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The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective.
... These notions are related to the evolution of modern state. The evolution and maturity of the modern state is thus a constitutive requisite for state emancipation and societal pacification (Chabal and Daloz 1999;Young 1994). The dialectical relationship between the emergence of a modern state and its emancipation and societal pacification form the theoretical and empirical frame of analysis and understanding of PB and SB in the popular progressive model. ...
... Emancipation as a constitutive of modern state represents a development of three interrelated qualities: (i) autonomy of the state, (ii) a state that stands above societal groups, (iii) the establishment of state hegemony over society (Bereketeab 2011(Bereketeab , 2021Chabal and Daloz 1999;Young 1994). State autonomy stands for independence of the state where it is able to exercise legitimate authority and control over society. ...
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Abstract This paper examines the challenges of post-conflict Peacebuilding and State Building (PBSB) in Africa. The paper's point of departure is a functional and enduring PBSB, basically, deals with the fundamental foundation of societal construction. The paper examines two conceptions. The two are neoliberal and popular progressive. It is the contention of the paper that PBSB is achieved through gradual evolutionary historical process. As gradual historical transformation process, it is contingent on domestic realities, trajectories, socioeconomic, demographic, ethno-political structures, relationship, sociopolitical forces and actor-ship. Unlike neoliberal understanding that focuses on technical and administrative, apolitical and ahistorical, external expertise and knowledge, institutions, top-down, etc. imposition; the alternative model of popular progressive understanding focuses on basics of societal construction. The paper's principal focus is on conceptual and theoretical aspects. It concludes only the popular progressive alternative could achieve sustainable and functional peace, security and development.
... Yet other scholars hold that the appearance of a despotic and authoritarian ruler after independence, as has so often occurred, cannot be considered an aspect of the colonial legacy (Young 1994). Booth (2007b) has noted this as well. ...
... These scholars agree that regardless of the legacy, if any, of colonialism, by the early 1990s it had vanished (Grier 1999;Young 1994). Thus, according to Maseland (2018), since gaining independence countries in Africa, for example, have "followed an institutional and economic development path that is determined less and less by their colonial origins and more by their own characteristics and contemporary environment" (284). ...
... Explicitly building upon the work of their predecessors, Acemoglu, Johnson, andRobinson (2001, 1372) highlight the unique contribution of their work, as they, "are not aware of others who have pointed out the link between settler mortality and institutions." For example, the authors cite, and seek to build upon, Young's (1994) exploration of the persistence of colonial institutions. Furthermore, they also respond to authors such as Diamond (1999) who have suggested that climate or distance from the equator is correlated with economic performance. ...
This chapter explores the role of asymmetric information in state-led efforts to facilitate voluntary colonial migration. By considering two cases of incentivized migration in the 19th century—to French Algeria and to once-Native American territories—it draws attention to policymakers’ convenient omissions about the detriment and cost of colonization upon third party indigenous communities. In cases of choice architecture, this paper argues that the state has an historically-unmet duty both to quantify the third-party effects of its ‘nudges,’ and to rectify potential informational asymmetries.
... They are inconsistent with the idea that the devolution of power to nonstate authorities and recognition of subnational identities threatens the state's ability to implement its chosen policies. Ruling indirectly through existing authorities has long been used as a method of projecting power across territory (Acemoglu, Reed, and Robinson 2014;Baldwin 2011;Mamdani 1996;Weber 1978;Young 1997). However, this strategy, while politically expedient, is thought to breed state weakness over the long term (Hutchcroft 2000;Soifer 2016). ...
How does the recognition of collective self-governance rights for indigenous communities affect national unity and state consolidation? In recent decades, many states have recognized such rights, devolving de jure control over land and local governance to indigenous institutions. Prominent perspectives in the state-building literature suggest that these policies are likely to threaten state consolidation by strengthening nonstate authorities at the expense of state authority and subnational identities at the expense of a national identity. Yet few studies have tested whether these policies have the consequences their critics claim. I address this gap, leveraging spatial and temporal variation in the granting of communal land titles to indigenous communities in the Philippines. Using difference-in-differences and panel designs, I find that titling increases both indigenous self-identification and compliance with the state. Results from an original survey experiment suggest that recognizing collective self-governance rights increases identification with the nation.
... Racism was endemic to European colonialism and imperialism, especially in Africa. In other words, it was the ordinary experience of people of colour (Young 1994). Biko (1978:25) describes racism as the 'discrimination by a group against another for subjugation or maintaining subjugation'. ...
The sin of racism severely and deeply affects the victims. The response in many instances is to remain silent to survive. The result is traumatic and even becomes symptomatic unless addressed. This article discussed the role that liturgy could play as an anti-racist praxis. However, firstly is discussed the underlying struggle of two Reformed Churches to become not only in polity but in praxis, non-racial through the liturgy as an anti-racism praxis. Liturgy is defined in the article not only as referring to the liturgical elements of a worship service, but also within its broader sense as the covenant people’s actions when they meet, listen to, worship and glorify the triune God within all contexts. This is also true when they mutually meet each other for edification. The authors focused partly on some liturgical elements in the worship service; however, the broader context – referring to the liturgy of life – received serious attention.
Contribution: The article holds that liturgy within the church service context, but mainly with what happens outside in life, would play a crucial role in helping Christians become anti-racist. The article follows a discourse analysis on the journey of two reformed denominations, on how they could, through the liturgy of life, establish an anti-racist praxis.
... For å oppnå dette fordelte de jord og forflyttet store folkegrupper. Dette ble gjort med tvang, og uten noen sosial basis i de afrikanske samfunnene (Young 1995, Beissinger & Young 2002. I de fleste tilfeller gjennomførte de imidlertid ikke noen full strukturell transformasjon av det afrikanske samfunnet. ...
... The devastating economic and political crisis in post-colonial Africa is the result of colonial history (Cooper, 2002). Thornton (1992), Berry (1993) and Young (1994) claimed that postcolonial Africa is faced with growth tragedy. ...
A large quantum of counterfeit textile products is increasingly being manufactured in China for Kano market. Abundant evidence indicates that Kantin Kwari textile market in Kano serves as collection and distribution post for textile items for West Africa. China fake textile items were integrated into local structures of consumption encouraged by its affordability. Moreover, a huge fake counterfeit textiles dump in Kwari market affects the local economy. Exploring the Kantin Kwari textile market as one of the biggest in West Africa, this article seeks to cross examine the boom in counterfeit and fake copies of textile products affecting businesses, making traders and wholesalers operate at loss. Furthermore, the article discusses Chinese counterfeit business and manipulation of price in the market. Competing against China became disastrous to local businessmen selling in the market. The study indicates that counterfeiting obliterate jobs and support for the Nigerian economy; it generates unemployment in the Kano textile market. Several local wholesalers and traders in business are sent packing out of the market as a result of a huge loss that is caused by the massive reduction in price-coming as a result of counterfeiting and fake textile items which far outnumbered genuine ones. The major chunks of textile items sold in the market are low-quality counterfeit items. The Kano State Traders Union (KASTU) lamented that more than 90% of textile items sold in the market were not original. The rise of China, four decades ago, became more profound in Kano textile market with high level of dumping of fake and counterfeit products causing generous havoc to the local economy. While the Chinese counterfeit industry lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty by creating job opportunities for them, it does exactly the opposite in Kano. The article can be used by market managers and state regulators in developing a wide-range and workable home grown approach which will arrest the ugly counterfeit drawback to the economy.
... 9 Kendhammer is correct that I discount Crawford Young because he is an example of an eminent scholar whose claims about the colonial state are tied up in self-contradictions, although I refer not to his 1994 book but to a 2016 book chapter (C. Young, 1994Young, , 2016. Taylor too rejects my interpretation of Young or others making similar claims, saying that it is consistent to assert that colonialists both disrupted too much (such as by "replacing Congolese institutions…with Belgian ones") and disrupted too little (such as by failing to create larger states or federations of states) (Taylor, 2018, pp. ...
I respond to scholarly critiques of my 2017 article "The Case for Colonialism." I find that my critics mostly misread my article, used citations they had not read or understood, failed to adhere to basic social scientific principles, and imposed their own interpretations on data without noting the possibility of alternatives. I note that a failure to adhere to academic standards, the main charge levelled against my paper, is rife among those who have levelled such charges. The use of their critiques to impose professional penalties and punishments on me as a scholar bespeaks the fundamental problems of ideological monoculture and illiberal censorship in academia today. I conclude that the problems of most research on the colonial past are so deep-rooted that nothing short of a complete rewriting of colonial history with appropriate scientific conditions will suffice in most cases. The same is likely true of many other topics in the social sciences.
... Young, Crawford (1994), The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press) ...
This article sets the theme for this issue. Weberian understanding of statehood has been valid and dominant for 100 years. However, it no longer reflects the complex dynamics of the superstructure resting on the social contract. One must acknowledge the widening frame of social and political influence and take it into account to make true sense of decades of failure in attempted state-building. Africa provides the scene for this argument as original focus of an ALC research project on the State in, and of, the Global South. Resulting from empirical evidence and analysis, this article not only offers the post-Weberian model of Extended Statehood, but also suggests its applicability within the realities of multilevel governance. Formal political order, even if remaining essential, has become a co-dependent element subject to fluctuating spheres of power. This research makes such dynamics visible.
... Young, Crawford (1994), The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press) ...
This article sets the theme for this issue. Weberian understanding of statehood has been valid and dominant for 100 years. However, it no longer reflects the complex dynamics of the superstructure resting on the social contract. One must acknowledge the widening frame of social and political influence and take it into account to make true sense of decades of failure in attempted state-building. Africa provides the scene for this argument as original focus of an ALC research project on the State in, and of, the Global South. Resulting from empirical evidence and analysis, this article not only offers the post-Weberian model of Extended Statehood, but also suggests its applicability within the realities of multilevel governance. Formal political order, even if remaining essential, has become a co-dependent element subject to fluctuating spheres of power. This research makes such dynamics visible.
... 12 Just as surely as the postcolonial state itself was imported and transplanted onto African soil by the colonisers, so also were ethnic identity and notions of civic citizenship a product of the colonial situation in Africa, co-constructed by the European colonizers and their African collaborators. 13 The post-colonial states that were handed down to Africans by the European colonizers were designed as legal-rational institutions based on the Weberian ideal type by which the state and its institutions draw their legitimacy from the legal-rational basis of law, and execute their functions accordingly. Such states operate by clearly defined rules and there is a clear separation of the public duties of public officials from their private interests. ...
... As the most advanced colony in what was to become South Africa, the taxation challenges and policies of the Cape strongly influenced later fiscal developments in twentieth-century South Africa and Southern Africa (Gwaindepi 2018;Gwaindepi and Siebrits 2019). Addressing the revenue imperative was regarded in the early colonial period as an essential prerequisite for securing all other aspects of the governance of colonial territories (Young 1994), and the ability to raise tax revenue on a permanent basis became an important indicator of effective occupation and territorial administration. An additional factor that affected British colonies in Africa was the doctrine of self-sufficiency, which dictated that colonial territories had to be administered at the lowest possible cost to the Treasury. ...
The topic of this article is the development of the tax system of the Cape Colony from 1820 to 1910. This period was crucial for the introduction and diffusion of modern taxes, and the Cape constitutes an important case as the prime settler-colony in Africa. The article uses a new tax dataset and evidence from official documents to trace and explain the Colony’s growing revenue problems during this period. It shows that few changes were made to the tax system from the annexation of diamond fields in 1877 until the end of the South African War in 1902 and that the public coffers mainly benefitted indirectly from the Colony’s increased prosperity via railway earnings. This, it is argued, largely reflected the success of efforts by the mining industry to block the introduction of new taxes. The article emphasizes the unusual form of this resistance: instead of undertaking conventional lobbying activities, industry representatives obtained positions of policymaking authority in the Cape Colony’s then still immature system of democratic institutions. Hence, it draws on the experience of the Cape to show that immature democratic institutions can hamper fiscal capacity-building.
... 16. This finding is not surprising, given the abundant evidence for the fact that British (and Belgian) colonialism was more marked by a decentralized divide-andrule strategy that encouraged ethnic fractionalization than French colonialism (Blanton et al., 2001;Young, 1994). Indeed, as seen in Table 1, the two countries with by far the largest number of ethnic groups are Nigeria and Tanzania, both former British colonies, while the two countries with the lowest number of ethnic groups, namely Guinea and Senegal, are both former French colonies. ...
Recent literature suggests that African Presidents tend to target co-ethnics with patronage, especially in non-democracies. Coupled with evidence on the role of incentives in driving ethnic identity change, I propose that a change in the ethnic identity of the President should lead to an increase in the proportion of people identifying with the President’s ethnic group. I use survey data from fourteen African countries with Presidential transitions to show that ethnic Presidential change leads to an upwards shift in the percentage of respondents identifying with the new ruling ethnic group in non-democracies, and that this shift increases with the level of autocracy. I also show that countries where citizens perceive more ethnic favoritism see higher levels of ethnic switching. Within-survey evidence from Zambia demonstrates that this shift is immediate, and case study evidence from early modern China suggests that this phenomenon is not limited to Sub-Saharan Africa.
... Some incorporated and co-opted civil society into party-structured ancillary organisations to serve as mechanisms of surveillance and control devoid of participation and voice (Young, 1994). ...
... Given that warfare and the military tend to reflect the society to which they belong (Morton & Barber 1973), the peculiarity of the African independent state is significant within this analysis. Some agree on the assumption that colonialism in Africa bequeathed a distinctively destructive legacy to its successor regimes, and that Africans must now invent a new kind of state (Young 1994). In contrast, others believe that the sovereignty of most African states was never much more than a convenient myth (Clapham 1996); scholars such as Mick Moore (2001) argue that even before the World Bank imposed structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, sovereignty was not an absolute, invariable and timeless attribute of the African state but rather an historical evolutionary concept. 1 In any case, the concept of sovereigntyas a result of uncompleted and/or a failed nation-building processis paramount and represents the wider scenario where the private sector starts to operate, thus becoming involved in tasks previously reserved to the public sector. ...
This article analyses the 2015 intervention of Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection (STTEP International Ltd), a South African private military company (PMC), against Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist group in Nigeria. The origins of PMCs are highlighted before an in-depth analysis of the mercenary intervention against Boko Haram is performed, with an eye on previous major PMC interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. On the one hand, the paper emphasises the unprecedented use of PMCs against Islamic extremist groups but on the other reveals that PMC interventions have not changed much. Finally, the article assesses STTEP’s intervention in light of the current debate on private security involving those who advocate its use and regulation and those who question the legitimacy of PMCs as a tool of conflict resolution.
... In other to understand the immerse forces influencing Africa's economic performance, many researchers have delved into the area of institutions in relation to growth Robinson, 2001, 2002). To Crawford (1994), the origin of Africa's institutional weaknesses is the long lasting effects of European colonial rule, which had little incentive to develop Africa's local institutions. Iqbal and Daly (2014) argued that weak institutions diverts scarce resources from productive sector to unproductive sector therefore promotes rent seeking activities whereas strong institutions reduce the chances of rent seeking activities and accelerate economic growth process and productivity of the growth inducing factors. ...
This study empirically accessed the impact of institutional quality on economic performance in West Africa. The study employed the control of corruption, government effectiveness, regulatory quality and rule of law as institutional quality indicators as provided by the World Governance Indicators, WGI (2017). A panel data set of 12 West African countries from 1996 to 2015 was estimated using the fixed effect model, the random effect model and the panel two-stage least square technique. The result showed that all the indicators of institutional quality employed in the study have positive and significant impact on economic performance in West Africa when the fixed and random effect model estimation technique was employed but only government effectiveness was significant after taking account of endogeneity using the panel two-stage least square technique. The study concludes that economic performance in West Africa would be enhanced in the presence of improved institutions with more consideration to government effectiveness.
... Whereas intellectuals or elites may have larger or more inclusive political orientations, the prevailing scholarly tendency is to consider ordinary people as wedded to narrow, provincial conceptions of political communities and identities. Because of the violence with which colonialism was imposed, it is supposed that Africans lack enough reasons to trust or offer allegiance to the state which emerge (Berman, 2010;Young, 1994). This is also attributed to the arbitrary imposition of colonial boundaries which paid scant regard for already-existing social and political boundaries. ...
This chapter examines contemporary constructions of citizenship identities in Ghana. Citizenship in former colonies could be conceptualised as structurally and substantively different from Western forms due to the articulation of pre-existing and European modes of political organisations and belongings. National citizenship was supposed to redirect all subnational allegiances to the state, but scholars argue that this does not always happen. In former colonies such as Ghana, the tension between ethnic and national identities are believed to be especially intense. In this chapter, the author argues that the popular dichotomy between ethnic and national identities is an elusive one. It fails to capture the ways in which citizens actually think of themselves as members of various political communities. This failure stems from the practice of unproblematically applying an ideal-typical conceptual dichotomy to the messiness realities of the social world.
... Some incorporated and co-opted civil society into party-structured ancillary organisations to serve as mechanisms of surveillance and control devoid of participation and voice (Young, 1994). ...
... Colonialism is the policy of a country extending or retaining its authority over other people or territories, with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonization, colonizers impose their religion, economic system, and cultural practices on indigenous people (Young, 1994). The foreign invaders rule the territory in pursuit of their interests, seeking benefit from the colonized regions' people and resources. ...
Colonialism is a policy in which a strong nation enters a weak territory and starts exploiting the inhabitants of that land for their economic interests. The colonizers dominate the colonized through violence to bring them into their subjection. Some liberal writers have written about colonialism and its impacts on the colonized slaves. Chinua Achebe has presented the realistic picture of Africa when it was colonized by the Britishers. His novel, "Things Fall Apart" presents the pre-colonial and colonial states of Africa that make it easy to understand how colonialization impacted the culture and lives of the natives. The paper justifies Franz Fanons point of view that the colonial world divides humans into the colonist and the colonized and this difference is created by colonists to assert their superiority
The dramatic urban change taking place on the African continenthas led to a renewed and controversial interest in Africa’s cities within severalacademic and expert circles. Attempts to align a growing but fragmented body ofresearch on Africa’s urban past with more general trends in urban studies havebeen few but have nevertheless opened up new analytical possibilities. This articleargues that to move beyond the traps of localism and unhelpful categorizationsthat have dominated aspects of urban history and the urban studies literature of thecontinent, historians should explore African urban dynamics in relation to worldhistory and the history of the state in order to contribute to larger debates betweensocial scientists and urban theorists. By considering how global socio-historicalprocesses articulate with the everyday lives of urban dwellers and how city-staterelationships are structured by ambivalence, this article will illustrate how historianscan participate in those debates in ways that demonstrate that history matters,but not in a linear way. These illustrations will also suggest why it is necessaryfor historians to contest interpretations of Africa’s cities that construe them asontologically different from other cities of the world.
This study is, at once, a historical critique of neoclassical and Marxist economics of labour market formation, a critical history of the colonization of continental Equatorial Guinea by France, Germany and Spain, and a comparative inquiry of the labour recruiters who forged the gateways to expanding imperial peripheries of colonial production. A recruitment boom for the cacao plantations of the Spanish island of Fernando Po swept into Rio Muni and the Fang areas of southern Cameroon and northern Gabon during the first half of the twentieth century. By documenting the volatile phases as well as the recruitment techniques for this great boom and eventual bust, the author argues that recruiters have usually been empirically conflated or conceptually obviated even though they stood in sharp contrast to the slave trade or state-organized forced labour schemes. They were key informal vectors of commercial conquest across a variety of times and regions, and operated non-violently by way of persuasive and distorted communication and immanently through credit and money creation in the form of gifts and advance payments.
A wealth of new data have been unearthed in recent years on African economic growth, wages, living standards, and taxes. In The Wealth and Poverty of African States, Morten Jerven shows how these findings transform our understanding of African economic development. He focuses on the central themes and questions that these state records can answer, tracing how African states evolved over time and the historical footprint they have left behind. By connecting the history of the colonial and postcolonial periods, he reveals an aggregate pattern of long-run growth from the late nineteenth century into the 1970s, giving way to widespread failure and decline in the 1980s, and then followed by two decades of expansion since the late 1990s. The result is a new framework for understanding the causes of poverty and wealth and the trajectories of economic growth and state development in Africa across the twentieth century.
This study adopts a comparative approach to investigate the impact of the reciprocal fears of internal and external parties on the stances of key actors during the 2011 transitions. Apparently, the uncertainty that accompanies any democratic elections has not been a local factor in the Arab cases because regional and international forces have an interest in hindering democracy, being a potential threat to the status quo. The study examines four interrelated problems related to external factors. It concludes that the external factors that have hindered democracy in non-Arab cases were not inevitable because addressing them seems to have been related to changes in the international system and the emergence of domestic democratic blocs that are able to exert pressure on external forces and get them to change their positions.
This chapter aims to provide snapshots of Africa’s contributions to world civilization. Africans have contributed significantly to global history, however, much of it has been denied or suppressed by western gatekeepers. Africa’s precolonial history showed the existence of several civilizations. Western achievements in the fields of science and technology became a yardstick to measure civilization. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that world civilization is made up of the contributions of the civilizations of all human races. Indeed, through interactions, either peacefully (trade) or violently (wars of conquest) cultures, ideas of state-building and beliefs systems moved around the globe. This chapter discusses some of the intriguing contributions of Black Africans to world civilization in critical areas such as science and technology, education, arts and music, among others. In the areas of science, technology and innovation, Africans have made their mark. Africans continue to contribute to world civilizsation in the twenty-first century and beyond.
The nation-state is a double sleight of hand, naturalizing both the nation and the state encompassing it. No such naturalization is possible in multinational states. To explain why these countries experience political crises that bring their very existence into question, standard accounts point to conflicts over resources, security, and power. This book turns the spotlight on institutional symbolism.
When minority nations in multinational states press for more self-government, they are not only looking to protect their interests. They are asking to be recognized as political communities in their own right. Yet satisfying their demands for recognition threatens to provoke a reaction from members of majority nations who see such changes as a symbolic repudiation of their own vision of politics. Secessionist crises flare up when majority backlash reverses symbolic concessions to minority nations. Through a synoptic historical sweep of Canada, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, The Symbolic State shows us that institutions may be more important for what they mean than for what they do.
A major contribution to the study of comparative nationalism and secession, comparative politics, and social theory, The Symbolic State is particularly timely in an era when the power of symbols - exemplified by Brexit, the Donald Trump presidency, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement - is reshaping politics.
Ethnicity has played a core role in the construction of African security institutions, with leaders often relying on coethnics to secure military loyalty. Such practices, termed ethnic stacking, likely have profound consequences for a range of important outcomes, from combat effectiveness to coup propensity to democratization. The Ethnic Stacking in Africa Dataset provides the first comprehensive data on the ethnic stacking practices of all African countries, from independence to 2018 (with 95.7% of leaders and 98.3% of country years recovered). This new data will allow scholars to better understand African militaries and their behavior and capabilities.
The main objective of this paper is to test the influence of Africa’s founding fathers and the impact of British colonial legacy on the political stability of Africa. We relied on a sample of 50 African countries and employed cross-sectional research designs, which covered two separate periods (1960–1989 and 1990–2018). Using logistic regression and OLS estimators and controlling for French colonial legacy, economic development, regime type, ethnic heterogeneity, and ethnic polarization, we found that the founding fathers were conducive to Africa’s political stability between 1960 and 2018. We also found that British colonial legacy had some impact on former British colonies’ stability between 1960 and 2018. In addition, GDP per capita had a significant impact on Africa’s political stability over the two periods.
One of the resultant effects of British colonial rule in northern Nigeria was restructuring and incorporating the indigenous economy into the newer capitalist oriented system through the introduction and expansion of cash and exportable crops cultivation, use of single currency, and imposition of a new system of taxation among others. This led to rural–urban migratory flow to offer labour for cash. The advent of the Second World War and the economic recession that preceded it threw the economy of this area in crisis. Instead of attending to the labour question, the colonial regime used the war to canvass for support from the colonized people by encouraging intensive labour recruitment and conscription in various fields as well as confiscation of foodstuffs, pay cuts and compulsory contributions towards winning the war project. These policies gave rise to a drastic reduction in the price of labour and widespread protest in the 1940s, a development Toyin Falola among other scholars conceptualized as a form of economic nationalism which signified the advent of a new force in the anti-colonial nationalist movement that was entrenched in the struggle to dismantle the colonial regime. Through a careful examination of primary and secondary sources which are accessible in both colonial and post-colonial archives and libraries, the paper will explore the factors that culminated in the labour unrest and demonstrate the ways the colonial state took advantage of the war to combine coercion and consent in its dealings with workers
Coping strategies of international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) operation in authoritarian regimes have received much scholarly attention. These organisations are repressed and pushed into adopting ways of remaining operational in such hostile political environments. Analyses of coping strategies of INGOs operating in post-2000 Zimbabwe are still very low and incidental in literature. This paper described coping strategies of INGOs engaged in humanitarian and developmental work in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The aim was to contribute to a body of knowledge on INGO coping strategies in an authoritarian political environment. The paper used a qualitative case study of INGOs operating in post-2000 Zimbabwe to explore and describe the nature of coping strategies they employ. In-depth interviews were conducted on a sample of 10 INGO officials purposively selected from the array of INGOs operating in Zimbabwe. Thematic analysis was employed in analysing the data regarding the specific coping strategies INGOs employed. The study found that INGOs resorted to coping strategies such as accommodation, collaboration, complementarity, compromising and co-optation.
Keywords: Accommodation, Collaboration, Complementarity, Compromising, Coping
strategy.
Living for the City is a social history of the Central African Copperbelt, considered as a single region encompassing the neighbouring mining regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Haut Katanga and Zambian Copperbelt mine towns have been understood as the vanguard of urban 'modernity' in Africa. Observers found in these towns new African communities that were experiencing what they wrongly understood as a transition from rural 'traditional' society – stable, superstitious and agricultural – to an urban existence characterised by industrial work discipline, the money economy and conspicuous consumption, Christianity, and nuclear families headed by male breadwinners supported by domesticated housewives. Miles Larmer challenges this representation of Copperbelt society, presenting an original analysis which integrates the region's social history with the production of knowledge about it, shaped by both changing political and intellectual contexts and by Copperbelt communities themselves.
Since the turn of the century, Africa has been emerging economically, politically and socially and striving to assert itself on the global stage. This book provides an interdisciplinary view of Africa’s struggle to find its unique voice and contribute to the dialogue of international affairs.
Highlighting both challenges and opportunities, the book explores the
multi-faceted economic, political and social debates that surround Africa’s
emergence in a complex, increasingly globalised world. The author provides holistic, complementary and policy-oriented advice to African governments and policymakers on how to cope with new interrelated realities in an age of globalisation. This book will be of great interest to students, academics and researchers in the areas of political economy, international development, global governance, public policy and the international relations of African states. It will also appeal to African leaders, policymakers and governments who seek to increase the ability of their countries to cope with the challenges presented by a globalised world.
This introductory chapter explains the aim of the book, defines what we understand by the term pacification and gives an outline of the following chapters. Pacification as a process, whereby a state achieves a monopoly of violence and law over politically autonomous small-scale communities, and thereby ends both tribal warfare between those communities and any armed resistance against the imposition of state control, should not be understood as a unilateral imposition of state control, but as the result of an interaction between various state actors, on one hand, and politically autonomous local groups on the other.
All over the world and throughout millennia, states have attempted to subjugate, control and dominate non-state populations and to end their wars. This book compares such processes of pacification leading to the end of tribal warfare in seven societies from all over the world between the 19th and 21st centuries. It shows that pacification cannot be understood solely as a unilateral imposition of state control but needs to be approached as the result of specific interactions between state actors and non-state local groups. Indigenous groups usually had options in deciding between accepting and resisting state control. State actors often had to make concessions or form alliances with indigenous groups in order to pursue their goals. Incentives given to local groups sometimes played a more important role in ending warfare than repression. In this way, indigenous groups, in interaction with state actors, strongly shaped the character of the process of pacification. This volume’s comparison finds that pacification is more successful and more durable where state actors mainly focus on selective incentives for local groups to renounce warfare, offer protection, and only as a last resort use moderate repression, combined with the quick establishment of effective institutions for peaceful conflict settlement. ---------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
JÜRG HELBLING AND TOBIAS SCHWOERER
2 Pacification as Strategic Interaction of Indigenous Groups and State Actors
JÜRG HELBLING
3 The Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa (1830–1910)
MATTHIAS HÄUSSLER
4 The Eastern Highlands of New Guinea (1930–1965)
TOBIAS SCHWOERER
5 The Iban in Sarawak (1840–1920)
JÜRG HELBLING
6 The Lobi in French West Africa (1897–1940)
NATALIE AMMANN
7 The Naga in British North-East India (1830–1890)
RUTH WERNER
8 The Karimojong in Uganda (1898–2010)
TOBIAS SCHWOERER
9 The Waorani in Ecuador (1940–2000)
JÜRG HELBLING
10 Conclusion: Comparing Configurations and Processes of Pacification
JÜRG HELBLING AND TOBIAS SCHWOERER
Political elites tend to favor their home region when distributing resources. But what explains how political power is distributed across a country’s regions to begin with? Explanations of cabinet formation focus on short-term strategic bargaining and some emphasize that ministries are allocated equitably to minimize conflict. Using new data on the cabinet members (1960–2010) of 16 former British and French African colonies, I find that some regions have been systematically much more represented than others. Combining novel historical and geospatial records, I show that this regional political inequality derives not from colonial-era development in general but from colonial-era education in particular. I argue that post-colonial ministers are partly a byproduct of civil service recruitment practices among European administrators that focused on levels of literacy. Regional political inequality is an understudied pathway through which colonial legacies impact distributive politics and unequal development in Africa today.
JEL: F54, I26, N37, N47
Much of the literature on the history of liberal peace-and state-building in South Sudan focuses most directly on the actions of the international community as being responsible for the intractable conflict and issues of state fragility. Implicit in such arguments is the assumption that, if Western donors, states and organizations simply remained more committed to their liberal ideals or devised more effective strategies, the situation would be more stable and prosperous. The central argument here is that state formation is primarily an internal process that cannot be manufactured effectively by foreign actors. Civil war and the inability to implement the liberal model are primarily explained by structural factors, within South Sudan and the international states system, that are not amenable to external manipulation. These include: the incipient and informal nature of the state, the character of relevant rebel and militia groups, the presence of oil, the country's interactions within anarchic global systems and the arbitrary make-up of African states. These conditions also inhibit indigenous actors from achieving lasting peace and consolidating state power. While this analysis scrutinizes the liberal paradigm, the argument is not that the model of political and economic liberalization is mainly responsible for the persistence of conflict and state fragility. Instead, although efforts to implement the liberal model have arguably been counterproductive at times, they have in fact been largely inconsequential to the outcomes in South Sudan.
Colonial investments impacted long-run political and economic development, but there is little systematic evidence of their origins and spatial distribution. Combining novel data sources, this article shows that colonial investments were very unequally distributed within sixteen British and French African colonies. What led colonial states to invest much more in some districts than others? The author argues that natural harbors and capes led some places to become centers of pre-colonial coastal trade, which in turn increased later colonial investments not only in infrastructure but also in health and education. Furthermore, distance from pre-colonial trading posts helps explain the diffusion of investments within each colony. The author finds limited support for alternative explanations such as natural resources and pre-colonial ethnic characteristics, including pre-colonial political centralization. These two findings suggest an economic origin for the regional and ethnic disparities observed in the colonial and contemporary periods.
I examine the reasons for the impressively consistent disinterest in African economics that runs through all the schools of comparative political economy that Economy and Society has published over the last three decades. These theoretical movements can be helpfully arranged in reverse chronological order: Callon's economization, Soskice and Hall's varieties of capitalism (VoC), Boyer and Jessop's regulationism and Foucault's governmentality. Each of them shows an intriguing indifference to the question of whether African evidence matters for their arguments. What makes this interesting was that in its first decade, between 1971 and 1981, Economy and Society was obsessed with the problem of the comparative theorizing of the African economy and its transformation. Indeed, it is not too strong to say, as I show, that theorizing African capitalism was the journal’s raison d’etre. What happened to kill off that curiosity? Reconstructing debates within the journal, the paper explores the shifts, in comparative political economy and in African studies, between 1970 and 1990 that account for the collapse of comparative interest in the features of capitalism on the continent.
This study compares taxation trends, volatility and tax effort between sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) and Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries since 1980. It finds that the LAC countries lead on revenue collection and revenue stability, but richer SSA countries outperform their LAC counterparts. Since 2010, there has been a divergence on personal income taxes, which have grown in SSA but declined in the LAC. The panel analysis shows that tax determinants are sensitive to income levels. The study shows the importance of exploring diversity and cross‐regional variations on income levels. Additionally, it shows that room exists for peer‐to‐peer lessons on tax reforms.
This chapter addresses Africa’s most pressing issue at independence and since: economic development, overwhelmingly neglected during colonization, but now, major global organizations were procuring the opportunity to right these wrongs especially through the RECs and global IGOs, to achieve economic development. It explores the OAU’s Department of Economic Affairs, and OAU’s persistence in elevating global development agencies and agendas in IGOs. It studies the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) based in Ethiopia. Globally, it examines trade-based IGOs such as UNCTAD, GATT and its successor, the WTO. Other institutional arrangements are considered: the (Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Group of 77 (G77) that convened in the shadow of UNCTAD, and the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the (as of April 2020 Organisation of) Africa(n), Caribbean and Pacific States ([O]ACPs) are some of these avenues discussed. The African Economic Community (AEC) stemmed from the 1991 Abuja Treaty, which also set in place the integration of RECs into regional cooperation and ultimately, the foundation of the nascent Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
This article is concerned with the colonial state as a producer, consumer, and regulator of print. Propaganda and censorship may represent two extremes in the management of a colonial public sphere. Censorship was an interactive and negotiated process—one whose successful management was in the interest of both the censoring agents and those censored. One might think that censorship is a measure taken in order for communication to break down. If we imagine colonial print communication as a continuum suspended between partners that at one end desire full freedom of expression and at the other full control, absolute censorship does constitute silence, like that represented by the dramatic closure of the African press in Kenya with the Emergency of 1952. In a politicised colonial environment, like that in postwar Kenya, censorship may be understood as negotiation between colonisers and colonised on the limits of free speech. The article examines what changed in Kenya's late-colonial period in relation to the production, broadcasting, censoring, and suppression of non-European newspapers, and how the change affected the institutions and groupings that produced and received texts. More narrowly, it seeks to trace the dynamics of textual interfaces between the European print frameworks and those of the consolidated or emerging non-European publicists and publics. An examination that situates censorship in a broader context of management of discourse, of negotiation and dialogue, one that tests and goes beyond the dualism of suppression and resistance, may make it clearer why and to what extent a number of critical, anti-colonial publications were allowed to exist, and some were encouraged; and what the limits were, when opposition became unacceptable, and communication broke down.
How did political institutions emerge and evolve under colonial rule? This article studies a key colonial actor and establishes core democratic contradictions in European settler colonies. Although European settlers’ strong organizational position enabled them to demand representative political institutions, the first hypothesis qualifies their impulse for electoral representation by positing the importance of a metropole with a representative tradition. Analyzing new data on colonial legislatures in 144 colonies between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries shows that only British settler colonies—emanating from a metropole with representative institutions—systematically exhibited early elected legislative representation. The second hypothesis highlights a core democratic contradiction in colonies that established early representative institutions. Applying class-based democratization theories predicts perverse institutional evolution—resisted enfranchisement and contestation backsliding—because sizable European settler minorities usually composed an entrenched landed class. Evidence on voting restrictions and on legislature disbandment from Africa, the British Caribbean, and the US South supports these implications and rejects the Dahlian path from competitive oligarchy to full democracy.
The Congo has consistently been a subject of wide-ranging historical and creative productions aimed at capturing its dramatic history. This has often led to the submersion of Congolese voices under exogenous and exotic depictions of Congolese realities in ways that position the Congolese subject and space as the other, void of complexity and possibility. In Koli Jean Bofane (1954) belongs to a generation of Congolese authors who “write the Congo” from within, through an inventive sensibility, an insightful worldview, and an unsettling style aimed at representing the paradoxes of the nation’s trajectory. Bofane hails from the Congolese Equateur province, a fact which perhaps explains his affinity with Isookanga, the protagonist of Congo Inc. (2014). He spent his childhood and youth in the Congo before settling in Belgium in 1993. After a series of literary works that earned him modest recognition, he rose to literary fame with the publication of Mathématiques congolaises (2008), which won the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire in 2009 and has been translated into various international languages. His award-winning novel has already marked a distinctive voice among the flurry and cacophony of representations inspired by the specific history of the Congo, a voice which is given a new profundity in Congo Inc., the text under study. The present article discusses the complexity of the Congo as represented in Congo Inc., analyzing the Congolese territory as the interface of the violent dimensions of globalization. I discuss the process through which Congo Inc. converts the ambiguous coexistence of scarcity and excess in the Congo into not only a unique text, but also into the creation of a new narrative genre which I refer to as the coltan novel.
The mix in politicization of ethnicity and religion especially among minority ethnic groups in response to skewed fragmentation/balkanization of the Nigerian state through creation of regions, states, local government councils, jobs and disbursement of appointment positions largely shape the 'how and what' of governance, character of politics and national integration in Nigeria. The central government became alien to units where access to government turned platform for religious and ethnic nationalism thereby occasioning the dawn of ethnicization and religionization of politics as a way of expressing enticement of politicians and public officers to ethnic or religious spaces. This paper thus traces the nexus between politicization of ethnicity and religion in relation to governance in Nigeria. It through the use of secondary sources of data observed that the embers of kinship and religious ties have continually paved way for political support thereby forming the major desiderata for political/resources mobilization and allocation in Nigeria. While recommending significant devolution and decentralization of powers to be preceded by a nationwide programme of moral and ethical revival aimed at promoting virtues of honesty, transparency, accountability and justice, the paper makes case for good governance along lines of best practices at all levels of government in Nigeria.
JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: VOL 47, ISSUE 1, 2012:
The state of the public sector in South Africa is heavily influenced by particular histories of state administration related to the legacy of apartheid and the nature of the political transition to democracy. We suggest, however, that there is a paucity of scholarly work in the discipline of Public Administration which takes into account this legacy and the manner in which the public sector is embedded in broader social, political and economic relations. This has had significant consequences for the particular models of public administration adopted. In making our case for the importance of applying a historical lens to the study of the public sector, we draw on research on the incorporation of the former Bantustans into provincial government administration in South Africa.
Current political order in Africa is often linked to legacies of colonialism, in particular to legacies of indirect colonial rule. However, evidence about the application of indirect rule is scarce. In this paper I argue that empire-level characteristics interacted with precolonial institutions in shaping the indirectness of local rule. First, British governments ruled more indirectly than French administrations, which followed a comparatively centralized administrative blueprint, came with a transformative republican ideology, and had more administrative resources. Empirically, I find that French colonization led to the demise of the lines of succession of seven out of ten precolonial polities, twice as many as under British rule. Second, precolonial centralization was a crucial prerequisite for indirect rule. Local administrative data from eight British colonies show that British colonizers employed less administrative effort and devolved more power to native authorities where centralized institutions existed. Such a pattern did not exist in French colonies. Together, these findings improve our understanding of the long-term effects of precolonial institutions and draw attention to the interaction of characteristics of dominant and subordinate units in shaping local governance arrangements.
The state of the public sector in South Africa is heavily influenced by particular histories of state administration related to the legacy of apartheid and the nature of the political transition to democracy. We suggest, however, that there is a paucity of scholarly work in the discipline of Public Administration which takes into account this legacy and the manner in which the public sector is embedded in broader social, political and economic relations. This has had significant consequences for the particular models of public administration adopted. In making our case for the importance of applying a historical lens to the study of the public sector, we draw on research on the incorporation of the former Bantustans into provincial government administration in South Africa.
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