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Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Michael Bratton
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Nicolas van de Walle
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Abstract

This article proposes revisions to the theory of political transitions by analyzing patterns of recent popular challenges to neopatrimonial rule in Africa. The approach is explicitly comparative, based on contrasts between Africa and the rest of the world and among regimes within Africa itself. Arguing against the prevalent view that transitions unfold unpredictably according to the contingent interplay of key political actors, the authors contend that the structure of the preexisting regime shapes the dynamics and sometimes even the outcomes of political transitions. They find that in contrast to transitions from corporatist regimes, transitions from neopatrimonial rule are likely to be driven by social protest, marked by struggles over patronage, and backed by emerging middle classes. Following Dahl, the authors compare African regimes on the basis of the degree of formal political participation and competition allowed. They find that regime variants—personal dictatorship, military oligarchy, plebiscitary one-party regime, and competitive one-party regime—are associated with distinctive transition dynamics. Whereas transitions from military oligarchies are typically managed from the top down and are relatively orderly, transitions from plebiscitary systems often occur discordantly through confrontational national conferences. A consolidated democracy is least likely to result from the abrupt collapse of a personal dictatorship and is most likely, though never guaranteed, from a graduated transition from a competitive one-party regime. In general, getting to democracy is problematic from all regimes that lack institutional traditions of political competition.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1994

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References

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30 Samuel Huntington finds only six cases of transitions by “replacement,” that is, from below, see Huntington (fn. 29).

31 See Bratton, Michael and Walle, Nicolas van de, “Popular Protest and Political Reform in Africa,” Comparative Politics 24 (July 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The five exceptions were Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, Sao Tome, and Tanzania. Of these, only Cape Verde and São Tomé have completed a protest-free full transition. See also Cahen, M., “Vent des lies: La victoire de l'opposition aux lies du Cap Vert et à São Tomé e Principe,” Politique Africaine 43 (October 1991)Google Scholar. In Madagascar massive protests erupted in mid-1991, when it became clear that President Ratsiraka's reforms were only window dressing. The elections of February 1993, which brought the opposition to power, were clearly the result of popular pressures. See “Madagascar: Hanging on in the Face of Change,” Africa Confidential, September 1991, p. 7. Finally, in Tanzania and Guinea Bissau, political liberalization has fallen well short of a full transition.

32 African states with particularly acute fiscal crises were also vulnerable to donor pressures to engage in political liberalization. See Bratton and van de Walle (fn. 31) for a discussion of the relative role of domestic and international factors in recent African transitions.

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37 In Huntington's work (fn. 29), for example, the success of democratization hinges largely on the ability of “liberal reformers” within the government to outmaneuver the standpatters.

38 As Waterbury (fn. 21) argues with respect to the monarchy in Morocco, “The king's degree of political control varies directly with the level of fragmentation and factionalization within the system... The king must always maintain the initiative through the systematic inculcation of an atmosphere of unpredictability and provisionality among all elites and the maximization of their vulnerability relative to his mastery” (p. 552).

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45 Confronted by a journalist on national television with evidence that the government had disregarded its own laws in the manipulation of voter lists on the eve of the legislative elections of March 1992, the Cameroonian minister of territorial administration explained that “laws are made by men, and are no more than reference points.” Cited in Celestin Monga, “La recomposition du marche poli-tique au Cameroun (1991-1992)” (Unpublished paper, GERDES, Cameroon, 1992), 10.

46 The national bar associations played leading opposition roles in Cameroon, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Togo. See Tedga, Paul John Marc, Ouverture democratique en Afrique Noire? (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1991), 6472Google Scholar.

47 Evans, Peter, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Collier, David, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

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50 Numerous studies have chronicled and analyzed this process. The locus classicus remains Zolberg, Aristide, Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)Google Scholar. But see also Bienen, Henry, Tanzania: Party Transformation and Economic Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Foltz, William, “Political Opposition in Single-Party States of Tropical Africa,” in Dahl, Robert, ed., Regimes and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

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58 Remmer (fn. 2).

59 These categories and labels build on existing typologies. Ruth Collier distinguishes military, multiparty, and two types of one-party regime: plebiscitary and competitive. Huntington identifies four regime types: personal, one-party, and military regimes, plus the special category of racial oligarchy for South Africa.

60 Dahl (fn. 57) labeled regimes that had been “highly popularized and liberalized” as polyarchies rather than democracies because, he argued, no large system in the real world is fully democratized (p. 8).

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62 Remmer (fn. 2) even holds that “it is possible for exclusion to be achieved even more effectively under competitive political arrangements than under authoritarian ones. Exclusionary democracy not only makes it possible to secure regime support from dominant social groups in a highly stratified society, it obviates the costs of coercion and problems of regime legitimacy that are associated with exclusionary authoritarianism” (p. 74).

63 Writing about Mobutu's consolidation of power, Callaghy (fn. 21) speaks of the systematic “dismantlement of inherited structures, especially departicipation and depoliticization,” including the emasculation of parliament, the elimination of the position of prime minister, the banning of all parties and youth organizations, and the centralization of state power away from the provinces to Kinshasa (p. 171).

64 For a similar argument, see Snyder (fn. 17).

65 News reports in mid-1992 indicated that Zaire's national currency, printed in Germany, was being flown directly to Mobutu's luxury yacht on the Zaire River, for use as he saw fit (Africa News, May 24, 1992). Amidst a crumbling economy, in which the average civil servant had not been paid in months, Mobutu was still personally ensuring the support of key followers, including elements of the armed forces charged with protecting him. See also “Mobutu's Monetary Mutiny,” Africa Confidential, February 5, 1993; and “Zaire, a Country Sliding into Chaos,” Guardian Weekly, August 8, 1993.

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67 See Tedga (fn. 46).

68 Collier (fn. 49), 104-8.

69 For country examples of these practices, see Bayart (fn. 21) on the Ahidjo regime in Cameroon (pp. 141-84); and Toulabor, Comi M., Le Togo sons Eyadema (Paris: Karthala, 1986)Google Scholar, on Togo.

70 See Lemarchand (fn.29); Pearl T. Robinson, “The National Conference Phenomenon in Francophone Africa” (Paper presented at the colloquium on the Economics of Political Liberalization in Africa, Harvard University, March 6—7, 1992); and Eboussi-Boulaga, Fabien, Les conférences nationales en Afrique Noire: Une affaire à suivre (Paris: Karthala, 1993)Google Scholar.

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72 As Allen (fn. 24) argues in relation to the national conference in Benin: “It was conceived originally by the government as a means of discussing mainly the political and economic problems of the time . . . and of co-opting the opposition into a joint solution in which the government would retain the leading role” (p. 48).

73 Bienen (fn. 51), 122-45; Decalo (fn. 51, Coups and Army Rule in Africa), 231-54.

74 Even then, the military has sought to limit the power and autonomy of the party, despite Leninist principles regarding the supremacy of the party over all other political institutions. See Decalo (fn. 51, “Morphology of Military Rule in Africa”), 134-35.

75 Samuel Huntington writes: “The problem is military opposition to politics. Military leaders can easily envision themselves in a guardian role; they can also picture themselves as the far seeing impartial promoters of social and economic reform in their societies. But with rare exceptions, they shrink from assuming the role of political organizer. In particular, they condemn political parties.” Huntington, See, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 243Google Scholar.

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80 Nonetheless, the military coup by junior officers that toppled the Traoré regime in Mali in March 1991 shows that there are limits to the extent to which even a military regime can rely on force to maintain its power. See Turrittin, Jane, “Mali: People Topple Traoré,” Review ofAfrican Political Economy 52 (November 1991)Google Scholar.

81 As Lemarchand (fn. 29) argues: “Transitions from above are the more promising in terms of their ability to ‘deliver’ democracy in that they tend to be rather specific about the time frame, procedural steps and overall strategy of transition. Unlike what often happens with transitions from below, the net result is to reduce uncertainty” (p. 10).

82 In addition to the aborted transition in Nigeria, one might note events in Ghana, where Rawlings lifted the ban on political parties in May 1992 in preparation for pluralist elections in November, while simultaneously having the constitution rewritten to protect members of the ruling Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) from prosecution by future governments. Rawlings won the elections of November 1992, in a contest widely perceived to have been marred by extensive fraud; see Abdulai, David, “Rawlings ‘Wins’ Ghana's Presidential Elections,” Africa Today 39 (Fall 1992), 6671Google Scholar. In Uganda, President Museveni slowed down his country's managed transition in order to give himself time to build a new political party with a broad ethnoregional base; see Africa Confidential, April 17, 1992.

83 These trends can be attributed to elite efforts at demobilization of formerly active participants and the co-optation or elimination of opposition power centers. They are well covered by Kasfir, Nelson, The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics with a Case Study of Uganda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar. On the characteristics of single-party elections in Africa, see the following: Lavroff, D. G., ed., Aux urnes rAfrique! Elections etpouvoirs en Afrique Noire (Paris: Pedone, 1978)Google Scholar; Chazan, Naomi, “African Voters at the Polls: A Re-Examination of the Role of Elections in Africa Politics,” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 17 (July 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hayward, Fred M., Elections in Independent Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987)Google Scholar. On competitive single-party elections in Tanzania and Kenya, see Hyden, Goran and Leys, Colin, “Elections and Politics in Single-Party Systems: The Case of Kenya and Tanzania,” British Journal of Political Science 2 (April 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Donge, Jankees Van and Liviga, Athumani, “The 1985 Tanzanian Parliamentary Elections: A Conservative Election,” African Affairs 88 (January 1989)Google Scholar.

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86 The 1991 transition in Zambia was “a struggle over the rules of the political game and the resources by which it is played (in which)... the ruling party employ(ed) all its strength to tilt the rules of political competition in its own favor.” See Bratton, Michael, “Zambia Starts Over,” Journal of Democracy 3, no. 2 (1992), 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even so, the opposition successfully forced incumbent president Kaunda to forgo a referendum on multiparty politics and move directly to elections. They also felt confident enough to contest the October 1991 election under a less-than-perfect voter register and constitution.

87 In the case of Ivory Coast at least, this calculation proved to be sound. Thus, regarding Ivory Coast, Faure (fn. 44) argues that the victory of the ex-single party was due to the fact that “the government, thanks to its effective and very loyal territorial administration, and to the PDCI apparatus, present all over the country down to the most isolated hamlet, controlled electoral operations throughout ... and all official information sources” (p. 37).

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90 Analysts are divided regarding the prospects for democracy in South Africa. On the one hand, South Africa's lack of national homogeneity, of broad-based economic development, and of unambiguous defeat of the old order predispose the country to continued conflict. The posttransition government may also be tempted to use the formidable apparatus of repression inherited from the current government for its own ends. See Giliomee, Herman and Gagiano, Jannie, eds., The Elusive Searchfor Peace: South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland (London: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Herman Giliomee, “Democratization in South Africa” (Paper presented at the congress of the American Sociological Association, Miami, Fla., August 1993). On the other hand, some commentators see “an individually-based liberal democracy” as a viable option for permanently settling conflict in the country. See Smooha, Sammy and Hanf, Theodor, “The Diverse Modes of Conflict-Regulation in Deeply Divided Societies,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 33 (January—April 1992), 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Slabbert, F. van Zyl, The Questfor Democracy: South Africa in Transition (Johannesburg: Penguin Forum Series, 1992)Google Scholar. Our claim is comparative: we do not say that consolidated democracy is easy, imminent, or preordained in South Africa but only that it is more likely than in those African neopatrimonial regimes where political competition has been outlawed. For a similar argument, see Huntingdon, Samuel, “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984)Google Scholar; and idem (fn. 4), 111-12.

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