Second Republic of Uganda, announced the mass expulsion of Asians over a period not to exceed three months. Thus began the final chapter in the story of the Indian presence in Uganda. General Amin had once again made newspaper headlines all over the world. While press coverage had not been favorable to the General, it became particularly scathing in October when he expressed his views on Hitler and the Jews. What began as consternation quickly turned into intense vitriol against Amin, and newspapers throughout the world reflected this change. With the exception of a few papers in West, East, and Central Africa, however, most of the African press did not comment on the General's pronouncements. Black African leaders — with the notable exception of President Kaunda of Zambia and President Nyerere of Tanzania — adopted a curious attitude of non-interference.

In our original perspectives and hypotheses on Small Urban Centers in Rural Development in Africa, we stated that these small centers are “the most strategic key to problems of Rural Development…points of articulation between the national systems of marketing, distribution and policy development on the one hand and the interests and productivity of the rural poor on the other.” They are “points of articulation of incentives for greater productivity…at which local rural interests are aggregated and expressed to government and party…sources of new ideas and belief systems…what some would call ‘modernizing centers,’ sources of innovation, politicization, mobilization and national integration” (Southall, 1979: 371).

As knowledge grew, our hopeful optimism was punctured and this rosy, positive picture faded. We had recognized the stagnation of the rural sector, the over-centralization and over-bureaucratization of goverments, increasing the fiscal burden, weakening popular local institutions, benefiting mainly elites and even resorting to counterproductive coercion (Southall, 1979b: 375-7). In short, we had recognized that rural development efforts so far have been disappointing and that hypotheses on rural development “must take the form of assuming conditions which do not now prevail.” None the less, with hindsight, we see that our propositions tended to state aspirations as facts, in the wrong tense and the wrong mood. We now recognize in them the same flaws that we still recognize in many other grant-seeking documents.

We had also entertained the hypothesis that a three-tiered structure of local points of concentration, somewhat analogous to the Chinese three-tiered commune-production brigade-production team hierarchy, was likely to emerge if positive small center development took place; it was a valid model even without the Maoist ideology (Southall, 1979:377).

One can say with certainty that all the contradictions that had bedeviled previous democratic experiments in Nigeria were present and magnified in the February 27, 1999 election: divided loyalties, manipulation of primordial identities and loyalties, corruption and other election malpractices, lack of political discipline, and limited attention to serious structural questions.

Why did Chief Olu Falae lose the election to General Olusegun Obasanjo? Several reasons can be advanced. First, Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) clearly had more money. Obasanjo was able to donate N 130 million and several cars to his party.

Between 1900 and 1940 the establishment of French colonial administration and the introduction of cash crop agriculture led to far-reaching social and economic changes among the Diola of Boulouf, in southwestern Senegal. Also during this period, the Muslim religion began to attract converts in Boulouf. The growth of urban migration and trade, together with the sale of peanuts as a cash crop, brought a degree of financial autonomy to the young men who participated in these activities. Many of these individuals converted to Islam to achieve status not accessible to them in the traditional social structure.

During the 1930s a series of natural calamities afflicted Diola society. The cumulative effect of these disasters and of continuing social and economic change, was to promote a sense of loss of power over their world among the Diola. This led, in turn, to a great acceleration in the rate of religious conversion. By the beginning of World War II, a majority of the Diola of Boulouf had become Muslim.

The 220 thousand Diola are the largest ethnic group in the Lower Casamance region of southwestern Senegal. Sedentary rice farmers, they have a social organization comprising shallow patrilineages three or four generations deep. The 40 thousand people of Boulouf, the region north of the Casamance River, west of the administrative center of Bignona, and south of the Diouloulou marigot, are a subgroup with distinctive dialect and cultural traits. They inhabit twenty-one villages numbering from six hundred to six thousand persons; each community in turn contains two or more semi-autonomous wards. In southern Boulouf there is a sizeable Catholic population; northern Boulouf is, however, 95 percent Muslim. The Islamic area constitutes the subject of this study.

This essay outlines a realist explanation for an increase in women's participation in formal political processes in Uganda. The essay notes that a variety of factors influence women's participation in formal politics, such as demands for increased participation from women and women's organizations, the influence of the worldwide feminist movement, and Uganda's turbulent political and economic history which has created openings for novel political initiatives. However, the paper's central argument asserts that women's role in formal politics in Uganda is expanding principally because women constitute a potentially influential voting bloc in an era in which the liberalization of African economic and political systems limits politicians' abilities to build electoral support based on patronage. The essay suggests that in this context, politicians will seek to build support around issues that can be addressed with symbolic solutions. In sum, this essay asserts that women's increased role in formal politics in Uganda has been brought about by power-seeking politicians who are sympathetic to feminist issues because (1) electoral strategies are severely limited by liberal political and economic values and (2) politicians can secure support from women with relatively low-cost symbolic political initiatives. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the implications of an expansion of women's influence in formal politics in Uganda, especially concerning the potential for women's political support to “cross-cut” historical Ugandan political allegiances defined by ethnicity, religion, region, and political party affiliation.

Readers of Issue know better than to accept the images of tribalism and ancient hatreds propagated in much of the American press during the early days and weeks of the genocide in Rwanda. And the media (or at least some journalists) came around eventually to a recognition that far from mindless tribal violence, this was planned and calculated genocide. Still, in North America it is the deaths and brutality that have most mesmerized public attention; there has been too little discussion of the political, social, and economic context in which the genocide occurred.

Over the last decade, African regional organizations have gained considerable scope in peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Two subregional organizations in particular, ECOWAS and SADC, have gathered significant experience in military interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This article assesses the decision-making processes of both organizations ahead of the interventions and concludes that African states participate in military interventions for reasons of national and personal interests rather than humanitarian reasons or out of a primary interest in preserving regional stability. The article draws from extensive fieldwork in four African countries.

In the post cold war era, most of the wars in the international community have occurred in Third World countries, and African countries have experienced on the average more years of civil and external wars than other Third World countries. What are the consequences of war on African societies? Do states involved in war tend to fare worse than those not involved in war? In this paper, data on African countries involved in war and those that were not involved in war between 1960 and 1983 were examined for evidence of differences in development patterns after war. In contrast to the few studies on the consequences of war, where war was associated with positive development in the European countries, this study posits that wars in African countries are unlikely to produce similar outcomes.

Conflicts, which exist on a continuum from low to high intensity, range from individual acts of aggression and protest to organized extreme violence perpetuated by institutions, organizations and countries. Conflicts on the low intensity side of the continuum are less violent, involving few, if any deaths, while conflicts on the other end, called wars, involve numerous deaths. The most intensive end of the continuum—war, defined here as violence sponsored by countries which involves at least 1,000 military troops—was selected as the focus of this research because of an interest in the impact of war on the development of the state.

Our understanding of the international political economy of Africa is underdeveloped; we have inadequate data and theories about the development of underdevelopment on the continent. Even the orthodox study of international politics and foreign policy in Africa is largely a recent phenomenon, stimulated by the rise of new states in the last twenty years. This essay, then, can be no more than a review of the field and a lament over its deficiencies. In particular, we are concerned about: i) the relative inattention afforded the impact of international politics on the rate and direction of social change in African states; ii) the need for a new conceptual framework to advance our understanding of the linkage politics between African elites and external interests; and iii) the related growth and international inequalities on the continent. This essay proceeds therefore from a critical review of analyses of the international political economy of Africa to a tentative presentation of a new typology of states and regimes, regions and behavior, in Africa which reflects the importance of those variables on which students of political economy focus.

Trying to avoid lending authority to any one culture over others, current advocates of multiculturalism generally emphasize the appreciation of difference among cultures. Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina today provide horrifying evidence that difference can have precisely the opposite impact. On the one hand, difference can be necessary to national self-confidence, but, on the other, it can stir destructive tribal or national pride. Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart represents the cultural roots of the Igbos in order to provide self-confidence, but at the same time he refers them to universal principles which vitiate their destructive potential. Seeing his duty as a writer in a new nation as showing his people the dignity that they lost during the colonial period, he sets out to illustrate that before the European colonial powers entered Africa, the Igbos “had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity” (1973, 8). Achebe, however, cannot achieve his goal merely by representing difference; rather he must depict an Igbo society which moderns can see as having dignity. What is remarkable about his Igbos is the degree to which they have achieved the foundations of what most people seek today—democratic institutions, tolerance of other cultures, a balance of male and female principles, capacity to change for the better or to meet new circumstances, a means of redistributing wealth, a viable system of morality, support for industriousness, an effective system of justice, striking and memorable poetry and art. Achebe apppears to have tested Igbo culture against the goals of modern liberal democracy and to have set out to show how the Igbo meet those standards.

This paper acknowledges that states in Africa have contributed to the problems confronting social science research on the continent. It argues, however, that the causes of the problem go beyond the state. The paper undertakes an intensive exercise in introspection within the continental and external Africanist communities to explain the problems confronting social science research on the continent. The study identifies several factors as challenges facing research: intellectual distancing of the disciplines from society, the retrogressive sociopolitical atmosphere that characterizes some African universities, and the negative attitudes of individual academics. It argues further that these problems are compounded by the politics surrounding the hierarchical processes of intellectual validation and propagation at the global level. The paper concludes that without a correction of these internal and external deficiencies, it will be difficult to maintain a respectable and beneficial level of research endeavor, integrity, collaboration, and sustainability.

Recent scholarship on pastoral societies in Africa indicates that qualitative changes are taking place in their economies (Picard 1980; Galaty and Salzman 1981; Swift 1982; Toulmin 1984; Sutter, 1987; Behnke 1984; Little 1985; Rigby 1985; Kelley 1987; Munei 1987). Although this literature shows that these changes are largely induced by urban groups, such as merchants and state bureaucrats who invade the pastoral range, it nevertheless fails to theorize systematically the nature of the transformation. As recent contributions of Berry (1989), Okoth-Ogendo (1989), and Blaikie (1989) indicate, changes in land tenure in rural Africa are part and parcel of larger social and economic processes operating in African economies, which lead to the reorganization of property relations and the restructuring of rights of access to resources. In spite of the warnings by these authors, even the more theoretically informed literature does not follow through with the implications of conceptual insights regarding the nature of pastoral transformation. Fundamentally, the contours of pastoral transformation very much depend on the structure and internal coherence of the pastoral sector and the type and the tendency of the capital impinging on it. This article is a contribution to the debate over the nature of African pastoral transformation and the social forces operating in that process.