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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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The Challenge of Uncertainty and Order in African Politics: An Introduction
| Panel |
60. The challenge of uncertainty and order in African polities
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| Paper ID | 377 |
| Author(s) |
Macamo, Elisio ; Neubert, Dieter
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | African politics have been widely discussed in recent years. Starting from the optimism linked to the wave of democratisation at the beginning of the 1990s with the discovery of African civil societies through the disappointment over the results of the often incomplete democratisation all the way to the analysis of “failed states”. All these concepts and discussions led to a much better understanding of the nature of the post-colonial African state. However, they share a focus on politics which is based on the assumption that political action and the formulation of political rules and constitutions are central to an understanding of processes of change in Africa. Additionally, these approaches draw from a normatively loaded conception of the state, which is informed by the idea of Western liberal democracy under the rule of law. Finally, there is a bias on ”big” policy and politics: who rules, who wins power? What is often missing in these studies is information on the role of the state, in general, or policy, in particular, in every day life. Yet, there seems to be an awareness that such information is lacking. It is in this connection that international development assistance appeals to “good governance”, “more participation” and “political capacity building.”
In the meantime, livelihood conditions have not been improving. Livelihood analysis and vulnerability studies have described and conceptualised this in great detail, fuelling, in consequence, yet another international political effort to attack poverty. The persistence of poverty in Africa shows the limits of this undertaking. There is, therefore, a sense in which discourse on African politics, as well as development discourse on poverty fail to engage with actual society in Africa as part and parcel of African polities. Understanding processes of change requires a shift in focus towards society and its interaction with or distance from the state. We argue, therrefore, for the need to bring “society back in” the discussion.
We need a sociological perspective in which the state and the polity as a whole should be understood as societal institutions that are constituted in everyday life. Former experiences with the state, expectations towards and images of the state shape its performance. These institutions are neither pre-cast nor act independently of the social context. Processes of interaction between the state and the people do matter. To overcome these limitations we should tackle state building and new forms of order and state in every day life as related fields of research. A very important starting point is the study of local forms of political organisation or the focus on non-state actors. These “twilight institutions”, to use Christian Lund’s helpful expression, have mostly been studies by social anthropologists. They are either traditional or form a new nucleus for an upcoming order shaped by interaction with the state and polity. In this introductory paper we want to present a first overview of these forms of order, look for approaches for their conceptualisation and discuss a frame for the analysis of the creation of order in interaction with the state.
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