Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond 9780415687935, 9780203145623
Neopatrimonialism, a system whereby rulers use state resources for personal benefit and to secure the loyalty of clients
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Table of contents :
Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond
Copyright
Contents
List of tables
List of contributors
Introduction
Part I: Concepts and their relevance
1 Weber’s patrimonial domination and its interpretations
2 Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism: comparative receptions and transcriptions
3 The model of the political entrepreneur
4 Charles Njonjo: the portrait of a ‘big man’ in Kenya
5 Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy?
6 Neopatrimonialism and its reinterpretations by development economics
Part II: New orientations and debates in Africa
7 The path from neopatrimonialism: democracy and clientelism in Africa today
8 Rebellion and warlordism: the spectre of neopatrimonialism
9 The origins and meaning of Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon
10 Monitoring the neopatrimonial state on a day- to-day basis: politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger
Part III: Regional transcriptions and interpretations
11 Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines
12 Jeitinho and other related phenomena in contemporary Brazil
13 Neopatrimonialism, factionalism and patronage in post- Soviet Uzbekistan
14 Berlusconismo as a case of ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’
15 Clientelism and patrimonialism in international relations: the case of France’s African policy
Conclusion: neopatrimonial and developmental – the emerging states’ syndrome
References
Index
Citation preview
ROUTLEDGE STUDIES ON AFRICAN POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond Edited by Daniel C. Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo
Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond
There is simply no other work of similar scope on this essential topic for comparative pol itics . . . It enlightens the reader on the origins of the concept and its past uses, while also offering new theoretical contributions, critical assessments of its usefulness within and beyond Africa, and original empirical applications. Pierre Englebert, Pomona College, California, USA A highly appropriate and masterly presentation of the conceptual and theoretical richness of neopatrimonialism that rightly corrects its traditional confinement to Africa and demon strates its relevance to other political contexts including democratic Western polities. Helge Hveem, University of Oslo, Norway This book without doubt elevates the theoretical and comparative study of neo patrimonial ism in Africa to new heights and demonstrates that the concept is not unique to Africa. Muna Ndulo, Cornell University, USA …a fitting tribute to, and reflection on, the work of Jean-François Médard, from which so much of our awareness of neopatrimonial politics derives. Christopher Clapham, University of Cambridge, UK …an essential collection for all those concerned with the politics of development in its broadest sense. Richard Crook, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK Neopatrimonialism, a system whereby rulers use state resources for personal benefit and to secure the loyalty of clients in the general population, is central to any teaching or conceptualisation of con temporary African politics. This book is a theoretical and comparative study of neopatrimonialism in Africa and across world regions. Although such practices are widespread in other parts of the world, the African neopatrimonial state has also become a global prototype of the anti-developmental state. This volume calls for a reappraisal of the genesis and interpretations of the concepts of patrimonialism and neopatrimonial ism. Expert contributors consider recent debates in Africa through the study of democracy, clien telism, the ‘big man’ syndrome (Kenya), the rise of ‘godfatherism’ (Nigeria), ‘warlordism’ (Liberia) and the neopatrimonial state on a day-to-day basis (Niger). They discuss patrimonialism and neopat rimonialism from Latin America to Europe, Central Asia and Asia-Pacific, to weave a comparative analysis of the interplay between public policies and private interest. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond is an important and timely volume that will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, African studies, sociology and international development. Daniel C. Bach is a CNRS Director of research at the Emile Durkheim Centre at the University of Bordeaux, France. He is also a professor at Sciences Po Bordeaux. Mamoudou Gazibo is Professor in the Department of Political Science of the University of Mon treal, Canada.
Routledge studies on African politics and international relations Edited by Daniel C. Bach, Emile Durkheim Centre for Comparative Politics and Sociology, Sciences Po Bordeaux.
1 Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond Edited by Daniel C. Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo
Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond
Edited by Daniel C. Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo
First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Selection and editorial matter, Daniel C. Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo; individual contributors their contribution The right of Daniel C. Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Neopatrimonialism in Africa and beyond / edited by Daniel Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo. p. cm. – (Routledge studies on African politics and international relations ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Political corruption–Africa. 2. Political ethics–Africa. 3. Africa– Politics and government. I. Bach, Daniel. II. Gazibo, Mamoudou. JQ1875.A55C6392 2012 320.96–dc23 2011025890 ISBN: 978-0-415-68793-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-14562-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
List of tables List of contributors
Introduction
viii ix 1
M amo u do u G a z ibo
ParT I
Concepts and their relevance
7
1 Weber’s patrimonial domination and its interpretations
9
H innerk B ruhns
2 Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism: comparative receptions and transcriptions
25
D aniel C . B ach
3 The model of the political entrepreneur
46
D aniel C ompagnon
4 Charles Njonjo: the portrait of a ‘big man’ in Kenya
58
J ean-F ran ç ois M é dard
5 Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy?
79
M amo u do u G a z ibo
6 Neopatrimonialism and its reinterpretations by development economics A lice S ind z ingre
90
vi Contents ParT II
New orientations and debates in Africa
109
7 The path from neopatrimonialism: democracy and clientelism in Africa today
111
N icolas v an de W alle
8 Rebellion and warlordism: the spectre of neopatrimonialism
124
M orten B ø å s and K athleen M . J ennings
9 The origins and meaning of Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon
132
C hris A lbin-L ackey
10 Monitoring the neopatrimonial state on a day-to-day basis: politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger
142
M ahaman T idjani A lo u
ParT III
Regional transcriptions and interpretations
155
11 Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines
157
D omini q u e C ao u ette
12 Jeitinho and other related phenomena in contemporary Brazil
169
Y v es-A ndr é F a u r é
13 Neopatrimonialism, factionalism and patronage in post-Soviet Uzbekistan
186
A lisher I khamo v
14 Berlusconismo as a case of ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’
197
M a u ro B arisione
15 Clientelism and patrimonialism in international relations: the case of France’s African policy D aniel B o u rma u d
208
Contents vii
Conclusion: neopatrimonial and developmental – the emerging states’ syndrome
221
D aniel C . B ach
References Index
225 254
Tables
5.1 Authoritarian, hybrid and democratic regimes 7.1 Government employment, early 1990s 7.2 Characteristics and correlates of different kinds of clientelism
87 115 118
Contributors
Chris Albin-Lackey is a Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, where he spent five years covering Nigeria and the Horn of Africa. His work on Nigeria has included research and reporting on state and local government corruption in the oil-rich Niger Delta, patterns of electoral violence and vote-rigging around Nigeria’s 2007 elections, and broader patterns of violence and crimi nality in Nigerian politics. Chris has a BA in Political Science from Boston University and a JD from Columbia Law School. Daniel C. Bach is Director of Research of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Centre Émile Durkheim and a Professor at Institut d’études politiques, University of Bordeaux. He holds a D.Phil from Oxford University and has published extensively on federalism and politics in Nigeria, regionalism and regional integration in Africa and the international relations of the continent. His latest publications include ‘The European Union and China in Africa’, in Kweku Ampiah and Sanusha Naidu (eds), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? China and Africa (University of Kwazulu Natal Press, 2008) and ‘The EU’s ‘strategic partnership’ with Africa: Model or Placebo?’, in Osita Eze and Amadu Sesay (eds), Africa and Europe in the 21st Century (Lagos, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 2010). Mauro Barisione is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Milano. He holds a doctorate from the Institut d’études politiques (IEP) of Paris and the University of Firenze. He has also taught political communication at the IEP of Paris. His research relates to public opinion formation, electoral com munication and the symbolic dimension of leadership. His latest publications include ‘Valence Image and the Standardisation of Democratic Political Leadership’, Leadership, 5(1), 2009: 41–60; and Comunicazione e società. Teorie, processi, pratiche del framing (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009). Morten Bøås (PhD) is Research Director and Senior Researcher at Fafo’s Institute for Applied International Studies. He has published extensively on African pol itics and global development. His articles have been published in journals such as Politique Africaine, the Journal of Modern African Studies, Third World Quarterly, African Spectrum and Global Governance. His two most recent
x Contributors books are co-editions (with Kevin Dunn) of African Guerrillas: Raging against the Machine (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007) and (with Benedicte Bull) of International Development (vols 1–4, Sage Publications, 2010). Daniel Bourmaud is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bor deaux. He initially worked on East Africa, notably Kenya. His more recent work has been on the comparative analysis of African political regimes, the continent’s international relations and France’s African policies. He has simultaneously been pursuing research on the evolution of the French polit ical system under the Fifth Republic. His current research relates to the com parative analysis of authoritarian regimes and encompasses Latin American and Asiatic case studies. Hinnerk Bruhns is Emeritus Director of Research of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Centre de recherches historiques (EHESS/ CNRS). He holds a doctoral thesis from Köln University, and taught Ancient History at the University of Bochum, and contemporary history and social sciences at the University of Aix-en-Provence, at EHESS (Paris) and at the École normale supérieure of Cachan. His recent publications include (with Patrice Duran) Max Weber et le politique (Paris, 2009); (as editor) Histoire et économie politique en Allemagne. De Gustav Schmoller à Max Weber (Paris, 2004); (co-edited with Jean Andreau) Sociologie économique et économie de l’Antiquité (Paris, 2004) and (co-edited with Wilfried Nippel) Max Weber und die Stadt im Kulturvergleich (Göttingen, 2000). Dominique Caouette is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Sci ence, University of Montreal, where he teaches international relations. Within the University of Montreal he coordinates the Réseau d’études des dynamiques transnationales et de l’action collective (REDTAC) and is a member of the Centre for the Study of South East Asia. He also taught at the University of Ottawa and worked for five years in the Asia team of Inter Pares. Dominique holds a doctorate from Cornell University, Ithaca. He is specifically interested in the study of non-state actors in South-East Asia and has published on social and revolutionary movements and, recently, on net works and movements involved in the protection of transnational rights. Daniel Compagnon is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Bordeaux. He has worked in Somalia and Zimbabwe and has published on the compari son of authoritarian regimes and their political economy in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa. His current interests also include the politics of environ ment and global environmental governance. His latest book is A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe (University of Penn sylvania, 2010). Yves-André Fauré is Professor and director of the Pôle Universitaire Guyanais. He has taught at Sciences Po Bordeaux and was a Director of Research of the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) where he led research pro
Contributors xi grams and extensively published on the interactions between economic pol icies and political systems in West Africa. He was then a professor at the Federal university of Rio de Janeiro, and pursued research on the regional economies and local development in Brazil (published by Editora E-Papers, Rio de Janeiro). He is currently conducting research on the local production systems in the Brazilian Nordeste and the Amazon basin. Mamoudou Gazibo is Professor in the Department of Political Science of the University of Montreal (Canada). He holds a doctorate in comparative pol itics from Université Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV. His research relates to democratisation processes in sub-saharan Africa, China–Africa relations and theoretical/methodological issues in comparative politics. He has published: (with Jane Jenson) La politique comparée: fondements, enjeux et approches théoriques (Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2004); Les paradoxes de la démocratisation en Afrique: analyse institutionnelle et stratégique (Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2005); Introduction à la politique africaine (Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006; 2nd edn, 2010); and (edited with Céline Thiriot) Le politique en Afrique: état des débats et pistes de recherche (Paris, Éditions Karthala, 2009). Alisher Ikhamov is Research Associate at the Centre of Contemporary Central Asia and Caucasus, School of Oriental Studies, University of London. He holds a doctorate from Tashkent State University. His research relates to nationalism, historiography, political economy of the farming sector and gov ernance issues of Uzbekistan. His latest publications include ‘Stalled at the Doorstep to Modern State: Neopatrimonial Regime in Uzbekistan’, in Emil ian Kavalski (ed.), Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia (Ashgate, 2010); ‘Neopatrimonialism in Uzbekistan: Interest groups, Patronage Networks and Impasses of the Governance System’, Central Asian Survey (March 2007, 26(1): 65–84). Kathleen M. Jennings is a researcher at the Fafo Institute for Applied Interna tional Studies in Oslo, Norway, focusing on issues related to UN peacekeep ing operations, the uses of force in conflict and post-conflict environments, and gender. She has previously been the acting deputy director of the Norwe gian Peacebuilding Center (Oslo), and a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. Jennings was educated at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and Stanford University. Jean-François Médard (1934–2005) was Professor of Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes politiques of Bordeaux University. A former director of the University’s African studies Centre (CEAN) and of IFRA (Nairobi), he is generally remembered for his keen interest in African politics. Médard had started his career by looking at community organisations in the United States, then local politics and patronage in France and Africa. His interest in compar ative politics focused more specifically on what he called ‘political exchange’, including when this involved ‘corruption’. Most of his publications are pre sented in the references at the end of this volume.
xii Contributors Alice Sindzingre is a Research Fellow of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) attached to EconomiX, University Paris X-Nanterre, and a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London). Besides her work in the field of development economics and the political economy of West Africa, she has published extensively on the con cepts of poverty, globalisation and the developmental state. Mahaman Tidjani Alou is a Professor at the Université Abdou Moumouni of Niamey. He holds a doctorate in political science and an Habilitation à diriger des recherches from the University Montesquieu Bordeaux IV. He is also the former director of and a research fellow at the Laboratoire d’études et de recherches sur les dynamiques sociales (LASDEL) of Niamey. He has taught in several European universities and has been involved in numerous interna tional research programmes. His publications relate to the study of interna tional aid, state construction and local politics in Niger and West Africa in general. Nicolas van de Walle is Professor of Political Science at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He is also associated to the Center for Global Develop ment in Washington, DC. He holds a PhD from Princeton University. He is the author of over 100 communications and publications on politics in Africa, the political economy of development and democratisation. His books include: Overcoming Stagnation in Aid-Dependent Countries (Washington, DC, 2005), African Economies and The Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999 (New York, 2001) and (with Michael Bratton) Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspectives (Cam bridge, UK, 1997).
Introduction Mamoudou Gazibo
Contemporary references to neopatrimonialism reveal a sharp contrast between what may be described as their quasi-hegemonic acceptance when it comes to analysing African political systems, and the paucity of comparativist reflections on the transcriptions of the concept.1 The term was originally coined by Shmuel Eisenstadt so as to remove any ambiguity with respect to the distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘post-traditional’ modern patrimonial regimes (Eisenstadt 1973). Today, the concept’s association with Africa extends well beyond the realm of scholarly references as reflected by its casual endorsement by NGOs, donors or development research institutions. This environment sets the foundations for the ambition of this volume to identify the diversity of meanings associated with contemporary expressions of (neo) patrimonialism, and revisit the implications resulting from its extensive use to characterize African politics. In the process, the contributors to this volume also pay tribute to the pioneering work of Jean-François Médard who first applied the concept of neopatrimonialism to the study of an African state in the late 1970s (Médard 1979). The confusion between the public and private spheres was, in his view, the essence of neopatrimonialism (Médard 1991a), an equation that still remains central to the model of the neopatrimonial African state whose contours and contents he helped to define. Accounting for the ‘endemic’ character of references to neopatrimonialism in Africa while the concept still remains parsimoniously used outside the continent has hardly called for attention so far. The dearth of comparativist work resorting to neopatrimonialism as a shared concept is all the stranger since until the 1980s, patrimonialism was called upon to analyse areas and dynamics that were not typ ically African. The contributions to this volume that discuss Russia and the post- communist states (Chapters 2 and 13), Brazil (Chapter 12) or the Philippines (Chapter 11) typically illustrate how practices that pertain to neopatrimonialism remain easy to discern in these extra-African contexts. Outside Africa, discussing the interplay between corruption, clientelism and nepotism also goes along with the reference to related but distinctive notions, such as those of ‘state capture’ (Russia), jeitinho and fisiologismo (Brazil) or ‘crony capitalism’ (Southeast Asia). In such cases, the underlying assumption is that neopatrimonialism does not need to permeate the entire state, but may be of varying intensity, with
2 M. Gazibo the result of different patterns of interactions between the public and private sphere, and an ongoing ability to produce public policies. The contributions to this volume, while addressing this issue, discuss how shifting away from somewhat reified understandings of neopatrimonialism in Africa offers opportunities to monitor and conceptualize a considerably broader range of configurations. The ambition to depart from essentialist interpretations of African neopatrimonialism is a path fraught with its own difficulties. Indeed, seeking to avoid the kind of ‘flattened’ comparative approach that would proceed from analyses restricted to African countries can induce problems of conceptual overstretching. Neopatrimonialism then becomes associated with case-studies that are obviously foreign to its logics, with the result that qualitative differences are blurred. The risk that conceptual elasticity may also turn the concept into a ‘catch-all’ notion should not be overlooked either. The concept of patrimonialism was the object of such criticism in the 1970s and, today, these extend to neopatrimonialism as well (Chapters 1 and 2). While showing awareness of such methodological issues, this volume keeps to an analytical thread that stresses differences in responses and points to specific traditions of interpretations associated with these. Such an approach proceeds from the type of ‘ecumenism’ that was once advocated by Jean Blondel, for whom the tools used for the purpose of comparison are not to be stringently pegged to any established research community and its traditions (Blondel 1994). The concept of neopatrimonialism has nurtured canonical debates among political scientists, and is inscribed within empirical configurations that are not specific to any peculiar regional area. Neopatrimonialism, was originally a by- product of the encounter between Weberian sociology and scholars working in different areas and disciplines (Chapter 1). The issue-areas covered by students of neopatrimonialism encompass a broad array of questions, e.g. what used to be known as ‘under-development’, but also the emergence of capitalism, strategies towards the conquest and perpetuation of power, the structural or strategic determinants of conflicts within political systems, or the contribution of corruption to the build-up of political legitimacy. It is therefore hardly surprising that the concept should have become endemic to the study of contemporary African polities. Yet there is no need to be a comparativist to notice that these questions invite the adoption of a cross-cutting grid of analysis. They also span many areas that used to appear unrelated to them. The question is therefore to assess in which sense neopatrimonialism is discriminating. The polysemy of the concept of neopatrimonialism is underscored by a federating concern for the analysis of the state, especially with regards to the question of its interactions with private interests. In other words, neopatrimonialism refers to configurations where the state, while claiming to be modern, combines public and private norms, unlike the Weberian bureaucratic state that relies upon imper sonal rules. These rules are ‘partially interiorized’ by actors who therefore find themselves in an intermediary position. Neopatrimonialism refers less to the absence of legal norms or the pre-eminence of tradition, than to the co-existence of conflicting norms (Médard 1979). The outcome is a constant interpenetration
Introduction 3 between private and public interests, but also the management of official mandates for private purposes, the imprint of nepotism in the recruitment of civil servants and in the selection of the entourage of officials. In the process, personal loyalties prevail over institutionalized relations, with the result of a correl ative weakness of institutions and legal frameworks since they lack the capacity to shape the behaviour of actors. We may add to this list the low accountability of the leadership and a lack of incentive or commitment to adopt developmental policies. Neopatrimonialism is often equated with a quintessential expression of the failings of the African state. Yet, this is clearly too restrictive a framework of analysis. The NGOs, think tanks and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) that seek to benchmark the intensity of corruption or the interplay between bur eaucracies and business circles – as in the case of Transparency International or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) – simultan eously point to the global spread of such phenomena. The Mani pulite operation in Italy and the large-scale corruption scandals which repeatedly shook France in the 1980s and 1990s offer timely reminders that the issues at stake cannot be dis connected from broader reflections on the future of the state, including in advanced Western democracies. At the end of his career, J.-F. Médard felt the urge to revisit the concepts and break away from their strict confinement to the African continent. His writings on large-scale corruption in corporate France and the French military–industrial complex, or his work on Françafrique,2 bear testimony to this desire to explore less conventional avenues. Neopatrimonialism, if understood as the interpenetration and entanglement between public and private interests, can no longer be construed as the exclusive preserve of ‘developing’ societies, including in Africa. The concept refers to processes that contribute to reconfigure state functions and can apply to both developing and industrialized countries. In order to address these issues, the book is divided into three sections. A first set of contributions discusses the meaning and relevance of the concepts. Hinnerk Bruhns (Chapter 1) reviews the different strands of references to patrimonialism in Weber’s writings and argues that, although Weber’s typology of the pure types of domination is closed, it remains open with respect to empirical forms of transcription. This legitimates applying the concept of neopatrimonialism to a broad range of contemporary situations. H. Bruhns identifies a perceptible weakness in contemporary conceptual reflections, but acknowledges the heuristic value of the concept to account for the post-colonial African state or empirical forms of contemporary domination in general. Daniel Bach (Chapter 2) discusses the overarching impact of neopatrimonialism and its assimilation, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, to a teleology of the post-colonial state’s decline. He argues that such a trend results from the underlying assumption that neopatrimonialism should be equated with patrimonialization of the entire state. This offers a sharp contrast with the notion’s use outside the continent, where patrimonialism has not been treated as ‘structurally’ incompatible with the production of public policies. As illustrated by debates in Asia or Latin America,
4 M. Gazibo the state can be both neopatrimonial and developmental, hence the notion of patrimonialism within the state suggested by D. Bach. The key figure of the ‘polit ical entrepreneur’ is then reviewed by Daniel Compagnon (Chapter 3) who points to the casual means of expression of neopatrimonialism while dismissing culturalist interpretations. Political entrepreneurship, a notion already present in Max Weber’s work, can be therefore as relevant to the analysis of Western representative democracies as to the study of African and Asian neopatrimonial sys tems. Mamoudou Gazibo (Chapter 5) dissects the relationships between authoritarianism and democracy and concludes that patrimonial practices are, historically and empirically, the norm rather than the exception. A priori norm ative approaches should therefore be replaced by the exegesis of concepts or the analysis of empirical experiences. Accordingly, the initial query – ‘Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy?’ calls for an answer pointing to fluctuating equilibriums. Such fluctuations depend on the level of institutionalisation and the existence of norms that shape political processes, both formally and informally, in all political systems. M. Gazibo draws from the comparativist literature on the ‘third wave’ of democratisation – notably the ideas of hybridization and partially democratic regimes – to demonstrate empirically the structuring and enduring impacts of neopatrimonialism on new democracies. The last chapter of this first section focuses on the discussion of neopatrimonialism by development economists. Alice Sindzingre (Chapter 6) notes that until recently their work tended to focus on strictly economic variables. Political variables are nowadays more frequently called upon to account for growth disparities between countries. The concept of neopatrimonialism, A. Sindzingre concludes, could help to overcome the limitations of some of the existing methodologies. Indeed, neopatrimonialism impacts decisively on such issues as economic policy orientations, adherence to economic reforms or the mobilization of resources. The second section of the book is devoted to transformations that affect the actors, contexts and processes to which neopatrimonialism has been associated in Africa. This ranges from tectonic drifts resulting from democratic transitions or armed uprisings, to more focused patterns like the substitution of the ‘godfather’ figure with that of the ‘big man’. Nicolas van de Walle (Chapter 7) whose work played a decisive role in the diffusion of the concept of neopatrimonialism in the United States, treats clientelism, an inherent component to patrimonial regimes, as a dependent variable in the processes of democratic change that are occurring across the African continent. N. van de Walle identifies three forms of clientelism (tribute, elite clientelism and mass clientelism) and argues that African neopatrimonial regimes mainly practice elite clientelism due to weak fiscal capabilities. Neopatrimonialism should, he concludes, recede if and when these capabilities strengthen. Since political clientelism is constitutive of all political systems, N. van de Walle also believes that we should expect a trans formation of the forms and functions of corruption, in parallel with the emergence of the more redistributive forms of mass clientelism that are omnipresent in all democracies. Morten Bøås and Kathleen M. Jennings (Chapter 8) focus on the development of warlordism in the 1990s and seek to understand how armed
Introduction 5 groups that initially fought the neopatrimonial state ended up reproducing many of the very practices that initially prompted them to take up arms. Through a comparison between rebel movements in Central and West Africa, they monitor how the ‘spectre’ of the neopatrimonial state shaped their representations of the state. In his chapter, Chris Albin-Lackey (Chapter 9) grapples with another and more recent phenomenon, associated with Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999: godfatherism. Political godfathers (or godfathers in politics) are very different from the ‘big men’ celebrated in the 1980s by J.-F. Médard through his discussion of the trajectory of Charles Njonjo (Chapter 4). While Charles Njonjo drew his power and influence from his access to state resources and patronage, the patterns of interactions between godfathers and state bureaucracies are more evocative of Asian and Russian debates on the penetration or ‘capture’ of the state by business circles and oligarchs. The Nigerian godfathers do not have the ambition to access to political offices. C. Albin-Lackey, through detailed case studies, analyses their capacity to mobilize a broad range of resources that are put at the disposal of their protégés and their fight against competitors. Mahaman Tidjani Alou (Chapter 10) closes this section with a chronicle of the modus operandi of the neopatrimonial state on a day to day basis. His analysis of the inter actions between politicians, customs officials and traders in the Republic of Niger portrays a largely powerless state that is bypassed, dodged, or even excluded from the very customs transactions and procedures which it has instituted. The third and last section of the book focuses on neopatrimonialism in non- African contexts. Dominique Caouette (Chapter 11) examines the ability of the Filipino state to produce public policies when, unlike in Africa, the dominant social forces are rooted into strong economic bases that also happen to be inde pendent from the state apparatus. In contrast with the classic neopatrimonial state where control of the administrative institutions is key, the gravitas of power resides outside the bureaucracy. The latter is permeated by and loyal to the inter ests of the various factions of the landed oligarchy and electoral processes are transformed into open arenas for the expression of its infighting. Through a case study of corruption in Brazil, Yves-André Fauré (Chapter 12) suggests another reading of conventional interpretations of neopatrimonialism. He identifies an impressive lexicographical diversity that points to the vitality of patrimonial practices within a Brazilian state that simultaneously retains effective bureau cratic capabilities. The pervasive imprint of patrimonial practices is embedded into the casual use of specific terms, such as jeitinho, which refers to everyday arrangements, or fisiologismo that focuses on the special favours and privileges drawn from a public office. Alisher Ilkhamov’s discussion of Uzbekistan and post-Soviet authoritarian regimes in Central Asia (Chapter 13) builds upon the discussion of practices established during the late Soviet period to contrast President Islam Karimov’s rule from Stalin’s capacity to produce public policies. Mauro Barisione (Chapter 14) specifically concentrates on the meaning of the notion of the ‘big man’ in a European context. Over the last 20 years, Italian democracy has often been described as a political laboratory where some
6 M. Gazibo commonly shared tendencies of contemporary democracies could develop into extreme forms of expression. Through a study of the Berlusconi ‘case’, M. Barisione shows how the privatization of the public sphere and the ‘publicization’ of private concerns are the ingredients of a more complex situation. Berlusconi’s political legitimacy stems from his charisma and has kept being stimulated by an extraordinary succession of crisis affecting national politics. Equally significant are the ideological factors and elements of political representation drawn from a deeper social matrix. Finally, Daniel Bourmaud (Chapter 15) focuses on the interplay between patrimonialism and clientelism in international relations through a reinterpretation of Franco-African relations under the Fifth Republic. He analyses how, for nearly three decades, the African policy of France was a source of international leverage due to an enabling international bipolar system. During the past 15 years, D. Bourmaud adds, France’s African policy has come to reflect the erratic course of a foreign policy awaiting redefinition in a globalizing world. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the structural variables which fuelled the patrimonialisation of the Franco-African relationship have almost completely vanished. The notion of collective clientelism nonetheless remains as relevant as ever for characterizing the asymmetric nature of interactions between actors, and the mutual benefits that they draw from these relationships. Here, as elsewhere in the book, the comparativist slant builds upon the identification of ‘clinical’ cases that are then recast into a ‘generalizing’ rather than ‘individualizing’ mould (Dogan and Pelassy 1981). What is at stake is the discussion of the extent to which the concept of neopatrimonialism can travel as much as the identification of its limitations. This book could not have seen the light of day without the technical and fin ancial support offered by the Institut d’études politiques of Bordeaux and the Émile Durkheim Centre, also at the University of Bordeaux. Support from the Arts and Sciences Faculty and the Political Science Department of the University of Montréal was equally important. In addition to these institutions, we gratefully thank Christophe Albouy for his unfailing availability, Ndeye Anta Khoudia Ndiaye, who worked on the first draft of the manuscript, and Armelle Jézéquel who put the manuscript in order. Burney and Claire Médard also deserve special thanks for actively contributing to the translation of Jean- François Médard’s chapter. L’Harmattan’s authorization to reproduce it is gratefully acknowledged.
Notes 1 On the endemic uses of the notion of the neo-patrimonial state, see for instance Pitcher, Moran and Johnston (2009: 125‑56); Africa is completely ignored by Budd (2004), who focuses on Asia. 2 See ‘Bibliographie des travaux de Jean-François Médard’ (2006: 711‑15). Françafrique is an expression coined to show the overly close, mafia-like relationships between the leadership of France and its former African colonies.
Part I
Concepts and their relevance
1 Weber’s patrimonial domination and its interpretations Hinnerk Bruhns
For roughly the last 30 years, the concepts of patrimonialism and neo‑patrimonial‑ ism have been linked to the analysis of certain forms of state construction and gov‑ ernance in Africa, Latin America and Asia. As the following chapters emphasize, such analyses have sought to account for various facets of the obstacles encoun‑ tered in the process of democratization and political development in general. This goes back to the early 1970s, when, calling into question theories of moderniza‑ tion, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt questioned the legitimacy of using the term ‘patrimo‑ nial’, a term derived from the analysis of traditional historic political systems, for analysing modern political systems. And he added that such a use might indeed be very fruitful – but only insofar as the term ‘patrimonial’ is used to designate not a level of ‘development’ or differentiation of political regimes, but rather a specific way of coping with the major problem of political life which may cut across different levels of ‘development’ or structural complexity. (Eisenstadt 1973: 59; also 12) In the same text, Eisenstadt also suggested distinguishing between traditional patrimonial regimes and modern forms of patrimonialism, thereby introducing the terms ‘neo-patrimonialism’ and ‘post-patrimonial regimes’ (Eisenstadt 1973: 13 and 46). The distinction was designed primarily to discern between the patri‑ monial systems of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, on the one hand, and modern patrimonial systems on the other. Eisenstadt saw the ‘most important’ of the dif ferences between patrimonial and neo-patrimonial regimes as being, first ‘the political problems which were faced respectively by such traditional and modern regimes, and, second, in close relation to these problems, the constellations of conditions which could ensure the continuity of any specific patrimonial regime’ (Eisenstadt 1973: 50). In neo-patrimonial regimes, the links between the centre and the periphery were more intense and under pressure. The consequences of this were the establishment of a broader and more united political framework, the integration of new groups and the emergence of new dimensions of collect ive identities. The expansive tendency of these regimes rendered them simultan eously more fragile and subject to crises.
10 H. Bruhns S.N. Eisenstadt was reacting here to a development in the use of the concept of patrimonialism initially put forward by Guenther Roth (1968: 194–206). Roth had observed that in many new states, tradition had lost its force as a source of legitimacy without having been replaced by legal, rational modernity. As a consequence, forms of personal rule that did not correspond to any of the three Weberian ideal types of legitimacy (legal-rational, tradi‑ tional or charismatic) essentially owed their maintenance to material incen‑ tives and rewards, notably clientelism and corruption. To take account of this development, G. Roth suggested grasping these forms of domination conceptually by distinguishing between traditional patrimonialism and de-traditionalized, personalized patrimonialism, later referred to as neo- patrimonialism. Since then, certain nuances and distinctions have been introduced in the use of the term neo-patrimonialism. One first example is the definition provided by Jean-François Médard who, in contrast to Eisenstadt, views the difference as lying within the internal functioning of the two regimes: The neo-patrimonial conception of power is situated in the historic continu‑ ity of the traditional patrimonial conception, however it must not be con‑ fused with it, to the extent that it is not rooted in any traditional legitimacy. There exists a difference between ‘rationalized’ neo-patrimonial states, i.e. those regulated by a form of specific regulation based upon particularist redistribution, and purely predatory and kleptocratic states leading to the criminalization and privatization of the state. This pattern recalls ‘sultanism’ as described by Max Weber, and corresponds to the most extreme and exacerbated case of neo-patrimonialism, which destroys the state which feeds it. It is the ultimate state of neo-patrimonialism. (Médard 1999a: 15) Our second example is drawn from a more recent text in which the central problem with discussions on the concept of neo-patrimonialism between special‑ ists on Africa is defined as follows: All the attempts to define neopatrimonialism (or ‘modern patrimonialism’) deal with, and try to tackle, one and the same intricate problem: the relation‑ ship between patrimonial domination on the one hand and legal-rational bureaucratic domination on the other, i.e. a very hybrid phenomenon. [. . .] The term clearly is a post-Weberian invention and, as such, a creative mix of two Weberian types of domination: of a traditional subtype, patrimonial domination, and legal-rational bureaucratic domination. (Erdmann and Engel 2007: 104) The difference between patrimonialism and neo-patrimonialism is found by the authors of this text in the relationship between the private and public spheres. In patrimonialism, all (political and administrative) relations between
Weber’s patrimonial domination 11 the governing and the governed are private relations: ‘there is no distinction between the public and private realms.’ In neo-patrimonialism, the distinction between the public and private exists, at least formally, and is accepted. The ‘neo-patrimonial’ exercise of power is conducted ‘within the framework of, and with the claim to, legal-rational bureaucracy or “modern” stateness’ (Erdmann and Engel 2007: 105). These two authors consequently propose a definition of neo-patrimonialism which draws from the concepts of patrimoni‑ alism and legal-rational bureaucracy in Weber. They add that neo- patrimonialism is a ‘mixture of two, partly interwoven, types of domination that co-exist: namely, patrimonial and legal-rational bureaucratic domination. [. . .] Elements of patrimonial and legal-rational bureaucratic domination pene‑ trate each other’ (105). These spheres are not isolated from each other. Quite to the contrary, they permeate each other: the patrimonial penetrates the legal- rational system and twists its logic, functions, and output, but does not take exclusive control over the legal-rational logic (105) The prefix ‘neo’ is not to be understood as a synonym of ‘modern’ (114). Weber was interpreted somewhat differently by Blundo and Médard who with regard to the neo-patrimonial nature of African states, wrote: This is a prolongation of the notion of traditional patrimonial domination developed by Max Weber and which is based upon the idea of the confusion of the public and private in the context of traditional legitimacy. The recourse to the prefix ‘neo’ serves to emphasize that we are no longer in a traditional context. We understand the neo-patrimonial state as a state that is structurally and formally differentiated from society, while, with regard to the way it functions, the public and private spheres informally tend to get mixed up. In a sense, the state is privatised for their benefit by those who hold a position of authority, first at the summit of the state, but also at all levels of the state pyramid. The political leader behaves like a patrimonial chieftain, i.e. like the true owner of his realm. (Blundo and Médard 2002: 10–11) These two conceptions are a reminder of debates of the 1970s on Weber’s typology: [the prefix . . .] neo indicating a different type of regime characterized by a specific interpenetration of elements of traditional and legal-rational legitimacy, or is the prefix aiming at grasping the difference between traditional and modern contexts, and the impact of this difference on the nature of the patrimonial regime. The constant reminders as to the Weberian origin of these terms invited us to observe that the concept of patrimonialism (or the more recent concept of neo- patrimonialism) has become part of the general vocabulary of the social sciences and proved its usefulness. The reference to Weber seems for the most part to serve only a legitimating function, or even a purely decorative one. It is true that studies that have recently been devoted to the concept of patrimonialism in Weberian sociology are rare,1 and have hardly resonated among contemporary analysts of neo-patrimonial regimes. These are manifestly two completely
12 H. Bruhns distinct fields of research: the concept of patrimonialism has in a sense become autonomous with regard to the function Weber accorded it in his sociology. This is one of the cases where the shifts in defining the terms invite to return to the origin of the concept of patrimonialism and also to the moment of its re-interpretation as neo-patrimonialism. The objective is then to provide these two terms with a precise meaning and true instrumental function in a situation in which the terms tend to be transformed into catch-all concepts (Theobald 1982).2 However, such a return to the original meaning (or sup‑ posed original meaning) of the concept in Weber is not the easiest thing to establish and raises a problem of method. For it is not enough to draw an apparently unequivocal definition from the only text which is generally cited in modern publications on patrimonialism and neo-patrimonialism: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society). For the use of the concept of patri‑ monialism is not uniform in this work, and the analysis of the evolution of this concept is complicated by the fact that in the five successive editions of this major work, and thus in all translations into foreign languages that pres‑ ently exist, the order of the chapters does not reflect the chronological order in which this group of texts was written, as the order was arranged by Mari‑ anne Weber and Johannes Winckelmann following Max Weber’s death. To find their orientations within these texts as well as in the parts of the work published posthumously, readers have access to a growing number of special ized studies. However, they are addressed more to specialists of Weber’s work rather than to ‘outside’ users of his conceptual apparatus. The non- German reader moreover remains dependant upon translations which, given the numerous inaccuracies, or indeed errors, do not always facilitate the understanding of the texts. A more in-depth study of the use of the concept of patrimonialism by Weber should also take other writings into account, particularly the author’s major study on the political, social and economic system of China, Confucianism and Taoism. In this text, which has been rarely read by researchers interested in con temporary neo-patrimonial regimes, he very frequently used the concept of patri‑ monialism (Zingerle 1972; Schmidt-Glintzer 2001; Breuer 2006: 85; Bünger 1977 and Hermes 2003). For all of these reasons, it does not seem pointless to rapidly review the intro‑ duction and use by Max Weber of the concept of patrimonialism in his sys tematic and historic sociological writings. This does not mean that we advocate ‘a return to the texts’ or seek to oppose some Weberian orthodoxy to modern interpreters. We simply wish to draw attention to a few points of information and method which may prove useful to the current debate.
The concepts of patrimonialism and patrimonial domination in Weber Max Weber neither invented the concept of patrimonialism (Patrimonialismus), nor that of patrimonial domination (Patrimonialherrschaft). These terms are part
Weber’s patrimonial domination 13 of the political vocabulary of political reactionaries and conservatives in the German states of the nineteenth century. They are to be found in the political theory and German political texts throughout the nineteenth century, and Weber himself reminds us that ‘the concept itself, as is well known, has been most con‑ sistently developed by Haller in his Restauration der Staatswissenschaften’ (Weber 1972: 137 and 1968: 237). The use made by M. Weber of the term, pat‑ rimonialism and its derivatives, first reflects the idea of those political theorists and legal historians of the nineteenth century who had instituted a genetic rela‑ tionship between patriarchalism and patrimonialism.3 In this sense, patrimonial domination is initially a decentralization of the community of the oikos (Weber 1972: 583 and 1968: 1010; cf. Breuer 2006: 83). It was the important work of the medievalist Georg von Below, Der Deutsche Staat des Mittelalters, pub‑ lished in 1914, that led M. Weber to introduce a clear distinction between patri archalism and patrimonialism, i.e. between the level of the ‘household (oikos)’ and that of a political entity (Breuer 1991: 88).4 In his defence of the idea of a medieval German ‘state’, von Below opposed contemporary evolutionist theo‑ ries, notably those developed by Karl Lamprecht, for whom Landesherrschaft, the form of political rule in the German territories, originated in the position of lord of the land, i.e. in patrimonial relationships governed by private law. Prior to the second decade of the twentieth century, when Weber worked both on those publications which were to become Economy and Society and his studies on The Economic Ethics of the World Religions, the term patrimonialism did not appear very frequently in his writings. For instance, the notion of patri‑ monial jurisdiction (Patrimonialgerichtsbarkeit) is to be found in his writing on Prussia, or the Latin term, patrimonium appears in his studies on Roman agrar‑ ian history. In the third version of Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum (1909), Weber uses the concept of the patrimonial right of rule (patrimoniales Herrschaftsrecht), for instance and observes that ‘the despot (in contrast to the bureaucratic king) has a political interest (as Napoleon I still showed) in ensuring that no right of patrimonial domination founded on the possession of land be constituted without an explicit agreement coming from himself.’ (Weber 2006: 367; Weber 1976: 74) In that part of the work that can now be consulted in digital form,5 we find 68 occurrences of the adjective patrimonial, 107 occurrences of Patrimonialismus, 18 of patrimoniale Herrschaft or Patrimonialherrschaft. Patrimonialstaat appears 20 times, and Patrimonialbeamtentum (patrimonial officialdom) four times, without counting other compound nouns that include Patrimonial. In Economy and Society, references to patrimonialism should be classified according to the dates on which they were written. We may distinguish two sets, which we shall refer to as A and B. This classification, it should be emphasized, does not correspond to the order of the chapters in the editions which have been studied for more than 80 years. The texts on ‘Sociology of domination’ (Soziologie der Herrschaft) were written prior to the First World War and are to be found in the second part of Economy and Society.6 The first part of the work, Soziologische Kategorienlehre, on the other hand, dates back to 1919–1920. Translated into English as ‘Conceptual Exposition’, the first part consists of three chapters:
14 H. Bruhns (1) Basic concepts of sociology (translated into English as ‘Basic Sociological Terms’), (2) Sociological Categories of Economic Action, and (3) Types of domination (translated into English as ‘The Types of Legitimate Domination’). In his overall plan of the work, Weber had placed these texts, which have a sys tematic character and were written later, in front of those written before the war, which are more characteristic of historic sociology. We now have a more com‑ plete presentation of the various versions and stages of writing of the Herrschaftssoziologie thanks to a recent publication by Edith Hanke (2001). There, she distinguishes eight stages of writing. However, I shall content myself with indicating the major differences between the two major chronological strata of the manuscripts of Economy and Society. We can observe a development and change in the use and the scope of the concept of patrimonialism (Breuer 2006: 83). In the oldest version of the text, (A), the concepts of patriarchalism and pat‑ rimonialism are used in such a way as to suggest clearly a genetic relationship between the two phenomena they designate. In the later version, (B), on the other hand, Weber no longer writes of a patriarchal version of patrimonialism, instead making a clear distinction between (i) primary patriarchalism, the struc‑ tural principle related to the household (Hausverband or oikos) and (ii) patrimo‑ nialism as a form of political rule. The differences in conceptualisation combine with queries which differ between the two versions of the sociology of domination to be found in Economy and Society. In the oldest part of the text (Soziologie der Herrschaft), the guiding question is how does domination function? In the most recent part (Typen der Herrschaft), the question is: how is domination legitimized? (Hanke 2001: 33). These questions provide structure, even if Weber does not distinguish them with absolute clarity in his efforts at categorizing and constructing typologies. We grant that this is not very important for the ordinary user of the concept of patrimonialism. However, these questions should be important when looking at the history of the concept. This is why we are going to sketch the thrust of Weber’s argument, starting by identifying various pertinent themes and follow ing the chronological order in which the texts were written. Thus, we shall suc‑ cessively allude to the line contributions presented in the sociology of domination (gathered together in Economy and society, second part), before pre‑ senting the types of domination to be found in the sociological categories (Economy and society, first part). The sociology of domination Weber’s Herrschaftssoziologie, (translated as ‘Sociology of domination or soci ology of authority’), was essentially written between 1911 and 1914. In current editions, it includes eight major sections, ranging from a chapter on the structural forms of domination to bureaucracy, patriarchal and patrimonial domination, char‑ ismatic domination, political and hierocratic domination, ‘non-legitimate domina‑ tion (typology of cities)’ right down to the sociology of the state, composed by Johannes Winckelmann from different Weberian texts. In the critical edition of
Weber’s patrimonial domination 15 Weber’s works, currently being published, this arrangement has been dropped, and the volume entitled Domination does not include the text on ‘The City’ (already published in a separate volume) and the ‘sociology of the state’.7 The two forms of domination dealt with in the section ‘Patriarchal and patri‑ monial domination’ are for Weber the two major pre-bureaucratic structural principles. Patrimonial domination was born on the soil of the oikos, and consti‑ tutes a particular case of patriarchal domination. Weber defines it as ‘a special case of patriarchal domination – domestic authority decentralized through assignment of land and sometimes of equipment to sons of the house or to other dependents’ (Weber 1972: 584 and 1968: 1011). He then emphasizes that ‘patrimonial conditions have had an extraordinary impact as the basis of political structures’ (Egypt, China) (Weber 1972: 585 and 1968: 1013), and concludes that, ‘We shall speak of a patrimonial state when the prince in principle organizes his political power, i.e. his domination which is not related to his domain, through physical coercion vis-à-vis those he rules, over extra-patrimonial areas and men (= political subjects), in just the same way as he exercises his patriarchal power’ (Weber 1972: 585 [translation mine – compare with Weber 1968: 1013]). In the following passages of the text, he goes on to historic analyses, and studies the rise of the civil service and patrimonial offices (patrimoniale Ämter), empha‑ sizing the difference with regard to modern bureaucracy (Weber 1972: 594 sq. and 1968: 1025 sq.). He is interested in ‘the first totally consistent patrimonial- bureaucratic administration (patrimonial-bürokratische Verwaltung) known to us’, that of ancient Egypt (1972: 607 sq. and 1968: 1044) before addressing a very dif‑ ferent case, that of the Chinese Empire, and then Rome, modern Europe, etc. In the following section ‘Feudalism, Ständestaat and Patrimonialism’: (1968: 1070 sq.), Weber addresses patrimonialism from a number of different angles. He establishes a first distinction between feudalism on the one hand and ‘pure’ patrimonialism on the other, based upon the importance of arbitrary rule and consequently the instability of positions of power. Feudalism is considered a borderline case of patrimonialism because of its tendency to be stereotyped and to create fixed relationships between suzerains and vassals (Weber 1972: 625 and 1968: 1070). Weber also envisages the transition of feudal patrimonialism to bureaucracy: the transition of the patrimonial office (Amt) to a bureaucratic func‑ tion is fluid (flüssig), for it generally implies occasional administration (Gelegenheitsverwaltung) and favouritism (Günstlingswesen), for which patrimonialism offers a ‘specific space for development’ due to its ‘structural principle (1972: 638 and 1968: 1088). Lengthy developments are then devoted to the relationship of patrimonialism to the economy, on the one hand, and patrimonialism to life conduct on the other. Patriarchal patrimonialism and feudalism promote diver‑ gent political and social ideologies, and thus very different forms of life conduct (Weber 1972: 650 and 1968: 1104). These developments are followed by a section entitled ‘The City. Non- legitimate domination’. It is in point of fact the essay better known under the title The City. It is here that we find Weber’s first developments on patrimonial
16 H. Bruhns bureaucracy and patrimonial bureaucratism. He uses the terms here so as to char‑ acterize both phenomena such as ‘a bureaucratic patrimonial storehouse adminis‑ tration’ during the Mycenaean epoch and the nature of the modern continental state – differing from England, where, because of the different status of cities, pat‑ rimonial bureaucracy never developed (1999: 235 and 1968: 1282). Weber confirms even greater importance to patrimonialism, the patrimonial state and the patrimonial bureaucracy in Confucianism amd Taoism (Weber 1989),8 the first version of which was written during the same period as the older parts of Economy and Society and the unfinished text, ‘The City’. However, Weber does not provide any definition of patrimonialism. He writes instead that ‘the feudal elements of the social order receded, and in all essential points patri‑ monialism, as will be seen, became the fundamental structural form for the spirit of Confucianism’ (Weber 1989: 201). When evoking the economic consequences of patrimonial bureaucracy, Weber seeks to show that the consequence of speculation on the chances of a purely political exploitation of official charges meant that it was not ‘primarily rational economic acquisition’ that prevailed in the accumulation of property and in particular land, but ‘apart from trade, which also led to accumulations of money in the country, particularly predatory capitalism based upon domestic policy (innenpolitischer Beutekapitalismus)’ (Weber 1989: 258). We have pointed out above that the guiding question of the sociology of dom‑ ination is how domination functioned. In a parallel manner, M. Weber thought about the foundations of various forms of domination; he thus elaborated his famous theory of the three pure types of legitimate domination. The types of domination Weber wrote several versions of his typology of three pure types of legitimate dom‑ ination. The first three versions are relatively brief, dating back to before the First World War. Just as in the chapters on the sociology of domination, patrimonialism appears here mainly as a variant of patriarchalism, considered to be the most important form of traditional domination.9 Here, we shall concentrate on the most recent version, written after the end of the First World War, which he places at the beginning of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. First of all, let us note that the chapter in question (Chapter 3) is entitled ‘The types of domination’ rather than ‘The three pure types of legitimate domination’. The latter are addressed in a particular para‑ graph within Chapter 1, entitled Die Legitimitätsgeltung, or ‘The validation of legit‑ imacy’. This notion and the concepts of belief in legitimacy (Legitimitätsglaube) and claim for legitimacy (Legitimitätsanspruch) are dealt with as supplementary aspects, generally necessary to guarantee stability in domination (Herrschaft). According to Weber, the type of obedience and of administrative staff (Verwaltungsstab) required for exercising domination, but also the nature of domination depend upon the nature of the legitimacy being claimed. For this reason, it seems appropriate to him to distinguish forms of domination on the basis of the claims to legitimacy specific to each of these (Weber 1972: 122 and 1968: 212).
Weber’s patrimonial domination 17 We have here a clear case of distinction between ideal types: Weber identifies three types of legitimate domination, the bases of which he seeks to describe. Domination may be rational, traditional or charismatic in character. The relation‑ ship of domination with which he is most concerned is that between a lord and his administrative staff (Verwaltungsstab), and only secondarily between the power apparatus and the masses of the dominated. The logic of this perspective is the result of his general approach, which, in this part of the work, focusses on the sociology of action. The point is to determine the nature of obedience and of faith in forms of legitimacy (in their ideal type forms), which are not to be found in a ‘pure’ form in historic reality. Even then, Weber does not see these three pure types as the only way of analysing forms of domination. The members of the administrative staff may be bound to obedience to their superior (or superiors) by custom, by affective ties by a purely mater ial complex of interests, or by ideal (wertrationale) motives. The quality of these motives largely determines the type of domination. Purely mater ial interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of solidarity between the chief and his administrative staff result, in this as in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation. Normally, other elements, affective and ideal, supplement such interests. In certain exceptional cases the former alone may be decisive. In everyday life these relationships, like others, are governed by custom and material calculation of advantage (zweckrationales Interesse). But custom, personal advantage, and purely affective or ideal motives of solidarity do not form a sufficient reliable basis for a given domination. In addition, there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy. (Weber 1972: 122 and 1968: 212 sq., translation modified by the author) As we have recalled, Weber bases his analysis of domination, and sub sequently his typologies on the nature of the relationship between the ruler and the administrative staff (Verwaltungsstab). When analysing legitimacy, Weber is interested in stable forms of domination or rule, with solid foundations. ‘Illegiti‑ mate’ or non-legitimate instances of domination are considered unstable because they are not based (apart from other motives) on a belief in legitimacy. The discussion of types of domination (Chapter 3) is only partially structured around the three types of legitimacy. Weber saw the criterion of legitimacy as having only a complementary although decisive function for analysing forms of domination. Thus, he does not regard it as the sole structural principle for his ana lysis. The three types are themselves dealt with and sub-divided into sub-types that relate to distinctive legitimacy criteria (Legitimitätsgeltung). Thus, the term, rational domination disappears from the title of the corresponding chapter, the title of which becomes ‘Legal domination with a bureaucratic administrative staff ’ (Die legale Herrschaft mit bürokratischem Verwaltungsstab). Then, the author appears to deal with feudalism, collegiality and the separation of powers, parties, representation and other phenomena on the same level as traditional or charismatic domination.
18 H. Bruhns The term patrimonialism appears, without prior definition, in the chapter on traditional domination (Traditionale Herrschaft). As elsewhere in Soziologische Kategorienlehre, but also in numerous other texts, Weber’s approach consists in establishing typologies and specifying concepts so as to render them operational. Regarding traditional domination, he first introduces a dis‑ tinction which seems fundamental to him (Weber 1972: 131 and 1968: 226 sq.) between traditional domination without and traditional domination with an administrative staff. The former is divided into two sub-types: gerontocracy and primary patriarchalism. The second may be based upon traditional recruit‑ ment, i.e. patrimonial recruitment – Weber enumerates six differing sub-types: kinsmen, slaves, dependents who are officers of the household, especially min isteriales, clients, colonists, emancipated slaves (Weber 1968: 228) – or upon extra-patrimonial recruitment. He identifies three cases of extra-patrimonial recruitment, of ‘persons in a relation of purely personal loyalty such as all sorts of “favorites”, persons standing in a relation of fealty to their lord (vassals), and finally, free men who voluntarily enter into a relation of personal loyalty as officials.’ Max Weber insisted upon the link between patrimonialism and bureaucracy: ‘In China and in Egypt, the principal source of recruitment for patrimonial offi‑ cials lay in the clientele of the king. “Bureaucracy” first developed in patrimonial states with a body of officials recruited from extra-patrimonial sources; but [. . .] these officials were at first personal followers of their master’ (1972 and 1968: 228 sq.). For him, this link is essential: ‘Patrimonialism, and in the extreme case, sultanism, tend to arise whenever traditional domination develops an administra‑ tion and a military force which are purely personal instruments of the master’ (Weber 1972: 133 and 1968: 231). This is followed by the definition of these two types: Where domination is primarily traditional, but exercised by virtue of the ruler’s personal autonomy [kraft vollen Eigenrechts], it will be called patrimonial authority; sultanistic domination shall be used to designate a patri‑ monial domination the administration of which is to be found primarily in the sphere of free arbitrary rule, not bound to tradition. (Weber 1972: 134, my own translation). The distinction operated by Weber is definitely fluid. Both forms of domination are distinguished from elementary patriarchalism due to the presence of a per‑ sonal ‘administrative staff’. A new distinction is then introduced, clearly showing that these types and cat egories are elaborated on the basis of historic material: Estate-type domination (ständische Herrschaft) is that form of patrimonial domination under which the administrative staff appropriates particular powers and the corresponding assets (ökonomische Chancen. (Weber 1972: 134 and 1968: 232)
Weber’s patrimonial domination 19 Weber then suggests a long list of distinctions, adopting as the defining cri terion the question of who takes opportunities, how these opportunities are appropriated, what the objects of such appropriations are, and so on. The last part of the chapter dwells upon the question of the effect of traditional domina‑ tion, and particularly of patrimonialism, on the nature of economic activity (Weber 1972: 137–40 and 1968: 236–41). These consequences for the economy, Weber emphasizes, depend first and foremost upon the typical mode of financing of a structure of domination (Weber 1972: 137 and 1968: 238). And he adds all sorts of distinctions, categories and types. The nature of the patrimonial adminis‑ tration intervenes at a secondary level. ‘It is not only the financial policy of most patrimonial regimes which tends to restrict the development of rational eco nomic activity, but above all the general character of their administrative prac‑ tices’ (Weber, 1972: 138 and 1968: 239). This is notably due to the traditionalism inherent in patrimonialism, which perturbs the elaboration of formally rational regulations. In addition, there is the lack of specialization of officials, and then the vast field of arbitrary rule and personal favours related to of the lord and the administrative staff. The validation of legitimacy and the nature of its foundations tend, finally, to regu‑ late the economy according to ‘utilitarian or social ethical or materialistic “cul‑ tural ideals” ’,10 rather than through a formal orientation (in the sense of formal rationality oriented around ‘positive’ law). As a result, patrimonial rule is not incompatible with forms of capitalism related to trade, to “tax farming” ’ (1968: 240), to the enrichment of state powers, to the financing of wars, and possibly to plantation capitalism and colonial capitalism. Nevertheless, this precludes entrepreneurial capitalism, rationally organized with fixed assets, targeting a market of private consumers and operating within a (formally) free labour market. Weber nevertheless takes particular care to point out that ‘this situation is fundamentally different only in cases where a patrimonial ruler, in the interest of his own power and financial provision, develops a rational system of administration with technically specialized officials’ (Weber 1972: 139 and 1968: 240). In the later version of his sociology of domination, Weber thus clearly distin‑ guishes between primary patriarchalism as a structuring principle of the oikos, on the one hand, and patrimonialism as a form of political domination: ‘in a pure type, patrimonial domination, especially of the estate-type household (ständischpatrimoniale Herrschaft), regards all governing powers and the corresponding economic rights as privately appropriated economic advantages’ (Weber 1972: 137 and 1968: 236). As regards internal distinctions within this type of domination, the modifi‑ cations with regard to the earlier version are minor (Breuer 2006: 83). When the personalization of ties with the administrative apparatus is maximised, the extension of the space for arbitrary behaviour means that pure patrimonialism takes on the extreme form of sultanism. If the lord loses control of the admin‑ istrative staff, the case becomes one of ‘estate-type patrimonialism’ (ständischer Patrimonialismus).11
20 H. Bruhns Weber distinguishes between two types of configurations: on the one hand prebendalism, the ruler, in exchange for military or administrative services, cedes purely economic rights to members of the administrative staff, and on the other feudalism, if he also has to yield lordly rights. In his analyses of historical and contemporary political configurations and regimes, Weber never uses the term patrimonialism as an isolated conceptual instrument, defined unequivocally upon the basis of a single determining cri terion, but instead inserts one or more conceptual systems and typologies which respond to the variety and wealth of empirical situations. This dimension disap‑ pears almost entirely in the often reductionist references to this author that are found in recent publications on (neo-)patrimonialism. If we accept the logic of Weberian typologies, and particularly that of the ideal type, it is obvious that in empirical, historic or contemporary reality, all forms of existing domination mix various ‘pure’ types of domination: ‘Histori‑ cally, there has never been a purely patrimonial state’ (Weber 1972: 137 and 1968: 237). If, as in certain chapters of Economy and Society, the criterion of classification is the nature of legitimacy claimed, the main question is whether Weber’s typology and concepts can analyse the historic configurations that served to construct it, but also recognize contemporary unprecedented situations. From a pragmatic vantage, we might well ask whether the list of sub-types of traditional domination elaborated by Weber (including patriarchalism, patrimo‑ nialism, sultanism) should be complemented by other sub-types on the basis of new empirical data and configurations. Weber’s typology of ‘three pure types of legitimate domination’ is a closed one, but the list of sub-types, drawn from empirical forms of domination, con‑ ceptually resulting from mixes of two or even three ‘pure types’ is open by definition. Given this, there is no reason not to call neo-patrimonialism a par ticular combination of elements which are traditional (patrimonial) and legal- rational, or even charismatic, i.e. a specific combination of elements that was not dealt with in Weber’s studies of historic sociology. The distinction made by certain modern authors between patrimonialism and neo-patrimonialism depending upon the nature and the context of the private to public relationship corresponds, albeit, to the logic of the Weberian typology, but would benefit from greater thought as to process and dynamism. This is what Jean-François Médard undertook when he suggested reserving the concept of neo- patrimonialism to forms of the state which, in contrast to the European development, are the product of ‘two processes of bureaucratization and patri‑ monialization [which] have gone hand in hand and are intimately linked.’ He thus added to the Weberian idea of bureaucratic patrimonialism that of a patri‑ monialized bureaucracy (Médard 1998: 311 sq.). G. Roth’s already mentioned proposal that traditional patrimonialism should be distinguished from personalized, de-traditionalized patrimonialism, initially served as the basis for the concept of neo-patrimonialism, nonetheless seems to contradict the logic of Weber’s typology, for, as Stefan Breuer has observed, it mixes what Weber had gone to great pains to separate: legitimate domination
Weber’s patrimonial domination 21 and illegitimate or non-legitimate domination.12 As we have seen, the main cri terion behind Weber’s typology is, the validation of legitimacy (Legitimitätsgeltung). Neo-patrimonial domination, as understood by G. Roth, can be maintained for a certain time through support that has been secured. It can also generate new forms of support, but no belief in legitimacy. As S. Breuer observed, with respect to personal domination in more or less rationalized constitutional states, Weberian sociology offers the concept of plebiscitary democracy, but this is based upon a specific belief in a legitimacy (spezifischer Legitimitätsglauben) that neither exclusively relates to custom or interest, nor to ‘purely affective or value rational reasons for forming a social relationship.’ (Weber 1972: 122). This does not apply to neo-patrimonialism. For an outside observer and occasional reader of publications on (neo-)patri‑ monialism in Africa or elsewhere, referencing to Weber’s works raises three lines of comment. The first concerns the choice of the texts consulted. When Weber is cited first hand, which is far from the most frequent case, publications generally refer to the same passages, with the desire to find unequivocal defini‑ tions which can be applied to differing contexts. However, Weber deals with patrimonialism in many places in his work, and the reader might find numerous points for comparison as well as models of conceptual construction. These need not necessarily be imitated or taken on board in their present state, but they might enrich present-day discussions on the concept of neo-patrimonialism and its links with phenomena such as corruption, clientelism, or particular forms of bureaucracy. The second point concerns the very nature of conceptual work. Weber expressed himself very clearly on this point, and I do not think it useless to cite an excerpt from his writings of 1904: The history of the sciences of social life is, and thus remains, a constant shift from the attempt to order facts in thought through conceptual construc‑ tion – the dissolution of cognitive constructs so realised by the extension and displacement of the scientific horizon – to the reformation of concepts on this changed foundation. It is not the error of seeking to construct con‑ ceptual systems in general that is expressed by this – every science, includ‑ ing simple descriptive history, operates with the conceptual stock-in-trade of its time – it expresses instead the circumstance that in the sciences of human culture the construction of concepts depends on the posing of prob lems, and the latter change with the content of the culture itself. The relation within the cultural sciences of the concept to the conceived implies the tran‑ sience of all syntheses. Large-scale attempts at conceptual construction have in the domain of our science often been of value in revealing the limits of the significance of the perspectives that founded them. The greatest advances in the domain of the social sciences are substantively connected to the shift of practical cultural problems and disguise themselves as critiques of conceptual construction. (Weber 2004: 398 sq.)
22 H. Bruhns This excerpt might be read as a simple (albeit very strong) justification of recent or present-day attempts at redefining the concept of patrimonialism (so as to remain within the framework of our example). But there is more to it: Weber emphasizes his ‘conceptual systems’, and this dimension appears to me to be neglected in discussions on patrimonialism and neo-patrimonialism yet, it is not missing in Eisenstadt’s work, Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism (1973). My third observation concerns the use of the notion of ideal type. We recalled earlier that some authors appreciate Weber’s ideal type ‘because of its gen erality’ and that from this vantage point, ‘patrimonialism, as an ideal type, is the common denominator of very diverse practices which are characteristic of African politics’ (Médard 1991b: 338). This does not mean that such concerns and reflections are altogether missing in literature on neo-patrimonialism, to the contrary. In 1991, J.-F. Médard, upon the basis of his own reading of M. Weber, reviewed a series of conceptual approaches to patrimonial domination and neo-patrimonialism, as well as the criticisms of the use of these concepts in analysing contemporary African states. By conclusion, he reproached certain authors with having understood ‘neither the essence of patrimonialism, i.e. the confusion of the public and the private, and what such a definition implies, nor what the use of an ideal type entails’ (Médard 1991b: 328). This discussion should be taken up in greater depth. For the same author was not immune to risks of confusing the ideal type and the dif ference between patrimonialism and neo-patrimonialism. The Weberian ideal type was in his view useful and illuminating because it is so general. Patrimoni‑ alism as an ideal type is, he wrote, the common denominator for very diverse practices characteristic of African politics: nepotism, clanism, tribalism, region‑ alism, clientelism, patronage, prebendalism, corruption, predatory practices, fac‑ tionalism, etc. (Médard 1991b: 329 sq.). The concept ‘offers the advantage of making it possible simply to take account of the common logic behind all of these practices, without confining oneself to a single type of society.’ Respond‑ ing to one of his critics, Médard acknowledged that he might have ‘confused an ideal type and a mixed type. The ideal type is patrimonialism, and neo‑patrimo‑ nialism is a mixed type’ (1991b: 332). Without going into detail, let us remem‑ ber that for Weber, an ideal type is formed by a one-sided accentuation of one or several perspectives, and through the synthesis of a variety of diffuse, discrete, individual phenom‑ ena, present sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes not at all; sub‑ sumed by such one-sided, emphatic viewpoints so that they form a uniform construction in thought. In its conceptual purity this construction can never be found in reality, it is a utopia. (Weber 2004: 388) It is the research interest which defines the point of view from which a phe‑ nomenon is unilaterally accentuated and how the ideal type is constructed. This is clearly visible in the chapter entitled ‘The types of domination’ in Economy
Weber’s patrimonial domination 23 and Society. The unilateral accentuation does not concern the same points of view when dealing with the trilogy of pure types of legitimate domination or when constructing sub-types of traditional domination, among which is patrimo‑ nial domination, or finally sub-types of the latter. The ideal type is the opposite of a general type and cannot be the common denominator of a variety of phe‑ nomena. As for mixed types, they are the making of historic reality. The proposition that ‘African states are generally more neo-patrimonial than patrimonial to the extent that they are mixed types, mixing traditional and modern features (notably bureaucratic features) in a complex and unstable com‑ bination’ (Médard 1991b: 332) is nowadays commonly accepted in works on the neo-patrimonial African state. Although this proposition may pose serious dif ficulties from the vantage of the Weberian conceptualization of types of domina‑ tion, the usefulness of the concept of (neo-)patrimonialism in analysing the mechanisms and functioning of the post-colonial African state must not be underestimated. It should also be made clear that references to Weber keep requiring a critical discussion of his typology so as to avoid that they turn into a formal exercise.
Notes 1 Cf. publications by Zingerle, F. Bünger, S. Breuer, H. Schmidt-Glintzer and S. Hermes are cited in the references at the end of this book. 2 R. Theobald’s criticism appeared in the journal in which G. Roth had opened up the debate in 1968. 3 M. Weber had encountered patriarchalism in his studies on Roman agrarian history and his surveys on the conditions of farm workers in Prussian territories east of the Elbe. 4 In a letter to Georg von Below of 21 June 1914, in which he announces his intention to produce a contribution comparing and systematically dealing with political groups, Weber writes ‘Terminologically I shall stick to the concept of patrimonialism precisely for certain types of political authority. But the absolute distinction between power in the house, over the body and over land and political rule – for which there is no other cri terion apart from that it is not any of the above (but military and court power) will be hopefully sufficiently emphasised for your taste’. Max Weber (2003a: 725). 5 The essential part of his work is concerned. Cf. CD-ROM Max Weber – Gesammelte Werke. Digitale Bibliothek vol. 58. This edition is incomplete. It is not based upon the new complete and critical edition (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe), but upon the older editions, which nonetheless include the essential Weber. 6 We draw the references to Economy and Society from the German edition of 1972 and the English translation of 1968. 7 Regarding the sociology of the contemporary state cf. Anter 1995; Anter and Breuer 2007. 8 Numerous occurrences are referred to in the index at the end of the work. 9 This typology is very rapidly sketched in the sociology of domination (Weber 1972: 549 sq.), and then developed in the last pages of the Economic Ethic of the World Religions (Weber 1996: 370 sq.). The typology also appears in a text which was post‑ humously published in 1922 in the Preußische Jahrbücher: ‘Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft’. This text was then included in the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1st edn 1922), Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1988 [7th edn, J. Winckelmann (ed.)]. English translation in: Sam Whimster (2004).
24 H. Bruhns 10 This is inaccurately translated in Weber (1968: 240) as: ‘in terms of utilitarian, wel fare or absolute values’. 11 To translate ‘ständischer Patrimonialismus’, Parsons chose ‘decentralized authority’ rather than ‘estate-type domination’ because the members of the administrative staff are independent of their master. The term ständisch derives from the continental medieval system of the Estates, while implying high social rank. 12 In the sense of domination, the stability of which is guaranteed by an accepted claim to legitimacy; Breuer (2006: 90) does not specify this.
2 Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism Comparative receptions and transcriptions Daniel C. Bach When Guenther Roth suggested in the late 1960s that the notion of patrimonial rule should be applied to the regimes of ‘new’ states (1968: 194), this had already been experimented in Latin America and Asia. It was another matter in Africa, where the concept of ‘charismatic authority’ had been more commonly used to describe the rise to power of nationalist leaders and parties (Ake 1966: 6–13; Zolberg 1966). More generally, the adoption of patrimonialism was restrained by a deep ambivalence towards ways of conceptualizing, in so-called ‘modern’ states, features that Max Weber had associated with traditional authority. Aristide Zolberg had accordingly suggested the introduction of a dichotomy between ‘traditional’ and ‘neo-traditional’ regimes (1966: 140–1). In a similar vein, Guenther Roth argued that two forms of patrimonial dominance should be considered – one proceeding from the survival of ‘traditional’ patrimonial regimes, and the other associated with ‘de-traditionalized’ forms of patrimonialism. In this latter model, the leader’s personal power rested upon loyalty linkages ‘inextricably linked with material incitements and rewards’ (1968: 196). It was in the end Shmuel Eisenstadt who settled the terminology by suggesting the addition of the neo prefix to eliminate any ambiguity over the distinction between modern ‘traditional’ and ‘post-traditional’ regimes. Accordingly, the concept of neopatrimonialism refered less to a traditional, or tradition-derived mode of domination, than to modern bureaucratic political systems and domination processes. The introduction of this neologism also paved the way for the analysis of unprecedented situations – namely political systems where ‘organ ized forms of political life’, associated with bureaucracies, popular movements and political parties, were significantly more developed than those of ‘traditional’ and relatively undifferentiated political systems (Eisenstadt 1973: 11). Neopatrimonialism was conceived as a particular variant of patrimonialism – a hybrid model-type intended to account for new power systems in the ‘post- traditional’ societies of Latin America, South Asia and the Middle East (Eisenstadt 1973: 15). Africa was absent from Eisenstadt’s list and concerns but it is there that the dissemination of the concept of neopatrimonial rule was to be most successful. The following pages first discuss how the model of neopatrimonial state has progressively become the archetype of the African anti-developmental state. It is
26 D.C. Bach argued that this pattern was stimulated by the combination of a sharp dissociation between patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism, with the systematic assimilation of the latter to integral and predatory forms of domination. In its second part, this chapter contrasts this trajectory with those observed in Latin America, South-East Asia and Russia, where the ongoing use of patrimonialism, stigmatized for conceptual laxity in the 1980s, has often been counterbalanced by innovative lexicological adjustments. The outcome is the association of patrimonialism with greater axiological neutrality due to the persistance of the analytical distinction between regulated or capped forms of patrimonialism (patrimonialism within the state) and predatory forms of patrimonialism (the patrimonialization of the entire state).
Africa: the neopatrimonial state as a model and a prototype In Africa, as earlier in Latin America or Asia, references to the notion of the patrimonial state were initially designed to account for institution-building pro cesses rooted into a traditional, neotraditional or traditionalist turf. In Ethiopia, for example, the dynastic foundations of Haile Selassie’s regime were viewed as an exemplary case of what Max Weber meant by patrimonial rule (Jackson and Rosberg 1982: 120–6). Aside from this textbook case, few were the students of Sub-Saharan Africa who tied patrimonialism to the ongoing imprint of precolo nial or colonial political systems. As they undertook to conceptualize systems of personal rule in Sub-Saharan Africa, Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg argued that ‘rather than traditional “patrimonialism” in most new African states . . . we find forms of personal rule based on clientelism . . . but not politically relevant tradition’ (1982: 74). The relevance of the concept of patrimonial domination was dismissed on the grounds of its lack of inscription within clearly established ‘traditional’ dynamics. In contrast with the literature on Latin America, which primarily viewed patrimonial rule as an inheritance of the Spanish or Portuguese colonial systems, most students of the patrimonialization of the African state also focused on the study of post-colonial states. Crawford Young and Thomas Turner argued for instance that: Even though the colonial state, in its origins, was a personal fiefdom, over the years its rule became increasingly bureaucratized. The hegemony of the state was upheld by a socially distant European bureaucracy, paternalistic yet impersonal. . . . Administrative agents were equipped with ample discre tionary authority . . . but colonial rule was highly institutionalized, operating through a dense matrix of laws and regulations. (1985: 164; Young 1994: 291 sq.) The quest for continuities between contemporary and pre-colonial patrimonial rule still remains of marginal concern to historians and political scientists, despite the interest triggered by Victor Le Vine’s early attempt to demonstrate
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 27 how African societies were generally closer to ‘a diffuse form of patrimonialism’ than to patriarchal rule, with the result that they had no difficulty evolving towards ‘more focused “modern” personalist [forms of] patrimonialism’ (Le Vine 1980: 658; On the perception of public space in pre-colonial societies, see Dahou 2005: 329–36). Through the adoption of such notions as that of ‘decentralized despotism’, the relevance of debating the interactions between patri archal or patrimonial forms of rule and late colonialism has nonetheless been suggested in recent years (Mamdani 1996: 53–61). Until the concept of neopatrimonialism took over, discussing patrimoniaism in Africa went along with bifurcated interpretations of its impact on the African post-colonial state. J.-C. Willame’s notion of ‘decentralized patrimonialism’ was crafted to monitor the central government’s loss of control over the territory of Zaïre and the ‘appropriation of public offices as the elite’s prime source of status, prestige and reward’ (1972: 28). T. Callaghy similarly called upon the concept of patrimonialism to account for Mobutu’s political ascent in the early 1970s, but the implications were radically distinct (Callaghy 1984). Drawing upon a description of the evolution of authoritarian states in Latin America, and on the record of France’s absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century, Callaghy viewed the Mobutist state as an ‘early modern state’ and an ‘administrative mon archy’. Zaire’s political system was ambivalently represented as ‘neo-traditional and patrimonial’ (Callaghy 1984: 46), or as a ‘patrimonial-administrative’ regime. Indeed, the author argued, ‘the consolidation of viable state structures is still uncertain in much of black Africa’, where ‘patrimonial forms of rulership are still dominant [and] only partially affected by intermittent bureaucratisation and nascent class structures and struggles’ (1984: 66). Indeed, authoritarian and single-party systems in Africa were still widely associated with the notion of ‘early modern states’ that warranted analogies between Houphouët Boigny’s rule and Bonapartism (Zolberg) or Mobutu and ‘bureaucratic cesarism’ (Willame).1 The concept of neopatrimonial rule was first applied to Africa in the late 1970s, as Jean-François Médard undertook to account for the Cameroonian state’s lack of institutionalization and ‘underdevelopment’. Under the Ahidjo regime, he noted, Cameroon is simultaneously a ‘strong, authoritarian, absolute . . . and impotent’ state, where political-administrative authority is converted into a private patrimony by a bureaucracy and a party closely controlled by President Ahidjo (Médard 1979: 39). Personal rule, the confusion between public and private spaces, and lack of distinction between office and officeholder, Médard went on, are masked behind discourses, juridical norms and institutions that nourish the illusion of a legal-bureaucratic logic. While officially proclaimed through bureaucratic norms and institutions, the distinction between public domain and private interest is, in practice, ‘negated and voided of its contents’ (Médard 1979: 68). Devoid of a legitimizing ideology, the ruler owes his ability to remain in power to his capacity for transforming his monopolistic control over the state into a source of opportunities for family, friends and clients. Médard’s approach drew extensively from the study of political clientelism and patronage in Africa, an area of investigation that, besides him, had been
28 D.C. Bach extensively explored by C. Clapham, R. Lemarchand and S. Eisenstadt (Médard 1982; Eisenstadt and Lemarchand 1981). The patterns of articulation of state– society interactions under personal rule were key to the study of neopatrimonialism. They have been encapsulated through the ‘big man’ figure, borrowed from the typology suggested by Marshall Sahlins (1963). The achievements of the politician as an entrepreneur, analysed and re-interpreted by Médard, and later Yves-André Fauré through a study of the Kenyan politician Charles Njonjo (Médard 1987; Fauré and J.-F. Médard 1995), proceed from the ‘straddling’ of economic and political positions. The big man must imperatively retain the ruler’s total confidence, as he depends on him for access to institutional resources that are the basis of his influence. In short, the big man’s social and economic achievements are tied to the success of his investment in politics. Neopatrimonialism in Africa is classically defined as the expression of a confusion between office and officeholder within a state endowed, at least formally, with modern institutions and bureaucratic procedures. The introduction of ‘neo’ as a prefix means that neopatrimonialism is freed from the historical configurations with which patrimonialism had been associated by Weber (Bourmaud 1997: 61). The display of legal-bureaucratic norms and structures coexists with relations of authority based on interpersonal rather than impersonal interactions: In neopatrimonial regimes, the chief executive maintains authority through personal patronage, rather than through ideology or law. As with classic patrimonialism, the right to rule is ascribed to a person rather than to an office. In contemporary neopatrimonialism, relationships of loyalty and dependency pervade a formal political and administrative system and leaders occupy bureaucratic offices less to perform public service than to acquire personal wealth and status. The distinction between private and public interests is purposely blurred. The essence of neopatrimonialism is the award by public officials of personal favors, both within the state . . . and in society . . . (Bratton and van de Walle 1994: 458) The concept of neopatrimonialism, due to its key emphasis on the coexistence of patrimonialism with legal-bureaucratic elements, begs the question of the forms of interaction and their outcomes. What is at stake in fine is the neopatrimonial state’s capacity (or lack thereof ) to produce ‘public’ policies. Daniel Bourmaud touches on the matter when he defines neopatrimonialism as a ‘dualistic situation, in which the state is characterized by patrimonialization, as well as by bureaucratization’ (1997: 62). Bratton and van de Walle also refer to con temporary states where ‘patrimonial logic coexists with the development of bur eaucratic administration and at least the pretense of legal-rational forms of state legitimacy’, even though elements of legal-bureaucratic legitimacy may be a mere facade (van de Walle 1994: 131). Such dualism can effectively result in a wide array of empirical situations. J.-F. Médard, who had grown increasingly aware of the conceptual drift caused by undifferentiated descriptions of
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 29 neopatrimonialism, sketched, in the late 1990s, a taxonomy based on the mode and intensity of the regulation of patrimonial practices. His suggestion was to identify two types of African states representing two polar points, with all possible intermediate situations: at one end of the spectrum, neopatrimonial states characterized by a patrimonial mode of political regulation based on redis tribution (Côte d’Ivoire under Houphouët-Boigny), and, at the other end, purely predatory states that correspond to a sultanic type of patrimonialism (Mobutu’s Zaïre). (Médard 2000: 854) Political systems where patrimonial practices tend to be regulated and capped should be distinguished from those where the patrimonialisation of the state has become all-encompassing, with the consequent loss of any sense of public space or public policy. Regulated forms of neopatrimonialism The ruler’s personality exerts a decisive influence in the implementation of regulated forms of neopatrimonialism, usually through the introduction of a policy of ethnoregional balance. The distribution of resources and prebends is sometimes formalized and takes place on an inclusive base. Regulated forms of neopatrimonialism are expected to alleviate the imprint of social, ethnoregional and religious identities while promoting loyalty and intra-elite cohesion. The emphasis laid on co-optation and redistribution, rather than coercion, contributes to promote a culture of mutual accomodation. The outcome is an increased state capacity to penetrate society and ensure compliance. Even though notions such as public ethics and common good may be undercut, regulated neopatrimonialism conveys its own brand of ‘moral economy’, in so far as it favors redistribu tion processes that target the national territory (Olivier de Sardan 1999). The inclusive nature of such practices may also go along with a modulation in scope and intensity: some administrative sectors operate according to legal-bureaucratic rules with the result of a capacity to generate ‘public’ policies. The imprint of regulated neopatrimonialism is capped and ringfenced. The regimes of Jomo Kenyatta (1964–78) and Félix Houphouët-Boigny (1960–93) offer good examples of regulated neopatrimonialism. The notion of ‘rationalized clientelism’ that has been applied to Kenyatta’s rule gives a convincing account of the way his régime attempted to reconcile contradictory imperatives in a functional way. Indeed, within the Kenyan bureaucratic state, impersonal rules were made to co-exist with neopatrimonial practices designed to alleviate the risks that political competition might carry for the Nation-State (Bourmaud 1991: 262). Synergies between presidentialism, the single-party system and what amounted to an institutionalized system of patronage facilitated the incorporation of the periphery by the center.
30 D.C. Bach In Côte d’Ivoire, the régime of F. Houphouët-Boigny (1960–93) similarly exemplified the combination of personal rule with regulated neopatrimonialism. The trademark of Houphouët, a protoype of the ‘big man’ in politics, was his capacity to combine intra-elite co-optation with limited usage of coercion. Direct control was exerted over the recruitment of the political elite so as ‘to balance ethnic, generational and even personal rivalries’ (Crook 1989: 214). The outcome was a hybrid political system where ‘strong personal power . . . through patron–client relations [combined with] the use of modern bureaucratic agencies’. Patrimonial interference in the bureaucratic activities of the state was restricted (Sandbrook 1985: 119–21). The country’s political and administrative elites appear, observed Richard Crook in the late 1980s, far less divided than in the ‘patrimonial bureaucracies’ of other African states. Patrimonial elements within the political system, ‘have . . . not been allowed to override the commit ment set from the top to legal-rational forms of control, effective role performance and the implementation of an economic programme’ (1989: 227–8). The routinization of regulated practices over a relatively long period also invited parallels with the country’s remarkable political stability. The 1970s were the golden age of regulated neopatrimonialism in Africa. Commodity export prices were still high and the states often had access to signi ficant resources for redistribution. Comforting the rulers’ personal power seemed compatible with ensuring state- (if not nation-) building. The integrative virtues of the resulting processes were often extolled (Theobald 1982: 550). Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire were far from being the only cases of regulated neopatrimonialism. Cameroon under Ahidjo was also, for instance, labelled as a case of regulated neopatrimonialism. Although Cameroon was then frequently described as a police state, noted retrospectively J.-F. Médard, the use of violence by the Ahidjo regime remained, in the final analysis, ‘functional, discreet and circumscribed’, as the president kept actively pursuing strategies designed to co-opt his opponents – the president’s so-called equilibrium policy based on a sharing of offices and prebends among the different geo-ethnic groups (Médard 1995: 360–1). Predatory forms of neopatrimonialism Predatory forms of neopatrimonialism are associated with systems where personal rule and control of resources reach a paroxysmic level, with a consequent ‘failure of institutionalisation . . . and thus of the state’ (Médard 1991b: 339). The corollaries are the absence of a public space, and of any capacity to produce ‘public’ policies. Indeed, the privatization of the public sphere is carried to such extremes as to finally dissolve it (Englebert 2000: 104–5), as observed in the Central African Republic, where, under the Bokassa regime, deinstitutionalization and the rise of informal practices challenged the very notion of a state (Bigo 1988). Patronage and the distribution of resources also rest upon more selective and/or markedly discriminatory geo-ethnic foundations with the result, as in Angola during the 1980s, of a collapse of the clientelist distribution systems that
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 31 were meant to ‘bring rulers and ruled together, link centre and peripheries, urban and rural areas’ (Vidal 2008: 127). It is the evolution of the Mobutu regime (1965–97) after 1974 that still offers the purest illustration of a thoroughly patrimonialized state. Mobutu’s neopatrimonial rule, observes René Lemarchand, differed from others on the continent due to an ‘unparalleled capacity to institutionalize kleptocracy at every level of the social pyramid and his unrivalled talent for transforming personal rule into a cult and political clientelism into cronyism’ (2003: 31). Mobutu’s ‘predatory’ rule, C. Young and T. Turner also noted, involved the permeation of the state by a level of corruption so pervasive as to have become its most visible and defining property (1985: 165). Qualified as arbitrary, predatory or kleptocratic, Mobutu’s Zaire has also called for parallels with sultanism – the term coined by Max Weber to characterize those extreme instances where the ruler’s domination relies less upon traditional foundations than on the leader’s arbitrary and uncontrolled power (Chehabi and Linz 1998). The distinction between regulated and predatory forms of neopatrimonialism signals the two extremes of a diversity of empirical configurations. The idea of a dissociation between public office and the ruler’s private interests tends to become irrelevant in the case of integral and predatory forms of neopatrimonialism. Conversely, regulated neopatrimonialism infers some capacity to craft ‘pub lic’ policies. To put it differently, an operational distinction should be drawn between neopatrimonialism within the state and patterns of neopatrimonialism that permeate the entire state.2 Dissemination: from model to paradigm By the early 1990s, representations of the African state as neopatrimonial went along with the assumption that the concept was especially atuned to the study of politics on the continent. Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle argued that while neopatrimonial practice can be found in all polities, it is the core feature of politics in Africa . . . [P]ersonal relationships are a factor at the margins of all bureaucratic systems, but in Africa they constitute the founda tion and superstructure of political institutions. The interaction between the ‘big man’ and his extended retinue defines African politics, from the highest reaches of the presidential palace to the humblest village assembly. (Bratton and van de Walle 1994: 459) The same authors also earmarked some 40 African states where the constituent elements of a routinization of neopatrimonial practices could be observed. Such ‘institutionalization’, they went on, was manifesting through systematized resort to clientelism, the redistribution of state resources as a legitimizing device, and the use of presidentialism as the foundation for concentrating power to the bene fit of a single individual.
32 D.C. Bach The wave of criticism to which the ‘developmental’ and ‘dependency’ para digms were being subjected since the 1970s (Bayart 1989: 20–64; Médard 1991b: 323–4), largely contributed to the diffusion of neopatrimonialism. The concept was able to account for an extraordinarily diverse range of political arrangements. It could also interact fruitfully with research that proceeded from related, yet distinct theoretical premises, such as the quasi-Weberian typology of personal rule developed by Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg (1982), or the concept of the ‘prebendary state’ borrowed from Weber and applied by Richard Joseph to Nigeria (Joseph 1987). The notion of ‘quasi-states’ was also developed during this period by Jackson to characterize states endowed with a limited capa city to assert their sovereignty (Jackson 1990). In France, particularly, Jean- François Bayart’s paradigm of the ‘politics of the belly’ (Bayart 1989),3 the related attention paid to the study of ‘politics from below’ (Bayart, Mbembe and Toulabor 2008), and the launching of the journal Politique africaine contributed to inspire research agendas focusing on the neopatrimonial state. The dissemination of the concept of neopatrimonialism was also closely entangled with debates on the decline of the African post-colonial state’s administrative and bureaucratic capacities. Médard’s pioneering discussion of Cameroon already described neopatrimonialism as a process whereby the assertion of expanding ‘modern’ bureaucratic norms masked a deterioration of administrative capacity (Médard 1979). Neopatrimonialism was also viewed as an indicator of the degree of deconstruction of the colonial state: At first, observed Crawford Young, patrimonial practices in the post- colonial state were of modest scale. But a steady inflation of prebendal costs set in, and by the 1970s, the amounts diverted from public treasuries to lubricate the patrimonial machinery were very large – colossal in such cases as Nigeria and Zaire. (Young 1994. See also: Hyden 2000: 24) Regulated forms of neopatrimonial rule were also undermined by the effects of the economic crisis that affected African states in growing numbers during the 1970s. With the ruler’s reduced capacity to distribute prebends and capture rents, unrestrained and predatory forms of neopatrimonialism gained currency. The concept became a substitute for discussing ‘the political decay, economic collapse and administrative grotesqueries of African states’ (Crook 1989: 206). The patrimonialization of the state nurtured the spiral of a permanent economic crisis as incumbent rulers sought to preserve the status quo through the mobilization of international aid transfers and the negotiation of reform programs with International Financial Institutions (van de Walle 2001: 49–63). Declining growth rates, deteriorating living conditions, and the contraction of the resources available for redistribution similarly led to interrogations over the possible rise of sultanism through a ‘degeneration [of neopatrimonialism] into an economically irrational form of “personal rule” ’ (Sandbrook 1985: 12–13 and 89 seq.).
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 33 In its own way, the wave of demands for democratization and the political transitions that followed the end of the cold war, highlighted the resilience and institutionalization of neopatrimonialism. Only a handful of African regimes was not labelled as neopatrimonial. Botswana, the Gambia, Mauritius, Senegal and Zimbabwe were, for example, described as ‘multi-party polyarchies’ on the grounds that ‘while these regimes are imperfectly democratic, personal power is significantly checked by formal-legal rules, leadership turnover, and a measure of objectivity in decision-making’ (Bratton and van de Walle 1994: 473–4). At a time when the African neopatrimonial state tended to be equated to integral and predatory processes, a distinctive terminology need to be employed to account for regulated forms of neopatrimonialism. The African state, Thandika Mwandawire quipped, at the turn of the mille nnium, ‘. . . is today the most demonized social institution in Africa, vilified for its weakness, its over-extension, its interference with the smooth functioning of the markets, its repressive character, its dependence on foreign powers, its ubi quity, its absence, etc.’ (Mkandawire 2001: 289). The multifaceted nature of the African state’s predicament also transpired through the accumulation of epithets and metaphors. R. Sandbrook refered to states as ‘fictitious’ while R. Jackson had coined the notion of ‘quasi-states’, J.-F. Bayart described a ‘rhizomous state’, Callaghy a ‘lame Leviathan’ . . . Joshua Forrest forsaw the premisses of a ‘reversal’ of the state-building process as challenges to territorial integrity would multiply (Forrest 1998). Marina Ottaway echoed what was a widely shared viewpoint at the time when she claimed: ‘the probability that all African states will survive intact within the borders established by the colonial powers appears remote’ (Ottaway 1999: 83). The transformation of the concept of the neopatrimonial state into an endemic notion was stimulated by the build-up of publications on the informalization, deinstitutionalization and criminalization of African politics. In his study of the Sierra Leonean civil wars, William Reno described, for instance, how the informalization of power and the rise of personal wealth accumulation networks prompted the emergence of a ‘shadow state’ (1995). The metaphor was designed to underline the contrast between the state as it was meant to operate and how it actually functioned. Neopatrimonialism was associated with the rise of violence and a growing asymmetry in the patterns of distribution of resources and prebends. The figure of the warlord prevailed over that of the ‘big-man’, and the logics of gangs and criminal networks over those of patronage. Emphasis laid on the deterritorialization, informalization and criminalization of political systems encouraged the assimilation of neopatrimonialism to a tele ological expression of the decline of the African state: ‘the state in Africa is little more than an empty shell’ claimed the authors of a provocative and influential essay (Chabal and Daloz 1999: 24). The casual association of neopatrimonialism with integral and predatory forms of politics also contributed to turn the African state into a prototype of the ‘anti-developmental’ state.
34 D.C. Bach The African state as a prototype of the ‘anti-developmental’ state The foundations of a political economy of neopatrimonialism were laid by Richard Sandbrook as he undertook to relate ‘the private appropriation of the state’s powers’ to the developmental failure of African states (2000: 59). The neopatrimonial state, he argued, is an archetype of the anti-developmental state, with ‘economic objectives [subordinated] to the short-run exigencies of political survival’ for the rulers and his regime (Sandbrook 2000: 97). A few years later, Göran Hyden stigmatized as an ‘institutionalized curse’ the spread of neopatrimonialism in Africa (2000: 19). By then, the African state, stereotyped as desperately corrupt and ‘klepto-patrimonial’ (McIntyre quoted in: Searle 1999: 8), also provided an anti-model to the literature that, globally, attempted to conceptualize the developmental state. The typology of Peter Evan, drawing from the experience of the first wave of emerging countries in East Asia (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), identified three archetypes in accordance with the states’ propensity to promote economic development. The developmental state, exemplified by South Korea, was characterized as ‘embedded-autonomous’ – i.e. able to combine its ‘embeddedness’ in the societal environment with bureaucractic capacity for ‘autonomous’ action. In the intermediate category of states, illustrated by Brazil, bureaucratic capacity did exist but was constrained by an oligarchic system. Finally, the model of the predatory and anti‑developmental state was found to be in Africa, where, as in Mobutu’s Zaire, ‘the preoccupation of the political class with rent seeking has turned the rest of society into prey’ – a confirmation, Evans concluded, that ‘it is not bureaucracy that impedes development so much as the lack of capacity to behave like a bureaucracy’ (1989: 570). Atul Kohli’s more recent synoptic overview of development and industrialization processes in ‘peripheral’ or ‘emergent’ countries similarly refers to the neopatrimonial state (implicitly assumed to be African) as a counter-model. In addition to state territorial control and institutional development, Kohli emphasizes the need for an ‘effective public arena’ clearly differentiated from private interests, organizations and loyalties (2004: 408). The absence of such an arena produces ‘highly ineffective neopatrimonial’ states captured by factional interests (Kohli 2004: 408). The ‘cohesive capitalist states’, deemed truly developmental, ‘concentrate power at the apex and use state power to dis cipline their societies’ – they include South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Mexico and South Africa (Kohli 2004: 381–2). At the other end of the spectrum, the neopatrimonial state is characterized by the non-existence of a public arena, an inefficient state and an embryonic development of indigenous capitalism. Elites are chiefly bent ‘on maintaining power and on privatizing public resources for personal gain or gain by [their] ethnic communities’ (Kohli 2004: 289). Nigeria is seen as a near-perfect example of this neopatrimonial state model, which is also considered relevant to describe ‘almost all’ African states (Kohli 2004: 394–5). Africa is punctuated with predatory and integral forms of neopatrimonialism.
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 35
Beyond Africa: patrimonialism within the state We have demonstrated in the previous pages how, in Africa, the dissemination of the concept of neopatrimonial rule, stimulated by emphasis on processes of deinstitutionalization and informalization, has become equated with predatory and anti-developmental forms of power. The following pages contrast this trend of analysis with those observed in Latin America, the Middle East, South-East Asia and the Communist and post-Communist societies of Europe and Central Asia. While the diffusion of the concept of neopatrimonial rule has remained limited in most of these regions, ongoing references to patrimonialism have been adjusted to suit specific debates, as reflected by a rich crop of lexicographic innovations. Patrimonial and bureaucratic: the Latin American state In Latin America, patrimonialism still commonly refers to the legacy of the three centuries of Spanish and Portuguese presence (Zabludovsky 1989; Roett 1984). In the late 1950s, Richard Morse famously noted that patrimonialism could account for the persistence in contemporary South America of patterns of governance that drew their roots from Spain’s imperial policy (Morse 1964: 157–8; Sarfatti 1966). Henrique Florescano and Isabel Gil Sánchez also described how the Viceroys reproduced in Mexico the patrimonial nature of the Spanish state as they rewarded services ‘through the granting of prebends and the bequeathing of privileges’ (Florescano and Gil Sánchez quoted in Zabludovsky 1989: 52). After independence, the emergence of caudillos ushered a period during which the struggle for control of a ‘patrimonial state apparatus, [now] fragmented from the original imperial one’ oscillated between tyranny and anarchy (Morse 1964: 163). As had been the case with the conquistadores, the caudillos drew their power from their personal charisma as much as from military achievements that forced admiration from their followers. Like the ‘big man’ in present-day Africa, the caudillo was a political entrepreneur. His personal power stemmed from a confusion between public monies and personal assets, and rested as much on military skills as on a capacity to build up patronage networks and to distribute prebends. The caudillo, however, differed from the African warlords of the 1990s in so far as his raison d’être was to establish (or restore) the foundations of a ‘patrimonial-bureaucratic’ state for the benefit of an oligarchic elite.4 In Brazil, the notion of patrimonialism is still casually employed to describe ‘traditional’ societies in the course of ‘modernization’. In line with Weber’s sociological approach, the Brazilian state is depicted as ‘a bureaucratic state that traditionally has been at the service of a patrimonial order’ (Roett 1984: 1; Uricoechea 1980). Emphasis is laid on the persistence and rejuvenation of a system of domination going back to the hereditary ‘captaincies’ introduced by the Portuguese. Initially published in 1958, Raymundo Faoro’s seminal work on the roots of political patronage in Brazil paints a strongly centralized state, where political and bureaucratic elites do not differentiate the office from its
36 D.C. Bach holder, with the result of a capture of public resources by private interests (Osiel 1986: 39ff.). Subordinates are expected to be loyal to their superiors, and not to the office they hold. Today, such commonly used notions as ‘patrimonial society’, ‘patrimonial regime’ or ‘patrimonial order’ seek to stress the existence of continuities that transcend regime changes or the type of elites in power (Roett 1984: 23). In Brazil, noted a study of the judicial system in the early 1990s, patrimonialism stems from the entrenchment of a ‘tradition . . . that tends to perpetuate what always existed’, namely the appropriation of public offices by private individuals, and the absence of a concrete separation between the public and private spheres. The result is a ‘movement toward the privatization of public goods’ and ‘a dominant logic [marked by] attempts to informalize the current judiciary’ (Botelho Junqueira 1992: 437, 439). This diagnosis, despite its severity, mirrors depictions of the Brazilian political system that, refer to contemporary forms of patrimonialism through the notion of ‘patrimonial bureaucratization’ (Zabludovsky 1989: 57). This carries as a corollary the rejection of integral approaches so as to concentrate on the identification of patrimonialist practices within the state. In Latin America, the dividing line between ‘tradition’ and ‘traditionalism’ is often blurred. This was clearly the case as references to patrimonialism were adopted to illustrate the return of totalitarian rule, as in Brazil, Argentina or Peru during the 1970s. Patrimonialism became a metaphor for the assertion of the power of traditionalist corporate interests within the state (Schwartman 1977). Neopatrimonialism, a term which Oszlak was the first to apply to Latin America, simply referred to ‘contemporary cases in which personalist govern ment turns states into the private government of thoses possessing the neces sary power for the exercise of political domination’ (Oszlak 1986: 229). In contrast with neopatrimonialism in Africa, personal rule was not associated with processes of deinstitutionalization. The assumption was that a neopatrimonial regime could even have a developmental impact if the dictator happened to be surrounded by a ‘true “Court” of “trustworthy men” . . . who act as placemen at key institutions, and a small staff of professionals in charge of the administration of certain large programmes (i.e., public works, industrial pro motion)’ (Oszlak 1986: 232). Oszlak also considered that, in an authoritarian- bureaucratic regime, the appropriation and allocation of resources was also ‘subjected to the discretionary whims of the ruler’ (1986: 233). In the process, he curiously overlooked the influence that the marginalization of control pro cedures could have on the development of corruption or nepotism. That issue, scrutinized by Karen Remmer through a case study of the Pinochet regime, would lead to its re-classification as neopatrimonial (1989: 150).5 Both Remmer and Oszlak used the prefix ‘neo’ to clarify that personal domination ‘coexists with a professional military, technocratic administrative staff, and all the other elements of a comparatively modernized and industrialized society’ (Remmer 1989: 165). In Latin America, patrimonialism still primarily refers to the persistance of forms of domination dating back to Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule. More
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 37 recent intepretations of patrimonialism have stressed the personal as much as the corporatist or oligarchic dimension of the private interests at stake. In all such cases, an underlying assumption has been the lack of incompatibility between patrimonialism and the rise of a bureaucratic and capitalist state. References to neopatrimonialism are similarly exempt from any teleological perspective on the decline of the state. Patrimonialism and patriarchalism: North Africa and the Middle East In North Africa and the Middle East, studies on patrimonial rule were initially interspersed with allusive references to a ‘patrimonial style of leadership in the Middle East’, or to the notion of ‘Middle Eastern patrimonialism’ so as to describe a wide array of historical and contemporary political systems (Bill and Leiden 1974: 104–5). Patrimonialism was applied to polities with a strong patriarchal slant, as in Yemen or Saudi Arabia, just as the notion was applied to the complex administrative systems of the Ottoman empire or of Iran’s Qajar dynasty (1779–1925) (Bill and Leiden 1974: 250). King Hassan ii and Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi were considered to be the rulers of historically rooted patrimonial political systems (Bill and Leiden 1974: 142; Waterbury 1973: 535). By the early 1980s, interpretations of Middle Eastern political systems through the notion of patrimonialism were severely criticized on the grounds of their propensity to cultivate metaphors and conceptual overstretching, a trend exemplified by the dilution of boundaries between patrimonialism, patri archalism and authoritarian rule. This was equally manifest as the concept of sultanism was revived to characterize Boumedienne’s Algeria as ‘popular sultanism’ or describe Nasser’s Egypt as a form of ‘sultanic socialism’ (Leca and Schemeil 1983: 474 sq.). As the same authors pointed out, patrimonialism and other Weberian types of domination had become catch-all concepts that merely sought to account for ‘situations of modernity’ under which actual or assumed features of the traditional state could be detected. Neopatrimonialism, bolstered by the work of Africanist political scientists, has since then gradually emerged as a substitute to the somewhat discredited notion of patrimonialism. The concept was created in order to account for the stability of such authoritarian regimes in Syria, Libya, Tunisia and, until it was militarily attacked by external forces, Iraq (Brownlee 2002). Less euphemistically, neopatrimonialism has also been used to describe how Yasser Arafat’s control over the Palestinian Authority combined authoritarian rule with the lack of a clear distinction between the public sphere and private interests (Brynen 1995; Amundsen 2000). The state that was to be built in accordance with the Oslo accords remained the ‘property’ of a leader who ruled through the distribution of favours, thus condoning the spread of corruption and clientelism that would faciliate the electoral victory of the Hamas in January 2006 (Le More 2008).
38 D.C. Bach Cronyism: state and business in Southeast Asia In Africa, Latin America and the Middle East patrimonialism or neopatrimonialism have been linked to the discussion of processes of institution- and state- building. In East and Southeast Asia it is the interactions with and impact on the development of capitalism that have been the principal subject of attention. In Indonesia, patrimonialism was initially called upon to highlight the imprint on the post-colonial state of conceptualizations of power inherited from Java’s pre-colonial monarchies (Brown 1994: 117). As subsequently noted by Harold Crouch, the years of so-called ‘guided democracy’ initiated in 1959 by President Soekarno (1947–67) were associated with the resurgence of traditional patrimonial features until such a reading was undercut by the system’s disintegration (1979: 575). The ‘New Order’ project subsequently launched by General Suharto (1967–98) involved the neutralization of political parties, the de-politicization of the masses, and above all, what Crouch describes as a policy of ‘patrimonial distribution of various rewards among the elite’ so as to ensure regime stability. Suharto’s personal rule also resulted in what might be interpreted as regulated forms of neopatrimonialism. His domination did not impede the implementation of macroeconomic policies that combined patronage with a set of clearly defined public policy goals. As William Liddle puts it, Suharto: favors the nationalists primarily for ideal and cultural reasons. . . . The patrimonialists he uses to reward and punish materially those individuals and groups who could threaten his position. The nationalists are in direct and fundamental conflict with the economists over development politicy; the patrimonialists have no permanent friends or enemies, only a permanent interest in the continuing flow of funds. (Liddle 1991: 418) On the eve of the 1997–8 financial crisis, Indonesia was viewed as the prototype of an ‘Asian’ capacity to combine personal rule, rent-seeking behavior and corruption with levels of macroeconomic performance that were truly develop mental. In his comparative study of Indonesia and Nigeria, Peter Lewis also noted how Indonesia’s New Order regime was more personalized and centralized than most Nigerian governments [but] Soeharto reduced the uncertainties sur rounding his personal control by according influence to a team of capable economic technocrats and by locking in policies through a balanced budget rule, an open capital account and close cooperation with donors. (Lewis 2007: 7, 65–6) In the Philippines, the concept of patrimonial rule was initially adopted to describe patron–client relationships, and the networks of personal loyalty they sup ported. Paul Hutchcroft’s notion of ‘oligarchic patrimonialism’ was meant to
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 39 account for the control that clans originating from the elite’s leading families exerted over the state. This was viewed as the source of structural impediments to the build-up of ‘legal-rational’ processes and production-based forms of capitalism (Hutchcroft 1998: 20). Rent capture and ‘booty capitalism’ (or Beute Kapitalismus to use Weber’s own term) stemmed from the weakness of the state in its dealings with economic circles. As summarized by Hutchcroft: ‘the influence of extrabur eaucratic forces swamps the influence of the bureaucracy, and major power resides not in a class of officeholders but rather in the private sector’ (Hutchcroft 1998: 52). This was a reversal of the assumptions that associated (neo)patrimonialism with the firm control exerted by the ruler and office holders over the politico- administrative system and, in the case of an integral state, the country as a whole. Emphasis laid on the types of interaction between state bureaucracies and private business in Southeast Asia has produced a rich crop of expressions. These have been generally associated with the identification of specific forms of capitalism – labelled as ‘cronyism’, ‘oligarchic’, ‘predatory’, bureaucratic’, ‘rentier’ and even, in the case of Malaysia, ‘ersatz capitalism’ (Kunio 1988; White 2004: 389–90). Indeed, the relationship between bureaucrats and business has been central to the conceptualization of the ‘developmental state’. By contrast with the much celebrated economic performances of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960s, prospects for capitalist development in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia or Thailand were initially overlooked. Corruption and cronyism among rulers, bureaucrats and big business were considered too intense. Productive capitalism, it was argued, was adversely affected by a deficit of legitimacy due to the lack of social and political integration of local business circles – the Chinese ‘pariah entrepreneurs’.6 Industrialization processes were also viewed as overly dependent on costly state subventions. Such criticism, Peter Searle observed, were not directed so much against state interventionism as against the nature of such interventions. The Southest Asian state was bluntly described as ‘unable to address the national interest in any long-term and sys tematic way because it is captive of its own officials and operates in their inter ests to produce a rent-seeking form of intervention’ (Searle 1999: 7). The intimation of a thoroughly patrimonialized state conveyed by this pessimistic prognosis contrasted with the simultaneous belief that, in the cases of Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, capitalist development and the significant patronage and corruption ties could easily coexist (Searle 1999: 8; Hunter 1989).7 The economic performance of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand in the 1990s eventually led to a reappraisal of condescending descriptions of a type of capitalism supposedly trapped in rentier mentality, corruption and cronyism. Malaysian entrepreneurs had clearly managed to free themselves from state patronage networks, and were proving capable of standing up to interna tional competition. Such a trend was accordingly reinterpreted as the counterpart of a state bureaucracy that was more regulated despite the persistence of ‘highly patrimonialistic relations between the state and business’ (Searle 1999: 8). It was the financial crisis of the late 1990s, however, that led to an unpreced ented re-evaluation of the money-politics nexus in East and Southeast Asia. In
40 D.C. Bach South Korea, the myth of an economic growth based on the virtuous alliance between a technocratic meritocracy and an austere military hierarchy was suddenly blown away, and with it the classic model of the developmental state. As demonstrated by David Kang, in order to account for the contrasting evolutions of South Korea and the Philippines the links between money and politics were far more relevant than the traditional emphasis on bureaucrats and their policies (2002: 4). The bureaucracy had undoubtedly gained some degree of autonomy under the regimes of Syngman Rhee (1948–60), Park Chung-hee (1963–79), or Ferdinand Marcos (1965–86), but these regimes never managed to insulate themselves from societal pressures. Thus, in South Korea, ‘Park Chung-hee created a bifurcated bureaucracy that allowed him to meet his patronage requirements and still seek economic efficiency’ (Kang 2002: 63–4). The disparity between the Philippines and South Korea ultimately stemmed, argues Kang, from the balance of power between the politico-bureaucratic and economic circles. In the Philippines, interactions between state and business gen erated negative economic effects due to the permanent rivalry between groups competing for a share of the state’s spoils. By contrast, in South Korea as in Tai wan, or earlier in Japan, neither the political nor the business elites were ever able to gain a decisive advantage over the other. Corruption and collusion thus went hand in hand with investments and decision-making processes that were efficient in the long run, as they were based on a balanced relationship between government and business elites. While the South Korean, as well as the Tai wanese, states may be termed ‘developmental’ in view of their undeniable capa city to attract productive investments, to develop infrastructures as well as the people’s access to ‘public goods’, this does not necessarily mean that these achievements were fully intended: as noted by Kang: ‘the production of public goods was often the fortunate by-product of actors competing to gain the private benefits of state resources’ (2002: 6). State ‘capture’ and neopatrimonialism: post-Communist systems from Europe to Central Asia In the post-Communist states of Europe, the concept of patrimonialism still bears the imprint of Weber’s writings on the administrative system of Petrine Russia (Maslovski 1996: 295). Stalinism is also presented by some authors as a case of ‘the re-emergence, albeit in a modified form and in an altogether different histor ical situation, of the patrimonial principle that was salient in Russia in the 17th and 18th century’ (Maslovski 1996: 303; Hughes 1996: 551; Ilkhamov 2007: 74). Such conventional understanding coexists with the endorsement of the concept of neopatrimonial state to revitalize readings of the Soviet and post- Soviet systems. Yoram Gorlizki resorts to neopatrimonialism to interprete the dualistic situ ation resulting from the co-existence in the very midst of the Soviet state of dynamics that were both patrimonial and modern (2002: 701–2). Soviet archives enable us to understand better how, in the state’s day-to-day activity at the
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 41 highest level, unconditional personal loyalty to Stalin by clients and dependents trumped ideological or programmatic goals (Hughes 1996: 563; Gorlizki, 2002: 720–1). The Bolshevik revolution initially created a favorable environment for Stalin’s rise to power by setting up a political system based on the Party’s ‘orchestration’ of relations among institutions and their jurisdictions. Stalin later consolidated the foundations of his autocratic power through the build-up of ‘personalised patrimonial networks’, based on the appointment of loyal functionaries to pivotal positions in the party and the provincial nomenklatura’ (Hughes 1996: 551 and note 1: 565). Stalin’s discretionary use of power proceeded from the lack of clearly defined spheres of jurisdiction as much as from the porosity of the frontiers between office and officeholders or the public and private spheres (Gorlizki 2002: 718). Stalin’s rule was neopatrimonial in the sense that it involved ‘quite rational and predictable forms of decision-making lower down the hierarchy’, as well as an attention paid by Stalin himself to ‘certain rational-legal forms of administration’ (Gorlizki 2002: 720–1) Stalin could decide to intervene at all levels and in all sectors of governmental action, but he did not do this automatically. Neopatrimonialism was regulated and ringfenced, if not capped. Neopatrimonialism also tended to be reproduced and emulated ‘by powerful personalities who exercised enormous discretion over their terrains, just as Stalin did over his’ (Gorlizki 2002: 727). One of the side-effects of the post-Soviet and post-Communist transitions toward democracy has been the revival of classic interpretations of the concept of patrimonialism. As early as the mid‑1980s, Ronald Linden had suggested applying that notion to the Ceaucescu regime so as to account for the longevity of a political system unaffected by political tensions and the macroeconomic adjustment problems then experienced by Poland, Yugoslavia or Hungary (1986: 347). The Romanian regime was described as patrimonial on account of the combination of personal and discretionary use of power underscored by an effective network of personal loyalties. There was, however, no assumption that the state incurred the risk of dissolving into informality. Indeed, Linden assimil ated the Ceaucescu regime to a political project whose rationality, ‘defined by the state’, manifested itself through the implementation of a national version of Marxism-Leninism (1986: 348). Herbert P. Kitschelt’s more recent typology of communist regimes rests upon such criteria as the intensity of patrimonialism within communist regimes and their propensity to repress, co-opt or tolerate expressions of political dissidence. Three prototypes are accordingly identified: ‘patrimonial communism’, ‘national accommodative communism’, and ‘bureaucratic-authoritarian communism’ (2001). The definition of patrimonial communism has more to do with corruption, patronage and nepotism than with personal rule. Situations where a ‘formal-rational bureau cratic state apparatus . . . rules out corruption and clientelism’ are contrasted with an ‘administration based on personal networks of loyalty and mutual exchange’ (Kitschelt, Mandsfeldova, Markowski and Tóka 1999: 21). The list of the Communist states where this model formerly applied is particularly long, and includes
42 D.C. Bach Russia, Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldavia, Romania, Ukraine and the states of Central Asia (Kitschelt 2001: 38–9). The post-Communist regimes’ interactions with private business interests were also an extensive subject of interest in the 1990s. This coincided with the introduction of the notion of ‘state capture’, a term associated with debates evocative of those on oligarchic patrimonialism and cronyism in Southeast Asia. The rise of the somewhat elusive notion of state capture was originally prompted by investors and international donors seeking an assessment of the prospects for more regulated interactions between bureaucracies – seen as ‘predatory and corrupt’ – and the oligarchs who, in Russia especially, controlled a significant portion of the economy (Guriev and Rachinsky 2005; Gustafson 1999). The World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) then funded a number of studies and a major survey on the theme of ‘state capture’ (Hellman et al. 2000; Hellman and Kaufmann 2001). State capture was from the onset a rather fuzzy notion due to the diversity of interpretations of its scope and meaning.8 As an empirically based notion, state capture was an attempt at measuring ‘the extent to which the state is subject to “capture” – or undue influence – by powerful vested interests. “High-capture” states would focus on providing specific advantages to influential firms and lobbies, while under-providing the institutions essential to improving governance’ (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1999). Surveys were undertaken for the purpose of assessing grand corruption, namely the penetration of state bureaucrcies by private interests and lobbies and their capacity to fashion ‘laws, policies and regulations . . . to their own advantage by providing illicit private gains to officials’ (Hellman and Kaufmann 2001: 31). A 1999 study, conducted in 22 post-Communist countries, and covering several thousand businesses, concluded for instance that 11 states could be labelled ‘high capture economies’ (Hellman et al. 2000: 1–41).9 Throughout the presidency of Boris Yeltsin (1991–9), Russia stood out as the archetype of state capture. The accumulation of economic power in the hands of the so-called ‘oligarchs’ was akin to a massive transfer of state assets into private hands, with the result of a weakening of the institutional and normative environ ments inherited from the Communist era (Slinko et al. 2005). With the election of Vladimir Putin in 2000, a policy towards restoring the federal state’s authority was inaugurated. The notion of ‘capture’ could still be used to describe specific cases of external interference with state or bureaucratic decision-making (Yakovlev and Zhuravskaya 2006: 19; Favarel-Garrigues 2008). Yet, at least in Russia, the notion was far less relevant since the oligarchs now owed their influence to their ability to demonstrate their unwavering loyalty to Putin (van Zon 2008). Patrimonialism, as applied to Communist and post-Communist political regimes, has been associated with three distinct yet closely interwined strands of interpretations. A first type of reading stems from the analysis of patrimonialism as a historical or cultural model. Mikhail Maslovski, for instance, sees the development of patrimonialism within the Stalinist system as a ‘reversal’ (1996: 302). Hans van Zon similarly depicts post-Communist Ukraine as ‘a patrimonial
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 43 state [that] . . . furthers anti-modern tendencies in society’ (2001: 72). A second type of reading broadly coincides with what the notion of regulated neopatrimonialism stands for. The concept describes modern political systems with a capa city to produce public policies. When Yoram Gorlizski characterizes the day-to-day working of the Stalinist state as ‘neopatrimonial’, he is clearly not referring to a traditional system of domination: The enormous discretion Stalin enjoyed in . . . determining his own involvement in the party-state will not be referred to here as ‘patrimonial’. The pic ture that emerges is not the traditional one of autocratic rule resting on institutional confusion and disarray, but one of patrimonial authority coexisting alongside quite modern and routine forms of high level decision- making. (Gorlizki 2002) A third group of readings specifically refers to situations where patrimonialization tends to become integral. This current of analysis explicitly borrows from the Africanist literature on interactions between personal rule, patronage and the deinstitutionalization of the state. Accordingly, in Ukraine, the political system dominated by Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005) has been characterized as neopatrimonial, in view of ‘the disintegration of the state apparatus, the capture of the state by ruling clans [and] the spread of corrupt practices in the state bureaucracy’ (van Zon 2001: 72). Integral forms of neopatrimonialism, however, find an almost perfect match with Islam Karimov’s regime in Uzbekistan. The assimilation of neopatrimonialism to the deinstitutionalization and informalization of the post-colonial African state is echoed in this case by the ‘creeping capture’ of the political-administrative system inherited from the Soviet Union by networks of patronage and private interests (Ilkhamov 2007: 75). The informalization of interactions within the state is exacerbated by a system of personal domination based on the conversion of clanship alliances into patronage ties and the redistribution of state resources. The related rise of a ‘parallel power network, matching existing state hierarchy’ (Ilkhamov 2007: 71) – sketches a pattern reminiscent of the ‘shadow state’ of William Reno (1995). Neopatrimonialism in Uzbekistan amounts to an almost perfect illustration of the development of institutional underdevelopment.
The neopatrimonial state revisited Neopatrimonialism allowed those Africanists who resorted to it to fend off in the 1980s the wave of criticism aroused by metaphorical, allusive or laxist usage of the concept of patrimonialism (Theobald 1982; Leca and Schemeil 1986: 474 sq.; Gorlizki 2002: 701–2). Since it was initially applied to Cameroon, the dissemination of the concept of neopatrimonialism in Africa remains unparalleled in other parts of the world. Neopatrimonialism in Africa
44 D.C. Bach is similarly extensively and casually discussed in studies and programmes conducted under the aegis of multilateral institutions, NGOs, ‘think tanks’, and international donor agencies,10 with the result of an association of the notion with an increasingly diverse range of subjects (von Soest 2006; Rauch 2006; DeGrassi 2008). Such a trajectory, however, has not been without a price. Described by some as ‘endemic’ (Pitcher et al. 2009; Erdmann and Engel 2007), stigmatized by others as ‘a paradigm for all African seasons’ (Therkildsen 2005: 36) neopatrimonialism has become commonly equated with predatory and integral forms of personal rule. The outcome is a doxa that depicts the African state as quintessentially anti-developmental and infers its inevitable descent into informality and capture by criminal networks. As a result, regulated forms of neopatrimonialism have been overlooked or side- tracked. The neopatrimonial doxa has been equally inapt to account for the high degree of empirical variability ‘in public management practices across African countries and between organizations within countries’ (Therkildsen 2005: 36). Neglected for all too long, the study of regulated or capped forms of African neopatrimonial rule calls for empirical and theoretical attention. A recent discussion of Botswana’s political system remains unusual in this respect since the authors argue provocatively that one of Africa’s success stories . . . may also be one of its most clearly ‘patrimonial’ or ‘neo-patrimonial’ states. In Botswana, complex reciprocities link the government and its citizens, legitimacy is created and reinforced through both the rule of law and personal bonds and a mutually constitutive relationship exists between the personal and the public. (Pitcher et al. 2009: 150) Reasserting the empirical relevance of regulated forms of neopatrimonialism should contribute to restore the foundations for a truly comparative approach both within Africa and across world regions. The developmental trajectory of the different waves of emerging countries is a powerful reminder that neopatrimonialism – i.e., the coexistence of patrimonial and legal-rational elements within a political system – does not predetermine outcomes. In Africa as elsewhere monitoring cases of regulated or capped interactions between public space and private interests should have never ceased to constitute a topic of study deemed relev ant. The evolutions observed in Africa, like those previous noted in Latin Amer ica and Southeast Asia, invite to a reappraisal of the interactions between neopatrimonialism, institutionalization and the capacity of a state to become ‘developmental’. A comparative perspective should not be considered a diversion at a time when Africa is being increasingly described as a pioneering front and an emerging continent, a pattern closely associated with rejuvenated synergies between public and private spaces and interests.
Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism 45
Notes 1 Zolberg 1971: 13–14; Willame 1972: 162. 2 My distinction borrows from C. Geffray’s discussion of the interactions between the state and criminality in Brazil (Geffray 2000). 3 On the interactions between ‘belly politics’ and neopatrimonial rule, see D. Bourmaud 1997: 56‑9. 4 On that point, see Callaghy (1984: 29). 5 The massive nature of the embezzlements committed by Pinochet was disclosed by a report of the US Senate on his secret accounts with the Riggs Bank of Washington, DC. See: ‘The Secret Pinochet Portfolio: Former Dicator’s Corruption Scandal Broadens’, George Washinton University National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no 149, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB149/index.htm accessed on February 15, 2009. 6 Initially suggested by Fred Riggs in the case of Thailand, the term refers to character istics (domination without integration) of the Chinese preponderance in the domestic economic life of these four states (Searle 1999: 7). 7 In contemporary Japan, blood ties and matrimonial alliances still contribute to the preservation of strong interactions between politicians and bureaucrats, as illustrated by the hereditary and intra-familial transmission of patrimony or professional status (Seizelet 2006). 8 The notion is used by economists of the Chicago school and by neo-classical econom ists as well as by studies that refer to the works of Karl Marx or Paul Baran on the capture of the state by big capital (Laffont and Tirole 1993: 476). 9 These were Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Kirgizstan, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. 10 In the early 2000s, studies and programs initiated by Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) tried to operationalize the neopatrimonial paradigm within their development programs (the Drivers of Change program in particular). Among the international institutes and think-tanks which actively contributed to spread the work of political scientists on the neopatrimonial state are the Overseas Development Institute (London) and Chris Michelsen Institute (Bergen) (Cammack 2007; Levy and Kpundeh 2004: 6 sq.; Kaplan 2008: 49–64).
3 The model of the political entrepreneur Daniel Compagnon
A great deal of academic work on neopatrimonialism in Africa, including Jean‑François Médard’s pioneering analyses (Médard 1982: 125–72; see also 1991b: 323–53), initially laid emphasis on the features of the ‘imported state’ (Badie 1992) and of captive civil society as they were defined during the colo nial period. These scholars stressed the role of kinship for instance, and the manipulation of ethnicity while trying to explain variations in its empirical mani‑ festations through the historical trajectories of the countries concerned.1 However, a comparative study of African neopatrimonialism would not have been complete without an analysis of the political leaders’ specific role and leadership styles (Jackson and Rosberg 1982; Wriggins 1969). J.-F. Médard clearly perceived the central part played by some social actors in the political dynamics at work in neopatrimonial systems. He originally coined the notion of the ‘big man’ in Africa to account for the political career of Charles Njonjo (Chapter 4), a Kenyan ‘political entrepreneur’ cum businessman (Médard 1992). Médard also drew insights from the sociological theory of political and social exchange, the anthropological analyses of the big man in Melanesia (Sahlins 1977), and a groundbreaking article published by Jean-Patrice Lacam on the political entrepreneur in France (1988). Beyond the differences observed in time and space, the concept of political entrepreneurship captures fundamentally similar strategies of conquest and preservation of power, thus establishing a link between the political actor and the neopatrimonial context in which he operates. Contrary to an ethnocentric, evolutionist understanding of this concept – largely prevailing in political science – it goes beyond modern forms of ‘political markets’ – i.e. the Western democracies. Political entrepreneurship has a long history indeed, and it is a tool for comparative analysis in a broad sense. In the following pages we have tried to remain true to the eclecticism of J.-F. Médard who did not hesitate to break intellectual taboos, paid special attention to cultural differences in his comparative approach to societies but always steered clear from culturalism. We will first stress the potentially universal relevance of the concept of the political entrepreneur through a short reconstruction of its intellectual genesis, and then highlight its heuristic dimension for the understanding of African political systems.
The model of the political entrepreneur 47
A key concept In his well-known conference Politik als Beruf,2 Max Weber was the first author to focus on the specificities of politics, a domain in which actors ‘strive for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as “power for power’s sake,” that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives’ (Weber 1959: 113). Weber pointed accordingly to a category of actors who live ‘off ’ politics and not ‘for’ politics and regard it as a permanent source of income. In his view, the political entrepreneur was a charismatic leader inasmuch as he was someone who aroused and retained the confidence of his supporters (devo‑ tion to his person and his qualities) thanks to his capacity to offer rewards (1959: 156), notably through a more or less institutionalised ‘spoils’ system and the cli‑ entelist control of public offices. The political entrepreneur is always looking for resources, and positions of power may easily turn out to be less an objective than a means to access new prebends in order to remunerate his followers, thus con tributing to the preservation and perpetuation of his power. In such a context, Max Weber noted himself, corruption is simply an ‘irregular and formally illegal variant’ (1959: 127) of the political entrepreneur’s income. M. Weber thus took a special interest in the figure of the ‘boss’ in the local party organisation in the United States in the early twentieth century. This ‘polit ical capitalist entrepreneur’, to quote M. Weber, invested his own financial means (drawn from a business activity or from corruption) and controlled a certain number of votes which he delivered to the party candidate in an election. In return he secured some personal influence over the decision-making process, a kind of return on investment, so to speak, in the form of a say in the future dis‑ tribution of prebends. This meant a division of labour between the elected repre‑ sentative, the ‘boss’ and the party official – with possible swapping of roles in the course of their careers – at the service of a common political enterprise. As highlighted by some later studies on local politics in the United States, ‘a polit ical machine is a business organization in a particular field of business: getting votes and winning elections’ (Banfield and Wilson 1967). Corruption, therefore, was at the core of the machine’s operations but was not a prerequisite for its existence. In addition, the American political machine was intimately linked to a specific – now vanished – historical and social context: electors with an under‑ privileged background (usually recent immigrants), poorly educated, motivated not by ideological controversies but by the rewards and services that the boss could provide. In many ways, it is in a similar context that political competition takes place nowadays in many Third World societies. Throughout history the ‘professional politician’ has been embodied in many different figures, the contemporary parliamentary party leader, studied in more detail by M. Weber, being just one of them. Weber mentions the figures of the band leader (without specifying whether he is the leader of a band of Neolithic hunter/gatherers or bandits), the French Farmer-General under the Ancien Régime and the Italian condotierre in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth cen‑ turies. The condotierre, at the head of a private army hired by a prince or a city,
48 D. Compagnon was more than a mercenary; he was an entrepreneur fighting for both power and money. The condotierre was without scruples when making war – like a busi‑ nessman when doing business – and resorted to threats in order to get land and titles, material reward and social honour, forcing his way into the very exclusive circle of the Italian aristocracy. Francesco Sforza, for instance, became Duke of Milan in 1450, while other condotierri became popes. Achieving his political aims through war, the victorious condotierre was keen on carving a principality either out of the territory of the defeated enemy or out of the property of his weakened master, thus acting more as a partner/rival than as an obedient servant (Cloulas 1990). In the cities of Renaissance Italy – rich in capital but poor in means of coercion (Tilly 1992) – the condotierre coexisted with other types of political entrepreneurs. Some were ‘capitalists’ who reached power thanks to their wealth and the influence it gave them (e.g. the Medici), others were ‘experts’ who had become indispensable because of their competence and skills (such as, for example, Cicco Simonetta, a lawyer/adviser in Milan). Another type of political entrepreneur who rose to power thanks to war was later illus trated by the career of Albert von Wallenstein who recruited and equipped several regiments during the Thirty Years’ War and offered his services to the German Emperor and King of Austria, Ferdinand II. He became the supreme commander of the armies of the Habsburg Monarchy and was rewarded with huge tracts of land in Northern Germany, along with the right to levy taxes. He was finally assassinated because he had become richer and more powerful than the Emperor himself (Bérenger 1990: 298–305). Weber also saw the struggles between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines in medi eval Italy as the precursors of modern political party confrontations. In his view, there was no fundamental difference between the political enterprises of the past and competition on today’s ‘electoral market’ (dixit). Behind obvious differences in political discourses and programmes, behaviours had a fundamentally similar bias. Political entrepreneurship was defined by the instruments that were mobi‑ lised. Admittedly, the forms taken by political competition have changed in the course of history. In particular, the progressive ban on the use of violence in the Western countries is linked to the process of rationalisation of social action (the underlying theme of Weber’s historical sociology). The outcome is the profes‑ sionalisation of politicians, the emergence of an autonomous economic sphere, and a development of the state based on the monopoly on legitimate use of force. Politics in Western countries is not of a different nature than elsewhere, and the pacification and moralisation of this field of activity are both recent and fragile. Some political scientists, on the basis of a narrow-minded reading of Weber, made political entrepreneurship dependant on the existence of a modern ‘polit ical market’ that was equated with routinised electoral competition in pluralist democracies (Offerlé 1987; Gaxie 1993).3 The concept of political entrepren eurship is fully relevant in other contexts than the Western parliamentary demo cracies, including in societies where violence is once again the primary instrument of political competition, at least for a certain time. Joseph A. Schum‑ peter was adamant that armed insurrection, ‘seizing political command with the
The model of the political entrepreneur 49 people’s tacit consent’ and ‘election by acclamation’ (Schumpeter 1972: 357 note 2) do not represent democratic forms of competition since competition is not focused on the ‘people’s votes’. Yet, and however undemocratic these methods may be, they still involve forms of competition. In authoritarian regimes for instance, power struggles are shaped by competition for factional support within de facto or de jure one party state.4 Max Weber’s approach to the notion of political enterprise is embedded into a realist perspective on political competition that contrasts with the idealistic bias of democratic representation theories (the elected representative serving the public good), but also with neofunctionalist political sociology or system ana lysis (the assumption that all political actors pursue collective goals or values). Studying political entrepreneurs’ behaviour implies scrutinising their strategies to secure power and retain it, without being distracted by a metaphysical notion of political legitimacy or the particular ideology the actors claim to support (e.g. democracy). The point, however, is not to speculate on their inner psychology. Craving for power is not a pathological deviation but part and parcel of the pro‑ fessional ethos of those who live ‘off ’ and ‘for’ politics. J.-A. Schumpeter shared Weber’s realist perspective and compared the political competition for people’s votes to economic competition. This is not just a confusion between economic entrepreneurship and political entrepreneurship, but the acknowledgement of an analogy in the forms and logics of action.5 Schumpeter also highlighted the role of political leaders who shape the so- called public will thanks to propaganda and the use of tricks similar to commer‑ cial ads (Schumpeter 1972: 347, 356). Pieces of legislation and statutory instruments are the by-products of politics, argued Schumpeter, just as the pro‑ duction of commodities comes second to the quest for profit when conducting business activities. In that respect, it would be meaningless for a political scient ist to pass a moral judgment on the political entrepreneur’s abrupt changes of mind, on the contradictions between his discourse and his acts (such as breaking previous electoral promises) or on his ‘betrayals’ of past commitments, once yesterday’s enemies rally behind today’s winner. Schumpeter agreed with Weber that the reason behind the political entrepreneur’s apparent amorality was the need for him to adjust to ‘the average ethical standards of political conduct’ (Weber 1959: 167), just like the economic entrepreneur who abides to the mar‑ ket’s amorality. If one may claim to embrace a political career out of idealism rather than self-interest, there is only one way to succeed and ‘the political enter‑ prise is necessarily one based on interests’ (Weber 1959: 141). The political entrepreneur is therefore aspiring to power supported by a team of followers whose loyalty is guaranteed through the combination of material and symbolic rewards. Being successful as a leader means ‘collecting more resources than one’s opponents and using them more effectively. Attacking an opponent means trying to destroy his resources or preventing him from acquir‑ ing some or using them efficiently’ (Bailey 1971: 50). The structural homology established by Frederick G. Bailey between the various ways of struggling for political trophies is based on a comparison between cultural and historical
50 D. Compagnon contexts, which apparently seem to be worlds apart.6 In the various political arenas – from the local to the global – entrepreneurs (the British anthropologist prefers the term ‘leader’ but clearly defines leadership as entrepreneurship) and their political teams fight for the control of positions of power commanding access to new resources. Competitors abide not so much by explicit norms but essentially by pragmatic rules of the game (cheating, lying, corruption . . .), which can deliver success, even whenever the latter contradict the former. Drawing a line between virtuous politicians and crooks is largely pointless since the pragmatic rules of competition are the same for all players in a given society, whatever the values in which various actors claim to believe. In Frederick G. Bailey’s view, what really matters is the opposition between the entrepreneurs who succeed and those who do not. We have no desire to restrict man’s motives to the mere pursuit of material interests as opposed to altruistic behaviours or the spirit of self-sacrifice. The loyalty of the followers is partly based on symbolic elements (religion, witch‑ craft, kinship or revolutionary charisma), which the entrepreneur is willing to mobilise and exploit since they are often cheaper to produce. The followers’ belief in their leader’s capacity to lead them is an essential resource. If he wants to keep the devotion of his followers, the leader must adopt a form of behaviour in apparent conformity with their expectations. Any open infringement would ruin his political capital. Bailey uses the word ‘faction’ to refer specifically to political enterprises with purely transactional links, whereby the leader retains his prominent position only so long as he can redistribute material rewards to his supporters. Feelings of affinity and affection binding together the core members of the team and its leader are more durable while the followers bound only by self-interest are more likely to desert the faction as soon as material resources diminish. Bailey also operates a distinction between the proved and the virtual possession of resources: many entrepreneurs ‘live on credit’: they keep the con‑ fidence of their followers so long as their capacity to reward remains unchal‑ lenged. But a crisis may abruptly bring about a loss in value of their resources and consequently a loss in credit. New light is thus shed on successive sequences of betrayal and rallying and the importance of the political clientele and of the need to reward which are at the heart of African neopatrimonialism. The analysis of the mobilisation/combination of resources makes it possible to have a better grasp of the dynamics at work in the political enterprise. Key to the definition of political entrepreneurs proposed by Warren F. Ilchman and Norman T. Uphoff (1969) is their capacity to mobilise scant political resources and, through innovative combinations, ‘exploit the political and social environ ment or limit its constraining effects’ (ibid.: 204). In the words of another author, the politician is, just like a businessman, an entrepreneur . . . in the sense that, on the one hand, he builds a capital of resources useful for his career and on the other hand, once he has built his capital, he marshals these resources in order to generate some power. (Lacam 1988: 24–5)
The model of the political entrepreneur 51 What the politician manages as an enterprise is not public affairs or the state as an organisation (Chazel 1986), but his own political career. What we call career encompasses not only the offices successively held but also the accumulation of the various strategies adopted over time to reach political acme. Political entre preneurship mainly consists in mobilising and maintaining an efficient support base. It also implies alleviating constraints from the actor’s environment (includ‑ ing, but not exclusively, the institutional environment), by activating in due course relevant resources previously accumulated. Although the notion of political resource appeared in the literature as early as the 1960s (Dahl 1973), it has not been further elaborated. Yet, an essential element in an entrepreneur’s success and competence is his capacity to accumu late and permanently restructure his stock of resources through time. Whatever typology we choose,7 identified pools of resources – be they material or sym‑ bolic – cannot be regarded as such until they have been mobilised by an entre‑ preneur to suit a specific strategy. It is his action which turns money, violence, a social network or an ethnic identity into resources in a given interaction context. The devotion of the followers has to be sustained, even through propaganda. Nothing comes for free in that matter, even though the cost is closely related to the context.8 It is thus more costly to hold back supporters within a team that is already splitting up than to attract new ones when a political enterprise is in an ascending phase. While it is possible to compare resource matrixes at the beginning and the end of a politician’s career, as was done by Lacam, one has to bear in mind their fluctuating character and the dynamic dimension of the analysis of their mobil isation. Robert A. Dahl already noted that an entrepreneur’s success depends less on the size of his initial stock of resources than on his skill at developing them. The necessity of restructuring resources comes from dynamics specific to such political enterprise over time, from the evolution of its political environment and from the wear and tear of the elements used. Potential errors in the management of resources are numerous, especially as other social actors are not easily pushed around: the politician who loses ‘is not so much he who is devoid of resources but he who no longer has the acumen of using the adequate resource’, notes Lacam (1988: 30). More what is at stake is the ability to mobilise the adequate combination of resources against a better skilled competitor. Such an analytical perspective, devoid of any determinist or normative bias, makes the entrepreneur – and resource-based approach – a most useful conceptual instrument for the understanding of political domination in Africa.
On the diversity of political entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship The professionalisation of politics as a function, its institutionalisation through the use of law and media coverage may be less developed in Africa than in Western democracies.9 Yet, in Africa politicians live far more ‘off ’ and ‘for’ politics. Political entrepreneurship appeared on the continent at the time of
52 D. Compagnon independences, with the emergence of national electoral arenas (Zolberg 1966). The phenomenon endured even after the end of the democratic period and the development of single parties in the 1970s and 1980s. In effect, the one-party state meant that power was monopolised by political leaders who had more resources or were more skilled than their opponents. Political competition did not disappear by magic but moved within the party-state apparatus, fostering factionalism: a member of the political team who accumulated enough resources on his own could become the rival of the boss at any time. What was at stake was the unequal sharing of spoils and prebends, as well as the question of the succession – always postponed – of the supreme leader (Jackson and Rosberg 1982). Although the resources of the African ‘quasi-state’ (Jackson 1990) are limited – not least in terms of public revenue – claiming leadership over the country makes it possible for the leader to control most of the extraversion chan‑ nels including international aid. Being the head of state offers a political rent that provides unmatched access to privileges – for instance the capacity to barter one’s diplomatic support within the international arena against all kinds of material advantages (Clapham 1996). In such a context, competing entrepreneurs try to derive as much profit as possible from their dominant position in order to widen their political support and maximise power as head of state. In this respect Charles Njonjo’s career and downfall (Chapter 4) offer a revealing illustration of this phenomenon. In the semi-competitive single party system of the 1970s and 1980s,10 the African big man accumulated resources, in particular money, so as to get to power. The social context at the time meant that high positions in the political and adminis‑ trative apparatus were the best means of becoming rich – if one excludes employment as an executive in transnational corporations. In Kenya, Charles Njonjo thus ‘straddled’11 public office and private positions, either concurrently or successively, for, as Médard put it ‘while it is necessary to have political power in order to be rich, it is also necessary to be rich in order to retain political power’ (1992: 172). Indeed, in a neopatrimonial environment it is rather difficult for poor actors to take part in the political competition – in particular when it comes to creating a faction. Contrary to the Western political entrepreneur who operates within a highly autonomous and specialised political field where well defined and institutionalised norms are supposed to ward off any abuse of office and conflict of interest, the African political entrepreneur has no choice but to resort to corruption and embezzlement in order to succeed. The pragmatic rules of political competition, as defined by Bailey, become predominant when the rule of law is routinely ignored. There are of course a few exceptions among African countries, such as Bot‑ swana, where political and administrative corruption, while not totally absent, remained relatively low. The country’s government also avoided the pitfalls of the ‘Dutch disease’ and widespread predation thanks to a management system of diamond export revenues that had been set up by the first president of the coun try, Seretse Khama. The relative level and forms of corruption in Botswana are similar to what can be found in the West, concluded Médard (2001b). This also
The model of the political entrepreneur 53 seems to be the case in contemporary South Africa where the apartheid regime contributed to creating a strong legal-rational bureaucracy and, more paradoxi‑ cally, an influential civil society, in spite of the growing appetite of some of current leaders. Since illegal means are but a part of the political resources which can be mobilised, the position of the ‘white knight’ fighting against corruption may also become a source of legitimacy. The ANC leaders in Pretoria still have strong historical legitimacy, just as Robert Mugabe had for a long time in Zim babwe. The extent of corruption and the social acceptability of corrupt practices vary significantly from one society to another (Médard 1997a) and the political entrepreneur knows perfectly well how far he can go in this game. The African big man accumulates resources all along his career but also spends and redistributes almost everything he has. He is therefore constantly searching for liquidity – in terms of money, but also other types of resources. For him it is a question of prestige (ostentatious consumption) but also a social obligation (linked to kinship) and a matter of political capital (rewards for the support given). Accidents in his career are numerous (economic bankruptcy, periods of political disfavour or even imprisonment) and a political entrepre‑ neur’s skills should also be assessed in accordance with his capacity to ‘get back on his feet again’ – which means regaining favour from the leaders above him. Charles Njonjo, who retired from public life in 1983, was rehabilitated in 1998 when President Moi, then struggling to retain control and facing unrest, appointed him to the largely honorary post of chairman of Kenya Wildlife Service – the administration overseeing the country’s natural parks and wildlife management. Since then, thanks to his personal fortune, experience and influ‑ ence among the Kikuyus – one of the largest ethnic groups – Njonjo has once again taken an active part in Kenya’s political life, notably in 2006 when he pub licly announced his support for the opponents of President Kibaki (a member of the same ethnic group but his lifelong rival). The ruling cliques in African neopatrimonial states can be analysed as ‘fac‑ tions’ – in the sense given to the word by Bailey. The supreme political entrepre‑ neur is constantly obliged to extract new resources from his society in order to regulate political competition. Being at the same time a political servant and a potential rival to the super ‘big man’, i.e. the head of state, the political entrepre‑ neur must manage his own resources in an ever-moving context of changing fac‑ tional configurations. A famous illustration is provided by the tensions among Zimbabwe’s elites about the hypothetical succession of Robert Mugabe (Compa‑ gnon 2011). At the top of the pyramid of power, the head of state is also affected by the obsolescence and wear-and-tear of his political resources. Ultimately, there comes a moment when all his restructuring efforts become useless. He is obliged to give up, as was the case for Daniel Arap Moi, Hissène Habré or Charles Taylor, but he can also try to survive on a short-term basis with devast ating social and economic consequences for the country, as in the case of Mohamed Siyad Barre in Somalia (Compagnon 1995), Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Gbagbo in Côte d’Ivoire. In such circumstances, the political capital spent to consolidate personal rule is not invested in the institutionalisation of the state.
54 D. Compagnon As clearly illustrated by the example of Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d’Ivoire, such practices do not give birth to systems that can outlive their found‑ ers. Although neopatrimonial practices cut across government changes, each new leader has to craft his own personal system of domination and resource accumulation. After their successful capture of the ‘weak state’ (Migdal 1988), political entrepreneurs often contribute to its ultimate ruin through the erosion of both the institutions and the economy. The most arbitrary, predatory and violent forms of neopatrimonialism, called ‘sultanism’ by Weber, are the best illustra‑ tions of the risks that personal rule may represent for the people when there are no internal countervailing forces. The weak institutionalisation that is typical of neopatrimonial states means that the evolution of formal political norms – for example, constitutional reform and the return to multiparty systems in the 1990s (Bratton and van de Walle 1997)12 – did not fundamentally alter the trajectory of the African political entre preneurs’ careers. They can easily endorse the fashionable rhetoric on demo cracy and human rights – once presented as unattainable goals – or even call for God’s help through some opportune religious conversions (Daloz 1999). In the extreme cases of collapsing states, the individual nexus of political resources is heavily impacted but many entrepreneurs manage to adapt to the new situation. Lack of institutional constraints and the indiscriminate use of violence help to maximise opportunities for rapid enrichment available to former politicians and army officers – who may become become the leaders of armed factions rather than true ‘warlords’, as in Somalia (Compagnon 1998). In such cases, competi tion retains a political dimension, as exemplified by the repeated efforts made by warring factions to control the capital city and have their own ‘government’ acknowledged by the international community. Similarly, guerrilla entrepreneurs are not merely motivated by plundering, contrary to the normative perspective of the political economy of civil wars school – for a critique, see Marchal and Messiant (2002). The big men’s dual-track pattern of accumulation (power and money) may also adjust to the reorientations of economic policies adopted under the pressure of foreign donors and global economic markets. In the immediate post- independence period, state control of the economy took various forms and was the privileged channel for the patrimonialisation of the state. This hindered the emergence of a national bourgeoisie in the capitalist sense. Since the 1980s, African political entrepreneurs have managed to adapt to structural adjustment packages and to the neoliberal rhetoric, by taking advantage of opaque privatisa‑ tion programmes and opportune deregulation. When policies targetting the ‘Afri‑ canisation’ of the economy have been implemented, as in Zimbabwe, they have often been used as ideological justifications for enormous fund and asset trans fers towards specific groups, and the rapid enrichment of the ‘big men’ and their protégés – notably the enlarged family of the President (Compagnon 2001). This has resulted in a widening gap between between these small cliques of affairists, or ‘parasites’ (Iliffe 1983), and truly emerging African capitalists. Their opposi tion to the ‘political businessmen’ has been graphically illustrated in Zimbabwe
The model of the political entrepreneur 55 by the trajectories of Strive Masiyiwa and Philip Chiyangwa respectively (Raftopoulos and Compagnon 2003). The conversion of Zimbabwean leaders to crony capitalism in the 1990s went along with an increase in corruption and no economic takeoff, contrary to Asia (Médard 1997a) because Zimbabwean political entrepreneurs and those who depended on them preferred to squander their financial resources or externalise them massively,13 in conformity with the neopatrimonial ethos (Compagnon 1999). The rejection of a truly pluralist political system in some cases, or, altern atively, sabotaging democratic transition processes amount to a refusal to share access to resources in a context where the economy is still run in a short-term predatory fashion and not in view of securing sustainable and long-term growth. New generations have not ushered any significant change as many of the ‘new’ African leaders have been socialised in the very neopatrimonial culture they denounced when in the opposition – it’s now their turn to ‘chop’, as the expres‑ sion goes in many parts of Africa. It would indeed be suicidal on their part to act differently until there is an overhaul of the interactions between public and private patterns of governance.14 The present contribution, beyond its plea for the use the concept of the polit ical entrepreneur in comparative analysis, has sought to highlight the heuristic value of this concept for the study of both Western representative democracies and African – or Asian – neopatrimonial systems. Indeed, a purely holistic approach would not offer a complete vision of processes that combine institu‑ tional changes and enduring actors’ practices, as, for example, in the case of the successful or aborted African ‘democratic transition’ processes of the 1990s. Conversely the political entrepreneurs’ strategies cannot be dissociated from their countries’s political culture – largely shaped by history – or from a political economy of the neopatrimonial state. Neopatrimonialism goes beyond a form of political domination; it thrives in a variety of social and economic relations that the state contributes to shape (Fauré and Médard 1995). Through the study of the actors’ behaviour, it is possible to understand how they may contribute to the reproduction of neopatrimonialism, across political generations and beyond the incipient historical context that saw such practices emerge. Emphasis on political entrepreneurship also challenges the ordinary prejudices which consist in opposing ‘naturally’ corrupt politicians in countries of the South and supposedly virtuous heads of state, defenders of widows and orphans, in the North. This fiction, upheld by all Western politicians, does not take into account the implacable logic of political competition in which money plays an essential part. All professional politicians are clearly not corrupt, but the reason is often that they may not have had the opportunity to be so or that they were in a position to use other kinds of resources. In that respect there is only a difference in degree and not in nature between the patronising Western pledges and the practices observed in Southern countries. In France, it took the adoption of a more stringent law on party financing in the late 1980s to paradoxically reveal the extent of corrupt prac‑ tices and how they had been underestimated until then – even by political scientists and commentators. Corruption was rampant in many areas of France’s foreign
56 D. Compagnon policy, especially its African (Médard 1997b; 2002a) and Arab (Styan 2006) pol icies, as well as in some major state-owned companies, as epitomised by the Elf- Aquitaine ‘affair’ (see Chapter 15). The figure of the political entrepreneur, the best European example being certainly Sylvio Berlusconi in Italy (see Chapter 14) also reveals and highlights the deep unity of human political behaviour. In that sense, studying the African scene is conducive to giving us an insight into the true nature of politics and political activity in our own societies.
Notes 1 Although Jean-François Bayard challenges the concept of neopatrimonialism and prefers to refer to the notion of ‘belly politics’, his major opus (L’État en Afrique: la politique du ventre, 1st edn, Paris: Fayard, coll. ‘L’espace du politique, 29’, 1989) reveals many similarities with J.-F. Médard’s analyses. 2 Literally ‘Politics as a profession’; most translations in English euphemised the concept by replacing profession with ‘vocation’ – vocation being only the secondary meaning of the word Beruf. There is a similar difficulty with the word ‘Betrieb’ (busi‑ ness enterprise) often translated to the word ‘organisation’. M. Weber really meant to compare the political party to a business. 3 They are paradoxically stuck in the same theoretical impasse as the supporters of Public Choice (Tullock and Perlman 1978), in their understanding of the political exchange’s nature and the lack of a ‘currency’ on this political market. 4 Bridges allow transitions between these various modes of competition as illustrated by Hitler, Mussolini and other dictators who were initially ‘democratically’ elected. 5 For Weber, they not only resort to similar means of action, but also, and more signi ficantly, partake of the same rationalisation process. However, one should neither fall into the illusion that economics and political science can be merged (Ilchman and Uphoff 1969), nor settle for the equally misleading and caricatured economic analysis of political life (Merle 1990). 6 Namely a state of the Indian Federation, the British political system in the early twen‑ tieth century, and some traditional African societies. 7 The concept of ‘resources’ has been depicted as the ‘soft spot’ of the theory of social movements (Lapeyronnie 1988). Many typologies of resources were offered (Uphoff 1989; Braud 1985: 335–93; and Braud 1992; Hermet 1985). Lacam’s typology remains best suited to discuss the notion of political enterprise. Political entreprise is, according to him, based on two criteria that combine into a matrix with nine categor ies. According to their origin, resources may be: (a) personal (the entrepreneur’s network of relations, his tactical or oratory skills); (b) contextual (the political or social environment), or (c) institutional (positions held within the organizations). According to the importance of the influence exerted, Amitaï Etzioni considers that resources may also be: (a) coercive (use or threat of public or private force); (b) retributive (material or symbolic rewards), or (c) persuasive when legitimisation stems from propaganda and reliance on personal charisma (Lacam 1988: 28). 8 This paragraph draws from Bailey (1971: 51 sq.). 9 During the second round of the French presidential campaign of 2007, some of the protagonists behaved like political entrepreneurs who successfully turned their per‑ sonal image into a decisive political resource with the help of the media. By contrast, ideology was only used episodically as a rhetorical resource, including at the expense of intellectual coherence, when the right-wing candidate associated references to the tutelary figures of the Left with some themes borrowed from the Far Right. In an ever more competitive electoral market, politicians’ speeches tend to be akin to advertising messages. To buy or to vote become very similar.
The model of the political entrepreneur 57 10 Similar mechanisms can be found in the dominant parties of many African countries. The ‘Primaries’ organised within the single party de facto in control of Zimbabwe’s political life since independence – the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF ) – have a similar function (Makumbe and Compagnon, 2000). 11 The notion of ‘straddling’ was elaborated on the occasion of the ‘Kenyan debate’ over the true nature of local capitalism (Fauré and Médard 1995: 304–5). 12 By the end of the decade; frequent cases of authoritarian restoration led to the emer‑ gence of electoral autocracies (Schedler 2006). 13 The year 2005 saw record imports of upmarket Mercedes cars despite foreign cur‑ rency shortages in crisis-hit Zimbabwe. Illegal fund transfers by Mugabe’s big men reached unprecedented levels that same year. 14 World Bank pressure to compel Chad to spare some of its oil revenue in order to finance sustainable development programmes and fight poverty met with the determi‑ nation and cynicism of President Deby who eventually broke the deal.
4 Charles Njonjo The portrait of a ‘big man’ in Kenya Jean-François Médard
In the contemporary African state, the combination of weak institutionalization with personal rule needs no reminder. Conversely, the expression personal rule does not refer to the classical analyses of personalization of power, which in the case of Africa have laid too much emphasis on the notion of charismatic power. Personal rule, through its reliance on public office, rapidly shatters the institutional framework. For this reason, when trying to characterize the state in Africa, one is bound to pay special attention to the head of state, the highest authority, whether or not he is charismatic. Personal rule, however, is not solely associated with the head of state, who tends to monopolize the observer’s attention, but to anyone who holds some public office, whether he is an orderly or a Cabinet min ister, and tends to use his position and the resources tied with it so as to maximize public and private benefits. The state tends to fade behind the head of state, and the administration behind the civil servant. Thus, in Jean-François Bayart’s L’État au Cameroun (1979), it is impossible to identify what constitutes statehood in its classical meaning. The concept of the state seems to be superseded by the actors who instrumentalize it. When analysing the African state, the personal variable cannot be ignored. This is well established in the case of heads of states, much less so with respect to the other bearers of official functions. Fascination for the head of state has resulted in neglecting other actors, in particular, the second(s) in command when he or they exist. The position of an important political leader other than the president is fragile: he does not usually stay for very long in office, either because he replaces the head of state, or because he is eliminated by the ruler or one of his presumed heirs. Kenya, in this respect, offers a rich crop of important political leaders: Tom Mboya was assassinated; Oginga Odinga was eliminated politically; J.M. Kariuki was also assassinated; Charles Njonjo was eliminated politically.1 Charles Njonjo broke the record for political longevity. Under Kenyatta he was a national leader among many others as he drew his influence from his position as Attorney General and one of the president’s advisors. Under Moi, whom he helped decisively to become president in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution (Karimi and Ochieng 1980), he truly became the number two in the government (although Kibaki was formally the vice president). He was also
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 59 an influential advisor to the president who sheltered him as he built his own political machine within the state in view of replacing him. Charles Njonjo’s knack for politics makes him particularly fascinating for a political scientist. He mobilized all sorts of political resources and knew how to accumulate them in a remarkably skilful manner to serve his political ambitions. Charles Njonjo, while he was successful, but also in his final downfall, gives us a lesson in political skills. It is on this aspect that we wish to concentrate our analysis. Other dimensions of his character would be worth mentioning, for example, his political options, or his sociological significance from the standpoint of interactions between social class and power (Currie and Ray 1984). The material for this analysis is relatively abundant in the Kenyan press which, from the onset, observed and reported Njonjo’s career closely. For instance, the Daily Nation published in extenso the findings of the judicial commission that president Moi appointed to investigate the accusations brought against Njonjo. The information available is both heterogeneous and of uneven significance and credibility. In a sense, the results of the findings of the commission of inquiry were rather disappointing since it discussed minor questions in depth while only superfic ially addressing major subjects. This stemmed from more or less reliable witnesses and their attitude. Rarely were the allegations backed by sufficient evidence. This much said, however, we are neither detectives, nor judges, nor even historians. As political scientists we must first try to decipher the logics of the player’s action and power. For this purpose, we did not need to collect all the information on Njonjo. A margin of error is acceptable if, from the facts we gathered – clearly the tip of the iceberg – we are able to reconstruct the logic of his political strategy in a convincing way . . . In this description of the power of a man, a ‘big man’, we will begin by describing the public image of Njonjo; such an inflated image that one may refer to it as a Njonjo myth. This myth became over time an element of his power. We will then examine the foundations of this power, that is its range, the nature of the resources accumulated and mobilized in his attempt to become the country’s ruler. This will help us to understand his attempt to seize power and subsequent failure to do so.
The Njonjo myth Njonjo was certainly a star for the Kenyan press, which gave him broad cover age. All his movements were scrutinized, commented upon and the subject of all kinds of rumors. It would be an understatement to say that Njonjo was a public figure: his image was so inflated that it carried an almost mythical aura. Given his family, his university degrees, his political career, Njonjo was very privileged, and this extended to the way he eventually left the political scene. His private and public behavior, his lifestyle, his connections and relations, drew attention and turned Njonjo into an outstanding public figure. Perceived as all powerful, he was also feared.
60 J.-F. Médard A privileged person Njonjo was born in 1920 in Kikuyu, in the district of Kiambu, in the Kikuyu region.2 His father, Josiah Njonjo, who recently died, had been converted by the missionary Leakey, the father and grandfather of Louis and Richard Leakey, and the English had designated him one of the four paramount chiefs in the Kikuyu region. It must be remembered that there were no traditional chiefs among the Kikuyu, and that the paramount chieftainship was an artificial device of the col onizer meant to create channels for his rule. Generally speaking the Kikuyu chiefs were seen as loyalists, as ‘collaborators’, even though it was not always as simple as that. Still it was somewhat curious to hear of Njonjo’s father being described as a nationalist at his funeral oration . . . After primary school in Kikuyu, Njonjo entered Alliance High School, the most famous high school in Kenya. At the time it was the only high school open to Africans. That is also why most of the Kenyan elites were educated there. Njonjo later attended King’s College (Budo, Uganda) before being admitted to Fort Hare University in South Africa. From South Africa he went to the University of Exeter in Great Britain where he studied public administration in 1946. From 1947 to 1950 he was enrolled at the London School of Economics, after which he studied Law for four years in the same city. He was then admitted to Gray’s Inn as a lawyer, and returned to Kenya in 1955 to work in the colonial administration, initially as registrar and later as registrar-general. In 1961 he was promoted to Senior Crown Counsel, and became, in 1962, deputy public prosecutor, an important position. When Kenya became independent in 1962 he was appointed Attorney General, which is an administrative post, and not a political position. The following year he became ex-officio a Member of Parliament and a member of the cabinet. He had then the rank of Minister, without having been elected to Parliament. Njonjo remained Attorney General throughout Kenyatta’s presidency and also served him as his legal and personal advisor. It was he who convinced Kenyatta to reject the amendment which proposed a revision of the constitution to prevent Vice President Daniel Arap Moi from succeeding him. It is thanks to Njonjo that, when Jomo Kenyatta died in 1978, Moi could become the second president of Kenya. When, in December 1980, Njonjo resigned from his post in order to be elected MP for Kikuyu he was suspected of nourishing secret ambitions. He vigorously denied it and, after a brief period as a ‘backbencher’, was appointed Minister of Home and Constitutional Affairs. As Attorney General and as Minister Njonjo was very close to President Moi, much closer in effect than to the preceding president. However, after the attempted coup d’état of August 1, 1982 there was a split in this relationship: the President began to distance himself. In May 1983, during a ‘harambee’3 at Kisii, Moi denounced a traitor backed by foreign powers, without giving his name. Other politicians followed suit and went on denouncing a traitor whose name they eventually pronounced. By the end of June 1983, Moi suspended Njonjo from his ministry and opened a public inquiry which lasted close to ten months (late October 1983–mid-August
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 61 1984). Njonjo was compelled to resign from all his political responsibilities. In November 1984 the commission published its report declaring Njonjo guilty. Moi, however, granted him pardon. He was then eliminated politically after ruling in his own way for 20 years. Due to his family origins, his wealth, his power and his political career, he was also privileged in his disgrace: he was not to be condemned, but merely side-tracked. Style of leadership Dressed in a dark three-piece striped suit, wearing a carnation in his buttonhole and a gold chain on his watch, Charles Njonjo was fond of the style of the British aristocracy and imitated it in dress and manner. Married to an English citizen who gave him three children, ‘Sir Charles or The Duke of Kabeteshire’4, as he was sometimes called, was highly successfully in model ing his behavior on the style of Britain’s high society. His enemies called him therefore a ‘white African’ or a ‘white Kenyan’. It was rumored, among other things, that he imported his eggs from England. The expatriates who knew him liked him and unquestionably felt friendly towards him. The courtesy and attention of a real gentleman were much appreciated. Njonjo represented one of the best examples of assimilation to English society – and such an ability to integrate is rare considering the reputation of the English high society for not easily accepting people from the outside. His popularity among expatriates, the English Kenyans and Asians did not come from the simple fact of defending them from frequent attacks: because of his lifestyle, they con sidered him to be one of them. This is why he characteristically accumulated important responsibilities in various Kenyan associations traditionally controlled by the British: the Safari Rally, the Automobile Association, Dr Bernado’s Homes in Kenya, the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals, the East African Wildlife Society, the World Wild Life Fund, St. John’s Ambulance, the Heart Foundation, the CORAT (Christian Organisations Research Advisory Trust, Africa), the Nairobi City Players and, of course, the Presbyterian Church, a major actor in the evangelisation of the Kikuyu region, where he was an active member. In the eyes of his countrymen, Njonjo seemed to be a kind of foreigner in his own land. He was perceived as a man tied overseas through political and economic connections. He had personal links with the Foreign Office and the British Conservative Party whose political options he shared – he systematically defended the most conservative social, economic and political positions. In opposition to his fellow countrymen and on grounds of efficiency and competence, he sought to restrain the Africanisation of public administration and particularly the judicial system, then still dominated by the English and Indians – Njonjo claimed that African judges would be easily corrupted. He systematically put forward rule of Law and the Constitution, while denouncing corruption relentlessly. Internationally, Njonjo positioned himself as a faithful ally of the West. He even had strong ties with South Africa and Israel. He had gone as far as inviting
62 J.-F. Médard Dr Barnard to Kenya and in opposition to the official Kenyan government pol icy, he defended a policy of dialogue with South Africa. These positions and attitudes did not make him popular. Yet, he enjoyed being outspoken and loved provoking social groups such as the academic com munity, the judicial branch and members of Parliament. He scorned his fellow compatriots and did not hesitate to let it be known. Being white was a requirement to be hired as his personal assistant (he had an English secretary – sent to him by Edward Heath it was rumored). It was said that the idea of flying in an airplane piloted by an African terrified him, and that he refused to have black doctors treat him. In Parliament he was formidable for his wit and irony while he overwhelmed his colleagues with sarcasm, occasionally accusing them of smoking cannabis and drinking a whisky to gather the courage to stand up and speak in Parliament. Academics were his favorite target. He accused them of being Marxists and attacked particularly the University’s literature department, the law faculty and ‘lecturers’ in general because of their accent when speaking English. Only the medical school found favor with him. As for the students, he prescribed caning and stigmatized free education. The Ministry of Education and the whole system of education were another of his favorite targets. He once described it as a ‘cor ridor of confusion’ and regularly questioned the administration of the Ministry and the competence or morality of the teachers. This highly provocative style made him very unpopular among the Kenyan intellectuals he deliberately antagonized. They regarded him as the devil incarnate. His lack of popularity, however, went beyond this group whose importance is sometimes overrated. Njonjo challenged consciously spontaneous popular sensitivities, a behavior that also contributed to reinforce the image of power that he conveyed: if he expressed himself so frankly, it was because he could afford to. This was his weak side, and, as we will see, his Achilles heel. Njonjo, the all powerful Njonjo’s power was based on specific events or facts, but also on rumors that were impossible to verify. He was meant to have files on everyone and, as a journalist remarked, who in the political world does not have a skeleton in the cupboard? His fortune was immense and he could buy anyone he pleased. Implacable against those who resisted or dared to confront him, he had the reputation of jailing whoever he wished or, conversely, offering them a ministerial post. Those who did confront Njonjo usually paid for it dearly. According to public rumor he was behind all the plots and political assassinations. Njonjo knew how to put to good use this image of inexhaustible power. He cultivated it carefully, thus making it even more effective: reputation was transformed into an instrument that enabled him to avoid showing or using power, something akin to the relationship between confidence and credit. Reputation could, however, also prove dangerous if it were to offend the head of state who might grow suspicious.
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 63 When power turns into a myth it also becomes largely immune to analysis. People with usually sound judgment can express senseless views. One feels like asking, as a political scientist once asked Jacques Foccart (see Chapter 15): ‘Mr Njonjo who are you?’ The answer, difficult as it is, is easier today. If public rumor had been trustworthy, Moi would have never been able to exclude Njonjo from power. He was able to do so and this is, in itself, an important element. We will therefore try next to assess the actual political resources of Njonjo, in order to benchmark his power before observing how he used it in his attempt to seize control.
Njonjo’s power To analyse the power of a politician one should first draw an inventory of his political resources, namely the instruments at his disposal to progressively accu mulate power. In the case of Njonjo, the diversity and close interconnection between these resources is such that they confer to his power a systemic dimension. The question that arises next is that of the latitude of action that such power confers to its beneficiary. Njonjo’s system of power As Njonjo entered politics, a key asset was his family’s background that gave him access to financial, higher education and relational capital, thus enabling him to secure key positions when the cards were distributed at Independence. Appointment to public functions. Njonjo’s first asset was his position as Attorney General, and later as Minister of the Interior and Constitutional Affairs where he skilfully learnt how to squeeze all potential resources. As Attorney General he had authority over almost the entire repressive system of Kenya: he controlled the judicial system, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the ‘Special Branch’ in the Police department. As he became Minister of Internal Security and Constitutional Affairs, he also retained control over the CID. Overseeing the CID opened many possibilities. Njonjo had access to informa tion on the private lives of all the important people in Kenya. As Attorney General it was he who decided whether or not to start legal proceedings. This gave him a hold over all delinquents. All the newspapers kept alluding to Njonjo’s files. These files were used either to extract financial resources,5 or to convince stubborn MPs to keep on the right track. As the Attorney General (and later minister) for 20 years, he had immense opportunities for patronage and the strengthening of his hold over the repressive system. Njonjo was consulted on the nomination of judges and policemen. This, along with the indirect benefits drawn from much publicized presidential patronage, meant that Njonjo could place friends in the judicial or administrative sys tems or in the police: Ben Gethi, head of the General Service Unit (a paramilitary wing in the army and police) and later Police Commissioner, was one of his
64 J.-F. Médard friends. Rao, Deputy Public Prosecutor, Sokhi, Superintendant of Police and Nderi, Deputy Director of CID were also friends. Influence on the President. As Attorney General Njonjo was also the President’s legal advisor for constitutional, judiciary and even political issues. From this he drew the capacity to influence the President, probably his most important resource. This influence also gave Njonjo indirect but considerable power over the conduct of politics in Kenya. After Jomo Kenyatta, Njonjo’s personal influence increased with Daniel Moi. Under Kenyatta Njonjo shared his influence with other close advisors such as Koinange and members of his family. Towards the end of his life Kenyatta was dominated by his family, yet he resisted its pressure – they were afraid that power would escape them – and, following the advice of Njonjo, he prepared the constitutional transition. With Moi as President, Njonjo truly became the eminence grise. They were good friends and Moi was grateful for the help Njonjo had given him at a decisive moment. He had complete confidence in him and appreciated his qualities and took his advice on politics. The President, Njonjo, G.G. Kariuki, the minister of state responsible for internal security and a close ally to Njonjo and to Kiereini, the Chief Secretary of the Civil Service, another of Njonjo’s friends, were inseparable. They shared the President’s car (‘the matatu’), lunched together and shared a highly informal relationship. Intimacy with the President enhanced considerably Njonjo’s resources which were of all kinds. Yet, these resources were indirect and conditional: the President remained the supreme authority. Networking. Njonjo’s ‘relational’ social capital was immense and his network of relations went well beyond the national arena. On the international scene we have already mentioned his connections with Britain, South Africa and Israel. He was a friend of Banda, the President of Malawi, of Tiny Rowland, the head of Lonrho. He was also close to the Saudi millionaire and arms dealer Kashoggi,6 was a friend and associate to the Indonesian millionaire Haryanto. They owed him many favors which were probably substantially repaid. These international relationships, besides giving Njonjo psychological satisfaction, were of much value politically and financially. The South Africans and Kashoggi were involved, along with Njonjo, in the attempted coup d’état in the Seychelles in 1981 – the Kenyan MP Martin Shikuku produced documents proving that Njonjo had received money from South Africa. In Kenya, Njonjo had strong ties with the British Kenyans: he was a close friend of Mackenzie who, after playing an important role at the time of Independence, became Minister of Agriculture. Mackenzie remained active in the region, notably as representative of the British M16 (Bloch and Fitzgerald 1983: 153–7) until his airplane exploded in the air while returning from Kampala. Njonjo was also tied to the Indian community which was strong economic ally, but politically weak. In exchange for offering his protection to them, he was largely rewarded financially. Among Kenyans, Njonjo also had a solid network of friends and allies in various circles. Thanks to Githii’s help, it may be said that he had a newspaper
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 65 at his disposal, the Nation first and then the Standard. Njonjo had established solid ties within the Civil Service, not just with its boss Kiereini. In the eco nomic world, Njonjo was close to a certain number of Kikuyu business men, and particularly to Githunguri, the former executive director of the National Bank of Kenya. Juma Boy, the former head of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) and MP for the Coast, was one of his allies. In the political world (KANU,7 Parliament) he also had a network of clientele and people who were indebted to him. The only sector where we never heard his name mentioned was the army. Njonjo’s relational capital could also translate into economic resources. Economic resources. Njonjo’s economic resources should not be confused with his personal fortune – he also had access to the economic resources of a number of his friends. Although Njonjo had a sizeable fortune, it would have never enabled him to meet the important financial obligations that his political ambition necessitated. We actually have very little information on his personal fortune. To begin with he benefited from his family’s wealth. His fortune grew, however, after he became a top political figure with direct access to economic resources. He developed diversified interests in sectors such as agriculture (horticulture, ranches), industry (metallurgy), banking, tourism, transportation (air, automobile).8 The extent of his economic resources provided him with consider able means to influence the political system: he employed them to get elected as a MP for Kikuyu, to buy out the municipal council of Mombasa, or secure sup port from dozens of parliamentarians. What the Weekly Review once described as the ‘Njonjo system’ was an all-powerful machine. From the data presented here, it becomes obvious that the Njonjo system was a network that went beyond national borders, while permeating politics and soci ety within the country. Within the country, Njonjo controlled directly or indirectly the repressive apparatus (justice and CID, Special Branch, Police), the Civil Service, part of the political class (MPs and ministers, KANU, COTU). A daily newspaper acted as his spokesman, reporting about him and campaigning against his enemies. His privileged relationship with the expatriates and the ‘Asians’ provided economic resources and hence helped him to assert his polit ical influence. If one adds to this Njonjo’s international networks, one gets the impression of facing a state within the state. Such an organization went beyond the simple idea of a political machine and beyond the classical notion of faction. Controlling such an organization gave Njonjo considerable latitude of action. Njonjo’s latitude of action Njonjo’s latitude of action served his private power as well as his influence on public policies. We will look particularly at the first aspect. As a ‘big man’ Njonjo, the man of Law, was actually above the law: he did not have to abide to the rules that applied to a common citizen. Here are a few examples drawn from the Commission of Inquiry report. Njonjo not only traveled with several passports (the commission heavily insisted on this detail), but entered and left the
66 J.-F. Médard airport without going through immigration or customs. Every three weeks he had baggage sent from London and this was never inspected by customs. He never paid Kenya Airways for his huge excess luggage (200–40 kgs per trip), although he went to London about four times a year. When a zealous employee once sent Njonjo a bill, he complained to the boss of Kenya Airways, his friend Sir Cole, who had the employee fired.9 Njonjo also allowed his friends to share his privileges. As a friend of the head of Immigration, Mutua, Njonjo could facilitate their journeys – Giscard d’Estaing was among them when he was France’s Minister of Finance. Njonjo would go as far as having visas delivered to South African tourists in contra diction to government directives. Flamingo Tours, a travel agency in which he had shares, was in charge of these tourists. Without any due respect for the law, he also helped one of his friends, the Indonesian business man and millionaire Haryanto, to import over 100 firearms (118, including one which was a military gun). This arsenal, along with sophisticated radio equipment, was kept in the house of the millionaire who was helped by Walker, the police officer who was responsible for registering arms.10 The commission of inquiry studied this story carefully hoping to prove a subversive plot. This was a dubious interpretation. These arms and equipment were probably used to hunt on private reserves (although hunting was forbidden) and to protect a camp in Masai Mara near the Tanzanian border. When you are rich like Haryanto, or powerful like Njonjo, common law does not apply. It is not necessary to look here for dark stories and plots. The Commission of Inquiry reported in detail how Njonjo intervened on the Coast to favor the faction supporting him (Nassir, Hemed) and to bribe the town council of Mombasa so as to ensure the election of Rajab Sumba as mayor and Mwidani11 as his deputy. Hemed, an ally of Nassir, the political ‘boss’ of the Coast, was in charge of recruiting for Njonjo. One counselor, Maitha, later explained how Hemed, after asking him to resign from his job in order to be a candidate in the elections, had paid for his campaign. Hemed was supposed to penetrate the Giriama, an important coastal group, for Njonjo. Hemed broke ties with Njonjo after refusing to use his influence to expel Giriama squatters from land owned by a friend of Njonjo, Duncan Ndegwa, head of the Central Bank. Hemed subsequently testified that Njonjo had spent 400,000 Ksh to bribe 21 out of the 24 municipal councillors of Mombasa for those elections. Mwidau, deputy of Mombasa South, the main opponent to Nassir recalled how after refusing to cede to Njonjo’s pressure, he lost his job in the private security company where he had been working for 28 years. The head of the enterprise, an expatriate, had been threatened with expulsion if he did not fire Mwidau. As he stood in the witness stand during the inquiry, the head of the company did not confirm this, but recognized that Njonjo had threatened to cancel an important government contract.12 Njonjo never hesitated to have his enemies jailed on diverse grounds. Kanja, then the MP for Nyeri and an Assistant minister, accused Njonjo in parliament, of having been implicated in the assassination of Tom Mboya and J.M. Kariuki,
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 67 but provided no evidence. The next day he had lost his post as minister. Shortly afterwards he was imprisoned for three years for a currency exchange control violation.13 Two other MPs, J. Gachago (MP for Makuyu) and G.M. Muchiri (MP for Embakasi), who had echoed allegations that Njonjo played a part in the assassination of Tom Mboya, were imprisoned for five years for stealing coffee, which they said they had never done. Njonjo had them released before the end of their term, and taken to his home, although he was at the time no longer the Attorney General, nor Minister, but just a simple citizen!14 Njonjo also secured from the President a reprieve for a murderer condemned for armed robbery. Such a crime was in theory excluded from amnesty, but the bandit was from Njonjo’s Kikuyu’s constituency. There are many more such examples. Njonjo similarly protected his friends from the judicial system. The most characteristic example is Githunguri who was accused of stealing 300 million Kenyan shillings from the National Bank of Kenya when he was the executive manager. It was only after the fall of Njonjo that the accusations began to be made. Njonjo also tried to protect one of his friends who was compromised in the scandal of the Bank of Baroda,15 by calling Kamere for help, a friend who had become Attorney General. Njonjo was also tied to companies which were accused of fraud on the exchange controls. Njonjo was himself never subjected to the normal procedure on exchange control. He operated directly through Duncan Ndegwa, the head of the Central Bank. The latter’s personal secretary, who was British, did not even have a work permit. Njonjo could act illegally without fearing pursuit. For example, he imported a Mercedes illegally by making a false employment declaration. He was also accused on several occasions of involvement in the assassination of Tom Mboya and J.M. Kariuki. There was no conclusive proof and there were other suspects. What is certain, however, is that he helped to smother both affairs. Two police agents that were directly implicated in this, Ben Gethi and Sokhi, were also his friends. What was Njonjo’s power on public decisions? We know that he was respons ible for the marginalization of the Luo. We also know how he favored free enterprise, supported ‘Asians’ and the presence of expatriates. He was also opposed to any social legislation, favored detention and the institutionalization of the one party system. It is hard to define Njonjo’s precise contribution to these political options, but his influence was significant. However, when Njonjo left power such political orientations were not radically altered. We could have expected a return of the Luo. It did not occur. We could have expected a more liberal attitude towards the opposition. This did not happen either. Resentment against expatriate employment did develop somewhat. Internationally, too, there was no change in Kenya’s position except at the regional level. Closer cooperation with Tanzania and the resolution of the conflict over the assets of the former East African Community were premised on Njonjo’s departure from the political scene (Médard 1984). The combined accumulation of power with political organization and a wide margin of manoeuvre invite us to conclude that Njonjo’s ambition went beyond
68 J.-F. Médard the position as number two in the shadow of the President. With retrospect this seems obvious. His attempt to become the head of state was meant to be the ultimate test of his power. It revealed its limits.
The test of power The judicial commission of inquiry came to the conclusion that Njonjo was guilty. He wanted to replace Moi and was definitely a ‘Msaliti’, the Swahili word used by Moi to declare him ‘not worthy of confidence’. The English translation used the word ‘traitor’ which is purposely ambiguous – traitor refers, legally speaking, to the crime of treason. The commentators in the expatriate commun ity, however, considered Njonjo the victim of a witch hunt16 and thought that Moi was depriving himself of an excellent advisor. What subsequently emerged was that Moi was right to get rid of Njonjo the way he did, for the somewhat strange procedure applied proved to be both efficient and final. Njonjo’s attempt to seize power The judicial commission of inquiry concluded that Njonjo was a traitor from a legal standpoint. It stated that he was implicated in the Muthemba affair and the August 1982 aborted coup – not to mention the Seychelles coup that affected a foreign government, Rene’s. Yet, even though Njonjo had betrayed Moi’s confidence, whether he intended to resort to violence could not be proven. What is striking for anyone who tries to reconstruct Njonjo’s strategy to access power is his effort to appear to be acting within the realm of the Constitution, although the means employed were definitely illegal. A possible recourse to violence on the part of Njonjo seems to contradict what remained an overwhelmingly institutional logic. On the other hand this logic did not entirely preclude usage of violence. An institutional strategy. With hindsight, it is most likely that Njonjo’s ambitions were quite deeply rooted, although situations, and therefore the strategy to adopted, were very different under Kenyatta and Moi. Jomo Kenyatta was already quite old when he became president. The problem was not to replace him, but to succeed him. As Attorney General and due to his relationship with the head of state, Njonjo was able to build a powerbase that he later developed under Moi. However Njonjo was not a favorite in the line of succession to Kenyatta. The interplay of factions under Kenyatta was shaped by the possibility that the issue of his succession could arise at any time. Although Kenyatta often favored his family, he never entirely gave in to their pressure, seeking support from others so as to keep room to manoeuvre. Vice president Daniel Moi kept a very low profile, the best tactic since a vice president, like the dauphin in the French monarchy, must wait without showing signs of impatience to take the place of the ruler. In order to preserve the faction’s powers, the Kenyatta family and their allies, the Kikuyu of Kiambu, sought to impose a constitutional amendment that would
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 69 prevent Moi, as vice president, from succeeding automatically to Kenyatta. Njonjo had the choice between rallying the Kiambu faction and helping Moi to succeed normally to Kenyatta. The first option did not assure him of remaining a privileged advisor of the President and even less of replacing him. By choosing to side with Moi, Njonjo would consolidate his relationship with him while keeping a large freedom of action. Perhaps he may have made the mistake of considering that Moi lacked political ambitions and would give him his position. Or perhaps Njonjo thought he would be able to manipulate him without too much difficulty. Njonjo therefore decisively contributed to Moi’s accession to the presidency as he blocked the constitutional amendment. In his capacity as Attorney General, he also announced, obviously with Kenyatta’s consent, that it was a crime carrying the death penalty to anticipate the death of the president.17 His friend Oloitipitip18 then managed to push through Parliament a motion with 90 signatures to oppose the amendment. That ended the matter. Later on Njonjo revealed a plot to assassinate Moi when Kenyatta died. Some people, however, consider that this ‘Ngorokos’ plot was a pure invention of Njonjo, meant to position him closer to Moi and to weaken his enemies by dividing them. In order to ensure Kenyatta’s constitutional succession, Njonjo had to side with Kibaki who became vice president and, therefore, heir apparent. Since Moi was still young, there was, however, no real possibility of Kibaki succeeding Moi. To become president one would have to replace Moi, not succeed him. Though the power struggle was organized around factions in the classical sense just as had been the case under Kenyatta, their significance had changed. At first sight, the situations were similar: Njonjo soon started attacking Kibaki through the Standard newspaper. Kibaki responded half-heartedly, somewhat uncomfortable in his new position as vice president. Njonjo’s influence on the president kept growing stronger as he increased his campaign against Kibaki, stigmatizing him as ‘anti‑nyayo’19 that is as an ‘enemy of Moi’. Njonjo’s engagement with politics grew in the shadow of Moi, as he helped him to eliminate politically the Luo and their leader Oginga Odinga. As Njonjo took the prerogative of declaring who was pro or anti‑nyayo, opposing him became synonymous with opposing Moi. Moi, like Kenyatta before him, was nonetheless careful not to eliminate Kibaki and give in entirely to Njonjo. Right he was, for behind the battle over anti-nyayoism Njonjo was aiming for Moi’s position. Njonjo was trying to replace Kibaki because he actually wished to replace Moi. The conflict went beyond the factional fighting between Njonjo and Kibaki: it was an attempt to displace Moi. The situation crystallized when Njonjo, on April 14, 1980, resigned as Attorney General to enter politics and was elected MP of Kikuyu.20 As long as Njonjo was Attorney General he had not been officially party to the political competition. He could not pretend to become vice president or president without having been first elected as a MP. As a candidate for the Kikuyu seat, Njonjo entered the national political competition. Observers realized this and Kibaki reacted strongly.
70 J.-F. Médard The very day Njonjo resigned, the MP of Kikuyu, Amos Ng’ang’a, left his seat to Njonjo on the ground that Njonjo would know how to promote the development of Kikuyu. He was meant to have done so willingly, but he had also received 160,000 Ksh to cover the campaign expenses incurred six months earlier.21 Soon after this, Amos Ng’ang’a was named head of the Tana River Development Authority, a public enterprise. Njonjo himself claimed he had given in to the pressure of his future constituents. In reality, all this had been carefully orchestrated – it is also true that, locally, people considered that electing a powerful person would be beneficial to them. Much to the surprise of observers, the campaign revealed that Njonjo could speak Kikuyu and Swahili and even, if necessary, shake hands. No one dared to challenge him and he was elected unopposed. As Mwaruwa (the general secretary of the Syndicate of Dockers of Kenya) put it then: ‘To oppose Njonjo in the next elections would be like opposing the Law.’ What was Njonjo trying to achieve, wondered analysts at the time? According to some rumors he wanted to be Prime Minister, to which he replied, ‘The Kenyan constitution does not provide for the position of Prime Minister.’ To those who asked if he wanted to become President he answered, ‘There is no presidential vacancy, our president is young and in good health.’ He added that since he had been supporting Moi during the transition, why would he want his post now? Moi was convinced by this and congratulated him warmly on his election. After a brief period as a ‘backbencher’, he was named at the end of June Minister for Home and Constitutional Affairs; in the process he also regained indirect control over the CID. As an MP, Njonjo was efficient, active and kept in close touch with his constituency. He became genuinely popular locally, through generous gifts and the organization of bus services and access to water in the area. In order to be generous, money had to be extracted some way. For instance, to get money for the establishment of a Fund for Development in his constituency, Njonjo diverted money from the sale of a truck that had been given by Ryce Motors Ltd to the National Fund for the Disabled of Kenya that he chaired. To the director of Ryce Motors, who was a little puzzled when learning that his check should be written in favor of the constituency’s Fund for Development, Njonjo simply explained that there were also handicapped people in Kikuyu. Although Njonjo had previously had quarrels with the leader of the Bohra22 he suddenly reconciled with him and, in 1980, became a representative of the Bohra Charity Foundation. He was able in this way to seize the lion’s share of the funds of this Muslim foundation. Although using their funds towards the pro motion of other religions was forbidden, 300,000 Ksh were used to purchase a bus for Saint Paul United Seminary.23 Njonjo also transferred 500,000 Ksh from the development Fund in Kikuyu into his private account, an initiative that was considered to be embezzlement by the inquiry commission. Locally, Njonjo undertook to get closer to Gichuru and Karume, the political leaders of Kiambu district, with whom he had been on bad terms after he opposed the movement to change the constitution. They were also responsible
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 71 for the Kanu Branch Committee of Kiambu, letting it be known that they did not endorse Njonjo’s candidacy for the seat of Kikuyu. While working to comfort his local base, he began penetrating the Kenyan political system. Njonjo’s friends apparently laid their hands on KANU, in effect a single party, on the occasion of the elections of October 1978.24 Two of Njonjo’s friends, Kariuki and Oloitipitip, had played a key role by drawing up a list suggesting candidates for the different Party positions. This list aimed at renewing the party’s leadership considerably. Oloitipitip and Nasser had also tried, but in vain, to get it accepted by Parliament. Yet, just before the elections, Kariuki had printed 3,000 cards, using this list, thus suggesting it had been officially accepted (which was not the case). Candidates on this list were nonetheless all elected. It is likely that Njonjo was behind the drafting of the list, a move that would in such a case reflect a long term strategy. As the Attorney General Njonjo could not appear to be formally backing up the renewal of the party leadership. Whether Njonjo was aiming for the presidency or vice presidency he first needed to become president or vice president of the ruling party. Gaining strong support within the party was therefore essential. When parliamentary elections were held in 1979, Njonjo made a big effort to build up support in Parliament. Was this meant to prepare for a vote of censorship against Moi? This is what Sifuna (MP of Bungoma) later alleged.25 Support from three-quarters of the 170 deputies would have been constitutionally required. Yet, by 1981 Njonjo’s control over 60 MPs was remarkable, but insufficient. In addition a vote of no confidence would not have automatically brought the downfall of the president since he could still dissolve the assembly (section 56[2] of the Constitution). Thanks to the work of the Commission of Inquiry we have a rich crop of information on Njonjo’s recruitment campaign. According to Maitha’s testimony, Njonjo had undertaken to create a powerbase by identifying individuals who would be prepared to follow him. He funded their electoral campaign and used them as relays to reach the diverse communities in the country. Recruitment was carried out by such people as Hemed in Mombasa who, as previously mentioned, employed Maitha to contact the Giriama. We have also seen how Njonjo secured the election of the mayor and the deputy mayor of Mombasa by bribing 21 out of the 24 councillors. This testimony was confirmed by Sifuna who named the recruiting agents of Njonjo. Besides Moses Keino (deputy speaker of the legislature, MP for Kericho) who had to resign after preventing Parliament to deliberate on the prayer meeting held at Rungiri Church (see below), those involved were Said Hemed (parliamentary chief whip and MP for Mombasa North), Stephen Kiragu (MP for Kirinyaga South and deputy chief whip, the assistant to Hemed), Juma Boy (MP of Kwale Central, Coast Province and general secretary of COTU), Jackson Kalweo (MP for Meru South and assistant minister of Culture and Social Services), Clement Lubembe (former MP) and J.M. Mutua (former Principal Officer for immigration). Sifuna recalled in detail the diverse efforts that were made to recruit him. Kalweo made a first try in 1981 threatening him with retaliation if he refused to
72 J.-F. Médard join Njonjo’s faction. If he were to accept, Kalweo boasted, Njonjo’s consider able power would enable him to obtain whatever he wished. Njonjo even promised that he could ensure that the appeal of his rivals in the elections would be rejected by the judge. And this is what happened. A second attempt was made during the same year as Kalweo informed Sifuna that Njonjo would soon come to power and that it was in his interests to be on the right side. Njonjo could find him a ministerial post just as he did for Kitele (MP for Iveti) and for Ambala (MP for Gem – later compromised in the assassination of his rival Owit, he was found dead in prison) who both became assistant ministers. The third attempt to recruit Sifuna occurred in September 1982. Mutua then promised to return Sifuna’s passport so that he could travel to Italy if he agreed to talk to Njonjo after his return. He added that his hostility to Njonjo was misguided because it was him that governed Kenya and could get him any position or money: ‘You are like my child and I am trying to help you become a “big man” in this country’. Since Sifuna eventually refused to see Njonjo after his return from Italy, Mutua withdrew his passport. Lubembe also tried twice to have him meet Njonjo and Kiereini. Njonjo, Lubembe argued, was a good man, the only one who was apt to become the president of the country, and a very generous person: thanks to Njonjo’s help Mutua had risen from President of the National Construction Company to Head of the Kenya Sugar Authority. On one occasion, in Parliament, Njonjo also tried to force money into Sifuna’s pockets in front of witnesses. Mutvol, a MP of Kalenjin origin (the president’s ethnic group) also narrated how Njonjo had offered him money, not to rally his clan – since he was already part of it – but to recruit Kalenjin MPs. Njonjo had gone as far as offering him a Mercedes. He had also pressed him to tell the president to dismiss Kibaki, and, most importantly, not to replace him with a Luo, because Njonjo could do the job. His plot failed.26 As a final example, let us discuss another attempt by Kalweo to win over Mwachofi, a radical MP. Kalweo, after several unpleasant remarks about Moi, allegedly told him that ever since he had started working with Njonjo, his finan cial problems had been solved, before adding: ‘If you don’t change your attitude towards Njonjo, we are going to shut you up like your brother Wamwere’.27 Wamwere, the former MP of Nakuru was then in detention. Njonjo’s tactical skills did not solely involve developing his network in Parliament. According to Maitha, Hemed was in charge of securing financial sup port in Arab countries and improving Njonjo’s reputation – these countries considered him a friend of Israel. Hemed was also seeking funds from the Indian community. Later on, as a reward, Hemed was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. Oloitipitip was simultaneously assigned the job of discrediting Moi’s government, even though he was Minister of Local Government, by prescribing programs impossible to realize, by reclassifying dozens of municipalities, by promising funds which were not available and by naming additional councillors without any legal base. According to the evidence of an MP, the damage Oloitipitip did to local authorities within two years would take ten years to repair. Another method was to initiate and finance development projects through
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 73 ‘harambee’ organized by the Njonjo clan so as to prove their greater efficiency than Moi and his government.28 These examples point to what seems to have been a planned offensive involving the mobilization of all of Njonjo’s resources against President Moi. The strategy was deployed within existing institutions, but what the final act would have been remains unclear. Was resorting to violence considered? It is difficult to answer to such a question and we can only guess. Resorting to violence? On two occasions Njonjo was implicated in plots to overthrow the government. In 1981, Njonjo’s cousin and a businessman, Muthemba, was arrested and taken to court for treason. He had tried to secure weapons from the army in order to train ‘experts’.29 An officer who had pretended to be part of the game sub sequently testified that the plot was to assassinate the President. Muthemba claimed he had taken this initiative with Njonjo’s backing in order to test whether access to weapons was adequately protected. Such an affair would have never come to light when Njonjo was the Attorney General. His successor, Karugu, used to get along very well with Njonjo when he was his subordinate, but he decided to take what looked like a bold initiative, most likely endorsed by the President himself. The Special Branch, which Njonjo no longer controlled, dealt with the investigation. Njonjo reacted by denying that he was related to Muthemba, before recognizing that he had episodically met him. Thanks to the help of his friend Rao, the deputy public prosecutor, Njonjo finally got Muthemba acquitted in obscure conditions. This seemed like a cover up. Was Njonjo guilty? We have no proof. Njonjo argued that he was the victim of a machination by Kibaki and the Special Branch, but there again we lack evidence. A cover up doesn’t necessarily mean that he was guilty. Be that as it may Njonjo was certainly a suspect. After the acquittal Njonjo took his revenge: Karugu was forced to resign and the deputy director of Special Branch, Mureithi, was displaced and, when he protested, placed in detention. On August 1, 1982 a mutiny in the lower ranks of the Air Force turned into an attempted coup of populist inspiration. Kenya’s reputation for stability vanished. After some delay, other components of the armed forces took the offensive and crushed the putsch. The Air Force was disbanded and the leaders of the rebellion fled to Tanzania. Several days earlier a friend of Njonjo, Githii, the head of the Standard newspaper, had published a much-commented-on editorial that vigorously condemned detentions. He was accused of trying to destabilize the country and was fired. Njonjo was suspected of being behind the editorial, which is difficult to understand as both Githii and Njonjo had always been in favor of detention. It is hard to imagine Njonjo having a hand in the coup of August 1982 since it was a leftist coup. The leaders at their trial justified their acts saying they had taken action to prevent Njonjo from seizing power. Raila Odinga, the son of Oginga Odinga, was arrested after the coup. In his testimony
74 J.-F. Médard to the Commission he declared that, according to rumors the GSU was to have staged a coup on behalf of Njonjo on 5 August. Africa Now30 even wrote that three plots had actually been in the making and suggested that Kibaki and Njonjo were behind the other two. No suspicion was ever mentioned concerning Kibaki. This was not the case for Njonjo, though there is no clear evidence – Oginga’s account cannot be con sidered as such. Police Commissioner Ben Gethi had torn up Oginga’s testimony implicating Njonjo – he was to be arrested two days later. This was no proof, however. Nothing was ever proved against Njonjo, although a number of events called for suspicion. Githii’s editorial never got a satisfactory explanation. The attitude of the Armed Forces, police, GSU and Air Force was strange. Everyone actually seemed to have been informed in advance of the putsch. Kariuki, the Commander in Chief of the Air Force, although he was informed, was near Thika, going about his private business. Ben Gethi, the commissioner of Police was slow to react. The armed forces had intervened four hours later, once the rebels were established in the centre of town. This was perhaps because the army was on manoeuvre in the North and took time to return South. What is certain is that Moi felt abandoned, if not betrayed by Njonjo and this caused the rupture between the two men, signalling the end for Njonjo. Njonjo suffers defeat Njonjo’s fall from grace and his failure are closely related. One was the cause of the other.31 The fall of Njonjo. There were clear signals to Njonjo’s fall, even though it occurred over a period of time. First the ties with Moi weakened, then they broke apart and this signalled the end. We have seen how the link between Moi and Njonjo weakened after the attempted coup of August 1, 1982. From then onwards, the bond between the two men subsisted, but they were never again as intimate. Njonjo kept his official functions, but Moi withdrew the escort to which only he and Kariuki remained entitled. This decision underlined the fact that Njonjo had fallen back in line with the others. He had lost his privileged access to the President and thereby to the considerable indirect power that this meant. Although this was rarely noted, it was his most important resource. With hindsight, however, it would appear that the rupture was less brutal than it first appeared. Two warning signs may be noted. The first was the Muthemba affair: it is difficult to believe that the Attorney General Karugu opened the case without the President’s approval. Moi must have had his doubts about Njonjo at the time, even though he had given his benediction to his entry into politics. In the end, Njonjo managed to re-establish the situation and appeared even stronger after the Muthemba affair. The other event of key significance was not properly understood at the time. It was the cabinet reshuffle of February 1982: Kibaki then lost the ministry of finances which was given to Maguyu, a friend of Njonjo. Njonjo scored points for he had triggered through the Standard newspaper a campaign against
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 75 Kibaki’s economic policy. Kibaki remained vice president, however. Njonjo also lost part of his attributions as Minister for Home and Constitutional Affairs: he merely retained the portfolio of Minister of Constitutional Affairs. Losing Home Affairs meant that he also lost control over the CID – he nonetheless kept immigration, a very sensitive sector. The other changes were less important. His friend Kariuki was no longer Minister of State at the Office of the President, in charge of Internal Security; he became instead Minister for Land and Settlements. Obsessed with the Njonjo–Kibaki rivalry, observers concluded the match ended in a draw. Kibaki and Njonjo had both lost, but were still equal. African Contemporary Record32 was isolated in observing that Njonjo had lost the CID while Kariuki was no longer in charge of security. This was the first time that Njonjo’s power diminished. This cabinet reshuffle marked Moi’s desire to regain control, concentrate power to his benefit and put a stop to the conflict between Njonjo and Kibaki. The final rupture came in the speech at Kisii on May 8, 1983. The speech was made at a huge ‘harambee’ in favor of the schools of the district. Although Njonjo’s name was not pronounced, he was clearly targeted when Moi complained about ministers who did not dance to his tune, while a foreign power supported a ‘traitor’. Again there had been precedents: On April 15, Mwangala, then Minister of Tourism had asked the anti-Moi ministers to leave the Cabinet. The same day Shikuku had alluded to a plot meant to destroy the government. The same idea was repeated by Ole Tipis, Minister of State in the Office of the President. Moi’s speech appeared to be part of this campaign. Some well-informed sources have argued that Moi, without thinking of Njonjo particularly, launched this theme that then spiraled out of control. This seems rather unlikely since, when looking back, events seem to have unfolded very logically. Moi’s speech gave the signal of the anti-traitor campaign that kept growing in strength. The portrait of the traitor was sketched slowly, in small strokes: we first learned that he was a minister, then that he traveled abroad often and finally that he wore a three-piece suit. Ngei, a political leader of the Akamba and former companion of detention of Jomo Kenyatta also claimed that the traitor had received 40 million Ksh from Israel and South Africa. On 15 May Njonjo was returning from London. On that day, it was learnt that the traitor had been mentioned in the Muthemba affair. Everyone knew then who the traitor was, but there was still no name. On 17 May, Njonjo protested he was not the traitor and declared his loyalty saying, ‘At times like this you know who your friends are and who your enemies are.’ It was an implicit threat. Some friends of Njonjo had begun to distance themselves, while others remained. The KANU council was due to meet on 19 May and it was widely believed that the name of the traitor would then come out. Moi, however, confirmed what he had said without naming the traitor. The process speeded up while prayers for peace were held on June 13, at the Presbyterian Church in Rungiri (Kikuyu). Njonjo attended the meeting and one of the participants declared in Kikuyu, ‘When the leader of the herd of sheep
76 J.-F. Médard limps, the herd finds no grass’. The allusion seemed to be aimed at the President (Martin 1986). That was the final touch. On June 16, during a parliamentary debate Mwangale was the first to name Njonjo as the traitor. Njonjo tried to defend himself, claiming that the allusions concerned him, Njonjo, and not the President, adding that he had not organized the prayer meeting. The parliament ary debates were not transmitted on the radio, and the Minister, Mwamunga, a friend of Njonjo was accused of being responsible for this. On June 29, came the final episode: during a large debate in Parliament accusations against Njonjo began to multiply. Sifuna accused him of having tried to bribe him. Shikuku passed around documents showing that Njonjo received large sums of money from overseas for unknown reasons; he also accused him of having an interest in a South African firm (it turned out that this was not true). Ngei denounced his ties with South Africa and revealed that Njonjo was involved in activities of contraband at the airport. As the Githunguri affair came to be mentioned, Rao’s attitude was criticized, along with that of Judge Simpson. Oloitipitip dropped his friend saying: ‘Njonjo was my friend because he was close to the President. He is no longer my friend since it has been discovered that he is the traitor.’ That same day, Moi suspended Njonjo from his ministerial post and ordered the constitution of a judicial commission of inquiry into the various allegations. Moi hoped that the October elections would eliminate Njonjo’s friends. He was to be disappointed: Kamotho lost, Kariuki also, but Ngumba beat Waiyuki in Mathare, while Rubia, Gachanja, Oloitipitip, and Magugu were elected. In Kikuyu another friend of Njonjo, Kinyanjui, replaced him. The electors did not vote according to national considerations . . . By the end of October the judicial commission presided by Justice Miller began investigating. They were to look into the various charges brought against Njonjo, namely: conspiracy against the government in August 1982, complicity with the illegal activities of Muthemba, complicity in the convening of the prayer meeting in Rungiri; activities against national interest such as the political coup in the Seychelles, close ties with South Africa and abuse of power as Attorney General and Minister. The investigation started at the beginning of January 1984 and continued until mid-August. Njonjo abandoned the idea of justifying himself and made a declaration offering his apology, but this was in no way a confession. Njonjo was then expelled from the party, along with his close allies who lost their positions as MP and Minister and could no longer be candidates for elections. This amounted to a ban from politics.33 The report34 was published in November 1984 and found Njonjo guilty of most of the accusations, in particular treason. On Kenyatta Day (December 12, 1984), Moi granted him pardon, which caused an outburst of student agitation. Njonjo was eliminated politically and his departure from politics could be con sidered as final. He was lucky to have been treated with indulgence, something he never did to his own enemies. Did he strike a bargain with Moi? One may wonder. It was more important for the President to get rid of Njonjo, than to take vengeance. The reasons for the downfall of Njonjo concerned both Moi and Njonjo.
Charles Njonjo – the portrait of a ‘big man’ 77 The reasons for Njonjo’s downfall Moi got rid of Njonjo because Njonjo wanted to take his place either through a sort of constitutional coup or by other means. In any case, Moi would have wanted to distance himself from Njonjo without necessarily depriving himself of his services. This was the purpose of the ministerial reshuffle of February 1982. Njonjo’s power was too great for Moi who felt humiliated and obliged to him. There were many ways for Moi to get rid of Njonjo. The method he chose was somewhat disconcerting, but efficient in the end. In most African countries the ruler would have resorted to quicker and more brutal methods. Njonjo had underestimated the President and this led him to make some tactical mistakes. Perhaps events did not go as planned for reasons we ignore. If he intended to act constitutionally, the putsch of August 1, must have surprised him. If the putsch was planned, its failure shows that he had neglected the army too much. Njonjo also overestimated his own resources. He had not realized that his power was indirect and dependent on the president. Too sure of himself, belittling his compatriots, scornful of public opinion, he did not understand that power was not just a question of force and manipulation, but also persuasion and propaganda. Njonjo was in a way too honest, intellectually speaking, to hide his thoughts: he was not a demagogue. He manipulated the elite through money and threats, but that was not enough. He lacked deep support, especially ethnic support which would have balanced his lack of personal popularity. You cannot win loy alty with bribes. Even if he had come to power it is difficult to imagine that he would have ruled for long, unless he had changed his attitude towards the gen eral public. Most African leaders are neither popular nor legitimate, but if they want to stay in power they cannot totally ignore popular sensitivity. To conclude, let us mention a double paradox concerning Njonjo. The first is the contradiction which existed between the highly respected efficient, competent, punctual Njonjo, the British aristocrat, the incarnation of law, the keeper of the Constitution, the enemy of corruption; and Njonjo as a ‘big man’ without scruples, mobilizing all his resources to satisfy his ambitions. The second paradox is that Njonjo is much less exceptional than we might think. What was extraordinary with Njonjo was the power accumulated by a political leader who was not the head of state. However Njonjo behaved like all political leaders do. His abuse of power was great, but it was in proportion to his strength. He considered himself above his contemporaries and was openly contemptuous of them, yet he obeyed the common rule whereby anyone holding power will exploit it to the maximum.
Notes
This chapter is a slightly edited version of an article published in Emmanuel Terray (ed.) L’État contemporain en Afrique, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987 (49–87). This detailed case-study of the rise and fall of a ‘big man’ went beyond the exclusive focus on rulers. In an overall context where institutional resources were as important as behind the scene strategies of alliance, intimidation and corruption, Médard considered the story of
78 J.-F. Médard Njonjo to be an emblematic case of ‘straddling’ due to his skills at combining economic and political resources while shifting between the public and private spheres. 1 On the political context in Kenya during this period, see Gene Dauch and Denis Martin, L’Héritage de Kenyatta, la transition politique au Kenya 1975–1982, L’Harmattan/Presses universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, 1985. 2 For the biography of Njonjo see ‘The outspoken Charles Njonjo’, Weekly Review 25 April 1980. 3 A typically Kenyan method of fund raising for development projects which plays an important role in the political as well as economic life. 4 His home was in Kabete. 5 See The Express, vol. II(2), 1985. This is the story of a Kenyan businessman who ordered bank robberies with the protection of Njonjo and the CID who demanded money from him in return. Such romanticized versions of the life of Njonjo should be taken with precaution. 6 Weekly Review, January 20, 1984. 7 The Kenya African National Union was at the time the only political party in Kenya. 8 For information on the many connections and economic interests of Njonjo see Weekly Review January 20, 1984 (ranches) and January 27, 1984. This concerned only the affairs mentioned at the inquiry. 9 Weekly Review January 20, 1984. 10 Weekly Review January 12, 1984. 11 Weekly Review March 20, 1984. 12 Weekly Review March 16, 1984. 13 Weekly Review March 9, 1984. 14 Idem supra. 15 The Bank was involved in a fraud for tax evasion and currency exchange. To resolve the problem it lent 3 million Ksh to Kamere and 1 million Ksh to Mbathi, the labor Minister. Also compromised in the deal were Rao, Sokhi responsible for the inquiry, and a number of other friends of Njonjo. 16 Newsweek, May 30, 1983. According to the review Njonjo made many enemies in his fight against corruption. 17 Weekly Review, October 18, 1976. 18 Oloitipitip, political leader of the Masai: He was a MP since Independence. According to certain reports he was to be vice president in Njonjo’s government. 19 ‘Nyayo’ means ‘in the steps of ’. The slogan, adopted by Moi after Kenyatta’s death, meant that he would endorse the legacy of Kenyatta. Later, the word changed meaning and started referring to Moi’s own political philosophy. 20 See New African August 1980. Africa Confidential June 4, 1980. Weekly Review April 26, 1980. 21 Weekly Review April 26, 1980. 22 Bohra: a small sect of Ismaili with branches in Kenya. 23 Weekly Review May 25, 1984. 24 Weekly Review March 30, 1984. 25 Weekly Review March 16, 1984. 26 Weekly Review March 16, 1984. 27 Weekly Review March 23, 1984. 28 Weekly Review March 30, 1984. 29 Weekly Review May 11, 1984. 30 Africa Now September 1982. 31 See Ahmed Rajab ‘The Man Kenyans love to hate’, Africa Now August 1983. 32 Africa Contemporary Record, 198 B 1–82, Kenya B 181-B 208. 33 See Lettre de l’Océan Indien November 23, 1984, no. 207. 34 Republic of Kenya, Report of Judicial Inquiry appointed to inquire into the allegations involving Charles Mugane Njonjo, Nairobi November 1984, 95 p.
5 Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy? Mamoudou Gazibo
One of the best accounts of democracy refers to it as a system in which ‘some parties lose elections’ (Przeworski 1992: 10). Such a system is characterized by the existence of a public sphere that is autonomous from the political and social forces within which it operates, the institutionalization of the rules of the polit ical game, competition for power and a lack of pre-determination of outcomes. In short, these features require the exclusion of any form of paternalism (Beetham 1992). On the other hand, Jean-François Médard’s conceptualization of neopatrimonialism, as argued in the previous chapters, defines a system driven by arbitrary rule, authoritarianism, the privatization of power, clientelism and, above all, confusion of the public and private spheres. Neopatrimonialism and democracy are obviously based on antithetical logical bases and are, at first glance, incompatible. Gero Erdmann and Ulf Engel (2006) even point out a con sensus of the fact that neopatrimonial power should be considered a sub-category of authoritarianism. From a normative perspective bent on promoting democracy, that conclusion is preordained. But from an analytical perspective where empirical political situ ations, either historical or contemporary, are key, such a highly abstract vision of democracy does not quite stand the test of factual observation. In this chapter, I use textual exegesis to achieve three goals: first, to show how, at a theoretical level, neopatrimonialism and democracy are mutually exclusive. We shall see that this is not unrelated to the very particular reading of the history of the state and democracy, and of their emergence out of the West, a reading whose premises can be found not only in Max Weber’s seminal work, but also in Africanist historical and political sociology. I will then stress how, at a historical level, patrimonial practices are closer to the political norm than the political aberration. Indeed, the nature of regimes (either bureaucratic or patri monial) depends on either the institutionalization of the formal rules organizing political life, or on the prevalence of certain types of traditional conducts (in Weber’s meaning), which are forever returning in any political system. Finally, using the examples of Third Wave democracies (Huntington 1993) which are said to be hybrids, I will illustrate the notion of the solubility of neopatrimonial ism in democracy, notably as regards these new regimes whose identities it seems to define in a stable, enduring, non-transitory way.
80 M. Gazibo
From Weber to Médard: the tension between democracy and (neo)patrimonialism Neopatrimonialism and democracy are, a priori, hardly compatible. This state ment is primarily based on the work of M. Weber and the comparative sociology of the state and democracy. In Weberian sociology, which is a sociology of the state, bureaucracy, and parties – in short, ‘modernity’ – patrimonialism is one of the sub-categories of traditional domination. According to Weber (1968: 231), ‘patrimonialism and, in the extreme case, sultanism, tend to arise whenever tra ditional domination develops an administration and a military force which are purely personal instruments of the master.’ Traditional domination is in turn opposed to legal domination. These two forms, considered as ‘specific everyday forms of domination’, are opposed to the ‘charismatic’ form, which is ‘extra ordinary’ or ‘revolutionary’ (Weber 1968: 244). Therefore, of interest here are the connections that may be established between traditional and legal domina tion. Weber thinks that the ‘purest type of exercise of legal authority is that which employs a bureaucratic administrative staff ’ based on functionaries appointed on the merits of their skills and expertise (1968: 220). Legal domina tion is also associated with democracy, but cannot be reduced to it. According to Weber legal domination occurs when ‘the legal power holder who is not a “func tionary”, is for instance [. . .] the elected president of a state.’ He also points out that the spirit of rational bureaucracy, from the point of view of both functionar ies and the populace, is related to issues that have to do with ‘the theory of “democracy” ’ (Weber 1968: 217, 226). On the other hand, traditional domination, which includes patrimonialism, would be more adequate in the characterization of the political systems of small communities. Such systems are not very complex and are based on rudimentary economies, as in the case of most pre-colonial African chieftaincies (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 62). In comparing the forms of domination, and in particular legal-rational domi nation and traditional domination, Weber seems to establish a pecking order that develops within a normative perspective. These two models appear to differ not only in their form, but also qualitatively. The degree of power differentiation and function institutionalization can be contrasted with the confusion of person and role, the importance of rules with the chemistry of human relations, and the merit-based recruitment of staff and personnel with the status-based cooptation of relatives and clients. Legal domination – which corresponds to the first term in each of these divergent dyads – thus appears of a higher qualitative order, more refined than traditional domination, which is associated with the second term in each dyad (Weber 1968). In addition, Weber highlights the importance of the achievement of a purely personal administrative (and military) leadership’ when the ending of the ‘early types of traditional domination’ leads to the emer gence of patrimonialism, which is negatively comparable to legal domination through what it lacks: impersonal official obligations, free contractual relation ships, non appropriation of his position (Weber 1968: 220).
Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy? 81 Although historical sociology is greatly indebted to Weber’s work (Déloye 2003: 33; Gazibo and Jenson 2004; and most importantly, Kalberg 1994), it cannot be reduced to his work alone. However, considerations of neopatrimoni alism are few and far between (See Eisenstadt 1973 and 1987), including when it comes to works on Africa (Médard 1991b: 324). Such works have led quite logically to interpretations on the relationship between patrimonialism and democracy, since that linkage is inherent to the two modes of sovereignty; that is, national sovereignty as embodied by the state, and popular sovereignty as embodied by democracy. These relationships have also been rationalized a pos teriori when non-Western contexts have been studied against the benchmark of the West. The best illustration of this is very likely offered by historians of the state (Bloch 1978; Bergeron 1990; Tilly 1992; Elias 1976). The linkage between studies in historical sociology and the premise of an opposition between neopatrimonialism and democracy is highlighted in the work of Norbert Elias (1976), who describes the state as an ‘opportunity monopol ization’ process whose origins hark back to feudal Europe. Elias shows how, in Europe, state building developed through the stages of a gradual centralization process. Beginning with the vagaries of wars, matrimonial alliances and crown successions, the state became a project of its own when territories acquired on the basis of the monopoly rule were progressively demarcated and institutionalized. Initially, that is, between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, there was a ‘free competition period’, in the course of which the king was only a primus inter pares and had to rely on the lords for revenue and for levies (Elias 1976: 43). Then, between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, arose the ‘era of the appanages’, after the kings of England lost out in their claims over continental lands and territ ories (61). This ushered in a period marked by the ‘triumph of the royal monopoly’ (83). Two elements are paramount here: on the one hand monopolization, since relatively important territories were now concentrated in the hands of kings, pre figuring the era of the modern states with their neatly demarcated boundaries. On the other hand, and most importantly, once the monopoly became entrenched, there was the occurrence of something which Elias calls ‘the publicization of the monopoly’; that is, the process through which the state acquired an administration, a national army, public budgets, and started to differentiate itself from the person of the king. In short, what is described here is the gradual constitution of a distinc tive public space. In parallel to the process of the construction of the state, there was the evolution leading to popular sovereignty, which began as early as 1215, with the Magna Carta, in King John’s England. This as yet unnamed process cul minated in the nineteenth century with the emergence of citizenship, political par ties and universal suffrage (Weber 1963: 171). This leads us to note that even though, with Elias and the socio-historians, these state-building processes were to some extent based on chance occurrences (Elias 1976: 26; Bergeron 1990: 17), the temptation of an after-the-fact rationali zation of the state and democracy remains great. These are viewed as conquests over ‘tradition’, ‘arbitrariness’, and the ‘personalization of power’; in short, the reverse of ‘patrimonialism’.
82 M. Gazibo Directing research efforts toward obstacles to state-building and democrat ization is practically inevitable for scholars who are not so much interested in these sui generis processes as in African states that are seen as ‘imported’ from elsewhere (Badie 1992), and whose political systems pertaining to the Weberian type of traditional domination are, after the European takeover, enjoined to rationalize themselves, and then, afterward, to democratize. The state-building and democratization processes typical in these political systems bear out the notion that the two kinds of power are antithetical, as it appears that the legal- rational domination of democratic power can only be built on the ruins of tradi tional African forms. J.-F. Médard’s take on the linkage between neopatrimonialism and demo cracy is greatly influenced by the legacy of M. Weber and of historical soci ology, but it is devoid of any teleological direction, as may be ascertained by how Médard conceives of the shared criteria of the state-based and democratic sovereignty. In his view, ‘if the modern state presupposes the institutionalization of power, the democratic state also demands such institutional mechanisms that may limit the arbitrary use of power’ (Médard 1990: 25–36; Médard 1991b: 341). When discussing that linkage at the time when many African states were entering the Third Wave of democratization, he upholds the incompatibility thesis by arguing, for instance, that ‘patrimonialism finds a natural channel of expression in authoritarianism while contributing to the subversion of demo cracy.’ (Médard 1991a: 93). He considers that given that neopatrimonialism favors the personalization of political-administrative relationships, it constitutes the reverse of power institutionalization, which is a hallmark of democracy. Judging that ‘democratization attempts are an effort to go beyond patrimonial ism, inasmuch as democracy can only be based on a high degree of power insti tutionalization’, he deems that ‘democracy, in so far as it would succeed in rendering leaders accountable, would be a way to curb patrimonialism through compelling it to “eat more slowly and in a less solitary fashion” ’ (Médard 1991b: 353). The dilemma that he raises derives from the fact that ‘a curbing or a bringing under control of the politics of the belly [. . .] appears as a sine qua non condition of the introduction of democratic regimes in Africa.’ However, J.-F. Médard’s work did not focus very much on Third Wave demo cratization, and it was not concerned with a thorough analysis of the ways in which patrimonial practices may affect them. Transitologists, on the other hand, debated this at great lengths. Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle are very likely the scholars who went farthest in that direction by making neopatrimonialism the key independent variable of African democratization, whether it concerned the dynamics of demands for democratization, or transition modes or yet again long term consolidation. In view of the characteristics of patrimonialism, they note that a number of countries in the developing world show, in modified forms, some of the defining traits of neopatrimonialism, which influence the structure of their political dynamics (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 61–2). This includes the per sonalization of power by big men, clientelism and the utilization of public resources for private ends. Given these characteristics, such regimes lack
Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy? 83 legitimacy and have to resort to coercion. Although there are wide variations among them, these regimes are not very hospitable to competition or citizen parti cipation, and they stifle civil society (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 68–76; Young 1994: 87–9). The implications for democratization are significant: dictators leave power only under compulsion, generally after massive popular mobilization; elites are divided between insiders enjoying the privileges of power and outsiders who feel excluded and unable to negotiate and engage in a zero-sum game, which means that democratization is always under the threat of those who lose out. Bratton and van de Walle conclude that in the neo-patrimonial context democratic gains are quickly eroded by the fact that patronage, authoritarianism and the unfair manipulation of the rules of the game all combine to prevent the institutionaliza tion of democracy (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 233). This analysis has the merit of reminding us of something that was already emphasized by Alexis de Tocqueville (1952), which is the fact that it is hard to have a clean slate in political practices and institutions when pursuing political change. From that perspective, neopatrimonialism appears as a set of informal institutions which, deeply rooted in the political landscape, guides the behavior of actors who reject the implementation of formal democratic institutions and practices (Young 1994: 292). The notion of an incompatibility between patrimonialism and democracy is in fact related to normative considerations and a partial and one-sided interpretation of the key scholars (Médard, Weber) and of historical sociology. If they are read more attentively, and if this is combined with a look at the empirical character istics of the experience of Third Wave democratization, a more nuanced picture emerges.
Neopatrimonialism and democracy What balance between formal norms and informal practices? The hypothesis of a mutual exclusion between democracy and neopatrimonial ism has to do with the Weberian interpretation of the linkage between traditional and legal domination, but also with the a posteriori rationalization of the history of the state, of democracy and of the analysis of the obstacles to democratization in Africa. This, however, is a conclusion drawn from a one-sided understanding, tied to a normative a priori and the need to install and entrench democracy instead of simply studying it. A thorough examination of the works of Weber (and then of Médard) shows indeed that between neopatrimonialism and demo cracy the relationship is not so much one of opposition as one of a balance between legal and informal norms: ‘in the neopatrimonial state, we do not observe only a lack in the distinction between private and public domains, but also a conflict between private norms and partially interiorized public norms’ (Médard 1991b: 334). However, I shall come back to M. Weber, whose typology primarily aims at helping in the comprehension of domination phenomena. Since ‘every such
84 M. Gazibo system attempts to establish and to cultivate the belief in its legitimacy’, he sug gests that ‘it is useful to classify the types of domination according to the of claim to legitimacy typically made by each’ (Weber 1968: 213). That criterion implies the adoption of ideal types. For Weber, ideal types ‘are used by social and cultural scientists to provide clarifying models of complex social actions’ (Whimster 2004: 2). The approach requires therefore a simplification of phe nomena that are presented in their purest and most abstract traits, and are thus constructed rather than given to the scholar. This is very clearly underscored by Weber, when he asserts that: we have taken for granted that sociology seeks to formulate type concepts and generalized uniformities of empirical processes. [. . .]. As in the case of every generalizing science the abstract character of the concepts of soci ology is responsible for the fact that, compared with actual historical reality, they are relatively lacking in fullness of concrete content [. . .]. For example, the same historical phenomenon may be in one aspect feudal, in another pat rimonial, in another bureaucratic, and in still another charismatic. In order to give a precise meaning to these terms, it is necessary for the sociologist to formulate pure ideal types [. . .]. It is probably seldom if ever that a real phe nomenon can be found which corresponds exactly to one of these ideally constructed pure types. (1968: 19–20) The distinction between forms of domination, from which the analysis of pat rimonialism derives, has therefore as its first objective to achieve ‘their concep tual formulation in the sharpest possible form’ and to enable comparison among types and against an ideal-type, given that ‘none of these three ideal types [. . .] is usually to be found in historical cases in “pure” form’ (Weber 1968: 216). The necessary conclusion here is that, a priori, each type of domination – including democracy – is by definition a mixed type, very much bound to incorporate legal and traditional or charismatic elements. While each type of domination is mixed, they are distinguished by being primarily charismatic, traditional or legal. It is therefore logical to conceive of a kind of mixed democratic domination, and not only in Africa, where the legal aspect would prevail. Such coexistence would not be surprising to anyone famil iar with Médard’s view of the hybrid character of the state in Africa. The ideal- typical vantage point opens the door to an interpretation of the linkage between neopatrimonialism and democracy that hinges on the issue of normative conflict. In sound Weberian fashion, Médard demonstrates that one of the differentiation criteria of the African states – all of them considered to be neopatrimonial – rests in their greater or shorter proximity to the patrimonial ideal‑type. In other words, good questions to ask when studying these real life cases are: ‘To what extent does patrimonialism link up with “modern” logics that are its obverse? To what extent are such logics subverted? To what extent do they have a specific effect?’ (Médard 1991b: 351) Médard demonstrates ‘the ability to combine these
Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy? 85 contradictory logics in a more or less viable neopatrimonialism . . . one of the keys to explaining, beyond the shared patrimonial kernel, the often large differ ences in performance among states and leaders’ (1991b: 351–2). From this per spective, the difference between countries has less to do with strict patrimonial or legal identities and more to do with the degree to which formal legal norms or informal patrimonial norms prevail. Thus there is no longer the notion of an absolute opposition between the neopatrimonial character of authoritarianism and democratic systems that are free from patrimonial practices. The concept of neopatrimonialism is inherently hybrid and has been elaborated in order to account for mixed situations. This leads G. Erdmann and U. Engel (2006: 17–18) to observe that any approach that seeks to define or operationalize neopatrimoni alism must start from the idea that, since it is a mixed concept, it can actually account for situations that are very close to the pure patrimonial model, as well as for configurations that are associated with the legal-rational model. As a result, sound reflection on democracy and neopatrimonialism may be reduced neither to the quest for a native form of the system, nor to notions of futility and a smokescreen (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Bayart 2006). A re-examination of the implications of the ideal-typical approach that under scores the notion of hybridity evoked by the concept of neopatrimonialism leads us out of exclusive binary categorizations, and allows us to analyse political regimes that resist such classifications (Carothers 2002: 9).
The new democracies as sites for the institutionalization of contradictory norms The coexistence of contradictory norms extends well beyond the regimes orig inating in the transitions attempted in so-called neopatrimonial African coun tries. It has to do, more generally, with the nature of the ‘new democracies’ – those from African transitions, or in the post-Soviet world, or under Latin America’s authoritarian bureaucracies. As early as the beginning of the 1990s, the theme of hybrid regimes became prominent in studies on democratization, leading to a reflection on the possibility and the conditions for their survival, notably in the Third World (Riggs 1993). Larry J. Diamond (1999: 22) notes for instance that many among the countries engaging in democratization pro cesses are distinguished by the fact that their new regime endures without becoming institutionalized or legitimate – the two key features of so-called consolidated democracies (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 236). In fact, Thomas Carothers (2002, quoted article: 9) shows that in 2002, among the 100 or so countries in democratic transition, only about 20 were in a consolidation phase. As for the others, while a few receded to authoritarianism, the greater number resided in what he termed a ‘grey area’. Those are the countries which neither return to the authoritarian status quo ante, nor firm up the gains of political liberalization. The in‑between situation explains the great multiplica tion of adjectives (Carothers 2002, quoted article: 11) with which scholars strive to characterize these systems (Collier and Levitsky 1997). T. Carothers
86 M. Gazibo suggests then that grey area countries be classified in two categories: countries with feckless pluralism and those with dominant-power systems. In the first category, which is reminiscent of delegative democracies (O’Donnell 1994) or democracies marred by the electoralist fallacy (cf. Karl 1986), democratic pro cedures are respected, sometimes leading to power alternation, but the system remains confined within the limits of pure electoral formalities. Corrupt and selfish politicians take the population hostage, depriving it of any tangible improvement in living conditions. The second category, which includes dominant-power states, is close to the idea of illiberal democracies (Zakaria 1997): civil and political liberties are held back and more importantly, one party, or even one man, completely dominates the political stage, to the point of blending with the state and leaving little chance for the possibility of polit ical alternation. This is obviously not a very far cry away from the neopatrimo nial model of the ‘big man’ (Médard 1991a), that type of leader who personalizes power on the basis of a network of loyal followers and depend ents, and who manages to dominate the political and economic scene in his country or region. The binary classification of T. Carothers is an effort at condensing a great variety of possible regimes. The two types that he identifies reconcile and add together key elements of the definitions of democracy and of neopatrimonialism, which are supposed to be contradictory terms. He presents us with the incorpora tion of elements of democracy such as elections, the existence of a plurality of political parties, respect for a number of civil liberties, and the possibility left open to the populace to participate in the political game. Yet at the same time, elements of neopatrimonialism, such as elite corruption, elite seizure of state power, resources and institutions, and big man paternalism, feature prominently. It is however impossible to apply the concept of democracy to all the new regimes without falling into the trap of conceptual elasticity (Sartori 1994). At the same time, we cannot relegate these systems to the category of authorit arian regimes, from which they clearly differ, owing to the democratic gains they made through political liberalization. To stick to one position is most cer tainly to renounce the ability to capture the essence of hybrid regimes (for Latin America, see Karl 1995). As L.J. Diamond (2002: 21) indicates, the question of whether countries such as Russia, Turkey, Venezuela or Nigeria are or are not democracies can no longer call for a simple answer. Many among these countries have adopted democratic forms without democratic sub stance, and have thus become quite ambiguous systems. Scholars have multi plied conceptualizations as a way out of this dilemma. David Collier and Steven Levitsky (1997) show that there has been a proliferation of categories as bizarre as ‘authoritarian democracies’, ‘neopatrimonial democracies’, ‘military-dominated democracies’ or ‘protodemocracies’. Others have attempted even more complex explanatory typologies. In contrast, G. Erdmann and U. Engel (2006: 29) suggest three types of regimes: democracies, hybrids and authoritarianisms. In their view, neopatrimonialism is not an autonomous category, but one possible mode in each of these three types, following the
Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy? 87 form of the government and the bureaucracy. In this model, one may conceive of authoritarian regimes, similarly to a hybrid regime, being neopatrimonial. One may also conceive, among democracies, of a sub-category suitable for many African regimes, that of the ‘neopatrimonial multiparty systems’, in par allel with the sub-categories that are specific to other regions, such as defective democracies or illiberal democracies. Here the idea of normative conflict and of fluctuating equilibrium between legal norms and patrimonial norms reappears. While the previous typology is largely conceptual, and its authors do not provide any example countries, L.J. Diamond’s typology divides coun tries into five categories. Criteria relate first to the distinction between so- called liberal democracies and electoral democracies, according to whether or not they enshrine an actual rule of law. The next two categories are pseudodemocracies, which describe countries that organize elections (com petitive authoritarian and hegemonic electoral authoritarian regimes) and non- democracies, which are those countries that have completely closed systems (political closed authoritarian regimes). The last category consists of ambigu ous regimes. Whether they speak of neopatrimonialism in Africa; of bossism or cacique democracy in the Philippines; of democradura or dictablanda in Latin America; or more generally of feckless pluralism, scholars usually refer to one or another of the practices which J.-F. Médard (1991b: 330) includes under the heading of neopatrimonialism. Besides the methodological issues related to conceptual elas ticity that were mentioned above, a number of questions come to mind here: are these regimes transitory or will they endure? To what extent do they challenge the usual analytical models of democratization? The response to the first question is relatively straightforward since we cannot understand these regimes as pre-democratic formations that are meant to change into democracies in due course. As early as the 1980s the first transitologists (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986) did assert that transitions may lead to several possible outcomes, democracy being just one among these. Table 5.1 Authoritarian, hybrid and democratic regimes
Type of regime
Representative instances
Liberal democracies Electoral democracies Competitive authoritarian regimes Hegemonic electoral authoritarian regimes Politically closed authoritarian regimes Ambiguous regimes
Canada, Chile, Japan, Botswana, Cape Verde Brazil, Ghana, India, Niger, Mali, Philippines Russia, Malaysia, Gabon, Cameroon, Iran Kazakhstan, Singapore, Burkina, Uganda, Egypt Turkmenistan, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, China, Swaziland Armenia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Turkey
Source: adapted from L.J. Diamond (2002, quoted article: 30–1)
88 M. Gazibo This then brings us to the second question, which bears on the issue of analyt ical models. These regimes seem not only to be able to endure (Weffort 1998), but even to become ‘stable components’ of the political landscape, that is to say, possibly permanent forms, as is indicated by Fareed Zakaria (1997, quoted art icle) and Richard Banégas (2003). Such permanence calls for innovative takes with respect not only to their nature, but also to the issues of consolidation. It is generally accepted in the current literature that such regimes cannot consolidate (Weffort 1998: 226; Diamond 1999: 22). Yet hybrid regimes challenge a model grounded in the analysis of less ambiguous, more classic cases. Some scholars offer insights in that direction. For example, R. Banégas draws our attention more specifically to neopatrimonialism and shows, on the basis of ‘vote com moditization’ in Benin, that far from undermining local logics of the ‘politics of the belly,’ democracy can be reinvented to link up with these political regimes. Wolfgang Merkel (2004) remarks, for his part, that the different hybrid regimes suggested by scholars differ only by the type of flaws that they present, and he suggests that democracy may be conceived of as a set of five interdependent partial regimes, the electoral regime being the central component around which gravitate the four other regimes, which are: political rights; civil liberties; sepa ration of powers and the effective power for governing. Each regime corres ponds to certain exigencies. According to the way in which such exigencies of a regime are affected, W. Merkel identifies four kinds of flawed democracies: illiberal democracy, domain democracy, exclusive democracy and delegative democracy. Up to this point, there is nothing strikingly new in this analysis, since these concepts have also been suggested by other scholars. The really innovative idea has to do with the fact that the binary approach which distinguishes consolidated democracies from those which are not is shown to be reductive. It is also analyt ically important that consolidation can be seen as a flexible process that varies from one partial regime to another. These propositions also provide a first answer to J.-F. Médard’s questions about the possibility of combining contra dictory neopatrimonial and legal-rational logics. From a normative viewpoint, W. Merkel’s approach appears open to criticism, since it risks leading to a low ering of democratic standards. But analytically, it offers a richer spectrum, in terms of cases and nuances; after all, that is what Third Wave democratic experi ences make obvious. The idea of hybrid regimes is not new, but it is with the third wave of demo cratization that interrogations have been raised with respect to the capacity for democracy to be grounded in neopatrimonial or related regimes (Diamond 2002, article quoted: 23–5). Such a debate, it may be argued, goes back to the 1990s, characterized in Latin America by a stagnation in political reforms that were then unable to entrench democracy (O’Donnell 2001; Morlino 2001). In Africa, too this period was marked by difficult attempts to transform patrimonial regimes into consolidated democracies (Quantin 2000). One may be tempted to see in these evolutions an anomaly, but such an interpretation would result from a normative perspective oblivious of both theoretical foundations and empirical
Can neopatrimonialism dissolve into democracy? 89 teachings. The exegesis of the writings of Weber, Médard and other scholars along with the examination of empirical processes reveal the coexistence, but also the possibility of an ‘institutionalization’ of regimes, that mix bureaucratic and patrimonial components. This phenomenon has nurtured debates on hybrid regimes, although, as indicated by G. Erdmann and U. Engel (2006: 30), we still remain short of the conceptual tools required to fully understand these regimes in their diversity. In addition to this, the more important debate on the consolida tion of democratic regimes remains open. If these regimes are a new phenome non and are to last, it is urgent to ponder in a more systematic fashion our understanding of democracy and of its functioning. We need to rethink the issue and call upon indicators and measurements different from those atuned to the classic and less ambiguous cases. And finally, we have to depart from normative templates since these generate an a priori impediment to the appraisal of a-symptomatic situations.
6 Neopatrimonialism and its reinterpretations by development economics Alice Sindzingre
Economics traditionally explains growth by factors such as physical investment or human capital. In the last two decades, however, the poor performance of many low-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, has intensified the exploration of alternative variables in the list of possible determinants of growth, in particular variables related to economic and political institutions. Development economics thus makes an increasing use of concepts borrowed from political science, such as predation and corruption, in order to explain the differences in growth rates and income levels between countries. Disciplines that belong to the broad field of economics, such as development economics, political economy of development, and neo‑institutional economics use concepts that stem from the neoclassical conceptual framework, for example gains and costs (e.g. transaction costs), incentives, property rights, interest groups and the like. They explain political institutions, for example, and facili‑ tate the latter’s transformation into ‘variables’ that may be tractable in mathem atical models. Indeed, models and econometric analyses (usually cross-country regressions) have become over the second half of the twentieth century the key tools of validation in economics. Yet these tools rarely allow for an in-depth understanding of the causalities at stake, as variables refer to the forms of phe‑ nomena, which moreover are supposed to be identical throughout history and whatever the context. Other theoretical approaches in economics, however, have departed from the neoclassical framework. They emphasised that growth trajectories may be subject to multiple ‘equilibria’ – ‘high’ and ‘low’ – that may be triggered by shocks or random deviations, which may be small. These growth trajectories are characterised by path dependence, feedback processes, increasing returns, cumu‑ lative causation and threshold effects, and depend on the combinations of various factors (Arthur 1994; David 2000; Durlauf and Young 2001; Sindzingre 2005b). For example, if corruption does not necessarily impede growth, it may stabilise countries in low equilibria and poverty traps. This chapter analyses the concept of neopatrimonialism in the perspective of development economics and assesses the uses which that discipline has made of the concept. A key observation, however, is that the concept is rarely mentioned explicitly in the development economics literature, being viewed as belonging to
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 91 political science and political sociology. The chapter reveals the richness of the concept, as the latter gathers and links together phenomena that simultaneously resort to the political and economic domains; it demonstrates the limitations of the purely quantitative methodologies that are now favoured by standard eco nomics in the understanding of the impacts of such phenomena and their contri bution to differences in economic growth. The chapter finally shows the usefulness of the concept of neopatrimonialism for the understanding of lock-in mechanisms, as this concept analyses political and economic vicious circles which typically lock countries into poverty traps. A theory of institutional trans formation is therefore suggested which would reconcile the neopatrimonial approach and development economics in highlighting the multidimensionality of political institutions and the endogeneity of political and economic processes. The chapter is structured as follows. First, it discusses the concept of neopat‑ rimonialism and shows that the concept has greatly enhanced the understanding of the underlying causes of the poor performance of some developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa; it reveals the multidimensionality of the concept of neopatrimonialism, as neopatrimonialism refers to composite pro cesses and phenomena that are simultaneously ‘public’ and ‘private’, political and economic, individual and social, ‘old’ and ‘new’. The chapter also emphas ises that the relationships between neopatrimonial dynamics, on the one hand, and specific political institutions and regimes, on the other, remain inconclusive. Second, the chapter highlights the distinctions between the concept of neopatri‑ monialism and related concepts such as, among others, clientelism, corruption, cronyism and capture, as well as the plurality of their relationships with growth. Third, this contribution examines the studies of political processes by development economics and its uncritical use of modelling. It discusses the analyses of the diverse phenomena that are subsumed under the concept of neopatrimonialism by development economics and the political economy of development, for which, significantly, these disciplines have used the notion of corruption rather than neopatrimonialism. These disciplines’ studies are over whelmingly based on modelling and quantitative analyses (usually via econo metrics). The chapter shows the limitations inherent in modelling in regard to the understanding of the impact of these phenomena on economic growth, since neopatrimonialism refers to composite and multidimensional processes and phenomena. It argues that the concept of neopatrimonialism has been a precursor in putting together and demonstrating the importance of the phenom‑ ena, which economics now conceptualises in terms of threshold effects and stable ‘low equilibria’, and in particular the possibility of vicious circles, self- reinforcing processes and ‘traps’, such as the ‘traps’ where neopatrimonial processes and economic stagnation reinforce themselves. The neopatrimonial approach and these concepts elaborated by development economics can mutu‑ ally enrich themselves as both focus on the multidimensionality of institutions and behaviour as well as the endogeneity of political and economic dynamics, and thus result in a more refined theory of institutional and economic transformation.
92 A. Sindzingre
Neopatrimonialism, states and development The first two chapters of this volume have shown how the concept of neopatri‑ monialism, initially coined by Eisenstadt (1973) and further deepened by Médard (1982, 1992), was subsequently applied to a growing diversity of contexts. ‘Pat‑ rimonialism’, Eisenstadt argued, referred to cases of ‘traditional’ and personal domination, while neopatrimonialism could prosper in modern societies (Erdmann and Engel 2006, for an assessment of the literature). As a result of its dissemination, it lost its precision and became assimilated to ‘predation’, thus transforming the African neopatrimonial state into a ‘global prototype’ of the anti-developmental state (Bach 2011). The political science literature on developing countries, and more specifically on Sub-Saharan Africa, has also elaborated a series of concepts, thought to be more apt to characterise key fea‑ tures of the neopatrimonial state: for example, the concept of ‘quasi-states’ or notions of ‘kleptocratic’, ‘prebendal’, predatory rule – the latter being opposed to the ‘developmental’ states of East Asia, such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea (Evans 1992). Neopatrimonialism as a multidimensional concept In contrast to patrimonialism, which has highlighted dualism and differentiated between two regimes (impersonal and personal), the concept of neopatrimonial‑ ism has emphasised the overlap and exchanges between a series of domains: the public and the private, the political and the economic, the individual and the col lective, and the ‘old and the ‘new’. It refers to modes of individual behaviour that may be shared by groups – domination by certain categories of individuals, privately appropriated gains – and mechanisms that blur the distinction between the public and the private domains – state resources are ‘privatised’ in the sense that individuals treat them as private property – and the distinction between the political and economic domains – power over individuals is simultaneously a power over resources (e.g. land, production, workforce and so on). The concept gathers the dimensions of concentration of political power, the redistribution of personal favours, and the private use of state resources (von Soest 2007). Neo‑ patrimonialism also includes sociological and psychological dimensions, as the norms of behaviour of ruling groups may spread to all levels of society. A crucial point is that this behaviour is not the expression of ‘traditional’ norms. Modern political systems in developing countries, as well as in Sub- Saharan Africa, are no longer traditional (Médard 1983). The phenomena linked to ‘neo’ patrimonialism are ‘new’ in that they are not the mere translation of ‘traditional’ patrimonial institutions (e.g. village) but result from a transforma tion and borrowing of elements of these ‘traditional’ institutions. Political ‘entre preneurs’ utilise the overlapping of positions in the public-private and political-economic spheres, in addition to elements from tradition, but give them different forms or contents. Neopatrimonial phenomena may, for example, allo cate new contents to old institutional forms. For example, the idiom of witchcraft
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 93 may be applied to competition over new markets; old contents may be allocated to new forms – e.g. ‘traditional’ legitimacies may drive formal democratic institutions. The trajectories of post-independence African states In Sub-Saharan Africa, the dynamics of the aftermath of independence contrib uted to the formation of neopatrimonial states. In the immediate post- independence period in the 1960s, Sub-Saharan Africa rulers were faced with the dual constraint of a limited industrial base for priming the pump of development and of building their legitimacy (Englebert 2000). The existing private sector consisted mostly of foreign firms. These rulers relied on foreign investors (as in Côte d’Ivoire), built their economies through state intervention, public ownership and exploitation of resources (e.g. via state-owned enterprises), and fostered private entrepreneurs who were chosen among their political allies and whose wealth did not represent a threat (Sindzingre 2000, on the case of Ghana). Fragile political legitimacy often incited rulers to discourage domestic private activities that were not under their control. In this context state resources and rents (e.g. natural resources, state-owned enterprises, rights to specific activities, access to credit) constituted the basis of private accumulation, either for the private gains of politicians and civil servants, or for private firms and individuals. The domestic private sector was composed either of political allies who were ‘bought’ by rulers through public resources, or of entrepreneurs who had to choose between harassment and politics. This ambivalence – and sometimes antagonism – of rulers towards the domestic private sector is typical of many Sub-Saharan Africa countries and has been con sidered to be one of the factors in economic stagnation. The ‘public’ and the ‘private’ spheres have been built both on overlap and mistrust, which has been compounded by bureaucracies that also functioned along the extractive and rentier model. In an economic perspective, these processes generated a ‘lockingin’ stable equilibrium, indeed a ‘low’ equilibrium’ or a poverty trap. Most post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa economies never escaped the ‘small open economy’ structure that had been built during colonialism, where colonies exported primary commodities to the metropole and imported manufac‑ tured goods from it (Hopkins 1973), with their fiscal revenues depending heavily on the export of primary products (coffee, cocoa, oil, etc.). The above self- fulfilling processes were reinforced in the 1980s when the fiscal balance of Sub- Saharan Africa countries was affected by the fall and subsequent increased volatility of the international prices of commodities. Most governments had no choice but to turn to the international financial institutions (IFIs), notably the IMF and the World Bank, which conditioned their lending to the implementation of reform programmes, and in particular a tight control of public spending. Neo‑ patrimonial mechanisms – private appropriation of public resources, ambiva‑ lence towards the domestic private sector – were also compounded by large informal sectors that contributed to the formation of ‘traps’, i.e. vicious circles
94 A. Sindzingre where states were under pressure from the IFIs to collect revenues whereas indi viduals were seeking to escape taxation because of the weak credibility of gov ernments and their policies, the latter being perceived as mostly driven by motives of personal enrichment. IFI programmes – implemented from the 1980s to the 2000s – did not cause growth rates to rise, which in most Sub-Saharan Africa states were close to zero (Easterly 2001). It was only the boom in commodity prices (which started in the mid-2000s), that boosted growth in most Sub-Saharan Africa economies. The recurrence of civil wars, combined with economic stagnation and the emergence of a ‘globalised’ world in the 1990s, led to analyses of Sub-Saharan Africa states as ‘post-patrimonial’, or ‘collapsed’ and ‘fragile’ in the IFI literature. Being an extreme modality of neopatrimonialism and the ‘quasi-states’ perspective developed by Jackson and Rosberg (1982), a ‘warlordism’ political economy has viewed as a sufficient condition for a state the existence of a group that controls the extraction of a rent that can be marketed internationally (mines, etc.) (Reno 1998). In this approach, globalisation did not modify the relevance of the neo‑ patrimonial model, but has rather made it possible to ‘globalise’ the circulation and profitability of resources. Neopatrimonialism as a political process inducing economic outcomes In the literature of development economics and political economy of development, the phenomena gathered together in the concept of neopatrimoni‑ alism have been explained by economic factors such as the types of available resources (Sachs and Warner 1997). The so-called ‘natural resource curse’ is thus associated with ‘bad governance’, corruption and predation (Leite and Wei‑ dmann 1999; Auty 2001), high levels of inequality (Engerman and Sokoloff 1997; Easterly 2000), a distorted export structure and lack of diversification of exports and slower growth. In contrast, the concept of neopatrimonialism emphasises that it should be understood in the first place as a political device inducing specific behaviour and modes of exercising power. It is the outcomes of political systems that may be ‘developmental’ or predatory. The historical formation of Sub-Saharan Africa states made development the primary objective of post-independence govern ments, but due to the weakness of ‘impersonal’ institutions, and contexts of political and economic instability, this objective became conditional on political consolidation, and therefore, in a vicious circle, on accumulation of wealth by politicians. This political consolidation, in the absence of a large labour-intensive industrial base, often relied on the allocation of rents from natural resources. The rationalities that underlie neopatrimonialism are primarily political, but the concept encompasses their economic implications. In neopatrimonial con texts, incentives to development are conditional on the political calculations of particular groups; opportunities for economic transformation are seized upon provided they fit into the political interests of rulers or elites. Individual
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 95 characteristics of rulers are important variables, in particular their time frame, as revealed by Olson (1993): a short-term time horizon may be an incentive for the siphoning off of resources; a long-term horizon makes rentier behaviour rational. In the former case rulers may be genuinely predatory; they may even have an interest in the destruction of political and economic institutions that would foster development (Robinson 1996), as these institutions could allow for a more equal redistribution of resources and wealth that would not be controlled by the ruler and would therefore constitute a potential political threat. An inconclusive link between neopatrimonialism and specific political regimes By construction, the concept of neopatrimonialism explains the disconnection from specific forms of political regimes of this specific political economy mech anism and treatment of the public-private divide, as it underscores mechanisms of overlapping (public-private, political-economic) and personal power that may fill different forms and formal institutions. Neopatrimonialism does not appear to be linked to a particular type of polit ical regime, e.g. democracy or authoritarianism. Similarly, it is not linked to par ticular types of public policies, e.g. less ‘accountable’, or ‘transparent’ policies, as neopatrimonialism refers to sets of individual preferences, social mechanisms and functions, which may be conveyed by a great variety of ‘forms’, by many types of formal policies and institutions. For example, policies whose forms have been devised in order to improve accountability may in fact strengthen neo‑ patrimonial dynamics, as shown by Soest (2007) in the case of autonomous rev enue collection agencies in Zambia, where their effectiveness – increasing revenues – in fact increased the resources available for neopatrimonial redis tribution and hence reinforced the neopatrimonial system. Democracy is a telling example. Rulers may ruin their countries while respecting democratic forms. There is indeed no robust relationship between neopatrimonial or ‘developmental’ states and types of formal political systems, and similarly the relationships between growth and a formal political regime such as democracy remain highly debated (e.g. Bardhan 1993; Przeworski and Limongi 1993). The ‘developmental states’ in East Asia emerged under the aegis of authoritarian regimes (as in Korea, or Singapore and China1). In many developing countries in the 1950s, authoritarian regimes were reputed to be better equipped to introduce modernisation. In contrast, many neopatrimonial states are formally democratic. The author itarian ‘restorations’ that followed the wave of democratisation in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s revealed that setting up formal democratic institutions was insufficient to modify the ‘low equilibria’ created by neopatrimonialism and the conception of political power as representing an access to state resources, which over decades had stabilised and become routine behaviour (Médard 1991a). Access to state resources being both a condition and promise of wealth indeed constitutes a powerful and self-perpetuating incentive, where formal democratic
96 A. Sindzingre institutions may in fact provide new opportunities for predatory practices (Médard 1992) – the uncertainties stemming from failed democratisation and the subsequent fights over resources may also consolidate neopatrimonialism, as shown by Englebert and Ron (2004) in the case of the relationships between oil and civil war in the Republic of the Congo. This is why it is difficult to analyse neopatrimonialism solely through formal variables and with the tools of econo metrics and cross-country regressions. Neopatrimonial and developmental regimes result from various combinations that involve political interests, indi vidual and group characteristics, political and economic institutions, social norms, the economic environment, among many elements that are specific to given countries and time periods. More important than the forms of political regimes, the political determinants of the stability of neopatrimonial systems and growth refer to factors such as the trust of citizens vis-à-vis elites, the ways rulers use and allocate public resources, and the nature of institutions (captured by the groups in power, providing checks and balances, and so on) as well as their form (e.g. proportional or polarised presidential systems, etc.). The size of middle classes thus seems an important developmental factor (Easterly 2002). Capital flight is also a classic indicator of the lack of trust of citizens in their own governments and economies, and indeed Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions where it is the highest (Ajayi 1997), especially when compared to East Asian states, where cronyism and corruption may prevail but citizens invest rents in the region. Capital flight amounted to 3 per cent of Asia’s wealth vs. 37 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1970‑1990 period (Collier and Gunning, 1997). Between 1970 and 2004, Sub- Saharan Africa private external assets exceeded its public external liabilities: total capital flight amounted to $420 billion (in 2004 dollars), compared to the external debt of $227 billion (Ndikumana and Boyce 2008).
Neopatrimonialism, corruption, cronyism: commonalities and differences The concept of neopatrimonialism has deepened the understanding of other phe‑ nomena that are related to, but distinct from, neopatrimonial processes, as well as their respective determinants and consequences, in particular corruption, clien‑ telism, cronyism and ‘capture’. These latter concepts, however, have supplanted that of patrimonialism in political science and are significantly more investigated than it, whereas economic analyses have mainly focused on that of corruption. When contrasting neopatrimonialism with related concepts, the key point is that the concept of neopatrimonialism refers to a full political and economic sys tem, where both levels reinforce themselves, which shapes political and eco nomic institutions, social norms, and individual behaviour and beliefs. Also, neopatrimonialism subsumes and differs from the concepts of corruption, clien‑ telism, nepotism, and personalisation of power because it refers to a particular mode of formation and functioning of the state, to specific political relationships between its constituents – governments, civil servants, interest groups – and to
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 97 precise mechanisms, such as the appropriation of public rents for private accu‑ mulation, which have specific impacts on development (Médard 1990). Corruption as a set of heterogeneous activities Corruption is a concept that is narrower than that of neopatrimonialism, as it does not refer to a full political and economic system, as does neopatrimonial‑ ism, but to a set of certain activities. Also, there may be political and economic settings where corruption is pervasive, which are not necessarily neopatrimonial. Corruption is also broader than the concept of neopatrimonialism, as it an activ‑ ity that can be attached to a great diversity of other activities. Corruption is diffi‑ cult to define and, particularly in economics – that typically uses it as a factor of explanation of many other economic phenomena – encompasses many hetero geneous activities, such as bribery, influence peddling, embezzlement, mis- invoicing, vote-buying, etc. (Sindzingre and Milelli 2010). Corrupt activities are nevertheless a recurrent dimension of neopatrimonial‑ ism. Likewise, similarities between neopatrimonialism and corruption may be found in terms of their impacts. There is now a consensus on the detrimental consequences of corruption (Sindzingre 2004b, 2005c): impoverishing the poor even further, profiting the rich, aggravating inequalities because it exploits the poor who, by definition, are less capable of defending themselves politically (Gupta et al. 1998; Banerjee 1997). Creating a vicious circle, corruption increases even further the low credibility of the state and fosters the informalisa‑ tion of economic activities. This in turn lowers fiscal revenues, hinders the build‑ ing of infrastructures and social redistribution that precisely would improve the state’s reputation (Sindzingre 1998). The size of economies and markets also matters and corruption has a more devastating impact in countries, which are poor, that often export only one product and have only a handful of formal firms and banks, as is the case in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. The export structure also influences the impact of corruption: primary commodities create low added value, require little local human capital and favour less labour-intensive invest‑ ments than capital-intensive ones, which are prone to corruption (e.g. ports, roads) (Tanzi and Davoodi 1997). In view of the high risk premium associated with Sub-Saharan Africa, investors prefer investments that yield rapid, high returns, but which are typically exposed to international corruption (such as enclave investment in oil and minerals). Neopatrimonialism shares many commonalities with clientelism. As shown by the title of his 1982 paper (‘Political clientelism or neo-patrimonialism’), for Médard both systems had to be distinguished. Patronage and patron–client rela‑ tionships, however, may be viewed as being a central element of a neopatrimo‑ nial system (Erdmann and Engel 2007) – typical examples of clientelism being particular individuals or groups that target transfers taken from private resources or public funds to other individuals or groups in order to buy their support. The concept of ‘capture’ (‘political’, ‘elite’ capture, Bardhan and Mookherjee 2000) is also related to that of neopatrimonialism: it is narrower than it, however,
98 A. Sindzingre as the ‘capture’ of political processes, policies and institutions by private interest-groups is a dimension of neopatrimonialism. ‘Regulatory capture’ is the capture of policies and legal institutions by specific groups in order to accumu late wealth and power, both of which are conducive to one another in such a sys tem; this latter concept has been widely used to transition economies after the fall of communism in 1989 (Hellman et al. 2003), with this set of studies, inter estingly enough, having ignored the concept of neopatrimonialism. The contrast with ‘productive’ cronyism The concept of cronyism also relates to that of neopatrimonialism but may be distinguished from it. The concept of ‘cronyism’ has been more widely used in studies of Asian settings. It describes the overlapping between the political elite, on the one hand, and business groups and their networks, on the other, which are typically based on the exchange of resources: on political funding and bribes on the part of businessmen, and allocation of rents, control over resources and rights on the part of politicians. Cronyism refers to the political connections of firms, with firms that are connected to the government enjoying subsidies and benefits that unconnected firms do not. Cronyism does not always hinder growth or the development of the private sector and investment, as is shown by certain South East Asian countries (Malaysia, Thailand), as it relies on mutual interests and incentives to maintain the two-way flows of resources. This is why it is often referred to as ‘crony capitalism’ (Bhagwati 2000; Kang 2002). In contrast, neopatrimonial systems rely more on the appropriation of public resources by individuals for their personal benefit (or their social networks) than on reciprocal exchanges of public and private assets, and they do not require the existence of a significant private sector. Cronyism has been therefore often been viewed as more beneficial for growth and being more ‘productive’ than neopatri‑ monialism, as the latter includes an intrinsic dimension of ‘unproductive’ extrac‑ tion levied on public resources and private entrepreneurship. This may explain the difference in economic performance between East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Sindzingre 2002). Contrasting neopatrimonialism and cronyism refines the comparison between Sub-Saharan Africa and Asian states and highlights phenomena that may be spe‑ cific to the latter, for example Korea with the collusion between politicians and the industrial conglomerates (chaebols), Southeast Asia with the business net‑ works between politicians and their cronies, and vote buying as in Thailand. Cronyism, however, exhibits common features with neopatrimonialism as their effects on growth remain a matter of debate. Well before the 1997 financial crisis the East Asian ‘miracle’ had been viewed as an ‘ersatz capitalism’ relying on the redistribution of rents to connected firms (Yoshihara 1988; Bello and Rosenfeld 1990; Clad 1989), and despite its unquestionable spectacular growth, similar questionings have been applied to China, e.g. regarding the role of the well- known ‘connections’ (guanxi) (Taube 2009). Asian governments nevertheless used these arrangements for channelling rents into productive sectors and
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 99 investment (Malaizé and Sindzingre 1998). Politicians and the business sector had common interests towards growth in order to strengthen their legitimacy and profits respectively (on Korea, Kang 2002) according to an ‘alliance capitalism’ (Wade 2000). Collusion between politicians, banks and firms, and the family ownership and management of firms, have not been detrimental to growth and may even have contributed to it (on Thailand, Suehiro 2001). The advantages of the politically connected firms, however, may have decreased after the financial crisis of 1997–8 (on Malaysia and Thailand, Johnson et al. 2006). A lesson of these comparisons is that it is the interactions of these different phenomena with other institutions, the specific social groups involved and the type of use of rents, that determine in fine their effects on growth. Conversely, high growth rates may occur in countries that are plagued by kleptocracy, cor‑ ruption, and state capture, such as commodity-dependent countries where growth is driven by the fluctuation of the international prices of natural resources – as has been the case since the mid-2000s in oil producing countries, e.g. in Nigeria, Angola or Equatorial Guinea.
Neopatrimonialism and development economics: prospects for shared conceptualisations The phenomena that are subsumed in the concept of neopatrimonialism have been analysed by development economics and the political economy of development. These disciplines, however, have much more used the notion of corruption – and in the IFI and policymaking literature, related terms such as ‘weak institutions’, ‘poor governance’ and the like, than that of neopatrimonial‑ ism, which is practically ignored in economics. Current standard development economics uses similar concepts in order to explain economic and political problems: indeed, if economics addresses a polit ical phenomenon, it is in order to analyse it with the conceptual toolkit of the economics discipline, via concepts such as incentives, contracts, costs and gains, information asymmetries, collusion, and various theoretical frameworks such as the principal-agent theory, institutional economics – with the concepts of trans‑ action costs and property rights (which are sometimes even substitutes for the concept of institutions) – and ‘political macroeconomics’, which models the eco nomic and policy consequences of different forms of government and political institutions (e.g. the fiscal impacts of elections, the economic effects of constitu tions, etc., Persson and Tabellini 2000, 2003). Explanations of growth traject ories via concepts such as path dependence, lock-in processes, positive feedbacks, threshold effects and traps have remained relatively peripheral in development economics. The economic modelling of political processes and its limitations Numerous studies in the fields of development economics and the political eco nomy of development confine themselves to the use of ‘institutional’ variables in
100 A. Sindzingre econometric regressions that explore the determinants of growth within or across countries (Kenny and Williams 2001). These include categories of political regimes (e.g. democracy, dictatorship) and the number of political parties or elections, with little reflection on the concept of institution itself or of the nature of the political or economic institution considered. The necessity of modelling and quantifying obliges finding proxies, which may only be remotely linked with what they aim to represent (e.g. the number of newspapers as a proxy of rule of law), and with ‘institutional variables’ aggregating heterogeneous phenomena. In order to establish quantifiable causalities, these ‘institutional variables’ are posited as discrete entities that are stable across time and independent of their context and their relationships with others in a given society, e.g. the judiciary, the Parliament and so on (Sindzingre 2005a). These variables usually refer to ‘formal’ institutions and legal systems, the remaining phenomena being sub‑ sumed in notions such as ‘informal’ social norms – ‘social capital’, ‘informal’ redistribution, and so on, with corruption as a central variable. Comments of the coefficients of the variables, or of the residuals, and imple‑ mentation of series of tests, which are the common format in cross-country regressions-based studies, cannot be viewed as ‘explanations’, e.g. an explana‑ tion of a particular growth trajectory and its determinants (Sindzingre 2004a). The scientific rigour of growth regressions is also exposed to risks, among them collinearity, misspecification, and model uncertainty (Brock and Durlauf 2001). As shown by Kittel (2006), macro-quantitative comparative research findings are often not robust due to the inherent difficulty of statistical analyses in dealing with complex macro-phenomena. Studies of the relationships between political regimes and economic per‑ formance are therefore often inconclusive, e.g. between growth and democracy (Tavares and Wacziarg 2001; Bratton and van de Walle 1997), or between types of political regime and types of economic reform, or occurrences of eco nomic crises (Drazen and Easterly 1999; Drazen 2000), whereas the relation‑ ship between growth and political stability seems to be stronger (Przeworski et al. 2000). The variable of political stability per se, however, provides no information about the nature of the political regime and the fact that govern ments may be neopatrimonial, autocratic, democratic and the like. As is well- known, it is military regimes that achieved stability for developmental strategies in countries such as Korea and Thailand. In contrast, disastrous examples in terms of growth may be noteworthy cases of political stability (e.g. ex-Zaire). Models also explore the links between growth and ‘legiti‑ macy’: they remain questionable, however, as the contents of a concept such as ‘legitimacy’ are highly context-dependent. Legitimacy, moreover, may be an attribute of diverse forms of institutions and regimes, and neopatrimonial rulers may enjoy a high degree of legitimacy (Wantchekon 2003 on elections in Benin; Vicente and Wantchekon 2009, on a comparison between elections in Benin and Sao Tome and Principe). Similar indeterminacy concerns models that try to assess the impact of the variable of corruption, for example on growth or foreign investment. Indeed,
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 101 corruption has limited effects on growth when rents are channelled towards pro‑ ductive sectors (Baumol 1990; Bhagwati 2000) and the ‘corruption’ variables conflate heterogeneous phenomena, such as bribes, over-invoicing, smuggling, vote buying, and so on. Corruption typically exemplifies the problems of endo geneity of causalities: for example do ‘collapsed states’ aggravate corruption or does corruption accelerate state collapse? Econometrics has difficulty in analys‑ ing non-linearities, as well as the macro-effects of micro determinants, such as individual expectations and perceptions of uncertainty vs. stability or legitimacy – for example, rules of the game that do not change arbitrarily and according to the interests of the groups in power (e.g. constitutional laws).2 Some econometric studies also explain corruption, civil war, political instability, authoritarianism, low growth, and so on, via the loose use of the variable of ‘ethnicity’. Some econometric models have associated ‘ethnic’ fragmentation and ‘fractionalisation’ with lack of growth (e.g. Easterly and Levine 1997; Alesina et al. 2003; Alesina and La Ferrara 2005). Yet, ‘ethni city’ is typically a vague concept (Médard 2002b): social groups combine and overlap with many variations in degrees of membership, and include sub- groups with antagonisms that are revealed only in specific situations.3 Ethnic membership is often an idiom that reflects pre-existing conflicts. It may not be the outcome of any ‘tradition’ and may even be created by state political insti‑ tutions (Posner 2005); it is a marker of a social identity among many others, identity itself having many different meanings (political, social and psycholog‑ ical) (Fearon 1999). Moreover, homogeneous countries do not develop better and may even exhibit more civil wars, while countries with numerous ‘ethnic’ groups may enjoy positive growth rates. Such econometric studies have been called into question. ‘Ethnicity’ depends on the capacity of the state and of its policies, i.e. the management by a central political authority of the access to economic and political resources and the allocation of rights. A more relevant variable and better predictor of conflict is the level of wealth of countries (Fearon and Laitin 2003): this is an additional example of the vicious circles and traps created by the private appropriation of public resources whereas the latter are increasingly limited. Econometric models also seek to link the lack of growth with variables such as ‘social norms’. Here again the proxies are ques tionable (e.g. the concept of ‘social capital’ as well as its measurement, this concept aggregating heterogeneous phenomena in a unique and simplistic measure, Englebert 2002) or do not constitute independent units outside con texts (e.g. ‘reputation’, ‘status’). The results are therefore inconclusive. Common ‘ethnic’ membership may foster collective action, which may be a factor in growth, but it may also generate exclusion. Furthermore, social frag mentation may rely on many other criteria and mechanisms outside ethnic membership, e.g. occupation, education or the absence of cooperation or con‑ tract enforcement devices (McBride and Skaperdas 2005). More sophisticated economic studies have been carried out of phenomena that have been analysed using the concept of patrimonialism. These include the studies of Acemoglu and Robinson, who model the endogeneity of the political
102 A. Sindzingre and economic institutions that lead to stagnation. They assume that political atti‑ tudes are determined by economic incentives and that the form of political and economic institutions results from conflict between groups that have diverging interests (the ‘elites’ and the ‘citizens’). In certain conditions, for example, elites and interest groups have incentives to democratise or enfranchise other groups of citizens, increase their level of education and achieve a more equal distribu‑ tion of assets (e.g. land) that fosters growth. Certain conditions generate incen‑ tives for predation or, in contrast, for the setting up of institutions that are conducive to growth (Acemoglu et al. 2001, 2004, 2006). Notions such as personal power, the exchange between the public and the private, the political and the economic spheres, the theorisation of neopatrimoni‑ alism as a full system, on the one hand, and the economic theories of path dependence, traps and threshold effects, on the other, underscore the limitations of standard models and econometric studies, with the latter relying on the assumption that the variables they use are separable from other phenomena and fixed across history and space. Notions such as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘accountability’ and even ‘incentives’, however, refer to economic, political and institutional settings that are transformed in time and space and are endogenous to each other. Neopatrimonialism emphasised that certain types of behaviour – ‘cronyism’, ‘corruption’ – are the result of unique evolutions and heterogeneous mechanisms involving political objectives, economic incentives, formal state institutions, social norms and psychological representations. Neopatrimonialism is a multidimensional concept which put in coherence political processes, eco nomic outcomes and social phenomena (e.g. statuses, norms), and due to their simplistic assumptions and variables, most modelling exercises in economics overlook this complexity. The mutual consolidation of economic characteristics, political mechanisms and social norms: the emergence of vicious circles Neopatrimonialism is a particular outcome of the processes of state formation and the shaping of political institutions and their associated incentives. It is a typical example of virtuous and vicious cycles, feedback causalities, and increas‑ ing returns that may entrap entire countries, which have been highlighted by the approaches defended by Brian Arthur and Paul David. Neopatrimonialism, under its dimensions of pervasive corruption, transfers targeted to clients, private appropriation of public resources, fragmentation of civil services, territories and markets in membership groups built by personal allegiances and collusion, and the preventing or erosion of public services, may generate the formation of stable political and economic equilibria, the exiting from which is difficult and implies high political and economic costs for governments. Economic contexts and neopatrimonialism may mutually reinforce them‑ selves, although the causalities between low levels of incomes and corruption (as the discipline focuses on corruption and ignores neopatrimonialism) are a
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 103 much-debated subject in development economics. Poverty is viewed as fuel‑ ling corruption in low-income countries, which in turn accentuates disrespect for state rules and civil services. In addition, civil servants are often said to earn higher wages relative to GDP per capita (or to the mean or median wages), although in some countries civil service salaries do not cover basic needs (when they are paid), which is compounded by very limited formal sys tems of social security. The determinants of subjective ‘fair’ incomes, how ever, remain complex (e.g. relative status, domestic level of inequality, rich countries’ living standards). IFI reforms that modify the relative wages of civil servants have less impact on the reduction of corruption than the fact that an economy has not yet stabilised into a ‘low equilibrium’ and self-fulfilling expectations that all transactions include corruption and that sanctions are not credible (Van Rijkeghem and Weder 1997). Such endogeneity between characteristics of rulers and economic institu‑ tions has been highlighted by Olson (1993) in regard to the tradeoff of rulers between the choice of taxation (if rulers anticipate they will stay) instead of predation (in the opposite case): the stabilisation of neopatrimonial processes depends on the time frame of the rulers and the associated contractual arrange ments and property rights. Individuals with a long‑term time frame and who have built a centralised system of resource transfers and corruption foster a stable equilibrium of (privately enforced) property rights that may facilitate transactions, market development, and hence growth. Corruption is stabilised here through a centralised device with a ‘dictator’ seeking to seize the mono poly of corruption and to use it in a discretionary way to distribute the rights to rents to other officials in exchange for their support. This device is less detri‑ mental to growth than ‘decentralised’ corruption, where corrupt individuals compete with each other without control and coordination and take a levy on everything that is produced, which leads to the equilibrium of an economy in ruins, which in turn prevents the consolidation of state-enforced legal property rights (Shleifer and Vishny 1993; Charap and Harm 1998). Thresholds may emerge, under which ‘corruption traps’ stabilise, as shown by Gaviria (2000) in the case of the upsurge of crime in Colombia. Neopatrimonial ‘equilibria’ are typically prone to stabilisation, due to both the difficulties of getting out of them and the incentives to their perpetuation. The enforcement of rules against corruption may entail high political and eco nomic costs in countries that have stabilised in an equilibrium of generalised corruption, which maintains the vicious circle of states impoverished by corrup‑ tion but lacking the means to pull themselves out of the corruption trap. In this context of poverty and high corruption rulers may calculate that low wages may entail lesser costs in terms of public spending and control, even if they foster corruption (coined as ‘capitulation wages’ by Besley and McLaren 1993). Indeed, fighting against corrupt clients may be risky for illegitimate and fragile governments. In contrast, capturing and sharing public resources is an efficient instrument for maintaining clientelism, which precisely requires both weak insti‑ tutionalisation and civil services recruited via personal allegiances and not
104 A. Sindzingre technical skills or merit. The absence of sanctions against the private appropria‑ tion of public goods and against powerful individuals who challenge the rule of law – or excessive sanctions, which may be perceived as expressing personal antagonisms rather than impersonal laws – sets in motion vicious circles that perpetuate personal rule and reinforce the lack of credibility of public policies and institutions. Neopatrimonialism is thus often associated with secrecy and low incentives for the delegating of power. For some IFI economists, when neo‑ patrimonialism has not stabilised in repressive dictatorships or generalised pre‑ dation, these processes may be limited by a free press and public knowledge regarding the allocation of government’s funds (Reinikka and Svensson 2004). The credibility of public ‘impersonal’ institutions is a crucial element for getting out of the trap of neopatrimonialism, but credibility is a process that is typically path-dependent and built over the longue durée. Making an analogy with the building of credible policies through independent central banks, other studies emphasise that sanctions against neopatrimonial practices may be achieved through external ‘agencies of restraint’ that would improve the credib ility of state institutions (Collier 1991; Collier and Pattillo 2000). As for legiti‑ macy, however, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The content of credibility remains under-determined: external agencies may be themselves not credible (as has happened to IFI conditionalities or sanctions) and neopatrimo‑ nial rulers may be perfectly credible. Neopatrimonial political mechanisms generate economic outcomes and are reinforced by them and which may achieve ‘low equilibria’. As underlined by Acemoglu and Robinson (2000), it is both economic opportunities and the con‑ straints imposed by politically powerful groups that determine institutional struc‑ tures and economic policies. An example of the economic effects of the political nature of neopatrimonial mechanisms is the attitude towards economic reforms, especially IFI conditionalities. These reforms are accepted by governments if they are compatible with their domestic political agendas and interests (Vreeland 1999). Reforms are ‘filtered’ more according to the domestic political calcula‑ tions of the groups in power than the objectives of development. Vicious circles and poverty traps may emerge where neopatrimonialism, economic stagnation and dependence on IFI lending mutually reinforce themselves, e.g. when the manipulation of IFI reforms and financing lead to worse economic performance and hence an increase in the external influence of IFIs on domestic policy choice and therefore resistance to reform by neopatrimonial governments. Neopatrimo‑ nialism thus fosters, and is fostered by, the massive presence of IFIs and donors in some Sub-Saharan Africa countries, by these countries’ dependence on aid, which finances a high proportion of public investment and where dozens of external agencies promote hundreds of projects and try to orient recipient gov ernments’ policies (Easterly and Pfutze 2008). Together with public resources, aid flows constitute in aid-dependent countries crucial resources and opportun ities for jobs and rents – while the general functioning of the aid industry, which claims to be apolitical, provides donors with incentives to ignore the neopatri‑ monial character of the recipient governments (Cammack 2007). In such
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 105 situations of vicious circles, the credibility of donors erodes due to the recurrent inefficiency of reforms, lending to illegitimate governments and lack of sanction of reform postponement. The interest of donors is to maintain aid flows, which recipient governments are fully aware of (Sindzingre 1998). Social norms are also endogenous to neopatrimonial settings, which shape social norms and are reinforced by them, and affect in cascade all individual transactions. The spread of neopatrimonial routines is a self-reinforcing mechan ism, as in such states impersonal rules, e.g. legal rules prohibiting corruption, are not credible and there is no meta-level, no ‘supervisor of the supervisor’ who would not be caught in the same routines and who have the will, power, and credibility to enforce their prohibition and transformation. Judicial systems are an outgrowth of personal rule in neopatrimonial systems and numerous reforms of the public service (based on merit or autonomy of technocrats in, e.g. customs or taxation services) have therefore failed. These reforms assume the effect iveness of economic incentives: the latter, however, are also shaped by the polit ical environment and by social norms. For a civil servant, for example, incentives to please external donors may be weaker than securing political and economic survival via membership in clientelist networks, compliance with social obliga tions stemming from kin group membership or with norms organising social status (as for the ‘big men’, see Médard 1992). In developed countries institutions, laws, norms and incentives limit corrup‑ tion, and are ‘internalised’ by individuals. In many low-income countries indi viduals may even be unaware of existing laws, either because of the deliberate strategy of the government, because states are too poor to inform their citizens, or because the latter view laws as irrelevant, as when state rules differ from the social norms that organise membership groups (such as norms based on kinship). Indeed a key problem in neopatrimonial states and with a weakly cemented cit izenry is that rules originating from the state may be viewed as irrelevant, both because of the predatory behaviour of those who enact them and the competing norms stemming from group memberships. Rules and sanctions are necessary but not sufficient: sanctions may be ‘filtered’ by local norms and beliefs, being perceived, for example, as determined only by the interests of politicians. Legal sanctions are effective when they fit in with internalised norms (Posner 1998; Berkowitz et al. 2000). Social norms are the basis of formal institutions, which in turn endogenously influence social norms, the latter also resulting from education (Boyer 1994), while education results not only from private social norms but from public rules and policies. Compliance with state rules requires that individuals are incited to apply them and to control the actions of other individuals (Olson 1998): this depends on equilibria and threshold effects resulting from individual calculations on the gains and costs of compliance and ensuring that other individuals comply. In developing countries rules stem from several sources and create different spheres of obligation, for example, the state, societies, and international aid agencies. The plurality of the sources of rules, both ‘informal’ and ‘formal’, gen‑ erates overlaps and information asymmetries that are easily exploited by
106 A. Sindzingre particular interests: this adds to the difficulty of transforming neopatrimonial regimes and curbing corruption. A concept such as neopatrimonialism thus explains the feedback processes, where individual behaviour is shaped by particular ‘institutional equilibria’, while at the same time the degree of development and the forms of the institu‑ tions are the result of particular ‘political equilibria’, which in turn are influenced by the structure of economic interests (North 1990: 48). Their interactions give rise to specific institutional forms, property rights and contracts. Development economics has elaborated the notion of ‘missing markets’ (such as the credit market) that impede growth in developing countries: the concept of neopatrimo‑ nialism has highlighted the ways some institutions in developing countries may be ‘missing’, ‘fragile’ or purely formal, which according to feedback processes reinforces personal rule and the segmentation of the citizenry in centrifugal groups that are driven by the appropriation of available resources. As shown by Evans (1997: 80), strong civil societies go hand in hand with strong states and effective institutions. These political-institutional interactions are typically caught in prisoner’s dilemmas, where individuals (or groups) are unable to see that cooperation would entail larger aggregate gains for everyone, which has devastating consequences in terms of economic growth.
Building upon neopatrimonialism’s insights The understanding of the determinants that reinforce neopatrimonial or predatory, on the one hand, and developmental states, on the other, requires a theory of insti‑ tutional change that can reconcile the neopatrimonialist approach and development economics, i.e. which highlights the multidimensionality of institutions and norms and the endogeneity of political and economic processes. Institutions are not con‑ crete objects but sets of mental representations that have a normative dimension and are held collectively (Sindzingre 2005a, 2005b, 2007). They are composite entities, with forms and contents that transform over time and constantly borrow from other settings. Their meanings and functions are delimited through their rela‑ tionships and combinations with other institutions (e.g. democratic institutions have a different content depending of the presence of systems of social protection, the level of education, and so on). Their meanings or functions are not fixed ex ante (e.g. those of ‘public service’, or ‘privatisation’), and combinations of institu‑ tions and their outcomes are not stable over time. In several Sub-Saharan Africa states, for example, the democratic institutions set up in the 1990s were progressively emptied of their content and ‘filled’ by neopatrimonial routines. In contrast, institutions and linkages may also be missing: a country may have a press that denounces corruption but judicial insti‑ tutions are lacking. Neopatrimonialism may indeed be characterised by confu‑ sion between the public and private domain, but also by discontinuities between the various public spheres of legitimacy. The fact that political and economic institutions are composite entities, which combine their forms and contents in multiple ways according to past trajectories
Neopatrimonialism and development economics 107 precisely describes the self-reinforcing processes that are analysed by economic theories that focus on multiple equilibria, path dependence and the problems of credibility that are inherent in the exercise of power and public policies (the lack of ‘supervisors of supervisors’ who would be situated ‘outside’ existing norms). Neopatrimonial systems may constitute powerful ‘basins of attraction’ towards mimetic behaviour and poverty traps. This chapter has explored the concepts of neopatrimonialism in the light of development economics. It has discussed the contributions of neopatrimonialism to the understanding of the stagnation of Sub-Saharan African economies as well as its complex relationships with political institutions and regimes. It has assessed the analyses of the phenomena subsumed in the concept of neopatrimo‑ nialism by development economics, and has highlighted the limitations inherent to modelling in the understanding of the impact on development of the phenom‑ ena gathered under the concept. It has shown that the concept links composite phenomena that have many dimensions – referring to political domination, economic gains, social norms, as well as the public-private divide – and that neopatrimonialism should be under‑ stood as a system that results from dynamic endogenous processes. The concept of neopatrimonialism has contributed to the analysis of vicious circles and traps (poverty and corruption traps), which economics has conceptualised in terms of threshold effects and stable ‘low equilibria’. This latter approach can reconcile neopatrimonialism and concepts from development economics, and supports a theory of institutional transformation, which is more refined than model-based economic theories that explain growth by ‘institutional variables’. It highlights the multidimensionality of institutions and the endogeneity of political and eco nomic processes.
Notes 1 Though Singapore and China are not ‘developmental states’ in the initial sense of the term, which refers to the growth of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and has been elaborated by Johnson (1982), Amsden (1989) and Wade (1990). 2 As in Côte d’Ivoire, though it is not specific to Sub-Saharan Africa, as was shown by Italy under Silvio Berlusconi. 3 What anthropology coins as ‘segmentary processes’.
Part II
New orientations and debates in Africa
7 The path from neopatrimonialism Democracy and clientelism in Africa today Nicolas van de Walle
The nature, extent and impact of the political and economic changes taking place in Sub Saharan Africa are the source of much contemporary debate. Not all agree on the nature and extent of recent political reforms, but clearly, at least at the level of formal institutions, significant changes are in the process of taking place. Since 1989, political reform has witnessed the systematic introduction of multi-party electoral politics in a region where single party and military rule had been the rule for most of the 1970s and 1980s (Bratton and van de Walle 1997). In its wake, electoral competition has brought political democratization with the greater independence of the judicial and legislative branches of government, as well as the liberalization of the press, and the emergence of a much more lively civil society, or at least of more numerous organizations not controlled by the state. Of course, the extent of these reforms vary enormously across the states in the region, but at least on the surface, authoritarian politics seems to be retreating. The more significant debate concerns the impact of these reforms on the deeper underlying structures of African politics. The dominant paradigm for understanding African politics for most of the post-colonial era was some vari ation of the neopatrimonial thesis with which Jean-François Médard is so prominently associated (e.g. Médard 1991b). By this, I mean that most scholars agreed that African political dynamics were structured by a set of informal institutions they labeled as ‘big man politics’, ‘personal rule’, ‘politics of the belly’ or neopatrimonialism, to use some of the favorite labels, and without getting into the internecine debates between the practitioners of this general line of analysis (Erdmann and Engel 2007, for a recent review).1 Most observers have agreed on two theses: first, that neopatrimonialism was inherently anti-democratic. In other words, it was constituted by a set of mechanisms and norms that ensured the political stability of authoritarian regimes and undermined political participation and competition. Second, most analysts have agreed that neopatrimonialism played a central role in preventing capitalist accumulation in the region, and thus was a key explanatory factor in Africa’s longstanding economic crisis (Chabal and Daloz 1999; van de Walle 2001). As a result, the removal of neopatrimonialism has been widely seen as a prerequisite for sustained economic growth and structural transformation in the region.
112 N. van de Walle This chapter thus briefly addresses a central question posed by the recent political and economic evolution in the region: what effect will the introduction of multi‑party electoral politics have on neopatrimonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa? In addition, the answer to this first question can serve to shed some limited light on the region’s economic prospects. I argue that neopatrimonialism is largely incompatible with democracy, and will thus weaken as democracy in the region consolidates. Indeed, I believe that the medium-term survival of neopatrimonial tendencies in a country despite the regular convening of competitive multi-party elections provides a good sign that the regime is in fact an electoral autocracy (Schedler 2007), rather than a consolidating democracy. It is analytically useful to think of neopatrimonialism as having three constituent components. First, such regimes are characterized by presidentialism, in which both formal and informal rules place one man – usually the president – largely above the law and not subject to the checks and balances that democratic executives face in mature democracies. In such cases, one effect of democrat ization is necessarily the weakening of the president relative to the other branches of government. Second, such regimes rely on systematic clientelism by the president and his immediate followers to maintain the status quo and ensure political stability. Third, and unlike more traditional patrimonial regimes, neopatrimonial systems rely on the fiscal resources of a modern state to provide the resources that are distributed following a clientelist logic. The main focus of this chapter, because I believe the comparative literature to be largely imprecise and even analytically confused on the issue, will be what happens to political clientelism following the democratization of neopatrimonial regimes. This chapter is avowedly comparative. It starts with some observations about the historical evolution of political clientelism and the nexus between capitalist growth, the evolution of the state, and democracy. The central argument of the chapter is that political clientelism is a ubiquitous feature of modern politics, and will not disappear from Africa any more than it can be expected to disappear from the United States or Italy, but that its function and form will evolve in significant ways related to the nature of African political regimes and their economies. This is admittedly a ridiculously overambitious topic for a short chapter, and the objective will be to use a handful of empirical and theoretical observations to set out some broad hypotheses to be investigated more fully at some later time. The chapter starts with some observations about political clientelism. I distinguish between types of clientelism, which I link to the regime type and level of economic development. I then examine the likely effects of democratization on political clientelism. I argue that neopatrimonialism is incompatible with democracy, and that its manifestations will progressively become less important in countries of the region, provided, at least, that they do democratize, and not all will. The chapter argues that there is no reason to believe that clientelism will disappear, since it appears to be a ubiquitous characteristic of the modern state, but it suggests that the specific nature of clientelism will change significantly because of democratization.
Democracy and clientelism in Africa today 113
Political clientelisms In the classic anthropological definition, political clientelism can be defined as an exchange relationship between unequals, which provides a political advant age to the more powerful agent and a material advantage to the less powerful agent (Schmidt et al. 1977; Eisenstadt and Lemarchand 1981). Perhaps because of its roots in anthropology, journalistic discussions of clientelism in Africa, and indeed too many academic analyses as well, have tended to view clientelistic practices as an primordial atavism, left over from traditional political culture. This is surely wrong on two counts. First, the atavism view can not be right because clientelist dynamics exists in virtually all political systems, albeit in sometimes very different guises. Indeed, a new literature has re-energized theorizing about its manifestations in democracies in Europe and Latin America (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007; Piattoni 2001; Helmke and Levitsky 2006). Second, clientelism seems likely to exist in all modern states, as long as polit ical actors are able to use the preferential allocation of resources over which they have discretion for political advantage. State structures with any degree of either fiscal or regulatory capacity will have discretionary resources at their disposal. Fiscal capacity will provide state agents with resources to redistribute, while the ability to regulate the provision of goods and services in the economy will provide them with discretion over the allocation of those goods and services. Instead, it seems more useful to think of political clientelism as a modern phenomenon that is inherent to the modern state, but that changes as a function of the type of state. Political clientelism exists in all modern states in one form or another, but just as clearly, its precise manifestations vary enormously. More specifically, this chapter will argue that the form that political clientelism takes varies as a function of economic structure and the nature of the political regime. Though they are often conflated in careless and ethnocentric analyses, three relatively distinct types of clientelism can be identified in the literature (see van de Walle 2007 for a more complete discussion and citations). First, tribute constitutes the traditional practice of gift exchange in peasant societies and traditional kingdoms, in which patron and client are engaged in bonds of reciprocity and trust. It is embedded in a communitarian ethos, even if economic anthropologists offer a perfectly rational explanation for its prevalence in terms of risk-sharing. African big men may sometimes adopt the rhetoric and cultural repertoires of traditional forms of tribute to legitimate the clientelist practices they want to pursue, but their clientelism is fundamentally different, and indeed the reference to specific tribute traditions are not necessarily accur ate, but may be invented in the modern era. In other words, there is no reason to believe that the level of political clientelism in an African country today is related to tribute traditions that may or may not exist in that country’s past. Second, what can be called elite clientelism is limited to a narrow political elite. The characteristic form of this kind of clientelism is prebendalism, or the strategic political allocation of public offices to key elites, granting personal access over state resources. Significantly, it can be associated with authoritarian
114 N. van de Walle states of limited capacity in a resource poor environment. I will argue this has been the dominant form of political clientelism in the authoritarian countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Third, it can be distinguished from mass clientelism, which relies on the practice of using state resources to provide jobs and services for mass political clienteles, and usually involves party organizations and electoral politics. Pervasive use of patronage, defined as the political instrumentalization of the distribution of public jobs and services, is designed to gain support for the more or less institutionalized political party that dispenses it. It should be associated with mass politics, including in the mature democracies of the west. These three types of clientelism are often conflated in the literature, but it is important to realize the differences between them. The discussion that follows will focus mostly on the difference between mass and elite clientelism for ease of exposition and because tribute is much less relevant to politics in modern states. Most generally, it is important to distinguish between political systems that rely primarily on patronage from those that rely on prebendalism. Prebends and patronage overlap, of course, but I wish to emphasize their fundamental dif ference. Hiring a member of one’s ethnic group to a senior position in the customs office is an example of patronage. Allowing the customs officer to use the position for personal enrichment by manipulating import and export taxes is an example of a prebend. From this example can be deduced three fundamental differences between patronage driven politics and prebendalism. First, they have very different fiscal implications. Prebendalism is a feature of most early states, invariably characterized by the absence of a professional civil service and weak extractive capacity (e.g. Ardant 1975). Prebendalism constituted one of the basic fiscal institutions of the European feudal state, in which the king had little choice but to allow his barons to pocket a large proportion of the revenues they had control over. As a political mechanism, prebendalism is attractive to leaders who do not control either a high level of resources or much capacity within the state apparatus. Patronage, on the other hand, requires a reasonably healthy and growing state, since it is expensive. The poor, small states of Sub-Saharan Africa have for the most part, and with minor subregional variations, not been in position to afford major patronage strategies. Observers have sometimes erroneously suggested that patronage was an important feature of African politics, but such a claim it seems to me constitutes a conflation of patronage and prebendalism. In fact, low income African states command few resources and a smaller share of national GDP than governments in richer countries. In the late 1990s, roughly one in three African states had government revenues under 15 percent of their national GDP (van de Walle 2001: 74), a remarkably low number that compares to levels in the OECD that regularly attain half of much higher levels of national GDP. In sum, I am not denying that political patronage has existed in Africa, just that its political importance is easily exaggerated, and almost certainly less important to ensuring political stability than an elite clientelism, strictly circumscribed to the hundreds or maybe several thousand people who constitute the country’s top political elite.
Democracy and clientelism in Africa today 115 Table 7.1 Government employment, early 1990s Region
Africa (n = 20) Botswana Senegal Asia (11) Maldives Bangladesh Eastern Europe and Former USSR (17) Armenia Turkey Latin America and Cari. (9) Barbados Chile Middle East and North Africa (8) Egypt Lebanon OECD (21) Sweden Greece Total (86)
Employees % of which (as % of Pop.)
in Central Gov’t
2.0 5.8 0.8 2.6 4.9 0.6 6.9 10.5 2.6 3.0 6.8 0.9 3.9 6.2 1.4 7.7 17.4 2.7
45 60 50 35 61 67 14 8 38 40 59 33 36 29 14 23 24 41
4.7
26
Source: Salvatore Schiavo-Campo, Giulio de Tommaso, and Amitabha Mukherjee (1997), ‘An International Statistical survey of Government Employment and Wages’, World Bank Working Paper no. 1806, Washington (DC): the World Bank. Note: High and low countries given for each region; other categories are local government, teaching and health.
One direct result of this reality is that African state structures have tended to be comparatively small, with a considerably smaller number of state employees than states in other regions of the world (Goldsmith 2000). The available statist ics, presented in Table 7.1, thus suggest that the average African state’s public workforce represents around 2 percent of the labor force, compared to 7.7 percent for the rich countries of the OECD. Put in simple terms, African presid ents could not afford mass clientelism strategies. Indeed, the regimes that sought to build up large patronage states in the immediate independent period were all too soon facing fiscal crises and inviting the IMF to prescribe its stabilization medicine. By the late 1970s, any project to substantially expand the state appar atus had crashed and burned and the regime was committed to fiscal discipline under the attentive gaze of the donors. In sum, I posit that the wealth of the economy and the resources available to the state condition the scope of clientelism, regardless of the nature of the polit ical regime. In poor states that cannot afford mass patronage, clientelism is more likely to be limited to the distribution of elite offices. On the other hand, patronage is more likely in rich states overseeing substantial and diversified econom ies, which are more likely to be able to afford a large and expensive state.
116 N. van de Walle Second, and related to this first distinction concerns the impact of clientelism on state capacity. Whereas prebendal practices weaken the state or at least limit its capacity, patronage is quite compatible with an effective and responsive state apparatus. We know from a wide variety of regimes across time that patronage political machines can be responsive to citizen concerns and deliver services. Indeed, the so-called ‘political machines’ of urban American and European pol itics in the early twentieth century were electoral machines that received support because they addressed constituent concerns. On the other hand, the prebendalism of elite clientelism can be associated with regimes that seek to limit participation and are not responsive to their citizens. Even as a small political aristocracy bene fits liberally from its links to the state apparatus, the average citizen does not receive adequate social services or benefit from an adequate public infrastructure. Third, the relationship to legality differs across types of clientelism. Patronage is often perfectly legal and many mature democracies have officially codified it and circumscribed its extent. Though the favoritism it implies is frowned upon and constitutes a ‘grey area’ of acceptable practice; it remains present in the state structures of the most advanced economies of the world. Theobald cites the estimate of four million patronage positions in state and local government in the US during the early 1980s, for example (1990: 56). These positions are almost entirely controlled by the Republican and Democratic Parties, who thus provide steady employment to their rank and file, and use state resources to engage in significant amount of recruitment. At the Federal level, the spoils system explicitly allows the President to make several thousand political appointments in the federal government. Individuals hired as ‘political appointees’ face a different set of administrative regulations than regularly appointed federal appointees, and are, for instance, expected to leave office when the pres ident who appointed them leaves office. Prebendalism, on the other hand, invariably entails practices in which import ant state agents unambiguously subvert the rule of law for personal gain. As a result, these practices are invariably illegal and illegitimate, even in countries in which they are quite common. Finally, and a direct result from much of the previous discussion, the different types of clientelism have a specific causal relationship with the nature of the political regime. In particular, elite clientelism is not compatible with the parti cipation and competition of democratic politics. The practice of prebendalism is compatible with closed political systems, in which elites are little accountable to the citizenry, and in which their illegal actions are not sanctioned. On the other hand, patronage politics meets the needs of politicians engaged in electoral com petition, and is compatible with the high levels of participation of democratic politics. Put more generally, I argue that the amount of democracy in the system determines the nature of clientelism; the more democratic the system, the more clientelist practices will benefit mass publics; and the more they will be limited to legal and codified behaviors. The less democratic the system, the more the benefits of clientelism will favor elites, and the more clientelist practices will subvert the rule of law and undermine property rights.
Democracy and clientelism in Africa today 117 A corollary of this last point is that the locus of elite clientelism is typically the executive branch of government, while the locus of mass clientelism is more likely to be political parties and the legislative branch. In the former, the object ive of clientelism is to keep the president and his cronies in power; analysing the single and no-party regimes in Africa before the democratization of the 1990s, the subordinate status and marginality of political parties is striking. The presid ent and his inner sanctum of followers dominated politics, in what were highly presidential regimes, both on the level of formal and informal institutions. The party may have been an instrument of presidential power, but between the end of the electoral competition of the immediate post-independence period and the democratization wave in the first half of the 1990s, parties progressively declined in political importance. Even in countries like Kenya or Ivory Coast where the regimes had built relatively strong government parties, over time the regime’s clientelist practices bypassed the party apparatus, and came to be dominated by the state itself, notably the office of the presidency. In mass clientelist systems, on the other hand, the objective is to win elections, and the key instrument of electoral competition is likely to be the political party. The centrality of party competition is the hallmark of electoral politics, and the reliance of patronage to buttress parties a fairly standard feature of a wide number of democracies. Indeed, the codification and circumscribing of clientelistic practices that took place in rich countries a century ago, was accompanied by a broader reformist campaign to professionalize and discipline the civil service, and in effect move the remaining clientelism outside of the state and to political parties. Table 7.2 summarizes the discussion so far, distinguishing the different kinds of clientelisms. Democratization and clientelism in theory Of course, this distinction between mass clientelism and elite clientelism is idealized. Most regimes in the modern world exhibit both types, and in practice it is not always easy to distinguish between them. In addition, other factors shape the nature of political clientelism, from the prevailing electoral regime and other constitutional provisions that condition appeal of particularistic politics (Cox 2001; Haggard and McCubbins 2001), to the nature of party cleavages and party development (Shefter 1994). Nonetheless, and with these caveats in mind, it is useful to argue that the neopatrimonial states of Sub-Saharan Africa were characterized by elite clientelism because of both their authoritarian nature and the economic structure of their economies. Despite claims often made in the literature, there was relatively little mass patronage in the region, largely because these countries were not rich enough to afford it, and because their authoritarian nature lessened the need to be responsive to their citizenry. Instead, politics was more often characterized by elite accommodation processes in which different ethnic groups were integrated into the political system through elite clientelism. The state brought in big men
Tribute
Patronage
Prebends
Traditional Clientelism
Mass Clientelism
Elite Clientelism
Key Mechanism
State
State
Patrons’ own
Resources involved
Presidential network
Political party
Patron
Dispensed by
Table 7.2 Characteristics and correlates of different kinds of clientelism
Illegal
Grey area
Customary
Legality
Undermines state capacity, legitimacy
Bias for larger state
Alternative legitimacy to state
Implications for Central State
Incompatible
Depends on quality of state intervention Negative: undermines property rights
Positive: Rational risk sharing mechanism
Incompatible
Compatible
Relationship to Economy
Relationship to Democracy
Democracy and clientelism in Africa today 119 from different ethnic groups into the presidential majority, and the former were expected to bring with them the support of their ethnic group, as has been well described by a large Africanist literature (e.g. Bayart 1989). I am now in a position to offer an answer to the question this chapter began with: what happens as these types of regimes move to electoral competition? In general, I argue that democratic consolidation in the region will result in the decline of neopatrimonialism and the evolution from elite to various forms of mass clientelism. What does this imply? First, I hypothesize that prebendal arrangements will progressively disappear; in their place will be the kind of patronage politics which we observe in mature democracies, usually focused around party politics. These practices may be more or less significant, in much the way that variation is observed between, say, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark in the locus and scope of party patronage, but on the whole they will fall far short of the egregious illegality that we observe in the current set of neopatrimonial political systems. An important caveat to the argument relates to the resources available to these consolidating democracies to engage in redistribution. Fiscality constitutes the Achilles heel of poor democracies. As emphasized above, the advantage of elite clientelism is its cheapness, and the more ambitious expenditures of mass clientelism will bring with it huge economic risks, particularly in the absence of rapid economic growth. Indeed, the history of post World War II Latin America is in many respects a history of a failed transition from elite to mass clientelism, as the populist regimes that emerged as the electoral franchise was extended in the 1960s and 1970s established political economies that relied on a populism their economies could not ultimately sustain (Huntington and Nelson 1976; Remmer 1986), leading directly to the economic crises of the 1980s. In Africa, a successful transition will include the ability to shepherd limited resources into productive public expenditures, notably in social sector investments, that both promote productivity growth and economic development, and accommodate political coalition building. In sum, sustained economic growth is probably a requisite of the political regime transition I am hypothesizing can take place. Second, and provided the economy allows it, the move to mass clientelism will bring about a greater degree of economic redistribution to countries that democratize. Economists like Milanovic (2003) have shown in recent years that post-colonial Africa has undergone a rapid increase in inequality. This seems to me inevitable, as neopatrimonial institutions generate social and economic stratification. Again despite some careless scholarship on the contrary, the elite clientelism of neopatrimonial states is not redistributive, but is rather directed to an exceedingly narrow elite, which accumulates a disproportionate wealth. There is, moreover, little economic redistribution in these regimes through taxation, social programs or public spending which is minimal and rarely progressive. By definition, democratic regimes are more responsive to their electorates. As the clientelist networks expand with an electoral logic, we can expect greater economic redistribution. Clientelist networks are more likely to work themselves down the social ladder, and democratic elections are more likely to result in greater
120 N. van de Walle spending on social service. In sum, the more democratic a country, the more redistributive its clientelism will be, even if the logic of clientelism will always be to give a relatively privileged minority access to public goods. The size of this minority increases with competitive politics. Moreover, whether they are clientelist or not, democracies almost certainly engender greater public expenditure, notably in the social sectors, than do authoritarian states. Third, the evolution from elite to mass clientelism in the new democracies will entail the growing importance of political parties in political exchange. Rather strikingly, in mature democracies, the biggest single cause of political corruption appears to be the insatiable appetite of political parties for funding in order to wage electoral campaigns. Politicians across a wide variety of OECD countries regularly get caught with illicit schemes to finance their parties in rapidly escalating electoral campaigns. Rarely is individual gain the major motivation in these scandals. To be sure, occasionally a civil servant is caught in an influence peddling exercise, but this is much more rare. For instance, in perhaps the biggest scandal in American politics in the last two decades, the Abramoff influence peddling scandal, involving a so called ‘K Street’ lobbyist and his mostly Republican friends in Congress and the White House, virtually no career civil servants appear to have been involved. In sum, when African politicians go to jail on a regular basis for having steered illicit money to political parties in the months before elections, rather than to enrich themselves, we will know that Africa’s democratic transition is complete.
Democratization and clientelism in practice I hasten to add that these last several points do not constitute a prediction for Africa’s future. Instead, I am offering a hypothesis for what will happen if African countries successfully democratize. It is far from clear that democratic consolidation is taking place in more than a handful of states (see Lindberg 2006 for recent comprehensive and fairly optimistic survey), even if Michael Bratton is correct to surmise, from Afrobarometer data, that multi-party com petitive elections have become entrenched enough in popular attitudes that they can now be ‘regarded as an institutionalized norm of African politics’ (Bratton 2007: 8). In a larger proportion of African states, however, neopatrimonial rulers have adapted remarkably easily to the new rules of the game by instituting ‘façade democracies’ (Joseph 2003) or ‘electoral autocracies’ (Schedler 2007) that undermine neither their hold on power nor the main instruments that buttress their rule. It may be useful to remind ourselves that much of Africa is not demo cratizing, since so many observers are now willing, somewhat perversely, to point to electoral autocracies to highlight the alleged flaws of democracy (e.g. Carothers 2002). Even in countries that have undergone significant democratic progress, the resulting regimes are often best characterized as ‘hybrid’ (Diamond 2002) or ‘illiberal democracies’ (Zakaria 1997), as authoritarian dynamics subsists side
Democracy and clientelism in Africa today 121 by side with the new democratic dispensations. None of Africa’s new multi- party regimes have abandoned presidential constitutions, for instance, for parlia mentary rule, which is in force in just a handful of Africa’s 48 political systems. Though democratization has often included concerted efforts to curtail presiden tial power and empower mechanisms of vertical and horizontal accountability, more often than not, presidential prerogatives remain significant. If Mainwaring (1999) and others are correct, presidentialism weakens political parties in low- income states, and makes good governance less likely. Certainly, given the logical connection between neopatrimonialism and presidentialism in Africa, the latters’ continuing stranglehold on African politics is a cause for pessimism regarding more profound democratization. Moreover, the evolution away from neopatrimonialism is likely to be long and slow, for several other reasons. First, the national characteristics which facilitate neopatrimonialism and elite clientelism remain there in the short to medium term, even after formal political institutions have been altered. Economic stagnation and fiscal crisis will militate against attempts to move towards patronage strategies. Low state capacity had been endogenous to the old neopatrimonial ruler, that had no great incentives to promote an effective state apparatus; but the legacy of that rule will take years to overcome even if the new regime is entirely sincere about increasing state capacity and eliminating corruption. If Przeworski et al. (1996) are correct to suggest that democracies are unlikely to survive in low-income countries unless they are able to generate rapid eco nomic growth, at least some of these weakly institutionalized democracies will not survive. For a long time, the biggest danger facing them will be their inabil ity to promote economic growth, which could lead to an anti-democratic backlash. Rapid economic growth, on the other hand, can help finance the growth of the state apparatus and the services it provides, which fuels both the growth of patronage opportunities and legitimacy for the regime. Second, the transition to democracy can occur virtually over night, but demo cratic culture takes a longer time to develop. In Jonathan Fox’s felicitous phrase (1994), it takes time and effort to transform clients into citizens: civic organiza tions, the press, and the expectations of the citizenry will not immediately adjust to the new dispensation, but need to be nurtured and encouraged. For their part, many politicians and their followers were socialized in the ancient regime and bring certain expectations to the new one. The old kind of clientelism will remain a convenient solution to day to day problems for these politicians, particularly as long as the instruments of the new kind of politics, political parties, are weak and poorly organized. Schattsneider (1942) may be right that democracy is not conceivable without parties, but the building of strong party organizations takes time and skill, and requires the passage of time, if for no other reason than that elections are discrete events that only occur every once in a while. In the meantime, resorting to the tried and true methods of African politics will be tempting. Moreover, as Helmke and Levitsky (2007) remind us, in consolidated demo cracies, a panoply of well-established informal institutions buttress the demo cratic order, and shape both expectations and behaviors of political actors. These
122 N. van de Walle include norms and informal understandings regarding the relationship between political parties, mechanisms of accommodation and compromise between the branches of government, and broadly understood standards of not only what is legal, but also what constitutes acceptable behavior in the political game. Again, these rules do not immediately emerge in the aftermath of democratization, but require the passage of time, and the experience of repeated elections, budget cycles and legislative sessions. In the meantime, the old culture of neopatrimonialism will repeatedly be invoked by actors who find it useful to their ends, and it is far from clear that other actors will always be able to proscribe the resultant behavior. Finally, the international relations of most African countries on balance serve to maintain the political status quo. To be sure, since the end of the Cold War, the West has advocated democracy in the developing world with slightly more consistency and sincerity. But the $20 billion in annual foreign aid that is mostly directed to the region’s governments both on balance probably serves to buttress their hold on power and may actually weaken the bureaucratic institutions needed to counterbalance neopatrimonialism (Moss et al. 2007). Indeed, some observers have suggested that the current modalities of aid distribution are easily and consistently instrumentalized in clientelistic fashion by African state elites (Olivier de Sardan 1998; van de Walle 2001).
Concluding remarks A regular claim that is made today suggests that democratization has actually increased clientelism in sub Saharan Africa. It is argued that greater competition around elections fuels the buying and selling of votes, and that the end result may be greater clientelism than in the past. Other analysts have argued that democratization has increased ethnic identity and sharpened ethnic politics, through the lubricant of public resources and electoral competition. I am skeptical about such claims. First, even if accurate, the increase in clientelism may result not from democracy, but from the recent democratization. In at least some cases, it does seem that the democratization of public life has enlivened ethnic competition and increased corruption. Regime transitions can be a Pandora’s box, in which a number of old political resentments and conflicts that had been kept under wraps get new life, as new political actors emerge and heightened political competition takes place. The issue at stake is not necessarily the nature of democracy or of electoral competition, however, but rather the uncertainty and chaos of moving from one set of political rules to another. Second, many of these accusations are made about electoral autocracies, and it seems slightly perverse to blame democracy for the ills of what are essentially authoritarian regimes with only falsely competitive elections. One should rebut such criticism by arguing these deficiencies are often due to the non-democratic aspects of these regimes. Third, I would argue that the increased attention to political corruption often does not suggest an actual increase in its occurrence, but rather a freer press that
Democracy and clientelism in Africa today 123 is more able to report accusations of corruption than in the past, combined with a less cowed public that is more public about criticizing abuses of power than in the past. One of the paradoxes of democracy is precisely that its more open and participatory nature will generate a greater volume of sometimes delegitimating criticism than is the case for authoritarian regimes. In any event, this chapter has posed the more pertinent question, not whether political corruption would increase or decline, but instead, whether its function and forms are likely to evolve. I have sought to show that in beginning to demo cratize its politics, Sub-Saharan Africa has started the long road away from neopatrimonialism. Does that mean that politics will entirely escape various imperfections? Hardly. Entering the end of the second decade of democrat ization, nonetheless, a tone is creeping into the analyses of experts on the region that is quick to harp on the imperfections of multi-party elections in the region. It is important to avoid Panglossian optimism. Nonetheless, in suggesting that political clientelism is an essential and ubiquitous feature of all democracies, this essay has sought to inject greater optimism into the study of African democratic practices. Vote buying, jobs for the boys, schools being built in key constituencies in the weeks before elections, party finance scandals, corruption scandals in the press, influence peddling in the legislature – all these things should not be celebrated, of course, but they do mean that Africa is becoming less neopatrimonial and more democratic.
Note 1 For the rest of this chapter, I will use the general term neopatrimonialism as an all purpose label for this set of informal institutions.
8 Rebellion and warlordism The spectre of neopatrimonialism Morten Bøås and Kathleen M. Jennings
Recent decades have seen substantial parts of Central and West Africa plagued by civil war. Attempts to explain these wars commonly stress the problem of state recession, combined with the emergence of warlords and warlordism (see Thomas et al. 2005; Lezhnev 2005; Green and Ward 2004; Mackinlay 2002; Rashid 2001; Shawcross 2000; Rich 1999; Reno 1998). Less examined is the behaviour and actions of the nonstate armed groups fighting these conflicts, and how these may change over time.1 Why do movements that began as a social – albeit violent – rebellion against an authoritarian and deeply corrupted state end up as a perverted mirror-image of the state they originally set out to destroy? Greed and increased access to resources provide one explanation for the mutabil ity of armed groups’ behaviour over time (Keen 2000). A greed-based approach may capture groups’ increasing reliance on resource extraction and marketing over the life of the conflict. However, the profit motive itself does not explain why or to what extent groups turn away from their original political agendas – and why many end up replicating certain pathologies of the states they contest. We therefore advocate a different approach. We argue that the process by which rebel groups forsake political agendas to become profit-seeking, market-based entities may best be understood using a dual analysis. The first aspect of this analysis is to contextualise the insurgency with regard to the pre-conflict levels of structural and actual violence in society. In this, we echo Richards’s (2005: 1) contention that the violent character of these movements needs ‘to be understood in relation to patterns of violence already embedded in society’. The second aspect builds outward from the first. It centres on the questions: Did the state structures – specifically, the particular logic of dysfunctional neopatrimonialism – place insurgencies in the affected countries on a path-dependent track to a violent profit-seeking warlordism? To what extent are these structures, and this path, common throughout West and Central Africa? The second element of the analysis thus reflects our conviction, in line with Bøås and Dunn (2007), that ‘just because these guerrillas act within local, social, economic and historical contexts does not mean that their trajectories are entirely unique’. Certain commonalities are shared across space. These are grounded in meta-narratives that reflect and expound collective experiences of corruption,
Rebellion and warlordism 125 abuse of power and position, and poverty (see Bøås 2004). Thus, while the backdrop of unrelenting, systematic state recession and predation is similar to the conflicts of Central and West Africa, so too, to some degree, is the worldview of those fighting these conflicts. Shared perceptions and experiences of social and economic exclusion, disenfranchisement, and marginalisation inform this worldview. What our approach seeks to illuminate is whether, and the extent to which, movements that may have emerged from similar worldviews have similar paths; and whether these shared paths derive from and depend on structural factors determined by the neopatrimonial state and encapsulating the society.2 Our approach is premised on the assumption that the actions of armed groups and rebel movements can be analysed systematically. Although some of the movements at the forefront of these conflicts – such as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF ) in Sierra Leone, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda, the Mai Mai in Eastern Congo, or the many factions active in the Liberian civil war – seemingly bear little resemblance to established political science typologies of insurgency movements, this does not mean that the violence they wreak is irrational. In this chapter, we will describe how situations of marginalisation and exclusion, in patrimonial societies with the possibility of natural resource extraction, seem to lead to rebellions characterised by the same features as the society against which the original grievances were targeted. We do not argue that this is bound to happen, but rather that a certain path-dependency exists, and that the strength of this dynamic depends on local, national, and international responses to the conflict. Thus, the extent to which an armed movement with an agenda for social and political change can sustain, and act consistent with, that vision argu ably depends to some degree on how the group is treated by the system and soci ety it is rebelling against. The RUF was never presented nor treated as anything other than thugs, delinquent youths, and greedy bandits. Eventually, this was what they became. Currently, dispatches from the Niger Delta tend to downplay the very real social causes that the armed groups put forth, and focus on the piracy tactics they employ. This is worryingly evident in the Nigerian state’s approach, which treats the armed youth as bandits that can legitimately be crushed using the full force of the state.
Neopatrimonialism as social practice Neopatrimonialism is usually seen as a system of rule in which bureaucratic and patrimonial norms co-exist (see Médard 1991a, 1996; Braathen et al. 2000). If such a system of rule exists on a nationwide scale, the outcome is a state able to extract and redistribute resources. However, this extraction and redistribution is privatised. This circumstance is not unique to Central and West Africa, or even Sub-Saharan Africa: neopatrimonial aspects can be found in political systems worldwide. Yet there are important distinctions between these systems, both in the degree to which neopatrimonial logic has penetrated the political system in question, and in its functionality. In essentials, neopatrimonialism is a system of rule like any other: it lays
126 M. Bøås and K.M. Jennings the foundation for the political game of distribution and redistribution and, as illus trated by the longevity of many African regimes, can provide both stability and order. Yet neopatrimonial systems are also prone to extreme vulnerability. For example, Mobutu’s regime in Zaire shows how rapidly state fragmentation occurs once the system can no longer reproduce itself. Dysfunctional neopatrimonialism follows the same logic as before, but without the same ability to deliver. Even when functioning, however, a primary consequence of this kind of rule is that the various patrimonial paths of redistribution divide the population along regional, ethnic and, at times, even family lines. This has obvious implications for the regime, state institutions, and competing elites, but is equally important for the population as a whole. For our purposes, the questions that arise are: what are the conditions for resistance within and against such a system? To what degree is it possible to design an alternative political organisation when such logic is embedded, not just in the state and its macro-institutions, but also in people’s daily life – when it has become the order of things, the main principle of socio-economic interactions at all levels of society? It is the social system that all are implicated in and part of, willingly or not; it forms the fabric of daily life and practices even for those far removed from the spoils. Thus, instead of seeing neopatrimonialism only as variant of Weber’s (1947) typology of rule, it is perhaps more fruitful to interpret it as an iterated social practice that creates an informal institutional structure, which is not easily broken or bent. We do not argue that resistance is useless and change impos sible. Yet in examining why projects for change morph into distorted agents of the status quo, one explanation is that pervasive and increasingly dysfunctional neopatrimonial systems have created a machine-like character of African pol itics. This machine-like character may recreate itself in various armed insurgencies, particularly those that are long lasting and occurring in an environment where resource extraction is possible, and victory (in any meaningful sense of the word) more and more unlikely.
Rebel movements and warlordism If we accept that there is a relationship between pre-war state structures and the character of the armed insurgency, we must then ask: what kind of social norms are internalised, and what kind of mind-sets and cosmologies developed, under such circumstances as those described above? This brings back in the first aspect of our analysis. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia are productive sites for this exercise; below we focus on the former. According to Fithen and Richards (2005: 123), ‘the RUF represents a paradox. It claimed to have an ambition for a more just society, and yet ended up a random and arbitrary killing machine’, seeking whatever profit could be gained for its members. A closer look at pre-war societal conditions in Sierra Leone war zones may give us further insight into whether this was bound to happen, and to what degree the evolution of the RUF was linked to the state structures that the movement was initially established to resist and reform via armed revolution.
Rebellion and warlordism 127 The history of governance and management in Sierra Leone is characterised by corruption, mismanagement, and neglect, which eventually led to complete state decay and civil war. The majority of Sierra Leoneans were (and remain) poor and unable to access services typically associated with the public sector, such as education – even where those services existed. Political and economic disenfranchisement and marginalisation were common to both urban and rural areas. Kono District, the historical centre of diamond mining in Sierra Leone, is particularly illustrative as to the relationship between the structural and the social. Diamonds were discovered in Kono District in the 1930s. By the 1930s, Sierra Leone’s main export commodities were diamonds, iron ore, bauxite and rutile, illustrating the rather rapid shift from dependence on forest products (e.g. palm oil, coffee and cocoa) to a mineral economy. Control of diamond mining has always been vested in the wealthy, powerful, and/or connected, notwithstanding the fact that the mining itself was typically done by poor young men.3 Indeed, a brief sketch of the diamond mining industry in Kono shows both the systematisation of corruption and clientelistic relationships – between both young miners and local chiefs and local chiefs and the centre – and how issues of autochtony and exclusion were integral to the functioning and control of a diamond-based patrimonial economy. For most of the period prior to independence (from 1935 to 1956), Sierra Leoneans were legally prohibited from mining their own diamonds (Keen 2005).4 A British company, the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), had exclusive mining rights. To avoid illicit mining, SLST demanded the removal of those not considered autochthonous to the diamond regions from those areas. The colonial administration gave paramount chiefs the responsibility to control settlement in and migration to those areas, and thereby also the power to decide who belonged to the ‘soil’ of the diamond-producing regions (and who did not). Nevertheless, significant migration into diamond mining areas continued in the 1950s, and many managed to circumvent the SLST monopoly through bribery or the establishment of patron-client relationships to local chiefs. This was the beginning of what Reno (1995) later termed the ‘shadow state’ structure in Sierra Leone. Following violent protests in Kono District in 1955, diamond mining for Sierra Leoneans was legalised. In the areas previously controlled by SLST, the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme (ADMS) was established to grant mining licences to Sierra Leoneans and Sierra Leonean companies. Issuance of licences was subject to agreement by local chiefs and landowners. The primary beneficiaries of this reform were the rich and well connected: for the most part, only chiefs, politicians, civil servants, and traders could afford the licences and the necessary equipment. The Lebanese community in Sierra Leone was also able to penetrate and dominate the new, supposedly ‘native’ mining sector by virtue of its access to capital. In turn, the chiefs in diamond-rich areas, such as Kono, got rich from their power to grant licences and allocate mining sites. Meanwhile, licence holders established themselves and engaged and equipped others to dig
128 M. Bøås and K.M. Jennings for them. This system provided some short-term stability, and production and sales through legal and taxable channels even increased slightly. However, as early as the late 1950s, it was estimated that up to 75 per cent of the total value of diamond production was being smuggled (Keen 2005). The loss of formal control over the diamond areas, already underway during the last stage of the colonial period, further continued after independence in 1961. When Siaka Stevens came to power in 1968, attempts were made to re-impose government control over the diamond areas, by sending the army to support the police in their attempt to halt illicit mining. This ultimately resulted not in a decrease in illicit mining, but the expansion and entrenchment of a culture of corruption, as both police and army personnel accepted bribes from miners lacking the necessary permits. At the same time, Stevens’s new Government Diamond Office (GDO) – which essentially adopted a ‘buy cheap, sell high’ policy – only increased the incentives for smuggling. Although diamond smuggling posed a severe problem for state revenue and institutions, it was to the mutual benefit of licence-holders and state employees. The latter profited from turning a blind eye to (or cooperating in) smuggling operations. Thus, the state structures charged with controlling the diamond sector for the benefit of the country essentially degraded into fleecing operations for personal enrichment. By the late 1980s, some estimates say, up to 95 per cent of the diamonds produced in Sierra Leone were smuggled out of the country (Sesay 1993; Keen 2005). When Joseph Momoh assumed power in January 1986, he was pressured by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) to control and curb the smuggling. In 1987, the army was yet again sent into the diamond-producing regions. Rather than improve the situation, this resulted in a widening of the cooperation and cooptation between mining interests and the army, similar to that which unfolded during Stevens’ attempt to re-regulate the sector in the late 1960s. Although the purported reform operation was ineffective, the army’s expulsion of about 10,000 miners from Kono created a huge pool of discontented young ex-miners. This population later came to constitute the main recruitment pool for the RUF, the army, and the Civil Defence Force (CDF ) during the civil war (see Abdullah 1998, 2004; Richards 1996; Reno 1998; Fithen 1999). Thus, as the state lost formal control over its diamond resources, diamonds became the cornerstone of a culture of corruption and mismanagement of national resources for the personal enrichment and benefit of political and eco nomic elites, the armed forces, and foreign interests. Meanwhile, the general public and most of the miners themselves remained in a situation of poverty and vulnerability (Bøås and Hatløy 2006; Reno 2003). Migrant miners’ circumstances may have been especially precarious, as they were double outsiders: outside the economic and political channels through which spoils were claimed and distributed; and outsiders or ‘strangers’ (Reno 2003) to the diamond areas, and thus dependent on the ‘goodwill’ of local chiefs to carry out their activities (this goodwill typically the result of purchase through a protection racket). Miners also may have been unprepared for the difficulty of the mining life, and disillusioned by their inability to realise their hope of finding the big diamond
Rebellion and warlordism 129 that would secure their future comfort. Even if they did strike it rich, their share of the spoils would likely be limited, indeed. This state of affairs was not lost on people like the infamous RUF warlord, Sam ‘Maskita’ Bockarie, who grew up in Kono during this period. When killed in early May 2003, Bockaire was generally regarded as one of the most dangerous men in West Africa: rebel, bandit, but also a regional powerbroker whose actions could threaten the stability of the whole West Africa region. Yet his background was utterly ordinary. Born in 1964, the son of a diamond miner, Bockarie grew up in Koidu town in Kono. He left school at an early age to become a diamond miner – a typical fate in a country with high school fees, and where families are poor and depend on the income that children can provide – and worked at the bottom rung of the diamond mining hierarchy in Kono. As many others, Bockarie eventually left mining to earn his living by other means: first as professional disco dancer in Sierra Leone, and then as a hairdresser in Abidjan, where he met a group of RUF recruits and decided to try his luck with them instead. There is little special about ‘Maskita’s’ background. In its seeming aimlessness and constraints, it is similar to many others who ended up as rebels or soldiers. It illustrates, however, that in countries like Sierra Leone, it is not only the state and its institutions that is damaged and broken by an increasingly dysfunctional system, but the inhabitants as well (Bøås 2007). Youth may be particularly susceptible to the deadening effect of exclusion from opportunities for advancement or change (Honwana and De Boeck 2005). Is it therefore so strange that, in rebellion, and facing stronger resistance than perhaps anticipated, these movements retard to the same practices witnessed and experienced by the participants in their formative years? In so doing, corrupting their ‘revolution’ and mirroring the dysfunctional patrimonial state they origin ally had rebelled against. As Foday Sankoh, leader of the RUF, said in 2000, ‘They ask us why we mine diamonds. Why didn’t they ask Jamil [Said Mohammed] or Shaki [Siaka Stevens] that when the [All Peoples Congress] was in power? Yeah, we mine! . . . We are not going to give up diamonds or our guns to anybody (cited in Reno 2003: 59)’.6 5
Social banditry and neopatrimonial structures The case of the Niger Delta rebellion illustrates this point from a slightly different angle – albeit with the hope that this rebellion may yet produce a different outcome than in Sierra Leone. However, this rebellion is even more embedded in a patrimonial structure than in Sierra Leone: all social relations between groups and interests in the Delta region revolve around oil and oil revenue. Despite mismanagement of oil resources, corruption, poverty, and mar ginalisation, some sort of order still prevails in the Delta (ICG 2006). This order enables oil production, but at a cost. Oil companies conduct their business in an uneasy co-habitation (or cooperation) with a range of actors, including rebel movements like the Movement for Emancipation in the Niger Delta (MEND), other armed factions, bandits, local politicians, private security companies, the
130 M. Bøås and K.M. Jennings Nigerian Army, and national politicians (Yates 2006; ICG 2006). Yet local com munities that receive few benefits from oil production – and struggle under the weight of poverty, underemployment, environmental problems, crime, and corruption – have fuelled a militant uprising that threatens both Nigeria’s oil production, and the country’s fragile democratic transition (see Omeje 2006; Kaldor and Said 2007). Over recent years, different insurgency groups have fought against the army, destroyed oil installations, taken oil company employees hostage, and carried out several car bombings (ICG 2006). After a recent wave of hostage taking in August 2006, President Olusegun Obasanjo threatened to crush by force the so-called ‘criminal elements’ in the Niger Delta. Thus far, the most tangible result is the razing of hundreds of slum houses in Port Harcourt, in proximity to where a soldier was killed during the kidnapping of foreign oil workers (BBC 2006a). Such heavy-handed tactics have been tried in the past: they did not produce the desired outcome then, nor is there reason to expect they will be effective now (Lindsay 2006). The growth of militias, whether defined as armed factions with a political agenda, bandits, or something in-between (e.g. social bandits), are a consequence of local grievances that must be addressed. Two aspects of the situation in the Niger Delta are noteworthy. First, there is little doubt that connections exist between militia groups and local political elites in the Delta. Indeed, one of MEND’s demands is the release of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a former Bayelsa State governor charged with corruption. The link between militia groups and political elites is also evident in the conduct of recent elections. The ‘convergence of militancy and politics (ICG 2006: 21)’ is not foreign to Nigerian elections. In the Delta, previous elections have featured the harassment of candidates and their supporters by armed groups, mainly consisting of young men, in the service of another candidate; and clashes between armed groups controlled by different political opponents. The second notable aspect of the Niger Delta rebellion is the degree to which young armed men wear different hats (BBC 2006b). Under the banner of MEND, they attack oil installations and take oil workers as hostages, in order to put forward political demands for increased regional autonomy and control of oil revenues. The same people also take hostages for local communities, as a means of addressing – or at least highlighting – local company-specific grievances. This was for instance the case with four sailors taken hostage in August 2006. The hostages were taken by a group of armed young men, who then handed them over to a local community that had grievances against a Nigerian oil company, Peak Petroleum.7 Both the original kidnapping and the subsequent holding and negotiations, although different in type and nature, could be considered political acts, stemming from legitimate grievances and demands. However, the same groups of men also take hostages purely for ransom, with no political pretence; and work as hired thugs for local strongmen and politicians, especially during election campaigns. Their roles and activities overlap. They are conducting an armed political insurgency, but also operating as bandits. The rebellion in the Niger Delta is thus both an attempt to address social injustice, but also a mode of production and a way to make a living. Whether the
Rebellion and warlordism 131 Niger Delta rebellion will continue to have a social profile or deteriorate solely into criminality remains to be seen. However, the way in which its participants are embedded in patrimonial clientelistic relationships with local strongmen, and the multitude of oil money and actors in the region, implies that those rebelling walk a fine line between ‘greed’ and ‘grievances’. If they overstep this boundary, they may turn what is a legitimate rebellion into a market-based entity operating in an downward-spiralling, dysfunctional patrimonial order. We concur with Fithen and Richards’s (2005) argument that, in the case of the RUF in Sierra Leone, a collapse into fatalistic violence, random killing, and profit- seeking warlordism could have been avoided if – rather than trying to deny the movement – more attention was paid to the underlying reasons for its existence. In the case of the Niger Delta, it is not foregone that MEND will take the path of the RUF. MEND has put forward legitimate political claims that should be taken ser iously, including their suggestion for negotiations on the distribution of oil rev enues, under the supervision of a neutral third party. If these claims are ignored or denied, there is every likelihood that the patrimonial politics in which the armed youth of MEND are implicated will come to dominate the movement – and it will end up as another perverted facsimile of the society it rebelled against.
Notes 1 Two exceptions are Clapham (1998) and Bøås and Dunn (2007). 2 Will Reno’s (1995, 1998, 2000) concept of the ‘shadow state’ in West and Central Africa is key in showing how shadow state structures come to characterise societies, as neopatrimonalism becomes the norm for socio-economic interaction between elites and counter-elites, as well between people of all classes and strata. 3 For a description of the living conditions of diamond miners in Kono District, see Bøås and Hatløy (2006). They also describe the ways in which young miners are discouraged from attempting to keep and market ‘their’ diamonds because they generally lack the contacts and knowledge necessary to sell the diamond at an advantageous price, and because they know that they would be vigorously pursued and punished were such activities to be discovered. 4 Parts of this section are adapted from Bøås and Hatløy (2006). 5 Hope followed by disappointment or desperation is not unique to miners in Sierra Leone. In De Boeck’s (1999) examination of the bana Lunda (young urban Zaireans that migrated to the Angolan province of Lunda Norte to mine diamonds), he describes how these youth migrate in order to try their luck and hope for a quick profit, and will go so far as self-mutilation (amputating fingers or pulling teeth) in order to lift the curse (mpiaka) preventing one from digging up any diamonds over a certain period of time. 6 Jamil Said Mohammed was a Sierra Leone-born Lebanese partner of Siaka Stevens, who took over the Government Diamond Office in the 1970s and, through this mech anism, controlled with Stevens a vast amount of diamond revenue. See Reno (2003). 7 Two Norwegian and two Ukrainian employees of Trico Supply AS were kidnapped off their ship. Trico Supply AS is a Norwegian affiliate of a US-based company, Trico Marine, which supplies marine support services to the oil and gas industry. The supply boat had been let by Peak Petroleum. The men were later set free, unharmed. See Bøås (2006a, 2006b), and author interview with the released Norwegian hostages.
9 The origins and meaning of Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon Chris Albin-Lackey
Médard’s portrayal of Kenya’s Charles Njonjo as a ‘big man’ has become inextric ably associated with his understanding of patronage and neopatrimonial govern ance in Africa (Médard 1987). Two and a half decades later, that categorization has been parsed into a series of variations that attempt to capture the many distinct and important elements of the broader theme. Not least among these has been the need to describe the use of violence as a political resource. Médard was aware of this issue when he suggested borrowing from debates on power and domination in New Guinea the distinction between ‘big men’, associated with the ability to redis tribute resources, and ‘strong men’, whose power was primarily sustained by the ability to instrumentalize violence and coercion (Médard 1982). It is, however, in Nigeria that these issues have become an emblematic feature, deeply engrained into the country’s return to ‘democracy’ since 1999. What has become known as political godfatherism refers, in Nigerian parlance, to individuals who are able to dominate public institutions by maneuvering their protégés into elected office and other important government positions (Ibrahim 2003). Godfathers are not mere financial sponsors of these officeholders; they succeed because of their ability to mobilize violence and corruption effectively enough to hobble any and all of their protégés’ would-be competitors while guaranteeing impunity for the numerous illegalities this entails (HRWA 2007a). It has been suggested that Nigeria’s godfathers might be thought of as a dis tinct outgrowth of the phenomenon of violent ‘strong men’ who have risen to challenge the dominance of the ‘big man’ in many parts of Africa: While the big man combines economic power with key political functions as broker in a neopatrimonial setting; the strongman does so through his ability to control ‘illicit’ forms of violence, if need be through the manipula tion of public means of coercion. The strong man may be a warlord or the boss of a gang; he may also be, as observed in Nigeria under the fourth republic, a rogue politician or his ‘godfather’. (Bach 2005: 67) Nigeria’s godfathers represent a phenomenon that is fundamentally distinct from the typical patterns of ‘big man’ and then ‘strong man’ politics dominant in
Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon 133 many parts of Africa since independence. Nigeria’s godfathers grew out of a framework similar to those that produced, and were then influenced by, ‘big men’ like Charles Njonjo in Kenya. But on the basis of research conducted in Nigeria during the past two years, the following pages argue that Nigeria’s present-day godfathers are fundamentally different creatures even from the ‘strong men’ who dominate government institutions in other contexts. Their rising power and influence have also increasingly pushed Nigeria’s polity in uncharted new directions. Since 1999, the public institutions of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have become increasingly dominated by patterns of uncontrolled criminal activity that have subsumed many of the legitimate aims of government.1 The result is an undemo cratic and often violent perversion of the country’s federal ideals.2 Nigeria’s political system is not authoritarian in the traditional sense of the word. It more closely resembles an ‘electoral autocracy’ (Schedler 2006) where a formal emphasis on elections purports to mask the absence of real accountabil ity and the continuing importance of elite-centered patronage politics. Federal ism remains the intellectual core of Nigeria’s political system. But on the ground Nigerian federalism has degenerated into a structure that simply accommodates a multiplicity of decentralized and lawless political spaces – its 36 states and 774 local governments, along with smaller patches of political turf that are not for mally delineated.3 The fundamental character of Nigeria’s current political configuration has both created and is reflected in the power, the actions and the proliferation of political godfathers within the country. These godfather’s ‘politics’ focus nar rowly around personalized control and enjoyment of some portion of the ‘national cake’ – that is, straightforward access to Nigeria’s oil revenues rather than any broader attempt at establishing political hegemony. While the typical conception of political clientelism implies that the more powerful of two actors provides the lesser powerful with material rewards in exchange for political power (Eisenstadt and Lemarchand 1981), the godfather– protégé relationship postulates the opposite. Nigeria’s political godfathers have no interest in occupying the public offices: they work to dominate these by proxy by filling them with protégés who would be incapable of winning office on their own. Their behavior reflects a perception that government institutions matter only as investments that can yield greater personal wealth and power; it is also assumed that the institutions concerned can be effectively dominated from the outside. Godfathers demand regular financial ‘returns’ from those they install into positions of public confidence. Those returns take the form of money stolen from public coffers by political officeholders – generally either directly or through the awarding of phantom or grossly inflated government contracts – and handed over to the godfathers. Godfathers also typically demand the power to control appointments to government positions that fall within formal remit of their pro tégés and to ensure that many lucrative contracts are awarded to individuals of their choosing. In effect, godfathers appropriate their sponsored officeholders’
134 C. Albin-Lackey ability to dispense patronage as their own and in doing so create still more pro tégés who are each sources of additional financial returns to the godfather. The phenomenon is perhaps most pronounced at the state and local levels in Niger ia’s three-tiered system of federalism. Godfathers in Nigeria are also unique in that their relevance and power derives entirely from their proficiency in criminal activity. Godfathers finance gangs of political thugs to rig elections and bribe government and police officials who could stand in the way of their protégés’ success. By doing this they place the politicians they sponsor in a permanent state of debt, and ensure that those debts are repaid with the credible threat of unleashing violence or other forms of criminal retribu tion against recalcitrant debtor politicians. That government revenues are lucrative enough to be worth fighting for in such brutal fashion is testament to the scale of Nigeria’s centralized stream of government oil revenues and to the weakness of all other sectors of its economy (Lewis 2004; Rotberg 2004).
Portraits of two godfathers It is perhaps easiest to understand Nigeria’s godfather phenomenon – and the degree to which those godfathers reflect a broader criminalization of politics in Nigeria – by discussing individual examples in some detail. The following pages will discuss two of Nigeria’s best-known political godfathers – Chief Lamidi Adedibu of Nigeria’s southwestern Oyo State and Chris Uba of Anambra State in Nigeria’s southeast. The emphasis will be on the role of both men in politics under the Fourth Republic rather than on presenting their biographies. In the case of Adedibu, there has been at least one recent attempt to lay out in more detail his origins and history (Obadare 2007). Both Adedibu and Uba were interviewed by this author in 2007 for research that focused partly on the pervasive human rights abuses generated by the activities of both men (HRW 2007a). Except where otherwise indicated, most of the information below is drawn from that research. Lamidi Adedibu Lamidi Adedibu claimed to have been involved in politics in southwestern Nigeria since 1951, nine years before Nigeria’s independence. Initially and as a much younger man, he is widely described as having worked primarily as a local organizer of political thugs for Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group (AG). After the death of Awolowo in 1987, Adedibu successfully worked himself into a much more prominent political position.4 By the time of Nigeria’s return to civil ian rule in 1999, he had already handpicked and tightly controlled at least one past Governor of Oyo State, Kolapo Ishola.5 From 1999 until his death in 2008, Adedibu did much more than simply retain his prominence as a political power broker in Oyo State. By all appearances his power and relevance both increased under Nigeria’s nominally democratic gov ernment, along with his ability to mobilize violence, corruption and other illegal
Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon 135 modes of political competition with complete impunity. He became one of the iconic examples of the godfather phenomenon under Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. Adedibu openly flauted his political power; in one television interview he casually asserted that, ‘I have the last say on political decisions in Oyo State today.’ In another interview with Human Rights Watch he similarly stated that ‘I sponsor them, all of the politicians.’ Nor have the ‘sponsored’ politicians denied this. Former Oyo State Governor Christopher Alao-Akala acknowledged that ‘Chief Adedibu has sponsored everybody. Everybody who is who and who in Oyo State politics has passed through [his house].’ Akala is a longtime protégé of Adedibu’s. As Adedibu tells the story, ‘I sponsored him to become chairman of his local government council. At the end of his time, I said it is better to become deputy governor.’ And so it was. Akala became deputy governor to PDP Governor Rashidi Ladoja after the 2003 elections that brought the latter to power; the polls were blatantly rigged throughout Nigeria.6 Adedibu’s political power did not by itself make him emblematic of the god father syndrome. The way he secured power and enforced loyalty among his protégés is equally crucial. Adedibu was a very blunt player, relying primarily on a capacity to mobilize violence on demand to assert political relevance and ensure the political loyalty of Oyo politicians. The predominant reservoir of political thugs in Oyo State is the state’s chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW). Oyo’s NURTW chapter is dominated by violent motor park ‘touts’ with no legitimate employment, as opposed to the drivers and others who make up most of the Union’s membership in some other parts of the country. Before 2003 Adedibu maneuvered another of his protégés, Latif Akin sola – popularly known as ‘Tokyo’ – into the position of chairman of Oyo’s chapter of NURTW. Through Tokyo and through Adedibu’s regular dispensa tion of petty cash and food to a core group of NURTW members, Adedibu for years had the ability to mobilize large-scale violence with little difficulty. Adedibu did not hesitate to put his power to effective use. The candidate he successfully supported for Governorship in 2003 under the PDP ticket, Rashidi Ladoja, attempted to break free of Adedibu’s control almost immediately after assuming office. Ladoja alleges that Adedibu demanded huge cash payments in money stolen from the state treasury; the right to dispense appointments to Ladoja’s cabinet to cronies of Adedibu; and the right to channel lucrative gov ernment contracts to himself and those close to him in order to embezzle most of the money involved. Ladoja’s Government charged Tokyo with murder and imprisoned him without bail to try and partially break Adedibu’s power, and installed one of his own supporters in his place as NURTW Chairman. Adedibu, for his part, consistently referred to Ladoja as an ‘ingrate’. Adedibu showed no restraint in fighting to re-establish his control over the state government. In 2005 Adedibu even arranged for his supporters in the Oyo state legislature – 18 out of 32 members – to launch an attempt to impeach Governor Ladoja. Ladoja and his followers in the assembly allege that the pro-impeachment camp was largely bribed, blackmailed or otherwise beholden to Adedibu.
136 C. Albin-Lackey The impeachment saga deeply split the Oyo State House of Assembly and led to widespread violence as pro-Ladoja legislators tried to prevent the vote. At one point a pro-Adedibu legislator stabbed one of his colleagues from across the aisle on the floor of the House. When the vote to constitute a panel of inquiry that ultimately led to Ladoja’s impeachment was finally held, it was preceeded by a gun battle between supporters of the two rival camps and was followed by an attack by pro-Adedibu thugs who ransacked Government House and destroyed Ladoja’s office. In the end, Ladoja was briefly removed from office in 2006, but he was to be soon reinstated because the vote against him failed to satisfy the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority vote of the state legislature. From then on Adedibu took his battle against Ladoja to the streets. With Nigeria’s 2007 elections approaching, Ladoja sought the PDP’s nomi nation for a second term, while Adedibu sought to displace him in favor of Deputy Governor Akala. Both sides mobilized rival factions of NURTW, along with other gangs of thugs, to battle with one another in the streets. Pro-Ladoja NURTW leader Tawa took up residence in the same compound as the Gover nor’s official residence.7 The war between Adedibu and the Governor came to a head in February 2007 in the town of Akure in neighboring Ondo State, when the PDP formally invested Akala with the gubernatorial nomination. Bloody clashes immediately broke out between armed supporters of both sides, claiming at least four lives. Once Ladoja was out of the way, Adedibu, along with the machinery of the Oyo PDP, easily managed to force Akala into office at the April 2007 polls. Interna tional and domestic election observers reported widespread rigging and intimi dation as gangs of NURTW thugs assaulted voters and opposition supporters while attacking polling centers to steal ballot boxes in many areas. Adedibu’s position in Oyo State remained as strong as ever. Indeed, Governor Akala showed every sign of remaining loyal to his benefactor. Most of what Adedibu did to retain his grip over Oyo state after 2003 was in clear violation of the law. Far from being pursued by the police, Adedibu had a detail of Mobile Police Officers permanently attached to him for his protection. When Adedibu was publicly discovered to have illegally induced electoral officials to provide him with six voter registration machines for his personal use, the police refused even to investigate the crime, which carries a prison sentence of one year under Nigeria’s electoral law. There has also been no hint of police investigation into Adedibu’s open sponsorship of political violence against Ladoja’s supporters before and during the 2007 elections. There was no police or federal government response to curb the activities of NURTW gangs linked to Akala and Adedibu. These kept staging bloody attacks on supporters of Ladoja – including Tawa, Ladoja’s former NURTW protégé – and well as on ordinary civilians. Despite Adedibu’s central and notorious association with violence, corruption and other violations of the law, he was treated by those in power with respect and as a legitimate player in the political process. Adedibu enjoyed access to the corridors of power far beyond his own state. Throughout the period of the
Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon 137 Obasanjo Administration Adedibu secured regular meetings with the President, who treated him as a partner in realizing the PDP’s ambitions in Oyo. Former PDP Chairman Ahmadu Ali once referred to Oyo State as a ‘garrison’ and to Adedibu as its ‘Commander’. Nor was his position shaken after Obasanjo left office: when the head of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food, Drug Administra tion and Control (NAFDAC) was accusing Adedibu of marketing counterfeit medicines in October 2007, Oyo’s Commissioner of Police responded by pub licly denouncing the NAFDAC boss.8 Six months after leaving power, Obasanjo stirred up controversy by publicly referring to Adedibu as the ‘father of the PDP’.9 Adedibu died in June 2008 at the approximate age of 80 (though it is possible that no one other than Adedibu himself knew his true age). His death attracted comment from across Nigeria and from nearly every segment of the public. Many commentators expressed relief and satisfaction that he had faded from the scene. One columnist wrote: Adedibu is gone. We should probably not rejoice at the death of a fellow human being, but we are certainly relieved to hear the exit of such a rascal who ensured that democracy made no progress during his days. May he never have successors. And may all like him, who have been holding this nation to ransom, follow him to wherever he has gone. Nigeria will defi nitely be a happier place without them. (Sam Nda-Isaiah, June 16, 2008) The reaction of Nigeria’s political elite, however, was for the most part entirely different. There is perhaps no better testimonial to the central role men like Adedibu have played in shaping Nigeria’s political trajectory than the emo tional testimonials leading politicians paid him after his death. The PDP called on Nigerians to partake in seven days of mourning to mark his death.10 Major newspapers were filled with paid, full-page advertisements lamenting his passing. Former president Obasanjo called Adedibu’s death ‘the end of an era’ and declared that ‘nobody can replace him’; Obasanjo said that Adedibu had called him to say hello just two days before he died (Jide Ajani and Ola Ajayi 2008). A spokesman for the Nigerian Senate said that, ‘We [the Senate] mourn his departure and hope that all and sundry would have profited one way or the other from his life style giving freely to the needy and placing the welfare of his followers above every consideration.’11 But perhaps the most interesting reaction was that of Adedibu’s protégé Alao-Akala. ‘I am a lucky one’, the Governor said. ‘With the tutorial I had from Baba, I can deal with anybody.’12 Chris Uba Chris Uba is a political godfather just as famous and notorious across Nigeria as Chief Adedibu of Oyo State. Uba reached the apex of his power in 2003, when he ‘sponsored’ and helped rig into office PDP candidates for elective offices
138 C. Albin-Lackey across the state, including then-Governor Chris Ngige. After those polls Uba publicly referred to himself as ‘the greatest godfather in Nigeria’ while describ ing his achievement as ‘the first time an individual single-handedly put into posi tion every politician in the state’ (Ibrahim 2003). Chris Ngige became Governor of Anambra State through rigged elections with Uba’s backing in 2003. He had been compelled to sign away much of his power to Uba in return for his support. The arrangement between the two men was spelled out in remarkably clear terms in a written ‘contract’ and ‘declaration of loyalty’ signed by both of them and seen by this author.13 Under the agreement, Governor Ngige swore ‘absolute loyalty’ to Chris Uba and agreed to allow Uba control over appointments to important government positions including the Governor’s cabinet; the awarding of all government contracts; and other important decisions. As in the case of Adedibu in Oyo State, the violence associated with Uba’s sway over Anambra politics would come to light in a very public fashion once the man he helped install as Governor tried to break free of his influence. Ngige and Uba give differing accounts as to the reason for their falling out shortly after Ngige’s inauguration. While Uba has denied making any explicit demands for financial compensation beyond the right to appropriate and apportion lucrative government contracts, Ngige claims that money was at the heart of their dispute. Uba, according to him, kept making ‘personal demands that I go to the treasury, take money and give it to him,’ almost from the moment he was elected. Shortly before his inauguration as Governor, Ngige also claims that armed men broke into his home and forced him at gunpoint to sign a pledge stating he would pay Chris Uba N3 billion from state government funds. Uba has denied this, but acknowledges that Ngige’s attempt to assert independence was at the heart of their dispute. His position is that Ngige broke the terms of their agree ment and did not give Uba the returns he was entitled to for securing Ngige access to office in the first place. In an interview at his luxurious home in Enugu, Uba said that: The Governor was trying to be smart, trying to run the government on his own. . . . The problem is Ngige being a politician who did not invest one Naira, not even one kobo, wanted to run away with everything and not even share one appointment. Uba’s attempts to reassert control over the political empire he thought he had anchored through Ngige’s election took a violent turn, comparable in several respects to what transpired in Oyo. In 2003, Governor Ngige was kidnapped, alleg edly by armed policemen, and forced to sign a ‘letter of resignation’ at gunpoint. Ngige alleges Uba was behind this. The state legislature, packed with Uba’s sup porters, accepted Ngige’s resignation despite the circumstances under which it had been obtained. As one legislator put it later, most lawmakers including himself were then ‘in bondage’ to Uba. The courts, however, quickly overturned the move. Faced with that reversal in the courts, Uba resorted to even more violent tactics. In 2004 a large gang of armed thugs attacked State government buildings
Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon 139 including Government House itself, burning part of it to the ground. The police stood aside and watched as this took place – 24 people were also killed in the crossfire. Governor Ngige, like most of Nigerian civil society and the press, accuses Uba of having orchestrated the attack, pointing to the refusal of the police to intervene as evidence of his involvement. The feud between Uba and Ngige came to a sudden end in March 2006, as a Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the 2003 polls that had brought Ngige to power were so pervasively rigged that their results should be overturned. Ngige left office, and his opponent in those elections, Peter Obi of the opposition All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) took his place. Ngige’s departure arguably left Uba in no worse of a position since he had long since lost any influence over the Governor. Later during the same year Chris Uba’s power and ambitions suffered a dev astating blow as he was forced aside by his more powerful brother Andy Uba.14 Andy Uba had secured the PDP nomination for Governor in 2007 with the powerful backing of the Presidency in Abuja, and he pursued that ambition by pushing his brother aside to take control of Anambra’s politics himself. Andy forced out the entire leadership of the Anambra State PDP, which had been com posed of Chris Uba loyalists, while Chris was out of Nigeria on vacation. Chris Uba described this move as a ‘coup,’ and Andy Uba then successfully and quickly marginalized Chris Uba from the political scene altogether. Chris Uba’s already-waning influence over the state legislature continued to dwindle, and he largely faded from the forefront of the political scene. Andy Uba won the PDP nomination as well as the April election, which was rigged on a level that exceeded even the dismal nationwide norm in electoral authorities’ brazen manipulation of the process. Chris Uba suffered what was perhaps his greatest humiliation around the days of the elections, when he was detained in a prison cell in Abuja for two days for fear that he would disrupt the election. Andy Uba’s ambitions were also ultimately reversed. While he had been triumphantly elected in Anambra through rigged elections, days after he assumed office Nigeria’s Supreme Court ruled that the elections should never have been held in the first place because Governor Obi had not had the chance to serve out his full four-year term. Chris Uba’s own power over Anambra State had largely evaporated by the time these events had run their course, but he did not fall to any great depth. After the 2007 elections he remained a member of the PDP’s national board of trustees, and the thought of prosecuting or even investigating him for the numer ous violent abuses and acts of corruption attributed to him and those around him was not seriously broached in any government circles.
The bigger picture Adedibu and Uba are both exaggerated figures and the scale of their excesses and political achievements is not ‘typical’ of Nigeria’s political elite. But their actions and manner of influencing events around them help to illustrate the ele ments of godfatherism as an idiosyncratic phenomenon. Most godfathers in
140 C. Albin-Lackey Nigeria are far less famous and flamboyant than Uba and Adedibu, but they all share some basic characteristics in common. What caracterizes a godfather is his (or her, in the cases of at least a few ‘godmothers’) ability to establish control, through violence and corruption, over resources that flow from political offices that he does not hold himself. Some godfathers once held public office themselves, and seek to control their successors after hand-picking them and helping to rig them into their position. During the run-up to the 2007 elections several former governors, having served the two terms the Nigerian Constitution limits them to, were widely accused of attempting to position themselves as ‘godfathers’ to their successors. Critics of former (and notoriously corrupt) governors such as Peter Odili of Rivers State and James Ibori of Delta State have accused them of falling into this category. In their cases, motivations would include not only retaining access to and control over opportunities for patronage, but also a desire to avoid criminal investigations over abuses committed during their own terms in office. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo himself has been accused of attempting to turn himself into an extremely powerful godfather to his successor, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua-Obasanjo hand-picked Yar’Adua, oversaw the deeply flawed election that installed him into office, and ensconced himself as chairman of the PDP’s powerful Board of Trustees. It is impossible to ascertain whether the motives imputed to Obasanjo, Odili, Ibori and other former officials are real. But given the nature of Nigeria’s political system since 1999, it is not hard to under stand why so many Nigerians find the allegations credible. In other circumstances, godfathers themselves occupy positions in govern ment – and leverage the power and resources of those offices to install protégés into positions that their own offices lend them no formal control over. They then demand returns from those protégés in the same manner as any other godfather. For example, Rivers State’s Commissioner of Sport up until the 2007 election is widely understood to have used his influence and access to government revenue to install a notoriously violent protégé as chairman of his home local govern ment, Etche. In return, he is alleged to have claimed regular financial returns from the local government’s monthly allocation of revenues. At the time, Etche’s administration was indeed deeply mired in corruption and mismanagement that crippled basic services in the local government, though it was impossible to ascertain precisely what had become of its substantial revenues (HRWA 2007b). The pervasive spread of political godfatherism in Nigeria is a unique phenom enon, critically linked, this author would like to conclude, to the evolution of the country’s federal system of government In many other African states, struggles for political control focus on the center, but in Nigeria the most competitive and vicious political struggles often unfold at the state and local level. Federalism in the context of Nigeria’s corrupt and criminalized system of governance has decentralized billions of dollars in revenue to 774 separate state and local gov ernment administrations, most of them open to capture by the most powerful local political entrepreneur. It is that multiplicity of undemocratic political spaces – none of them of any direct personal interest to the politicians who
Nigeria’s ‘godfatherism’ phenomenon 141 control the center – that allows Nigeria’s proliferation of godfathers to succeed individually while co-existing with one another. Godfatherism is closely entangled with Nigeria’s corrupt and violent brand of politics. The mere existence of Nigeria’s godfathers is a remarkable statement about the nature of the Fourth Republic, since their influence is premised on an ability to participate in violence, corruption and other criminal activity openly and with complete impunity – without the shield of any public office to protect them from the law. The components associated with creating and securing a god father’s position – along with their rewards – are all illegal, yet there has not been a single reported case of a godfather at any level who was prosecuted for his crimes between 1999 and 2011. This reflects the systemic impunity that gave rise to the phenomenon of godfathers to begin with and has helped entrench viol ence and corruption in Nigerian politics.
Notes 1 ‘Criminal activity’ is a broad term, as it must be to encompass the range of criminal offenses committed by public officials in Nigeria. Here, the term is intended in the most expansive possible sense, encompassing any serious violation of Nigerian crimi nal law from electoral fraud to corruption to assault and murder. 2 For a discussion of how this trend manifested itself in the run-up to Nigeria’s 2007 elections (see HRWA 2007a, 2007b). The criminalization of politics in Nigeria has led to considerable disillusionment with the country’s nominally democratic system of government. A 2007 survey found that just eight years after the end of military rule, only 36 percent of Nigerians had a positive view of democracy in their country (Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007). 3 For a broader discussion of the decline of government institutions in Nigeria since independence and the corresponding rise in political violence and corruption, see Eghosa E. Osaghae 1998. 4 Adedibu’s rise to political prominence is discussed in detail in Obadare (2007, op. cit.). 5 Ishola served during the brief civilian interlude that accompanied the abortive ‘trans ition’ initiated (and later derailed) by Ibrahim Babangida in 1992. Ishola himself, in an interview at Adedibu’s home in Ibadan, confirmed that ‘When I was governor, Adedibu was supposed to have been banned [from politics] by the military, but nearly all of us came secretly to seek his support.’ 6 European Electoral Observation Mission (EUEOM) in Nigeria, 2007a; and 2007b. 7 Several NURTW members were shot and wounded by members of their opposing factions in the period leading up to the elections. 8 Vanguard, October 31, 2007. 9 This Day, November 21, 2007. 10 ‘PDP Declares 7 Days of Mourning,’ This Day, June 12, 2008. 11 Sufuyan Ojeifo, June 12, 2008. 12 ThisDay, June 19, 2008. 13 Portions of the contract are also reprinted as an annex in Human Rights Watch, Octo ber 2007. 14 The three Uba brothers have all ranked among the most powerful political figures from their native Anambra State since 1999. Ugochukwu Uba served as a Senator until 2007, while A. Uba served as Special Advisor to President Obasanjo for nearly the entirety of his eight-year tenure and was then widely and only half-jokingly referred to as ‘godfather to the whole of Nigeria’.
10 Monitoring the neopatrimonial state on a day-to-day basis Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger Mahaman Tidjani Alou It was not without much hesitation that, in the early 1980s, the state of Niger started to promote macro-economic reform policies under the aegis of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF ). In response to the financial crisis ignited by the slump in revenue from the uranium rent (Guillaumont and Guillaumont 1991; Woba 2002), many measures were taken to liberalize the economy and better mobilize national resources. This implied first the broadening of the fiscal base through more efficient tax collection and a reduction of the informal economic space, that is to say the section of the economy still ‘untamed’ by the state. Other measures were aimed at increasing customs revenue through the partial privatization of customs services, which were partly devolved, in 1997, to COTECNA, a Swiss-based multi national, responsible for the control and verification of the value of imported goods.1 However, with regard to that specific aspect of the government’s pol icies, the record shows that a great number of business people stuck to informal networks and not felt the need to formalize their commercial activities, or even pay the duties carried by international transactions. This situation has brought about scores of practices aimed at dodging or evading the state. The state has thus become, in a sense, a third party, excluded from many of the transactions occurring on its territory, at the expense of the rules that it has established. The fields of expression of neopatrimonialism in Niger are therefore many and host a great variety of players. However, my goal here is not to study the neopatrimonial state from a general perspective concentrating on the behavior of politicians in the everyday management of power, but rather to examine the middle-range levels of power, which have more to do with the action of its agents in their relationships with public service consumers (Darbon 2001; Copans 2001; Olivier de Sardan 2001). Therefore, I will specially focus on interface bureaucracies (Lipsky 1980; Dubois 2003; Jeannot 1998). I have chosen to explore the economic terrain, focussing in particular on mercantile activities and the processes they generate through their many interactions with certain state administrations, especially the customs administration. Merchants and customs officers are therefore the two key elements of observation of neopatrimonial practices within the state. In that respect corruption-based relationships are
Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger 143 considered as topical areas to observe certain modes of patrimonialism as they express themselves in Niger. This configuration involves the state, which appears as an omnipresent actor. It chiefly takes shape through the rules that it establishes. These rules give an abstract and disembodied image of the state while they symbolize it and bestow on it some permanence beyond the people who apply these rules. Customs officers make up an entire state organization, shaped by a unique history (Chalfin 2006). They may be said to be the state objectivized in a specific domain of activity; on the other hand, merchants are just one category of consumers for that administration. For customs officers and merchant circles, the relationship with the state is a central concern. The state’s situation is all the more paradoxical since it has played a key role in the structuring of merchant circles (Amselle and Grégoire 1987; Grégoire and Labazée 1993; Fauré and Médard 1982). Political power holders are directly involved in the emergence of large traders who, in turn, significantly contribute to financing the activities of incumbent political par ties. In fact, large traders hold the regional directorship of most of the major parties – a choice that is not accidental. It is part of the patrimonialization of parties. Moreover, the Nigerien state also draws significant revenue from collecting customs duties, which make customs officers a key tool of Niger’s eco nomic policy. When they collect them through the taxation de porte (imports taxation)2 bearing on merchandise entering the Nigerien territory, customs officers work in the name of the state, put on all the official state finery and identify with it in order to enforce their power through their function. While official discourse presents them as accredited state officials, they are in fact widely perceived as working for themselves, owing to the fact that they charge consumers in return for relief in the execution of the rules regulating their activities (Tidjani Alou 2001: 11–20). Indeed, customs officers possess comparatively large elbow room, which opens up genuine opportunities for auto nomous actions. As a result, the officers often do work for themselves, which turns their profession into a rentier occupation. The traders who form what I call here the merchant circles often seek to use the officers, or bypass them, in order to minimize the costs incurred by border crossing for their merchandise. They want to find means of evading state regulations, through, if need be, the subjection of state agents (build-up of personal networks within public administrations), or at least through one-time settlements made outside of any legal framework. There is here a very clear dissociation between the state and its functionaries. In essence, customs officers assume state prerogatives which they subvert to their personal advantage (Olivier de Sardan 2001). Thus, they turn their position as public agents into a way of creating a profitable situation at the expense of the state. This is made possible by the collusion between customs officers who are appointed to ‘juicy positions’ often in relation to their political color, and large traders with strong political orientations. From that perspective, it becomes possible to analyse the corrupt practices of customs officers in their relationships with consumers, more specifically, mer-
144 M. Tijani Alou chants, as a fertile turf to identify and understand patrimonialization practices within Niger’s state bureaucracies. In the following pages, I will first discuss how borders constitute the privileged terrains in which opportunities for bypassing the state occur. I will then look at some corruption practices that are specific to customs and which can be analysed as fields of expression of neopatrimonialism. A final aspect of this work will help determine the corruption mechanisms which emerge in the relationships between customs officers and merchants, and which shed light on the way the neopatrimonial state functions in this particular sector. This analytical progression will help us highlight the impotence of the state, confronted with the neopatrimonial practices of the very actors who operate and embody it.
Customs posts and boundary-lines as sites for bypassing the state The customs administration is first and foremost a segment of the Nigerien state, although it is only active at the country’s borders. Customs is certainly not the only state administration present in those areas, but it holds a predominant position, especially with respect to the import of merchandise. In fact, customs officers were called garde-frontières (‘border guards’) when the corps was created in the early twentieth century. The name douanier (‘customs officer’) came into use later. Today, the administration is one of the oldest state organizations. Indeed, the establishment of a customs regime in Niger dates back to November 1913, even though it was suppressed in 1918 and finally reinstated in 1938 (Idrissa 1998: 132). The customs administration appeared therefore from the start as a strong symbol of the colonial state in its dominating actions and undertakings.3 In effect, Customs was, from its earliest moment of activity, conceived of as a surveillance administration,4 and perceived by the populace as an exploitative, racketeering body serving the colonial powers. These images persist in a landlocked country where Customs has long been the main revenue for the state. The exploitation of uranium resources in the 1970s reduced the position of this administration as the primary budget provider. But with the dwindling of the uranium rent, Customs very much regained its former rank and it unquestionably now holds a prime position in the state’s policy of internal resource mobilization. Between 1995 and 1998, customs revenue increased from 29.3 billion CFA francs to 55.8 billion CFA francs accounting for more than 40 percent of the internal resources of the national budget.5 Moreover, in a structural adjustment context, Customs, as has been shown, at the heart of the state’s eco nomic and financial policy. The customs administration of Niger is today staffed by about 1,000 agents6 of all ranks, positioned throughout the territory, more particularly at the borders and along the country’s highways. The administration seems to be well regulated and organized. Furthermore, it operates in a way similar to that of a
Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger 145 modern private corporation. At the beginning of the year, the state sets object ives that must be achieved in terms of fiscal revenue production. The general manager (or general director) of the customs administration makes every effort to reach those objectives, since they are the key to measure his aptitudes and efficiency. He, in turn, uses the same criterion for assessing office managers and overseers working under his authority. In an attempt to give them the right incentives and protect their integrity, customs officers receive monthly efficiency bonuses (extra legal taxes or TEL) as well as a discount taken on the litigation files that they process. Yet despite all the measures set up by the state, the customs sphere remains an ideal site to observe state bypassing practices. Such practices occur through the personalized relationships that develop between customs officers and merchant circles. One of the most striking features of the Nigerien merchant circles is their heterogeneity. The merchants who symbolize them can be described through a variety of figures. The classic figure of the trader is well known. He is illiterate and works in the informal sector. He handles a great amount of business activ ities that may range from the transportation of goods and merchandise to undifferentiated rentier investments. He runs his ventures with no formal accounting system and likes to indulge in ostentatious behavior. In his noted work on the Alhazai of Maradi, Emmanuel Grégoire attempted to reconstruct the progressive shaping of the profession by distinguishing three successive stages: an early one in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, which saw the emergence of merchants with limited commercial stature, who mainly traded a variety of products (garments, kola) that they brought from Kano, where they would sell cattle, hide and skin. This was followed by a second period, spanning the colonial era, in which new traders rose thanks to their role as middlemen between European commercial houses and local producers and consumers. In E. Grégoire’s view, this group benefited not only from the post-1945 trading economy, notably with the expansion of groundnut production and the organization of transport, but also from the coming of manufactured products. The group also benefited from the support of the Nigerien state, which propped up their rise after the European commercial houses closed. A third stage saw the emergence of a newer generation of traders, far more modernist and enterprising in outlook, investing in real estate, transportation and even industry. They were able to build useful connections with the existing banking system and with trading networks that went beyond the regional level.7 Since then, new networks have stemmed from the policy of privatization and the promotion of the private sector. The policy is part and parcel of the structural adjustment programs (various measures favoring the creation of small businesses) and is tied to the opening of markets in a globalizing world. To the older figures, should be added another category marked by different characteristics (Tidjani Alou 2004). The emergence of these new traders in the market is recent but overwhelming. They compete for the capture of public markets and in their ability to supply them at lower prices, through, if need be, dodging or ‘negotiating’ with the customs.
146 M. Tijani Alou
A small inventory of corruption and evasion practices Corruption practices are key areas to identify the figures of neopatrimonialism in Niger. On the one hand these practices stress the fact that the state is bypassed by its own agents as well as by public service consumers. On the other hand, the magnitude taken by the practice of lump sum clearance uncovers processes of negotiations which bring together customs officers and traders at the expense of the state funds. Bypassing the state In its official discourse, the customs administration describes fraud as ‘a gangrene undermining Nigerien economy.’ It affects a variety of products, such as printed cloth, garments, tea, cigarettes, hydrocarbons, music players, etc., which reach the market without being subjected to the required customs procedures. The idea is to evade customs regulations by going through two possible channels. Firstly, customs posts and offices can be circumvented. Here, the strategy is not so much to bribe customs officers as to bypass them, and to elude the circuits that are covered by their services as much as possible. Secondly, attempts can be made to ‘shut the eyes’ of customs officers and buy their silence, so to speak. Such practices are common and hard to tackle owing to the institutionalization of fraud networks uniting a broad variety of actors: the customs officers themselves, but also the population which takes advantage of the development of ‘informal free zones’ tolerated by the state. The permeability of Niger’s borders, notably those with its first economic partner, Nigeria, probably explains the scale of these practices. Their origins are old. For historians, they reach back to the early colonial era. Between 1914 and 1918, fraud practices seem to have led to the establishment of the first temporary border monitoring posts (Idrissa 1998: 175). But fraud was not halted, and has now extended to all the regions of the country. In addition, ‘at the beginning smuggling was a night affair, but today, with technological evolution, it occurs at any time, day and night.’8 It even seems to have developed into a culture: When you take the example of a mobile brigade hunting down a smuggler, well, you know very well that the main predicament of the country is the informal stuff. Well, now, when a brigade hunts down a smuggler in a village or even a town, automatically we see the people forgetting that the customs officers are here to work for the country, for everyone. Instead of lending a hand, the first move is to assist the fraudster so that he may run away, and escape the customs officers, you see. (A customs officer working in Niamey) The fight against fraud and smuggling, to which public authorities increasingly pay attention,9 is seen as ‘the appropriate way to guarantee effective protection of the national production against unfair competition’.10 It is also seen as
Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger 147 a key instrument for ‘mobilizing revenue, safeguarding the interests of the fiscal system and of economic activity’.11 Many explain the persistence of fraud and smuggling through customs overtaxing and the ability of fraudsters to establish numerous linkages, even within the customs administration itself. Negotiating with the state: lump sum clearance Customs clearance is based on the collection of a specific tax which, in order to be effective, demands that customs officers systematically check all imported merchandise.12 The operation implies a detailed identification (number, quality and value) in order to determine the appropriate level of taxation. The job is therefore simple – applying the existing regulation. The customs officer’s task is to verify and validate the work of the transit agent. This is tedious, time- consuming work. A transit agent explains that a file must go through several stages: 1) Head of the office, 2) eligibility (verification of documents) 3) registration (computing) 4) distribution (identification of the agent to whom the file is addressed) 5) verification, 6) discharging, 7) clearance. This circuit could take just about two hours, but the customs officer has the legal right to keep a file with him for 48 hours. So in fact the time-length of the circuit depends on the generosity of the transit agent or of the customer himself, that is, it is dependent on his ability to pump money into the circuit and thus accelerate the processing of his file. (A transit agent) Traders are often in a hurry to complete the clearance formalities for their merchandise. The practice of lump sum clearance partly derives from the dis cretionary power of the customs officer in the assessment of any given amount of goods and of their quality and value. For merchandise imported from Europe and subjected to the Inspection and Verification Program set up by COTECNA, the customs officer does not have much leeway. But with regards to all other merchandise, he can play on the loopholes in juridical norms in order to legally reduce customs duties; he can also choose to apply, illegally, a flat rate to issue clearance on merchandise whose value he does not know. That is one of the best strategies for those who indulge in corruption practices. The idea is to issue clearance at the expense of state duties and receive in exchange a payment that can be negotiated as to its amount and nature. These very common practices favor large scale complicities between customs officers and traders. The emblematical case of the transit convoys The case of the transit convoys (Tidjani Alou 2004) aptly illustrates the collusion that exists de facto between customs officers and certain traders. Convoys
148 M. Tijani Alou reveal a strategy set up by businessmen with a view to evading the new regulations that result from the Nigerien state’s implementation of structural adjustment measures.13 They are of course not the only identifiable merchant strategy. But it is possible to see them as a peculiar case due to its nature and con sequences. What is a convoy? It is not a procession of heavy trucks or trailer trucks carrying imported goods; neither is it one of those endless lines of imported cars which leave the port of Cotonou to head towards Niger or Nigeria. The convoy, as presented here, is not a formal organization, but rather some traders’ mutualization of the expenses connected to the transportation and clearance of their imported merchandise. This merchandise is extremely diversified and reveals a very active and profitable business. As shown by Karine Bennafla in the case of Chad (1997; 2000) the business is related to products imported from Asia and Europe: garments and rugs from the East, gold jewellery, tableware, hi-fi and household appliances, Japanese cars, and auto parts. There are also all sorts of hardware, including personal computers, furniture, ironmongery, etc. All of this merchandise is sold on local markets and the very competitive prices help traders fulfil the public contracts that they secure. As a matter of fact, the convoys in their daily operation create forms of soci ability that are strongly personalized, as they are directly rooted into the pre- existing socio-cultural relationships. In their outward structure, convoys factor in values such as seniority, anteriority in the profession or personal relationships, hence the importance of the social capital accumulated by actors over their trading career. Whereas the state prescribes general and impersonal rules, the convoy system works out alternative strategies that focus on the actors and their networks, and favors a code of behavior based on personal relationships at the expense of state norms and rules. So the convoy system circumvents customs regulations. The heads of the convoy work without generating any bills; there is thus no paper trail to their transactions with Customs. The value of the merchandise is therefore assessed through a flat rate system that secures the lowest possible clearance cost to the direct benefit of the traders involved in the convoy. The effectiveness of the circuit and even the conditions for its functioning are largely related to a chain of corruption which must build functional networks and craft the habits and complicities that make it possible for the system to endure.
Exploitation of intermediation rules and practices As corruption mechanisms grow within the customs administration, they reveal how the state is exploited through its very rules. The state is also extensively cannibalized by numerous intermediation practices that obliterate its autonomy. Customs services operate on the basis of a great number of juridical texts which are known for their complexity and their opacity. Only a few professionals in the trade and their agents have the necessary competence for
Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger 149 decoding them. So the customs officer detains a knowledge based on the manifold rules that he is supposed to apply to his service consumers. In addition to the classic rules of Customs there is a body of internal regulations defined by the Customs general director or the incumbent Finance minister, which relate to the specific orientation that is being given to the country’s economic policy, and which Customs is to execute on the ground. Customs officers are thus endowed with professional prerogatives which grant them diverse and changing powers, the extent of which the consumer has neither the time nor the means to know and master: the power of checking weight, merchandise origin and value, the power of signature, the power of sanction when an offense is observed, but also the power of transaction and negotiation. All of these are normative resources which confer discretionary powers of control to the customs officers. Taking advantage of the rules In his encounters with the customs administration, the trader faces a number of issues: how to gain time by evading customs regulation? How to minimize clearance costs through manipulating procedural rules? Whatever the option, it cannot be implemented without the involvement of a customs officer. There are two possibilities. In the first instance, the trader tries to gain time by paying a ‘deflated’ commission to the customs officer who lets him go without performing his appointed job. He buys at a low price the lenience or laxity of the customs officer by preventing him from exercising his standard task of control. From the perspective of the consumer, queuing up, unloading and searching, are a ‘waste of time’ and must be avoided. Time is key to the essence of profit. The testimony of a driver is, in that sense, quite enlightening: let’s say that some traders often do want to avoid the unloading of goods, because sometimes there are folks who hide under the load or it is about pro hibited stuff or stuff that didn’t get clearance; so the unloading must be avoided to prevent being busted and the customs officer must be bribed imme diately, so as to get the idea of unloading out of his mind. Also, we know that some customs officers who threaten to unload a truck do not actually have the means to do it in the middle of the bush and so when he tells you to unload, you know that it is just a threat and he wants you to give something and that’s all. The relationships between the trader and the customs officers are mercantile, and they both shut their eyes on national interest . . . (Tidjani Alou 2001: 18) The second option implies that the consumer will try to minimize the clearance costs of merchandise. It is probably at this level that the more nefarious effects of customs corruption can be found. In effect the customs officer’s power of transaction gives him legal authority to negotiate settlements with the
150 M. Tijani Alou consumer. Such a settlement, which is supposed to benefit the state, often masks purely personal ends. One of the mechanisms of this kind of corruption occurs at the level of the establishment of the ECOR.14 At this point, the customs officer is free, after being paid, to handle texts as he sees fit and to produce a ‘negotiated’ statement which will then be the basis for clearance procedures. But the opera tion is possible only if both the customs officer and the consumer buy complicities within the circuit for import procedures. Each stage might necessitate a renegotiation of the terms of the initial transaction. And even when out of the circuit, the merchandise is not in fact sheltered from an ex-post control from the relevant administrative services. So it is apparent that at this level, corruption can work only if there is a chain of complicities within the customs administration. The practice of minimizing costs can be illustrated through the example of lump sum clearance, a widespread practice which is based on the abuse of the customs officer’s power of transaction. The practice is made possible by uncer tainties about the value of imported goods. The extensive use of convoys today is testimony to the generalization of a behavior which greatly reduces state rev enue through procuring for customs officers and traders extravagant gains thanks to easy clearance terms. A plurality of intermediation modes Intermediation practices are generated by the overregulation and complexity that are characteristic of the operation of the customs service. There are three kinds of intermediation: institutional, which is symbolized by the transit agent; polit ical, which takes shape through practices of political interventionism; and social, which is related to the social relationships of the customs officer. Institutional intermediation, initially carried out by transit companies, has gradually diversified. The companies still hold the lion’s share and their number has increased. Many work outside of legal norms. They hold a privileged position in the customs clearance process and the nature of their activity turns them into a necessary partner of the customs administration with which they work on a daily basis. Transit agents fill out customs declaration forms, represent the consumer in customs offices and follow through the clearance process. These tasks require that they master customs regulations in all their complexity while also managing a dense network of connections in customs circles, at all levels, from the orderly to the highest official through secretaries and a variety of agents according to their jurisdiction. In relation to consumers they are the necessary middlemen for customs officers, and many corrupt transactions go through them. They are often the ones who seek the settlement that would benefit the consumer who pays them. The scale of their business depends on their ability to master the circuit and to quickly clear the merchandise of their customer. The acquisition of this skill has a significant financial cost, which requires from the transit agent a strong capacity of redistribution through all levels of the customs hierarchy. In the context of generalized corruption, these transit agents are the ideal vectors for corruption.
Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger 151 The second form of intermediation, which is specifically political in nature, takes shape through the mixing of political authorities in the work of the customs administration, thereby limiting their autonomy and impartiality in the performance of their appointed task. In this regard, throughout the interviews I had with customs officers, they often blamed the action of political and administrative authorities as negatively affecting the efficiency of their work. They denounced the strong collusion between politicians and the larger traders. The latter fund political campaigns, and they think it perfectly normal to be repaid in case of a victory. That repayment often consists in illegal and informal exemptions from customs fees, or their lowering to the extreme. For the National Union of Customs Officers (SNAD), there has been: a development and institutionalization of ‘impunity since the advent of multi-party democracy, through the interplay of partisan solidarity throughout the Nigerien political class, with the result of favoritism and inequality in taxation to the advantage of certain businesspeople who have created electoralist financial provisions that they need to recoup by all means, once political victory is secured. (Cf. Statement of the secretary general of the SNAD, radio broadcasted on 12 February 2001) The refusal to pay customs duties is one of the forms of repayment that they award themselves in total impunity, because they know they can count on the protection of political and administrative authorities. The latter interfere in litigious cases to exempt offenders from the legal consequences of their actions. We have always known the annoying interference of political, customary and administrative officials who demand favors and special privileges for themselves or their relatives and allies. We have to suffer from these same officials quite energetic requests its such or such merchandise, fraudulently introduced, be given back, or its such value be minimized. The interference is now part of our service, it is recurring and people seem to accept it. How can it be otherwise, when your opposition may be disowned by your superior in the hierarchy? This phenomenon of interference has disarticulated the service, and quite viciously systematized among customs agents, unortho dox behavior which often leads them to engage in shady deals. . . . We are daily under assault from a group of leaders who think they are omnipotent. . . (Yacouba 2001: 15) In this way, the public authorities stimulate customs fraud and the development of an informal economic sector. Moreover, they create among customs offices personal, unnerving frustrations by disqualifying their duty of control and encouraging connivance between customs agents and fraudsters.
152 M. Tijani Alou Public authorities also intervene in the management of Customs’ human resources. Since Customs is perceived as a profitable sector offering obvious paths to wealth, political friends and relatives lobby for being posted to the so- called ‘juicy’ areas, those with a high density of transactions. In such a situation, the general director of Customs cannot organize his personnel as he sees fit, since outsiders often impose appointments. Such practices do not permit him to put into action the principle that the profile of an agent should match the appointed post. In general, interference is strongly correlated, in its intensity, with the stability of political regimes. One can therefore easily imagine that the various transitions that occurred in Niger over the last decade have incurred a high level of turnover within the customs administration, and they have as well generated a specific mindset in relation to the lack of guaranteed stability at appointed posts. The third and last kind of intermediation, the social one, has to do with the fact that the customs officer is also often subjected to pressure from his friends and relatives who, through their constant interventions, force him to circumvent rules and regulations in order to act in their favor. [With respect to] the function that I have fulfilled, even in Gaya, I think the most frequent word is, settlement. Every time I write a bill, I refuse a clearance on a certain basis, I hear ‘a gyara’ (let’s settle this), or yet again these are the goods of such and such, or our relationships are squarely put to work. Or they tell you that the owner of the merchandise is everything for you, he is the friend of your brother, or this, or that, they mention people that you know well, in order to morally break you up. (A customs supervisor) Here, repayment is not necessarily financial. Rather, it is symbolic and may become social capital that can be converted in a variety of ways.
The impotence of the state Why are the Customs so inefficient in fighting corruption? This question leads to other interrogations on one of the peculiarities of Niger’s customs administration, its system of self-control that should supposedly yield optimal duties collection. This is a fairly substantial institutional device which includes the direction for customs investigations and territorial surveillance (DCEDST) that includes a ser vice inspectorate, a swift action cell that is nationally competent, intervention and inquiries brigades, also called mobile brigades (also nationally competent), and a system of incentives designed to protect agents from corruption through a number of rewards (the extra-legal tax,15 the litigation discounts, the merit medal, etc.). To these we must add the activities of customs intelligence, designed to strengthen the capacities of the service in information gathering, such as the establishment of computerized tools for combating fraud (Traoré 1998) and the inspection and verification program implemented by COTECNA (Palé 1998). Such an elaborate
Politicians, customs officials and traders in Niger 153 organization should in theory have had the effect of shielding the customs administration from fraud and corruption alike. But that did not happen. Our research points to many elements, which stress the vacuity of this system owing to the weakness of intervention means (the fleet of vehicles is inadequate and old), an unreliable intelligence-gathering system, ill-managed human resources, a hostile populace which stigmatizes the job of a customs agent and protects fraudsters, and all-around political interference. The state, through the rules that it establishes within its various activity perimeters, remains at the heart of the practices that are identifiable with neopatrimonialism. The specificity of the observed configurations is related to the level of observation that was selected – interface administrations – as well as to the option to observe the patrimonialization process of the state through corruption. The patrimonialization of the state is not observable only at the top of the state, or in the behavior of political leaders. It can also be detected in public administrations, where state agents use their power to other ends than those prescribed, and those ends can be very personal ones. This brings us back to the neopatrimonial logics and practices studied by Jean-François Médard. As my analysis is conducted at the level of the interface bureaucracies, these practices implicate functionaries working at various levels in the hierarchy of their administration. In his writings on the neopatrimonial state, J.-F. Médard does stress that the significance of the confusion of the public and private domains should be considered alongside the degree to which public norms are interiorized (1991b: 333). It is interesting to note the pro gressive shrinking of the public space in the cases I have examined. While it is claimed to be the norm through which the customs service operates, its rules are always bypassed and sometimes ignored. To a certain extent, the service works as if it were the private domain of the functionaries who run it. This may be justly termed a kind of ‘informal privatization’. (Blundo and Olivier de Sardan 2001: 32–3). Normative rules certainly bestow an obvious formal dimension on these services, but they are constantly flouted, giving the customs service the image of an individually appropriated and monopolized service. To be appointed to these administrative positions is a sure path to wealth which is based on the possibility of triggering various processes of redistribution which structure corruption chains and insure that the system lasts. Beyond formal rules, networked administrations are installed. They are related to personal relation networks and anchored in the bureaucratic structures of the state. The functionary is appointed to a ‘juicy position’ through personal relations, built on political or other social relations that are equally usable and convertible in various ways within the administration. The powers that be tend to install ‘their customs agents’ at strategic posts where they may help ‘their traders’ who then enjoy numerous conveniences. The gains that are thus produced strongly con tribute to the financing electoral campaigns by large traders, and thereby to their gradual acquisition of the power to produce and place politicians in order to root their own influence. In such a context, clientelism and corruption combine to keep the state in a condition of impotence.
154 M. Tijani Alou
Notes 1 This is a grid used to set up an upstream and downstream control system in order to trim down as much fraud as possible on the value of imported merchandise. 2 Doorway imposts are all duties owed to the state on imported products. 3 The southern band of Niger’s territory was a border area with the English sphere of influence in West Africa. 4 Cf. the map of the customs service. 1914–18 (Idrissa 1998: 175). 5 Interview with Mr Diallo Mamadou Yacouba, General Director of the Customs Administration (Revue des Douanes nigériennes 1999: 9). 6 Interview with Mrs Idrissa Zeinabou Yabo, General Director of the Customs Administration (Revue des Douanes nigériennes 1998: 8). 7 There is a similar analysis in Amselle (1987). Grégoire 1986: 181–3. 8 See Revue des Douanes nigériennes, 1999: 13. 9 Cf. Report of the workshop on the drafting of a national scheme for fighting customs frauds in Niger. Revue des douanes nigériennes, 1999: 11–34. 10 Revue des douanes nigériennes, op. cit.: 5. 11 Revue des douanes nigériennes, op. cit.: supra. 12 Law no. 61–61 of 31 May 1961 designing the customs regime of the Republic of Niger, Journal officiel, no. 4 of 26 July 1961. The law was modified several times. See also its various implementation decrees. 13 It is worth noting that the state of Niger suspended the programs that it ran with the Bretton Woods institutions, under pressure from the unions. The new governmental teams that came out of the democratic transition regime set up after the national conference in 1991 had also counted on the mobilization of internal resources to increase state revenue. So they refused to mend fences with the World Bank. But faced with unproductive results, the government re-initiated talks with the World Bank in 1995. The partial privatization of Customs was part of the adjustment measures that were then recommended. 14 This undefined acronym (no one could give us the meaning) refers to the first quick look at parcels and goods, before more thorough searches and checks. 15 The TEL allows deductions that would help pay for overtime. But in reality, the money collected is redistributed to all customs officers at the end of the month and would amount to an equivalent of their monthly salary.
Part III
Regional transcriptions and interpretations
11 Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines Dominique Caouette
In February 2006, while the Philippines were getting ready for the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the popular uprising that put an end to Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship,1 president Gloria Arroyo Macapagal proclaimed a state of emergency. Declaring that she had just thwarted a military coup attempted by a certain number of officers in the country’s elite military forces, she banned all pop ular gatherings, imposed a curfew, and authorized unlawful and extralegal arrests (Gomez 2006). Furthermore, she accused the communist left of having concocted a tactical alliance with the above mentioned military officers to bring down her government. A little more than a week later, on March 3, Macapagal announced that she was now able to remove the previously imposed state of emergency, asserting that peace had returned and that she was fully in control of the situation. This new episode of political imbroglio, which characterizes the Philippines’ 20-year ‘democratic transition’, clearly illustrates the difficulties and the contra dictions inherent in an incomplete democracy, transplanted on a power structure based on oligarchic power, increasingly politicized armed forces, and a civil society which sees in the streets the only avenue for expressing its frustrations. Beyond doubtful electoralism and the idea of a mismanaged democracy, subject to sudden and unpredictable crises, continuity with the past is the most striking aspect of the political power-struggles of the past 20 years. In the pages that follow, an attempt is made to understand the modalities of the expression of patrimonialism in the Philippines. After a presentation of the historical roots of the political system, we will attempt to understand the mech anisms that have allowed the oligarchic elites to exert control over the electoral process and competition in particular and continue to consolidate their grip upon the Philippine state. Special attention will be paid to the double character of this state, patrimonial and oligarchic at the same time. Inspired by the works of Weber, Paul Hutchroft’s (1998) notion of ‘the patrimonial oligarchic state’ is most appropriate for our understanding of the political dynamics of the country. According to the author: In this polity, the dominant social force has an economic base largely inde pendent of the state apparatus, but the state nonetheless plays a central role in the process of wealth creation.
158 D. Caouette Thus, as is generally the case in patrimonial states, there is a slim separation between the private and the public. More exactly, in the case of the Philippines, it is the landed elites, made up of large and powerful families who are capable of imposing their views on the bureaucratic apparatus and even the electoral sys tem, that determine the oligarchic character of the state. Contrary to a classical patrimonial state where the control of the administrative apparatus is central, the power centre lies outside the bureaucracy and remains totally penetrated and loyal to the interests of various factions of the landed oligarchy, most often incapable of carrying out real reforms (Hutchroft 1998: 53).
The fundamentals of a patrimonial and oligarchical state To better grasp the importance of and the interpenetration between economics and politics in the Philippines, it is important to go back to the period of the US colonization of the country at the dawn of the twentieth century. If we take Hawes’ (1987: 19) proposed periodization, three main periods succeeded one another: the emergence of a landed oligarchy at the time of the American colon ization; the diversification of elite interests after World War II; and finally the breakdown of elite cohesion in the 1960s. It is by examining the formation of the landed elite as a social class and its links with international markets through the export of agricultural commodities that we can better understand how the polit ical system became oligarchical. The short period of industrialization through import-substitution that took place in the early 1960s created important tensions among the landed elite, yet the overall control of the political and administrative apparatus by the elite remained intact. The emergence and the importance of popular mobilizations at the end of Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship did not really upset this legacy. The Spanish colonization It is with the Spanish colonization in the sixteenth century that we can see the gradual formation of large landed families that Aguilar (1998) calls ‘caciques’. These large families, mostly made up of old aboriginal elites, con stituted the core of the landed oligarchy (Hawes 1987: 125). Not having found much gold or precious metals, the Spanish colonization was marked by very little investment in infrastructure. Moreover, a large part of the colony’s man agement fell under the responsibility of a variety of religious congregations that gradually learned to gain control of large parts of the territory of the archipelago (Anderson 1998: 5). That is why for a long time, Manila, the new capital, was hardly more than a big warehouse for goods coming from, or going to, China. The silk and China ware were bought with Mexican silver and resold with enormous profits on the other side of the Pacific and in Europe. It was at the end of the eighteenth century when the port of Manila was opened to international trade and foreign vessels that a veritable incen tive for large‑scale commercialization of tropical farm products, such as
Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines 159 sugar, indigo, and abaca, emerged for the first time. While in 1855, the exports of sugar stood at 53,000 tons and those of abaca at 12,000 tons, 40 years later, these exports were respectively 376,000 and 70,000 tons (Hawes 1987: 22). With a booming international market for tropical products, mestizos (mixed-race people with a Chinese or Spanish father and a Filipino mother) realized the importance of land ownership. 2
The American colonization The struggles for independence at the end of the nineteenth century and the sub sequent American colonization in 1898 following the Spanish-American war, hardly modified the concentration of the best farmlands, especially those of export crops. In fact, the incorporation of the Philippine economy into the Amer ican economic sphere notably through a series of treaties had the effect of strengthening the value of export crops while intensifying the concentration of land in the hands of the few (Abinales and Amoroso 2005: 117–30). Through this process of land monopolization, the American colonization contributed in a significant way to the consolidation of a solidly established and clearly visible national oligarchy. Inspired by their own model, the Amer icans set up bicameral political institutions similar to those found in Washing ton. Yet, no effort was made to adjust or adapt them to the peculiar context of the Philippines. As Anderson (1988: 11) explains, ‘the new representational system proved perfectly adapted to the ambitions and social geography of the mestizo nouveaux riches. Their economic base lay in hacienda agriculture, not in the capital city.’ This landed oligarchy gradually based its control on both national and local institutions by controlling the elective offices and posts and weaving a whole network of patronage. The oligarchy did not directly control various bureaucratic posts, but rather promoted the ascendance of sympathizers who then owed their positions to the favors and generosities of their ‘godfathers’ (Hutchcroft 1991: 421). Furthermore, the elite’s status and social prestige were strengthened by sending their children to the best American universities. This eventually led to the establishment of a new class of professionals in domains such as medicine, law, and other liberal occupations (Hawes 1987: 28). Through these networks, the landed oligarchy prevailed in establishing control over the whole bureau cratic apparatus. It was during that period, which was also marked by the adoption of the American electoral system, that the main characteristics of Philippine patrimoni alism were formed. Because of various restrictions – linguistic requirements, property ownership, and literacy – until World War II, only 14 percent of the population could vote, thus greatly reducing the possibilities of popular parti cipation (Anderson 1996: 24). Besides, the electoral system which mandated a single representative per district quickly took on oligarchical and patrimonial qualities. The large variety of local languages allowed politicians to use not only the power of money and patron–client networks, but also language barriers as
160 D. Caouette sources of legitimization and dominion. This electoral system insured some political stability because it distributed power horizontally through the archipel ago. Yet, it also led to the formation of vertical networks, guaranteeing the landed oligarchy representation in Manila. However, this did not lead to the cre ation of a professional centralized bureaucracy (Anderson 1996: 22). After all, the American colonial enterprise ended up in establishing a state in which ‘the state elite is identical with the economic elite’ (Hawes 1987: 19). This system remained relatively stable during the American era thanks to the free economic access which it offered. That was particularly true in the case of the sugar industry which enjoyed open access to American markets at a time when the latter followed one of the most intensely protectionist market policies in the world (Anderson 1996: 22). The sugar industry thus underwent huge development because access to the American market meant selling sugar at prices that were immensely higher than those of the international markets, thus leading to the con solidation of a ‘sugar oligarchy’ in the Philippines. The American colonial era was also quite favorable to the emergence of new, large and powerful families, through its sale of 400,000 acres of the most fertile agricultural lands that it had previously confiscated from religious congregations. The oligarchy’s control of the colonial legislature also led to the ‘plunder’ of treasuries through such government institu tions as the central Bank of the Philippines. In spite of 35 years of organized elec tions, these institutions did not pass a single legislation that would prove beneficial to ordinary Filipinos (Anderson 1996: 22). Towards an oligarchic democracy The Japanese occupation of 1941–5 opened the door for the independence of the country, without modifying the prevalent system of domination, characterized by the entanglement of political and economic power. Economic power was mainly concentrated in the hands of the landed oligarchy, organized around large and powerful families and often under the aegis of a patriarch (Hawes 1987: 28; Steinberg 1971; McCoy 1994; and Wurfel 1980). Though the Japanese occupa tion and the war severely affected the overall economy of the country, they did not lead to the breakdown of the oligarchy’s grip despite increasing pressures from disgruntled peasants, who demanded a series of reforms, the most import ant of which being land reform. The U.S. aid, investments, and military support in the anti-insurrectionary struggle were instrumental in the restoration of the oligarchic order. Three bilateral agreements with the United States proved par ticularly decisive in returning political and economic power to the oligarchy: the Tydings Rehabilitation Act appropriated $620 million for the reconstruction of the country, notably the rehabilitation of agricultural export sectors; a second treaty granted the U.S the control and use of their military bases (23 installations throughout the archipelago) for a period of 99 years (Anderson 1988: 14). Finally, the Bell Act restored free trade with the United States, and thus allowed improved access to the US markets for the Philippine agricultural commodities (Hawes 1987: 29).
Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines 161 By the end of the 1950s, this economic system, essentially based on agrarian exports to the American market, allowed the landed oligarchy to maintain its political control. Increasing negative balance of payment due to the reduction of American spending in the Philippines associated with a decline in the prices of export commodities, and the rising costs of imported goods all drove the Philip pine government to put in place a series of economic policies modeled on import-substitution industrialization (ISI). The new industrial policies, coupled with increasing student and labor militancy, led to frictions within the govern ment coalition, but were not serious enough to offset the oligarchical character of Filipino governance. The gradual modernization of the economic sector – without disturbing its mainly agrarian character – was coupled with the emer gence of the characteristics typically associated with the oligarchical neopatrimonial state. The electoral system also adapted itself to the post-independence conditions, characterized by the lack of a coherent central bureaucracy, with no professional army, and where control over the police and private armies was fragmented and dominated by provincial oligarchs (Anderson 1988: 23–4). Under such circum stances, money and violence became two intrinsic constituents of the political struggles. This led to an even more extensive plunder of the country’s treasures and the formation of complex networks in the political machinery that were often organized around an oligarch or a powerful family (Anderson 1988: 24, see also Sidel 1999; Kingsbury 2005; Wurfel 1988). The electoral tactics deployed ranged from the purchase of votes (vote-buying) all the way to the direct intimidation of voters by private militias (Conroy Franco 2001). While in the aftermath of the war these private militias had mainly been responsible for crushing the peasant movements, they were now deployed in the context of oli garchy infighting and competition (Anderson 1988: 18).
Dictatorship and caciquismo: Ferdinand Marcos (1972–1968) With the rising demands for greater popular participation, tensions developed within the oligarchical coalition with regards to the types of policies that should be adopted. While ISI policies were gradually losing ground, the IMF and the World Bank increasingly asserted themselves as important actors, mainly through the granting of loans to the Philippine government so that it could cover its balance of payment deficits (Wurfel 1988: 16; Lichauco 1988: 32–8). Under the newly emerging circumstances, the maintenance of the oligarchical model of governance became increasingly difficult. It was at this historical juncture that the figure of Ferdinand Marcos emerged. Elected in 1965 and then reelected in 1969, he declared martial law in 1972. Oligarchical domination cronyism Marcos was confronted with the impossibility of running for a third straight presidential campaign and the slow pace at which a new constitutional agreement
162 D. Caouette was being pursued. He had planned to propose and adopt a constitutional amend ment that would transform the presidential system into a parliamentary one, thus ensuring the perpetuity of his regime. He chose to centralize political power in a wholly new way by breaking the oligarchical modus operandi, which had marked Filipino politics since the American colonial period. His declaration of martial law marked the beginning of an authoritarian regime characterized by the dominion of Marcos and his family, his cronies, and the military. Hutchcroft defines cronies as those individuals and families that enjoyed the greatest sup port from the regime and were most favored by it (1991: 435). Moreover, the Philippines were a kind of ‘booty capitalism’ (capitalism of plunder) marked by the massive and recurring extraction of privileges and state resources on behalf of ‘cronies’ and big oligarchical families, hence the importance of factional struggles within the oligarchy (Hutchcroft 1998: 20). Marcos was not the only authoritarian leader in Southeast Asia during this period. There were also Suharto in Indonesia and the generals in power in both Thailand and Burma. Nevertheless, Marcos and his cronies best illustrate the predatory forms of patrimonial governance through the plunder of the state and the treasury, organized in a discretionary manner, and aimed at supporting a nationwide network of private patronage. Furthermore, there was, so to speak, no independent bureaucratic tradition or a professional army. On the contrary, Marcos quickly learned to ally himself with a large sector of the armed forces and the police, links he exploited in order to serve his interests. The increasing size of the army ran parallel with their involvement and implications in the main tenance of law and order, improving opportunities to take part – directly or indi rectly – in business ventures, and pay raises for ordinary soldiers (Hawes 1987: 40). To ensure the loyalty of the military, Marcos skillfully redistributed much valued resources, be they ‘the management of confiscated properties from the opposition, public enterprises, real estate, etc.’ (Anderson 1988: 23) At the same time, Marcos appeared abroad as a stabilizing force and a loyal ally of the Americans, who were bogged down in Vietnam and worried about maintaining their military installations in Southeast Asia. Marcos also took advantage of the strategic importance of the military bases put at the disposal of the United States in order to fill his personal coffers (Hutchcroft 1991: 429). Having recourse to widespread use of force and violence, the regime set up a monopoly system which ruined the Philippine economy, while the regime of the Thai generals proved less coercive and more conducive to an economic boom (Anderson 1996: 25). Marcos and his allies’ parochial and personalized plunder did arouse opposi tion and resistance. By late 1970s, the guerrilla warfare led by the Philippine Communist Party (CPP) intensified. This was coupled with an opposition move ment from within the large oligarchic families that had, under Marcos, been excluded from political power and in some cases even dispossessed. The polyc ephalic opposition widened and strengthened with the assassination of Benigno Aquino, a regime opponent, who was returning to Philippines from political exile (Rocamora 1994; Caouette 2002). Faced with the opposition and America’s
Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines 163 growing skepticism, Marcos opted for the electoral path and announced hasty presidential elections for November of 1985. However, his calculations did not stand the test of time. In 1985, the opposi tion movement widened to include a large part of the entrepreneurial class, a part of the Roman Catholic Church (including certain members of the hierarchy), a portion of the middle class3 several important popular sectors, the intelligentsia, several young military officers, as well as an important number of oligarchs hith erto excluded from the exclusive circle of Marcos’ protégés. Later, when a first glance at the ballots of the February 1986 elections seemed to indicate a win for Marcos rather than his opponent, the star candidate, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, who was the widow of Benigno Aquino, two former accomplices of Marcos, his second-in-command and deputy Commander in Chief, Fidel Ramos, and the Minister of Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, launched a mutiny against Marcos. The mutiny was then joined by a popular revolt called by the opposition leaders, especially the influential figure, Cardinal Sin. Faced with an impasse at home and America’s gradual withdrawal of support, Marcos and his family agreed to leave the country for a cozy exile in the Hawaiian Islands.
The return of the oligarchs During the first months of the Aquino presidency, political life showed signs of opening with the forming of a cabinet that included several representatives from civil society as well as individuals who did not necessarily have links with powerful oligarchs (Anderson 1988; Kingsbury 2005: 306). This democratic opening, however, was short-lived. The coalition that had formed around Aquino proved to be too diverse, while the army and several elements of the oligarchy remained suspicious of those personalities they deemed were threatening their interests. The military proved too polarized to seize power, as they had six failed coup attempts. Nevertheless, these challenges and rebellions were (sufficient) enough to compel the government of Aquino to turn back to the logic of oligarchy. By the end of Aquino’s mandate in 1992, a genuine restoration of oligarchic rule had taken place. This was done by restoring to Marcos’ cronies many of the privileges they had previously enjoyed and adopting a complacent approach with regards to judicial inquiries and proceedings (Kingsbury 2005: 308). The national electoral authorities, the Congress and the Senate, took up again their traditional functions of pacifying a population mobilized in favor of Marcos’ dis missal. At the same time, some of the legislative initiatives which had important social significance, such as the land reform program, were gradually emptied of their contents (Putzel 1992; Wurfel 1988: 321–3; Goodno 1991: 269–77). The most noteworthy element that stood out at the end of Aquino’s regime was its peaceful transfer of power following the election of Fidel Ramos, the former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, and later, the Minister of Defense. Ramos restored the economic situation and the public finances by appealing to international financial institutions. As noted by Kingsbury, the underlying
164 D. Caouette structures of power did not really change. At this juncture, the initial stages of the formation of a neopatrimonialism with a technocratic flavor can be observed, where Ramos appeared as an administrator surrounded with a team of techno crats, made up of an important contingent of neoliberal economists. Ramos’ mandate ended in 1998 with the election of Joseph Estrada, a former movie star, a populist and charismatic individual, who was once the mayor of one of Manila’s municipalities, and who later became vice president under Ramos. The presidency of Estrada did not last very long. He quickly began to under mine much of the peace-building efforts his predecessors had made with Muslim rebels and communists. Furthermore, his management of the economy proved dis astrous, or even ridiculous. As observed by Walden Bello et al.: ‘Joseph Estrada was a consummate, if clumsy, practitoner of “crony capitalism” ’ (2004: 243). Thus, Estrada did not question the patrimonial model of the Philippine oligarchical democracy, which had continued on the path of restoration ever since the EDSA revolts. Under Estrada, it became increasingly clear that the administration and opposing candidates had no real political and economic programs. We also see that the electoral system set up after 1986 reproduced the very trends that were domi nant before 1972, maximizing competition between various political factions while remaining united against any meaningful program for change. Some, like W. Bello et al. (2004), talk about the system of EDSA as one with two faces. On the one hand, it is a democratic system in the formal sense of holding elections and the equality of votes. On the other hand, it is an exces sively costly system that maintains the socioeconomic order and periodically allows for elite circulation. Within the system, the Philippine masses are manip ulated for the benefit of intra‑elite competitions and struggles (Bello et al. 2004: 1–5). After the revolt of EDSA, the regimes which succeeded one another proved incapable of bringing the promised prosperity, reducing the disparities, and stopping Filipinos’ massive exodus through immigration (about 10 percent of the population, almost seven million, live outside the Philippines, and every day 3,000 Filipinos leave their country to go and work abroad). Furthermore, as yet, there has not been a solid and impartial bureaucracy capable of setting up real policies and programs. In 2001, following the revelations of a financial scandal through which Estrada attempted to buy Congress’ support, a new wave of mobilization got underway. Called EDSA II, this new uprising conjointly with a protest movement from the urban middle classes led to the president’s departure from office, and the ascend ance to the presidency of his vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Having come to power in February 2001, Arroyo was quickly faced with a new popular uprising in May 2001. This time around, the popular classes were at the heart of the mobilization, including certain fringe groups financed by the supporters of Estrada and other social groups in favor of his populist rhetoric. As the daughter of a former Philippine president, Arroyo was quite popular and enjoyed a great deal of legitimacy as she ascended to the presidency. She was viewed by many as a sincere politician, despite the fact that her family and her husband had deep roots in the country’s oligarchical hierarchy. She was
Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines 165 quickly confronted with a resurgence of Muslim rebellion, and with small armed terrorist groups such as Abu Sayyaf on the island of Mindanao. In response, the president resorted to the solutions of the past by opening the country’s doors to American armed forces, thanks to an agreement of joint military exercises, matched by a substantial financial and military assistance. This was a pragmatic short-term solution to the country’s ills, one that would give Arroyo the oppor tunity to consolidate her new regime. But she also had to respond to the popular masses’ expectations, especially those middle classes which had taken part in the uprising that brought Estrada down. September 11, 2001 thus came at a very convenient moment, and Macapagal-Arroyo was one of the first international leaders to support the United States in their Afghan adventure. She also proved quite enthusiastic with regards to exploring the ways in which the Philippine Constitution could allow for the deployment of American troops in the country and the holding of joint military exercises. Moreover, it was due to this constitu tional clause that American military advisors arrived in the Philippines in Janu ary 2002, with American promises of financial aid for the revitalization of the country’s economy. The Philippine army, a close ally of the Arroyo government, also had much to gain from the arrival of American military equipment, espe cially the satellite detection systems that significantly reduced the number of rebel ambushes. Nevertheless, the military solution to the Mindanao crisis did not resolve the underlying sociopolitical causes of the conflict such as land tenure, redistribution of wealth, the tight control of the political apparatus by the economic elites, the economic marginalization of aboriginals, farmers without land, and the urban agricultural workers, be they Christian, Muslim, or animist. In 2004, Macapagal-Arroyo was reelected with a very narrow majority. This was viewed with suspicion with the release to the media of a telephone conver sation she had with the head of the country’s Electoral Commission, demanding that she be given an advance of one million votes over her opponent. Since then, her problems have snow-balled: repeated coup attempts, the failure of peace negotiations with communist rebels, and a strategic impasse in her dealings with the Muslim insurgency of Mindanao despite the substantial financial and milit ary support of the US. Plunged into a political storm since mid-2005, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo managed to hang on to power. In June 2005, she had to publicly admit to having communicated with a high official of the Electoral Commission when the votes were being tallied in May 2004. In September, she survived a congressional impeachment attempted by the opposition parties. In February 2006, she declared a state of emergency as people nationwide were getting ready to celeb rate the twentieth anniversary of the EDSA revolt and Marcos’ departure. Accus ing a number of officers in the country’s military of planning a coup, she ordered the arrest of three high-ranking military officials, prohibited demonstrations, and closed down a daily newspaper. The anniversary celebrations turned into nation wide protests. Pressure on the government was exerted from all fronts: tradi tional allies, ex-presidents, influential members of the Roman Catholic Church and civil society, and even a few members of the international community. A
166 D. Caouette week later, the state of emergency was removed, while the president declared that peace and order had been restored. Ever since, rumors of coup attempts have periodically surfaced. Although often unsubstantiated, they have nonetheless exposed the government’s growing vulnerabilities. Though the Philippine civil society has remained mobilized and the press relatively free, economic disparities are most poignant today in a region with a Gini coefficient of 0.46. Furthermore, in 2005, the country ranked 117th in the 159 country-classification of Transparency International (2006: 46, note 2), and on its index relating to the perception of corruption, it fell more than 15 places compared with the previous year. So disturbing is the situation in Philip pines today that Reporters without Borders considers the country as one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists (RSF 2005: 2). The current climate of impunity is most worrisome as indicated by the sharp increase in the number of individuals murdered by the paramilitary groups in 2006.4 The analysis of political regimes in the Philippines is rich in suggested con cepts and typologies in order to account for the country’s complex history (Quimpo 2005). For some, such as Landé (1965) and Novak and Snyder (1974), it is the complex links of patronage and clientelism that best describe the exer cise of power. For others, such as Hawes (1987), it would be rather adequate to speak (in the Philippines) of a certain degree of state autonomy weakened by the internal struggles of the bourgeoisie, although much less so than in the new industrial nations of East Asia (1987: 53). Other authors, such as Wurfel (1988), have seen the expression of a neopatrimonial state in its most repressive and cen tralized form in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Wurfel suggests that in fact, under Marcos, the political system in general became much more complex and that the base of the dictator’s power extended well beyond the control of the bureaucratic apparatus. It is thus more suitable to speak of patrimonial authorit arianism or neopatrimonialism as a system of highly personalized yet also insti tutionalized political power (1988: 153). Finally, there are those who propose a long term analysis of the Filipino situation. Anderson (1988) and Hutchcroft (1998) view the Marcos episode as the quasi-caricatural expression of a logic of power that is inherent in a political system that was consolidated during Amer ican colonialism. The former prefers to concentrate on ‘cacique democracy’ while the latter talks about an oligarchical patrimonial state, where the import ance of the control of the electoral system becomes itself one of the implicit rules of the patrimonial exercise of power. The Philippines has long been considered a model of peaceful democratic transition and in February of 2006, Filipinos celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the popular uprising that brought Marcos down in 1986. This twentieth anni versary celebration has a rather bitter-sweet taste to it, clearly exposing how the Filipino political imbroglio is rooted in continuity: the consolidation of a patri monial political system in a context of oligarchic democracy. Rather than looking for an important event or a crisis, it is more compelling to look at the basic predispositions and the various constituents of political life that reproduce themselves in the Filipino political system. Seen this way, the regime of
Oligarchy and caciquismo in the Philippines 167 president Macapagal-Arroyo points to a number of elements that favor continu ity rather than change. A first element of continuity is undoubtedly the persistence of the large landed oligarchical families’ hold on the electoral system. This structure of power is an old one, and as maintained by Benedict Anderson (1996) and Wurfel (1998), its roots go back to the country’s experience under American colonialism and the setting up of a highly fragmented electoral system. In fact, the American system was so thoroughly copied that there exists an impressive number of elected posts (offices) today. In the mid-80s, it was estimated that there was an elected office for every 1,400 voters in the country. However, far from encouraging a better democratization process, this led to the channeling of the electoral process toward a series of complex clientelist networks directly linked to the political machinery (Hedman and Sidel 2000; Quimpo 2005). The peculiarity of this system, notwithstanding the enormous costs associated with it, is that it allowed the consolidation of the oligarchs’ power base. In this con text, the era of Marcos deserves to be seen as that of a ‘big man’ or the ulti mate ‘cacique’ (Anderson 1988; Caouette 2002). Since EDSA and in spite of the introduction of certain elements of proportionality in the electoral pro cesses, the offices at the Congress and especially at the Senate have remained the privilege of a resilient oligarchy, and like all neopatrimonial systems, char acterized by intense power struggles. The second disturbing element which also clearly reflects continuity is the increasing politicization of the armed forces and the impossibility of the insti tutionalization of power. With the 1017 Presidential Decree, and the arrest of several military leaders, including Brigadier General Danilo Lim and Colonel Ariel Querubin, the Philippine government was faced with the twelfth coup attempt since its so-called return to democracy in February 1986. Besides, this was not Lim and Querubin and their accomplices’ first coup attempt: they had already launched a mutiny against Arroyo in 2003 and Lim had participated in a coup attempt against president Aquino in December of 1989 for which he was pardoned, apparently in order to bring back peace and harmony within the armed forces (Cabacungan and Dalangin-Fernandez 2006). Today, the mutiny or the threat of mutiny, such as the occupation of a shopping center by the military in one of Manila’s beautiful districts in 2003, have become a way of putting pressure on the government in order to force it to enter into negoti ations with the military. The last important element is the role of the elections. Far from being an indicator of the democratic character of the country, the elections raise profound questions today. As indicated by the crisis involving president Arroyo’s tele phone conversation when she asked for favors from a high-ranking official at the Electoral Commission, the role of the elections as channels of political expres sion have certainly taken a hard hit. Recent election campaigns have given rise to the emergence of a multitude of agreements, negotiations and tactical alli ances between the radical left and the right, between popular movements and the oligarchs, and between guerrillas and traditional politicians. In sum, although a
168 D. Caouette system of limited proportional representation allowed the emergence of sector- based parties, the electoral system has mainly remained profoundly questionable because it responds much better to the demands of the oligarchy than (it does) to the demands of the population for meaningful democratic reforms and the estab lishment of democratic governance. As Hutchcroft’s (1998) and Anderson’s (1988) oligarchic patrimonial state, and cacique democracy respectively demonstrate, the analysis of the various political systems which succeeded one another since the American colonization together reveal some of the main characteristics and attributes of neopatrimoni alism: a narrow link between private and public interests, weak and easily manipulated political institutions, and favoritism and the domination of clien telist networks (Médard 1991b: 342). Furthermore, the study of these regimes reveals the weak capacity of the Philippine state to set up attributable and trans parent policies (Transparency International and Quimson Gabriella 2006). The previous discussion also highlights the role of the electoral processes as venues for oligarchical infighting where charisma, money, and the use of viol ence become entangled, a reminder of Sahlins’ (1977) ‘strong men’ and Lacam’s (1998) ‘politician investor.’ The studies of Sidel (1999) and Lacaba (1995) on the regional ‘caïds’, McCoy’s (1994) work on large family-based dynasties, as well as Franco’s (2001) work on the importance of clientelist networks, echo the work of Sahlins and Lacam while also giving a Filipino dimension to Erdmann and Engel’s (2007) recent discussion. If we want to understand the Philippine political dynamics, recourse to neopatrimonialism represents a fertile conceptual ground, especially so if we emphasize its oligarchic structure and how this con tinues to constitute a decisive factor in electoral struggles.
Notes 1 The uprising of February 1986 is an integral part of the national political mythology and is ritually celebrated every year. We refer to it as EDSA, an acronym for the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue which crosses the city of Manila and passes between two military camps, the Crame camp and the Aguinaldo camp. The military officers who had commanded the mutiny against Marcos had found refuge there, before their mutiny was joined by the populace, following Cardinal Sin’s and other opposition leaders’ call for a popular revolt, provoking a popular uprising at the EDSA (Anderson 1988; Wurfel 1988). 2 Abaca, also called Manila hemp, is a fiber textile made from banana tree leaves which can be woven. It was used in the making of clothes and a variety of other products such as ropes, sandals, and even furniture. 3 It is necessary to underline the fact that a part of the middle classes has taken advant age of the relatively favorable migratory policies of several Western countries, includ ing the United States, to leave the country since the 1960s. 4 In its 2006 Annual Report, Amnesty International denounced this established fact, further noting that in 2005, 66 leftist leaders and community workers had been killed (Amnesty International 2006).
12 Jeitinho and other related phenomena in contemporary Brazil 1
Yves-André Fauré
The following commentaries and reflections aim to present the reader with a certain number of patrimonialist practices at play in the public sphere in Brazil, taking as an implicit benchmark the characteristics of patrimonialism as they were defined in a precedent article written jointly with Jean-François Médard to whom the present publication pays a friendly posthumous tribute.2 Just like any approach that cautiously avails itself of ideal types or models, our purpose here does not lie in an attempt to elicit absolute confirmations of such types or models from the empirical realities under analysis. Rather, it is to make use of those ideal types with a view to identifying and interpreting the real ities being considered without having to take into account the whole range of classificatory criteria, while keeping somewhat aloof from definitions whose rigidness would not make it possible to find applications fitting exactly the models. Indeed, it cannot be claimed that patrimonialism characterizes the whole or even the heart of the political and institutional system in Brazil, nor can it be asserted that it informs for the most part the exercise of public power and management in the country. Brazil has historically equipped itself with standards, institutions, bodies of political representation and public management which testify to a modern state organization. In this respect and in keeping with the definition proposed by Max Weber, the State has claimed for itself the monopoly of legitimate coercion over all its citizens, government is formally based on law and not on personal subordination, administrative services rely on corps of skilled civil ser vants and it might be added – with respect to social and economic challenges that the German sociologist could not have considered at the time – that the State assumes responsibilities in terms of development, often mustering both human and material resources to carry out its public policies without relying on total arbitrariness or on traditional forms of management of government property. In short, the elements of a system of power based on law and reason are emphatically present and several of the features that compose the liberal democratic state can clearly be identified in the order of political forms prevailing in Brazil. Yet, reservations must be made for each of the aforementioned indicators. The high level and generalization of violence, the success of organized crime and the multiplication of vigilante groups and other heavily armed private security services are clear signs that the State has failed in one of its essential functions; further,
170 Y.-A. Fauré that favor should often outweigh merit when it comes to appointing officials in the various categories of the administration seriously harms the principle that the operation of public institutions should rest on technical competence alone. In principle, all citizens are bound by the law but concrete enforcement is clearly subject to negotiation, as this posited equality before the law coexists with an array of judicial regimes specific to such and such category of citizens. Finally, the conception and the implementation of public policies are often swayed by corporatist interest. All this combines to form a picture of the State as a mixed body with the characteristics of a modern political and administrative organiza tion as its fundamental note, and, as a powerful overtone, a set of features often inherited from history yet continuously updated through evolving practices and driven by renewed interests, that clearly pertain to a patrimonialist system of government and management of public life. Public organization in Brazil can thus be described as the fruit of a hybridizing process (Badie and Hermet 1990). It may have been tempting for some to think that this second dimension of the institutional regime in Brazil would shrink, if not altogether vanish, with the coming into office of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the access to power of his Partido dos trabalhadores (workers’ party). Their political agenda did include the promise of a modernization of public practices placing ethics at the center of political conduct and decision. However, the successive ‘scandals’ that have since surfaced have shown the real extent of the patrimonialist practices pervading the very routine of the nation’s public life and call for renewed inter est in their analysis. So many officials in the political and administrative spheres, so much money, so many bodies pertaining to the State organization or its ramifications are involved, such a vast array of patrimonialist sources and uses are revealed in the process, that those persistently recurring affairs can only confirm the depth and ordinariness of the phenomenon (Hippolito 2005). Such conduct points concrete practices as much as the system of values that underlies them and indeed makes them possible so that it is advisable to put words such as ‘scandals’ or ‘affairs’ or even ‘corruption’ in quotation marks when one uses them. The facts that are made known to public authorities, parliamentary commissions, courts of justice, the police, public prosecutors and the media can only appear as ‘scandalous’ in the eyes of a minority who look upon them as undesir able or reprehensible or of those who have some interest in their exposure. One touches here upon a paradoxical characteristic of patrimonialism. Departing as it does from models of behavior that are publicly or officially displayed and proclaimed, patrimonialism undoubtedly infringes explicit standards. At the same time, it must be granted that patrimonialism is but an ordinary feature of Brazilian public life as it translates into commonly found, widely tolerated practices. ‘We need to strike a new social contract between Brazilian citizens in which corruption would be entirely outlawed and reduced to an isolated practice in the political life of the nation’ said the man who was to be appointed minister of finances in the new government after the presidential elections on announcing that the resources of the Services of General Control of the Union (Controladoria-geral da União) would be redeployed and substantially increased
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 171 – ironically enough, unsavory conduct later cost him his job in the government.3 For Professor Kant de Lima, coordinator of the Centre for Studies and Research at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the ‘affairs’ which over the past years have consistently tarnished the image of the government, of the party in power as well as of its allies in the Parliament show how crime, particularly that which is based on the use of slush funds (caixa dois) – and is implicitly legitimized by the routine practices of both private business and the public sphere – operates as much at the economic level as it does at the moral one. Ambiguity between what is legal and what is illegal is a feature of the Brazilian public sphere. [. . .]. Using such practices is tantamount to naturalizing illegality. (O Globo, 4 August 2005) Faced with the ambivalence of ‘corruption’, which is at once severely condemned and commonly practiced, the analyst can hardly set himself up as a judge. At the same time, such an analysis as this one would be meaningless, should it not refer, in the background, to situations where such patrimonialist practices are either absent, or have been eradicated or restrained to a sufficient extent that they can provide a counterbalance enabling comparison, if only implicitly, and thereby con tributing to the understanding of the phenomena under scrutiny. In addition to usefulness when it comes to representing some of the realities of Brazilian public life, the general or fundamental concept of patrimonialism offers several advantages.4 It is a unifying concept encompassing a variety of practices which, though intricately interconnected, are often treated as separate objects of study through approaches that do not take the context in which they occur into fair consideration. Furthermore, the notion of patrimonialism allows at once factual exploration and a holistic representation of the climate that legitimizes a certain set of practices and the related conducts or attitudes. The present study, which for lack of space has to limit itself to a modest description, will first consist in a quick overview of the relevant vocabulary meant to suggest a correlation between the abundance of words describing patrimonial practices and their pervasion of Brazilian social structures. An attempt will then be made to show that the State is a great provider of stipends, that public tenders are used to reward those who finance electoral campaigns, that legislative arenas are the locus of intense bargaining largely giving rise to votes motivated by self-interest, that nepotism permeates the various layers of the political apparatus. Finally, it will be shown how the extremely high operational costs of political life are a means for elected officials to get rich or richer.
Of words and behavior Brazilians are certainly not short for words or phrases when it comes to naming facts and practices that belong to the paraphernalia of patrimonialism. ‘Corruption’ in all its common forms and qualifications, whether administrative or penal,
172 Y.-A. Fauré (fraud, graft, peculation, influence peddling, etc.) has pervaded language as much as it has pervaded public affairs. However such words cover but a small part of the reality of patrimonialism and somehow fail to convey the existence of a system of organized and prestige-endowed processes subsuming the concrete manifestations which it makes possible and indeed perpetuates. Thus, in such commonly occurring arrangements as are subsumed under the word jeitinho, the traditional and central figure of the despachante stands out, a sort of intermediary between ordinary citizens and public bureaucracy, tasked with the mission of obtaining official documents, licenses, permits, etc. He is a character typical of a society that is wary of anonymity, of waiting lines, of the humiliation that the status of an ordinary supplicant may entail. In the political sphere, patrimonialism rests, among other things, on a form of patronage or clientelism that cannot be reduced to a top-down relationship between individuals with unequal status, social power or financial means. More fundamentally, patrimonialism supplies the structure underlying ‘the organiza tion of public power and its monopolizing by an elite’ (Badie and Hermet 1990: 257). The concept of paternalism used by some analysts instead of clientelism5 lays the emphasis on the good works of politicians and on the infinite gratitude owed them by ordinary citizens for asphalted roads, tap water, kindergartens, civic centers or sports facilities, although such projects are funded with public money and their execution carried out by public bodies. Paternalism stems from an attitude and collective affect that are widespread in Brazil and are conspicuously not confined to states notorious for the persistence of the archaic practices that testify to the enduring strength of their ruling oligarchies, of coronelismo, of caciquism. The current president, though a former union leader, is given to using the family metaphor when explaining governmental decisions: he claims he is acting as a ‘father’ and treating Brazilians as though they were his ‘children’. Such lexical borrowings are far more than mere rhetorical figures. They betray the deep reality of how relationships are conceived of and conducted within the social and political system in Brazil. What Brazilians name fisiologismo defines the exercise of public office as exclusively guided by self-interest and the quest for advantages and favors of all types. It is more or less practiced by all political groups and politicians while more specifically characterizing the attitude or behavior of specific parties. There lies a partial explanation for the ‘scandals’ that have accumulated during the Lula administration as, instead of the so-called ‘popular front’ alliances that had been promised in the course of the party’s conquest for power, the government has clinched deals with parties that had a better parliamentary representation and were more sensitive to the privileges and benefits traditionally attached to public charges and offices. Those connected to a political leader who plays the role of a godfather dictating conducts and rewarding them with easier access to positions and advantages are designated by the word apadrinhados. Political parties are all structured around national, regional or local personalities so that they are most of the time conglomerates of clans and factions which are founded on personal relationships
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 173 of subordination operating on the basis of reciprocated favors and very seldom carry a vision or even a general political perspective. In the world of Brazilian political parties one can hardly speak of clear-cut, easy to distinguish ideologies or of well-defined political programs meant to transform the whole or even part of the social order. The function of the articulação política lies in the art of negotiating alliances and support. No government, at any level of operation, whether national, estadual or local, can do without it partly because of the electoral regime which mech anically generates the scattering of political representation. The moeda (money) eleitoral serves to designate public resources (basic food baskets, school supplies, etc.) distributed with a view to capturing ballots. Half the council members of a large Brazilian city are thus also members of the board of social centers run with public subsidies that serve as vote tanks along with other civil bodies. In the imaginative language used to euphemize patrimonialist practices, a phrase that can be literally translated as ‘hand over ministries and public companies with a closed door’ (entregar os ministérios e as estatais com a porteira fechada) means that decision over the appointments to senior or junior positions in ministries, public companies and official agencies ultimately falls to the party that claimed them. Multiplying cargas comissionadas amounts to attributing positions to friends and staunch supporters, with no need for the latter to pass public competitive examinations. The verb aparelhar or the phrase lotear a máquina refer to the practice of filling political or administrative public bodies with clients, members of the same party, or those beholden locally or regionally to their patrons. Fraudar as licitações consists in abusing public calls for tender addressing the supply of goods or services for public bodies so as to benefit com panies in which the elected official, or the chief executive he has appointed, has vested interests, directly or indirectly through parents and allies. In this abundance of words and phrases which is only equaled by the frequency of the facts and acts to which they correspond, the baixo clero, i.e., ‘lower clergy’, cannot be said to be the least significant. The phrase refers to those members of the federal or estadual legislature who have most of the time no training to speak of and whose action in the Federal Congress or in the States’ legislative assemblies is solely guided by the prospect of obtaining material advantages for themselves or for their allies and clients. In a system where political parties, save for a very few, have no real political programme, the members of the baixo clero are notorious for having even less of a program than the others. As was noted earlier in this article, diverse high-profile ‘cases’ have left their mark on the government and on the administration of the new ‘petiste’ power since 2003, bringing forth the fall of its successive leaders and the removal or the resignation of more than 50 political and administrative officials that the ruling party had appointed. This has entailed in turn the stepping down of several ministers, a number of replacements in the leadership of the Workers’ Party, the removal of collaborators of the Palácio da Presidência as well as of members of the bureaus set for the coordination of the electoral campaign geared to the reelection of the current president. In total, more than 100 major personalities
174 Y.-A. Fauré have been indicted by the general prosecutor of the Federal Ministry of Justice, while the Federal Supreme Court has also initiated legal action.6 True, several local or regional structures and elected officials of the PT had already been embroiled in the past in illicit activities and had carried out rather unscrupulous operations but the party that eventually came to power at the national level had been until then rather less implicated in suspicious operations than other political groups. The latest ‘affairs’ have revealed an altogether different, more massive and systematic dimension of the party’s practices. This has considerably tarnished its image as ‘public morality’ was one of the two pillars on which the PT historically asserted its difference in the political world, a difference it has always widely proclaimed and that substantially contributed to its growing pop ularity with voters.7 No need here to draw up a detailed list of the ‘affairs’ that have punctuated the exercise of power by the highest State authorities and have left their marks on national political representation.8 Those affairs are echoed by those, even more numerous, that are played on the regional or local stage. Beyond the system of justifications used by the actors, it is possible to put forward a general interpretation which speaks to the deep currents running in the political life of Brazil. It is not our purpose here to examine which of the affairs or of their revelation or denunciation has become more significant than in the past. One can, however, wonder whether certain fundamental traits, certain structural features of the political system in Brazil have not eventually prevailed over the most virtuous of intentions. The PT, whose ostensibly proclaimed program was from the outset to enable the modernization of institutions and implement major changes in the structure of power relationships was for a long time confined to the opposition and its function was accordingly reduced to that of a tribune’s, at least at the federal level. It has eventually transformed into a powerhouse determined to conquer at all costs the levers of power on a national scale and in the highest spheres, a drive which has led some critics and observers to start speaking of the PT’s hegemonic project. An almost mechanical corollary of this reversal may have been the loss of the party’s distinctive marks and its fusion into the wider-encompassing political climate, which, in phase with rampant fisiologismo, may have somehow completed the party’s ‘Brazilianisation’. The preceding lines should not be construed as an attempt to suggest that the emergence and growth of patrimonialism may be looked upon as a ‘natural’ process. Patrimonialist practices emerge, grow and continually transform as they adapt to evolving social or historical conditions. This said, the evolution described above can also be interpreted as the progress of a political movement which the test of power has led to assimilate the dominating practices and the very workings of the machinery operating the public sphere or which, in other words, has learned to master the political rules according to which it has changed, grown in strength and eventually prevailed. A popular phrase encapsulates this dimension of Brazilian ‘Realpolitik’ fueled as much by the frequency of patrimonialist behavior as by the general climate of tolerance that makes citizens condone, if not indulge it: rouba mas faz
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 175 – ‘He steals but he does something’ – a phrase used to absolve elected officials and leaders, who, although dishonest, make projects advance and can be credited with a few realizations.
The state as the stepping stone for access to prebends In many respects, Brazil’s institutional system appears as a vast enterprise of appointments and allocation of positions, where administrative and technical cri teria, competence and merit prove to be less relevant than calculations based on partisan affiliation, mutual trust between individuals, the need for alliances or the exchange of favors dictated by political or material interests. Appointments are mostly decided on the basis of their association with stipends and material advantages together with the part they play in the consolidation of power structures. These practices affect almost the whole range of political groups on the national political scene. What makes Brazil peculiar is not the existence of a heavily politicized system of appointments in the public sphere – other nations including developed ones use such a system – but the extent to which it has developed there. In Brazil, the spoils system operates on a large scale. Horizontally, it affects all public bodies subservient to any power of appointing exercised by elected officials of the Executive – head of state, federal ministers, state governors and secretaries, heads of public services and companies, city mayors and secretaries. Vertically, the spoils system deploys through the complex pyramid of administrative and technical levels in which ‘trusted partisans’ fill in the notorious cargas comissionadas. One major characteristic is that it is reactivated at regular intervals owing to the short duration of voting cycles – four years on average, except for Federal Congress senators. The attractiveness of chief positions in ministries and state secretariats, of public offices and charges, of senior positions in the major public services and state-owned companies is a function of the quantity of resources that such positions enable their holders to control. The public bodies most coveted by the politicians and political parties allied to the elected officials of the Executive at the three levels of government are those boasting the largest budgets. Calculations do not only compute direct resources such as endowments but also include indirect resources, notably and notoriously those manipulated through public calls for tender propitious, by means of commonly practiced irregularities, to give an unfair advantage to this client or that business which have supported the party or the candidate. Thus emerges a hierarchy of positions that confers some order to this scrambling for the spoils. Against such a yardstick as this ‘ranking’, it is known that the Ministry for Transports is 10 percent as attractive as the Ministry of Health and 400 percent as attractive as the Ministry of Tourism. It must be stressed that the ‘pecking order’ that defines the choice and attribution of positions also takes into account the numerous funds that are not directly consolidated in ministries’ budgets but are managed by certain departments whose management is ultimately the responsibility of the ministries. Thus, although its
176 Y.-A. Fauré budget only ranks 16th among the 30 or so ministries and federal secretariats, the Ministry of Urban Affairs (Ministério das Cidades) looks far more attractive when considering that it supervises the substantial FGTS (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço), which is the equivalent of an unemployment benefit fund. The Ministry of Communications, that ranks poorly if considering its budget alone, is, however, the object of much interest in particular because of its parti cipation in the management of the richly endowed FUST (Fundo de Universalização dos Serviços de Telecomunicações). A former senator sounded out by a party allied to the government to become president of the National Institute for Social Security (INSS) was naturally presented in his state as the man ‘who will have control over R$127 billion’. Ministerial positions, public charges and offices endowed with decision power or management competence over significant resources are filled within the framework of negotiations between the heads of the Executive (at the national, estadual or local level) and the political parties, factions or leaders inclined to support them. These same political patrons propose the names of the individuals (pessoas indicadas) who are to fill the positions concerned in exchange for support received or to be received in the legislative arenas at their respective level in the three-tier organization of public affairs. Such ‘proposals’ are public knowledge. The appointment system concerns ministries and federal administrations including their respective decentralized services across the coun try as well as the governing and administrating bodies in the 26 states of the Union plus the Federal District. It is also applied in national institutions and state‑owned companies, and to assimilated bodies which complete public governance in each state.9 In turn, and with the agreement of their political patrons at the national or regional level, the presidents, directors, superintendants, heads of major departments and administrative services and of those numerous public or semipublic bodies that constitute the public machinery appoint allies, staunch supporters, clients to intermediary positions deemed to be economically sensitive. It is estimated that the number of public positions that are directly filled according to criteria linked to political affiliations or alliances might be as high as 20,000.10 The whole public apparatus, at all three levels of the Union – federal, estadual, municípios, public companies and agencies, etc. – is headed by individuals who have been designated on a mostly political basis modeled by tactical calculations or concerns linked to governmental configurations (governability, negotiations between parties, interplay of influence). Competence is sometimes put forward as a criterion for appointment but such attempts at jus tifying appointments cannot deceive anyone. This process is called aparelhamento do estado by those who denounce both its extent and the damaging effects it has on public life. The military dictatorship (1964–85) whose mistrust of politicians had led it to break away from tradition had a tendency to appoint technicians to key-positions of the public apparatus. The return to democracy was the occasion for a signific ant increase in the number of appointments made on a strictly political basis. This is a well-known and largely accepted fact as most in Brazil believe that
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 177 ‘trust’ should be the foundation for relationships in the conduct of public affairs. In a system of power where interpersonal and political connections prevail, technical competence cannot guarantee loyalty. Pre- and post-electoral alliances are forged and broken in direct connection with the advance or setback of negoti ations in this system designed to regulate the distribution of charges and public offices between parties and political leaders. The various threats that may jeopardize important votes in the legislative assemblies give rise at regular intervals to the reopening of bargaining cycles. Thus certain advantageous positions conquered in the course of negotiations can sometimes turn out to be quite precarious. Reconfigured alliances, circumstantial interests may therefore preside over the fate of ministers, state secretaries, heads of public companies – and, as a con sequence, the individuals they have appointed to the various positions at the various levels on the hierarchical ladder of public bodies – who can be dismissed overnight to make room for the members or clients of a new coalition. Public tenders and the return on investments into electoral campaigns Public tenders (licitações) are one of the major paths to the accumulation of resources, whether it be to pay back financial help obtained when in the conquest for an elective position, or to create personal ties clearly indispensable in a polit ical regime with such strong tendencies to patronage. Public tenders are also an essential means for politicians, their staff and their allies to line their own pockets by attributing contracts for the supply of goods or services to businesses that are directly or indirectly connected with the elected officials, or with these officiers’ kith and kin. Civil engineering, school endowments, advertising contracts are just as many opportunities to do profitable business. The practices and schemes involved may be easier to understand when seen in the light of the material conditions on which the organization of electoral campaigns is premised. Again, there is emphatically no attempt here to justify such practices but to grasp better one of the causes underlying the ‘manipulations’ to which many public contracts are subjected and somehow highlight why the odds are so few that such practices decline as long as one of the factors that originate them persists. The amount of money invested in the long numerous electoral campaigns is quite impressive. The approximate individual cost for each electoral campaign is known through estimates released in the form of ‘set prices’ by the press. A fin ancial standard is set for electoral campaigns according to the elective position at stake, the size of the voting constituency, the number of voters to be mobilized. Costs may range from tens of thousands of euros for a town council member to tens of millions of euros for a Federal senator. Fees paid to the political parties added to public subsidies (Fundo partidário) are not enough to cover campaign expenses, a part of which must be financed through personal contributions or companies’ donations. Generous donors are usually wary to ‘cover their investments’ (to use a phrase borrowed from financial markets) and may therefore be
178 Y.-A. Fauré led to support several rival candidates at the same time. When offering their sup port, they simultaneously send a very clear signal about their expectations regarding ‘payback’ for their efforts. Private funding thus often looks like pre- emption on future public contracts and government orders. A recent survey (Samuels 2006) has confirmed this interpretation of the function of financial con tributions to voting campaigns. Terms of office are relatively short and donors are pressed for time and pressing for results, which can explain certain indelicate or even shady conducts and the many irregularities or frauds that occur in the management of public resources by elected officials. In spite of the neoliberal policies that have been adopted since the late 1980s, the public ‘machinery’ still plays a major role in businesses’ activities and continues to contribute substantially to the prosperity of the various sectors connected with government orders. Institutionalized bargaining in the legislative assemblies Members of the parliaments at all three levels of government of the Union can obtain particular funding from their respective executive bodies that is earmarked in principle for such or such specific operation. To such funding can be added expenditures as planned in public budgets (orçamentos) that are voted each year by the national Congress, or by state and city legislative assemblies. These emendas parlamentares, negotiated one by one within a framework that is strongly based on interpersonal relationship, are resources aimed at financing projects located in the electoral strongholds (redutos) of the applicants. They are decided in a context of patronage and reciprocated favors, return for these ‘extra’ funds often taking the shape of political support. The procedure is very popular as payments are far from strictly complying with public tender regulations which they may even bypass completely. During the 2006 legislature of the National Congress, each of the 513 deputies of the Assembly and 81 senators were officially granted ‘drawing rights’ as high as R$5 million (a little less than €2 million). Many members of Parliament use this ploy, among others, to obtain contracts under public calls for tenders geared to the needs of schools or hos pitals, community groups or NGOs in which they have direct vested interests as directors/members of the board or because they have relatives filling in such positions. The same process applies at the level of state and city authorities. The verbas are another form of financial bargaining that relies heavily on interpersonal relationships yet does not necessarily involve members of Parliament or their respective counterparts in the Executive. Verbas take the form of public subsidies directly allocated by government authorities (Federal Government, state and city authorities) and paid to a multitude of social bodies (com munity groups, NGOs or research consultants) acting in a variety of domains (civil rights, charity, education or training, health, etc.). These public monies are distributed through procedures that are subjected to little or no control and the press is certainly not hard put to find and reveal how, for example, studies have been paid that were never carried out, or how social programs have been financed that were never implemented, as well as other no less fictitious
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 179 operations. In all cases, considerable amounts of money are at stake. The courts of auditors usually carry out but one perfunctory ex post control to check the regularity of the operation and ask for explanations or express their disapproval only in the most serious cases. Subsidies end up for the most part in the hands of politicians for whom they represent major sources of financing for upcoming electoral campaigns or, on a more trivial plane, of lining their own pockets. Nepotism as a comfortable avenue Public institutions provide their directors not only with the opportunity of filling strategic positions with allies and clients like so many pawns moved on a chessboard, but also of directly recruiting relatives in keeping with an old national tradition. A twofold advantage can be derived from such practices; relationships based on mutual trust are in principle strengthened in the process while oppor tunities for enrichment and accumulation are created for the benefit of the wider family circle. The notorious example of town councils (Câmaras dos Vereadores) is but one conspicuous occurrence of a situation that prevails in many other public bodies. Council members can hire numerous assistants and collaborators whom they appoint at will, without having to present any guarantee of qualification or competence whatsoever, the whole operation being financed with the budget of the local Assembly. These positions, called cargas de natureza especial, are similar to the earlier mentioned cargas comissionadas; endowed with a substantial salary, they do not depend on public competitive examinations. This use of ‘family labor’, which such conditions as obtain in Brazil’s public life foster at all different levels of Government, is proportionally more frequent at the regional or local levels. Bills introduced in the legislative assemblies at all three levels of the Federal government have been passed here and there to limit the influence of nepotism but their enforcement, hence their impact, have so far been very limited. The legal sphere has proved to be a privileged area for nepotism. So many staff in the courts, from the lowest to the highest, and who are kin to magistrates, fill trusted positions. This practice has been as widely spread as it has been long known, measured and even exposed in countless press reports. The 9.421 Act of 1996 had in principle prohibited the appointment of spouses and relatives at a third remove, but it was not until October 2005 that the National Council of Justice (CNJ), a body in charge of controlling courts, decided to prohibit nepotism and fixed a period of 90 days for magistrates to terminate employment contracts involving members of their families.11 There are at least two ways of getting around the obstacle: the first consists in what is called crossed nepotism – i.e., recruiting relatives between magistrates or between magistrates and public prosecutors. A quid pro quo alternative consists in certain courts of justice pressuring goods suppliers or service providers into hiring the relatives of magistrates. An enquiry has shown that 82 percent of the so-called trusted positions of the court of justice of the state of Pernambuco have been filled with direct relat ives of magistrates. A law dating from 1997 in the state of Goiás even
180 Y.-A. Fauré institutionalizes nepotism allowing as it does each official in the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary to hire two close relatives. In the state of Alagoas, the president of the Court of Justice is said to ‘practically work at home’ in the words of journalists who have publicized this remarkable case: no fewer than 25 of his relatives hold positions in the Court. The Court of Justice of the state of Amazonas numbers 33 close relatives of judges. In the state of Piauí, scarcely populated, the Union of civil servants reckons that 400 people will have to be dismissed should the law that prohibits nepotism be enforced. This situation is far from being confined to the oligarchic states in the poor Nordeste region. The Union of public servants of the Department of Justice in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a part of the country which is often presented as being closest to Euro pean practices and values, has listed 68 cases of nepotism. Interim applications (liminares) have been introduced before the Federal Supreme Court by staff, rel atives of judges of the Labor Courts of the state of Maranhão and by magistrates of several states on the ground that the contracts which have benefited their rel atives are perfectly legal whereas the decision of the National Council for Justice is unconstitutional. Trading votes and offices Ballots and elected offices are resources that are commonly traded in Brazil. Considering ballots first, a survey carried out in 143 towns by the Brazilian Institute for Public Opinion (IBOPE) commissioned by the NGO Transparência Brasil and by the National Union of Financial Analysts and Control Technicians (UNACON) showed that nearly 10 percent of voters (i.e., 11 million) were the targets of active and direct approaches aimed at buying their votes in the latest round of elections – in return for money, goods, favors, etc.12 This comes in addition to the prodigality flaunted by most candidates in the course of their electoral campaigns, lavishing school supplies, essential food items, facilitating enrolment in public schools or access to hospital beds, distributing meals or even haircuts until voting time in order to ingratiate electors. Such practices which may look picturesque to readers used to stricter and differently motivated voting procedures correspond, however, to deeply entrenched habits in Brazil. The purchase of ballots can also take the guise of ballooning budget expenditure in the run-up to elections. Among many examples of the government’s generosity, the substantial increase in the pensions paid by the National Institute of Social Security (INSS), Brazil’s state-run pension for private sector workers, can be mentioned here as this particular ‘bonus’ happened to be decided by Federal authorities just a few weeks away from major national and regional elections in October 2006;13 in the same vein and period: a significant increase in minimum wages, the timely correction of income tax bases, financial ‘packages’ offered to builders, farmers and employers of domestic staff. All these measures have con tributed to sending public expenditure to record-high levels while specialists and international agencies such as the CEPAL (Economic Commission of the United Nations for Latin America) which is not particularly orthodox in matters of
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 181 economy, had already deemed that Federal expenditure to cover personnel and operating costs was too high while public investments were too low.14 These decisions made by the government in order to sway electoral choice, which in certain cases are nothing short of attempts at buying votes, are difficult to understand if isolated from their wider setting and from the ‘time-honored’ and deeply entrenched practices which permit them.15 Another practice that partakes of the same principles and values is the renting of elected offices, called aluguel de mandatos or troca-troca. These arrange ments, which consist more specifically in one party recruiting elected officials from another party, feed the considerable crossing over between parties and factions that can be observed in the legislative assemblies at the three levels of gov ernment (Fauré 2005). One first factor of change in political affiliation stems from the Executive’s endeavors nationally, regionally and locally to reach majority in the Legislature in a system where electoral rules disperse political repres entation and have produced what some have called a regime of coalition presidency. This entails continuous bargaining in the corridors of the political arena, after electors have cast their ballots, with a view to obtaining support for crucial votes in the assembly in exchange for positions and other fiercely disputed advantages. In addition to this situation of dispersal which makes it neces sary for the ruling party to seek conditions for governability, and if one is to consider the daily routine of Congress, the quest for financial advantages and favors regularly feeds interparty peregrination and is at the origin of numerous changes in affiliation to such or such political group, with the distribution of seats in Congress being considerably modified in the sequence.16
A source of private enrichment: the high cost of politics It is a truism to say that the exercise of elective offices in a political system per meated with patrimonialism is a source of material enrichment for the happy few elected to office. To put things in a prosaic way, and on the basis of observations that have been repeatedly made by analysts, those offices which carry with them a commitment to serve the nation also enable those in office precisely to serve their own interests. In Brazil, however, such opportunities for elected officials to increase their personal wealth cannot be disconnected from the high cost of political life in general and from the way elective institutions work in particular. Possibilities of personal enrichment for those involved in the political game are a direct function of how substantial the resources managed or supervised by the Republic’s Executive bodies and its Assemblies of elected officials are. Scarce controls and lenient punishment also have an impact on the importance of the means put at the disposal of these very executive and legislative bodies. It is possible to form an idea of the cost of political life through a variety of quantitative data.17 For instance, it is known that each deputy of the Federal Assembly costs R$1.14 million per year (€422,000), apart from extraordinary sessions of Congress.18 In 2006 the deputies and senators of the National Congress had a budget of R$5.4 million. The Senate operates with the help of an
182 Y.-A. Fauré army of 12,000 staff. That same year, the staff of the lower Chamber numbered 20,579 people, among whom 3,579 so-called career staff (hired through com petitive recruiting procedures), 2,266 holding trusted offices, 9,821 fatly paid parliamentary secretaries also appointed at the discretion of MPs, which makes a total of 15,666 so-called active staff.19 This context makes it easy to understand the words of the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro who wrote about the High Federal Chamber: ‘It is even better than Heaven for there is no need of dying in order to get admission. The Senate is like a big club, convivial, deferential and cordial’.20 As for material enrichment, while one does not have to be so attentive an observer to notice it, sources for a serious identification of genuine cases and for accurate measurements to estimate their scope had been lacking up to now. Among several difficult investigations carried out recently by journalists – difficult for they are premised on the authorization by electoral courts to access the election candidates’ declarations of estate – a series of papers published by O Globo in April 2006 can be mentioned here which show that half the MPs of the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro managed to double their declared property within their four year term of office. Another enquiry released in the newspapers revealed that federal MPs spent dizzying amounts of money in fuel expenses. These gastos estratosféricos as the Brazilian phrase has it, amount to more than 4,100 journeys around the world or 215 to the moon.21 Among other elected officials, federal MPs benefit, in addition to their salaries and those of their innumerous collaborators, from substantial funding that covers all types of expenses with no need to produce receipts, one consequence of which being the system’s contribution to feeding an intricate circuit of false invoices.22 Payments often benefit businesses where politicians have vested interests whether they be owners, shareholders or directors, interests of which they take constant care through dependents and allies. A detailed survey examining the situation of 1,800 federal and estaduais elected officials between two legislative elections show the conspicuous material enrichment of MPs during their time of office, with those belonging to the governing party almost doub ling their estate in that interval (Rodrigues 2006). It should be added that the survey in question only took into consideration the property duly declared by candidates to the electoral justice. All these financial opportunities are both the fruit and one of the seeds of the patrimonial process at work in the management of public resources. Taking them into account enables the analyst to somehow draw a more complete and fairer picture of the formal functions that should be fulfilled by representative and gov ernment bodies than that, far too naïve, which continues to be presented to readers in public law treatises and textbooks. But the few devices described so far cannot give a precise comprehensive representation of the patrimonialist currents running through the public sphere in Brazil. The attributions of licenses and permits which are a staple of the very bureaucratic public administration in Brazil frequently give rise to underground negotiations that can actually involve criminal organizations operating from within the official corps in charge of granting and/or controlling rights (taxes,
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 183 work, health, environment, etc.) The pension funds of public companies pile up considerable amounts of money and are often used in somewhat dubious opera tions that have little connection with the purpose for which they were set up in the first place. Construction law in Brazil, whose regime is defined at town scale, together with building permits granted sovereignly by town halls, are an area where public and unscrupulous private interests commonly mix. Writing false entries into public ledgers for public agents and employees is quite common and makes it possible for those concerned to embezzle public monies through the payment of fictitious salaries. The purchase of legal acts in order to obtain an habeas corpus for example, or court rulings in favor of the mighty, are also part of a range of operations that cannot but foster the conditions in which patrimonialism has endured and thrived. At this point it would behoove this presentation to shed more light on the pervasion of the public sphere by those conducts and practices that partake of patrimonialism as well as to put forward some explanations regarding the factors that make them possible, frequent, indeed endow them with legitimacy. The histor ical endurance of patronage on a local and regional scale (the so-called coronelismo [Cf. Fauré 2004]), the anthropological duality of society, where the individual, as an abstract figure who is subject to the law of his country, still has to yield before the person as an entity provided with social quality and capable of turning standards to its benefit (Da Matta 1978), the influence of a system of beliefs and values which makes it possible to accept the prescriptions that invalidate patrimonialist conducts while contributing to their reduplication, are part and parcel of the structural factors to which the Brazilian jeitinho is subservient. If the jeitinho is still ‘alive and kicking’ it is also perhaps because of other currents and processes running deep through Brazilian society such as the conspicuous social inequalities, the considerable role played by the informal sector in the country’s economy, the far too lenient penal and legal systems, the liberties and immunities that the political class generously keeps granting to itself, the frequent collusion between politics and organized crime, the impunity that goes with power, whether it be of a political, economic or even criminal order, the uncertainty and instability of rules, the disempowering welfare policies, the facility with which one may transgress the boundaries between public and private sphere, including physical space, the frequent submission of the state apparatus and of its resources to the interests of particular categories both social or corporative, etc. Such are some of the factors, diverse and recurring, which contribute to the ongoing self-modernizing process of patrimonialism in Brazil and seem to guarantee its prosperity in the future.
Notes 1 The word jeitinho, a literal translation of which would be ‘the little art of finding a way out’, is used by Brazilians to designate the innumerable arrangements in daily life that make it possible for them to get around constraints and rules and often rest on the payment of tip money (propina) or on reciprocated favors.
184 Y.-A. Fauré 2 See Fauré and Médard (1995: 289). Our definition is close to the concepts and approaches of those who pioneered the reintroduction of the notion of patrimonialism – a word that is used here instead of ‘neopatrimonialism’ even to describe contempor ary situations – in social and political analysis (e.g., Zolberg 1966; Roth 1968: 194–203; Willame 1972; Jackson and Rosberg 1982). 3 O Globo, 22 December 2002. 4 Analysts have used various notions, words and phrases to describe processes partaking of patrimonialism: ‘patronage system’ (Clapham 1982), ‘clientelist regime’ (Bayart 1979), ‘prebendal politics’ (Joseph 1987), ‘politics of the belly’ (Bayart 1989), etc. 5 Léna, Geffray and Araújo, 1996, various contributions: 111–353. 6 Among the highest-profile ‘affairs’, the following can be cited – the phrases or words in Portuguese being those commonly used in Brazil when referring to these affairs: Waldomiro, Correios, mensalão et Valérioduto, sanguessugas, vampiros, dossiêgate. Penal regulations and procedure, regulations for the Legislative Assemblies, political immunity as organized by the constitution, etc. serve as sturdy shields for the indicted, very few of whom are actually punished in the end. It should be added that most of the elected officials implicated in those ‘affairs’ were returned to their offices in the 2006 October ballot. 7 The second major trait which used to distinguish the PT from other political parties lay in its proclaimed commitment to implement economic policies running counter to the free-market packages passed by the preceding governments. In this respect also, it can fairly be said that continuity has largely prevailed. 8 The present chapter was written in 2006. Since then, new ‘affairs’ of peculation, and, more generally, of ‘corruption’, some on a massive scale and implicating several political parties, have broken out and further tarnished the image of the Brazilian political class (navalha operation, etc.). 9 The same spoils system obtains on a local scale in the 5,561 Brazilian towns. A more detailed description and above all, more information about its effects in terms of eco nomic management and local development can be found in Fauré (2004, 2005) and in Fauré and Hasenclever (2005). 10 Exactly 19,925 in 2005 (source: Ministério do Planejamento, Orçamento e Gestão), an increase of nearly 2,000 in the first three years of ‘Lula’s term of office. The figures do not include the corresponding so-called trusted positions (cargas comissionadas) within the Federal Legislature and Judiciary, public and mixed-status companies, the states’ and municípios’ executive, legislative and judiciary bodies. On this, see the rather well-documented papers published in the Folha de São Paulo, on 16 March 2003 and in O Globo, on 15 October 2006. 11 It is not known to date whether the decision will be enforced as rebellion has flared up among magistrates, with several courts rallying against a measure that they claim is a direct threat to the independence of their office. 12 This result confirms previous investigations (O Globo, 16 March 2005). 13 Earlier increases had been limited to adjustments aimed at keeping seniors’ purchasing power even with inflation. 14 The 2000 Act of financial accountability (Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal) while having a few mitigating effects on public finances (cf. Fauré 2005), has still not curbed the traditional practice consisting in ballooning public expenditure in the run-up to elections. 15 A recent study by researchers of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation shows that since 1983 the income of Brazilians has increased 12.1 percent on average during presidential and governmental election years and decreased 11.9 percent during the year following the election. Considering all possible sources of income (salaries, pensions, etc.) it must be noted that transferred public money – notably subsidies for social programs – accounts for the highest increase during election years: +24 percent on average
Jeitinho in contemporary Brazil 185 (source: Centro de Políticas Sociais, Fundação Getúlio Vargas 2006). Isolated or specific ingratiating measures are thus easier to understand when considered within a general climate that is propitious to prodigality during election time. 16 Changes in political party affiliation – corresponding among other configurations to cross‑overs between the opposition and the governing coalition – during the seven terms of office since the end of the military dictatorship numbered: 168 (1983–7), 174 (1987–91), 261 (1991–5), 207 (1995–9), 225 (1999–2003) and more than 200 for the preceding 2003–6 legislature (source: Secretaria Geral das Mesas do Congresso). 17 The description here is limited to the Federal legislative bodies. The same trends, with all proportions kept, can, however, be observed in the legislative bodies at the other levels of government (i.e., the 27 states, including the Federal District, and the 5,561 Brazilian municípios). It must be added regarding the size of a given state’s Legislature’s expenditure that it is not proportional to that state’s population. Thus, for example, the Legislative Assembly of the state of Rio de Janeiro spends 25 percent more than the Assembly of the state of São Paulo whereas the population of the latter is double the population of the former (cf. O Globo, 22 October 2006). 18 Jornal do Brasil, 18 February 2006. 19 To these, 4,400 pensioners and dependents must be added (inativos e pensionistas) (source: Tesouro Nacional et Câmara dos Deputados). 20 Cited in Folha de São Paulo, 6 April 2006. Ribeiro 2006. 21 The comparison should not sound strange when seen in the national context: in 2006, the journey into space of the Brazilian astronaut aboard a Russian spacecraft was paid by the central government at commercial rates and some ridiculed an enterprise which they clearly deemed to be of a more touristic than scientific order. 22 See, for example, O Globo, 25 April 2006.
13 Neopatrimonialism, factionalism and patronage in post-Soviet Uzbekistan Alisher Ikhamov
Following the breakdown of entrenched authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt some observers turned their attention to Central Asian countries in anticipation of similar revolutions. Indeed, the ruling regimes in post-Soviet Central Asia present a number of features deemed characteristic of the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) states and societies. These include inter alia a common religious background, widespread poverty, corruption and the brutal treatment of civil society and civic freedoms. Apart from these parallels one may also highlight the ability of the Tunisian and Egyptian authoritarian regimes to have lasted over a long period of time in spite of their lack of political legitimacy and failure to address the countries’ social and economic problems. In addition to this, the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have revealed their authoritarian regimes’ vulnerability to massive street protests and popular demands for the regime change. This dualism, i.e., durability combined with fragility due to a legitimacy largely based on resource distribution, may be viewed as a systemic feature shared by Central Asian states, and an invitation to apply to these the concept of neopatrimonial rule. The notions of patrimonial or neopatrimonial rule have been widely used to depict politics in Africa, the Middle East and Asia (Sandbrook 1972; Willame 1972; Bill and Leiden 1974; Brynen 1995; and others). Yet, scholars studying the state and institutional transformation in post-Soviet Central Asia have rarely used this concept in spite of the unfulfilled expectations of post-Soviet transition to modern democracy and free market economy. One of the few exceptions was been John Ishiyama (2002) who operates a distinction between neopatrimonial regime and corporatist authoritarian regime. The following pages argue that the concept of neopatrimonial rule is particularly suited to the discussion of the system of personal rule established by President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan. Islam Karimov has been ruling his country since 1990. Despite his obvious mismanagement of social and economic affairs, he still exerts firm control over the country. Failed governance and a shrinking legitimacy have not resulted in mass uprisings, coup d’état or revolutions – the only exception remains the pop ular uprising in Andijan which was brutally suppressed in May 2005.1 Karimov’s rule invites for this reason a discussion of the pillars upon which his authorit arian rule rests, but also interrogations on the regime’s combination of resilience
Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 187 and vulnerability vis-à-vis internal and external pressures. Indeed, it would be a mistake to suggest that the perennation of authoritarian regimes has to do exclusively with their use of force and violence as means of political control. Besides the use of physical force, other key ingredients account for their governing performance. The concept of neopatrimonialism (see Chapters 1 and 2 in this volume) helps to account for key aspects of Karimov’s rule, namely: • • • • •
personal rule embodied in the domination of executive government over other branches of state authority; the existence, within the executive branch of power, a nexus of informal checks and balances mostly associated with rivalries between factions within the government; the neutralization of potential power contesters through their co-optation and accommodation; the use of state ideology and propaganda complemented with strict censorship and control of information; the transformation of institutional gaps, or ‘grey’ legislative zones, into spheres of oportunity for personal rule and patronage networks.
The Uzbek ruling regime has demonstrated its skills at mobilizing these forms of power control and governmentality. As similarly observed in other Central Asian countries, personal rule involves the control of various factions tied to regional and patronage networks. In other words, neopatrimonialism refers here formal and informal practices that only partly coincide with the state as a formal organisation. Indeed, family, kinship and patronage networks are actively mobilized as social resources to fight power struggles that offer a quintessential expression of neopatrimonialism. To monitor these interactions, this article first focuses on the role of informal factions and patronage networks. We will then successively discuss neopatrimonialism during the Soviet period and the rise of Islam Karimov after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
‘Clan’ and patronage networks The parsimonious appeal to the concept of neopatrimonialism in Soviet and post-Soviet studies contrasts with the abundant literature on clan and patronage networks. During the Soviet period, the discussion of patron–client networks, considered in connection with the issue of state corruption, featured both in the public arena and in private discussions. This was especially the case during the decade that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the lexicon of Soviet state ideology this was known and articulated through the notions of clanoviost (nepotism), mestnichestvo (regionalism) (Critchlow 1991: 141) and kumovstvo (cronyism). These were considered as diversions from governance based on purely national interests. The term ‘clan’ referred to kinship-based entities and relations based on lineage and descent (whether actual or fictive), but also to
188 A. Ikhamov networks based on a much broader range of affiliations. These interest groups, whether they were based on kinship ties or on regional affiliation, shared in common the aspiration to control particular resources by taking over certain offices. Clanoviost and mestnichestvo were stigmatized as a source of state corruption alien to the values blessed by Communist ideology. Over two decades after the demise of the Soviet regime and its state ideology, these notions keep being criticized on public tribunes where they are treated as threats to rule of law and state integrity. As in the past, none of the top and middle rank officials would dare publicly disclosing the ‘clan’ or patronage network to which they often belong. At the same time, the members of ‘clan’ and patronage networks are themselves often well informed about who is who in this respect.2 For the rest of society and external observers the evidence of ‘clan’ reality is rather scanty, with the result of a proliferation of rumours, stereotypes and myths on this subject. Not surprisingly, the phenomenon of ‘clans’ has attracted the attention of scholars. During Soviet times, ‘clan’ politics was treated as an essential feature of Central Asian politics by Donald Carlisle (1991, 1995) and Jim Critchlow (1988, 1991). In the post-Soviet era, scholars like Kathleen Collins (2004, 2006), Sally Cummings (2005) or Ilkhamov (2004: 1, 2002) have kept discussing these issues. Barnett Rubin (1998) and Olivier Roy (1998) treat ‘parallel power networks’, ‘solidarity groupings’ and regional factions as contributing factors in the civil war that affected Tajikistan. More generally, ‘clans’ and patronage networks are seen as sub-ethnic and rather pre-modern formations. Their influence is bound to be overcome if the agenda of modern nation-state building succeeds. They may also be preserved and subjected to manipulation by the political leadership. The bulk of publications on Central Asian ‘clan’ politics refer to material drawn from mainly three countries, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. However, there are significant differences in the role played by kinship and lineage networks in ‘clan’ formations between Kazakhstan, on the one hand, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on the other. In Kazakhstan, clans are often closely associated with primordial tribal and lineage kinship associations that refer to a – real or imagined – common nomadic ancestor. Edward Schatz, in his work on Kazakhstan, underlines how kinship, a key feature of ‘clan’ formations, persists in post-Soviet reality. As he puts it: ‘clan divisions are those that exist within an ethnic group and in which demonstrable common kinship is understood to underlie membership’ (Schatz 2005: 26). When studying informal, clan-like networks in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan some authors have tried to abandon the ‘cousinly’ interpretations of the ‘clan’ system. Indeed, tribal identity among Uzbeks and Tajiks, who have had a long history of sedentary lifestyle, is much weaker (if it exists at all)3 than among the recently sedentarized Kazakhs and Kyrgyzs. At the same, time the sense of affinity to territory and the related mobilization of regional networks are quite strong in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as indeed in other parts of Central Asia. Extended families still play a key role in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but lineage does not
Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 189 play such an outstanding role as in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan in the formation of ‘clan’ identity.4 In Uzbekistan ‘clans’ are often very loose coali tions built upon various types of allegiance, including kinship, friendship, patron–client or partnerships among clients. Muriel Atkin (1997: 292) makes a similar point when arguing that the term ‘clan’ is misleading when applied to informal networks in Tajikistan. In Tajikistan, at least, ‘clans’ are devoid of a primordial character and should be more adequately qualified as patron–client networks. Uzbekistan has also been moving from ‘clan’-based vertical affiliations towards new forms, based on patron–client relations, although, both of them still coexist. The transitional form of patron–client relations, that characterize Uzbekistan and its post-Soviet neighbours, can be called ‘neopatrimonial’, because of being coincided with the extensive legal-rational forms of govern ment and regulation. Uzbekistan enjoys a relatively all-encompassing legislation that, besides the overarching constitutional principles, involves numerous laws or decrees, often inspired from Russia or Europe. However, their impartial and systematic application is the problem. Government bodies often act arbitrarily by ignoring the law or applying it selectively, in accordance with the private interests of office holders or demands from clans and patronage networks that stand behind them or the top political leadership.
The Soviet period and its legacy The establishment of Karimov’s neopatrimonial regime, as in other post-Soviet countries in the region, is the outcome of a complex set of circumstances. Foremost among them are the pre-Soviet and Soviet legacies with respect to political culture, patterns of governance and relationships between state and society. The Soviet modernization project failed to uproot the patronage system because it was itself suffering from institutional underdevelopment. Stalin’s authoritarian rule and its enforcement by the Politbureau,5 thwarted efforts to eradicate patrimonialism. It is difficult to monitor precisely how the period preceding the October Revolution of 1917 contributed to shape the system of governance observed in today’s Uzbekistan. Some of the patterns of interactions between ruler and ruled during the Bukharan, Khivan and Kokand khanates were, however, survived throughout the Soviet period and remain embedded into the contemporary administrative system. For instance, the Emir of Bukharan used the practice of tanho, namely a sort of licence granted to beks (local governors) to collect from local peasants taxes designed to fulfil both their private needs and the maintenance of local administration. This licence system was granted in exchange for allegiance, military support and the transfer to Bukhara of parts of the revenue collected (Tolstov 1962: 175). As a system of tax collection imposed by a suzerain upon his vassals, tanho was strongly evocative of various aspects of con temporary neopatrimonialism regimes. Indeed, the Emir of the Bukhara Khanate acted like a statesman, legitimately collecting taxes on behalf of the state, but
190 A. Ikhamov also behaved as a patron vis-à-vis the beks. These were his clients and they also ran their own patronage networks which extended to the local aristocracy and communities. During the Soviet period, a similar system survived in conjunction with the expansion of patronage politics. Sharaf Rashidov, as First Secretary of the Uzbekistan branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), skillfully combined the Soviet style of leadership with informal practices akin to tanho. Such a style of governance helped Rashidov to convince Moscow that he is in control of the situation in the republic. Thanks to that he managed to keep his position of the de facto republican governor for 24 long years (1959–83). Such longevity stemmed from his capacity to redistribute resources as in the pre- Soviet period: provincial bosses were allowed to benefit privately from a part of the local resources, both economic and political, which were under their supervision. Control over the local resources was only made possible through unofficial and illegal channels of resource redistribution that related to the sphere of the shadow economy secured by ‘clan’ networks. The creeping capture of the Soviet administrative system by patronage networks was not confined to ‘backward’ Central Asia. It also occurred at the very heart of the Soviet state, within the Central Committee of the CPSU and the central government. Indeed, the spread of neopatrimonial practices was an intrinsic characteristic of the Soviet regime. As Ken Jowitt notes (1992: 127, 131), Bolshevic rule went along with the acquisition of an exclusive status by office holders and the routinization of corrupt governance practices. The shift of Stalin’s personal rule and charismatic authority towards neopatrimonial rule went along with the persistence of quite rational and predictable forms of decision making represented by the executive government which remained responsible for the definition of policy orientations over social and economic issues. Although Stalin himself remained free of regulations that might constrain his authority, his rule did accommodate certain rational-legal forms of administration (Gorlizki 2002: 701–2). Stalin’s personal preoccupation with exceptional control over the party and state administration also provided a decisive impulse to the spread of patronage and neopatrimonial practices across the Soviet Union. This translated afterwards into the widespread use of blat as a principle of social interaction and a means of securing access to various benefits via ties of reciprocity. Stalin had thus paved the way for the combination of authoritarian rule with an expansion of informal institutions and practices, a pattern most vividly illus trated by Leonid Brezhnev’s rule (1964–82). Although Nikita Khrushchev (1953–64) had restored some forms of collective and collegial decision-making, the restraints imposed on personal rule were subsequently compensated by the expansion of patronage networks. These were used as a channel to accommodate group interests, but also, and ultimately, to strengthen interactions between state and society. To some extent, the leading slogan of those times ‘The People and the Party are United’ was not unjustified. John P. Willerton (1987: 176) recounts how neopatrimonial rule under Brezhnev deferred from Stalin’s. Stalin had built
Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 191 a patrimonial hierarchy of loyal cadres and would not allow any factional grouping to influence him. He therefore periodically organised purges and sent the exiled to gulags. By contrast, Brezhnev was more inclined to craft solutions of compromise with both elites and society. As a result, the power seeking factions could exert some leverage upon Brezhnev and on policy making. Unlike the Stalinist dictatorship, the era of Brezhnev was marked by the emergence and consolidation of a kind of political class comprised of party, administration bureaucrats and managers of the large industrial enterprises who interacted with each other through formal and informal channels. Since the consolidation of this bureaucratic class occurred both at the centre and at local government level, this widened the framework for interest groups’ lobbying. In Uzbekistan, Brezhnev’s style of neopatrimonial rule was skillfully emu lated by the local chief apparatchik, Sharaf Rashidov. Like Brezhnev, he successfully engineered a stable cadre management policy due to his capacity to build patronage networks and conclude ‘clan pacts’. The resulting system of governance left a strong imprint on local politics and political culture since many party and state officials, who dominated the political arena after the post- Rashidov period remained indebted to him for their administrative career.6 Islam Karimov himself emulated, at least at the beginning of his rule, the consensual style so characteristic of his predecessor. With the rise of Karimov it pro gressively became clear that his rule differed from Rashivov’s tenure and was more akin to Stalin’s greater reliance on coercion and gulags7 as a means of making population compliant with his rule through brainwashing.
The rise of Islam Karimov President Islam Karimov initially came to office as a leader of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan in 1989. These were the years of resurgent nationalisms across the Soviet Union. Karimov, during public meetings, presented himself as a leader of the whole nation who would stand above of any ‘clan’ or regional patronage network. Karimov also denounced clan politics and swore to fight and eradicate these from Uzbekistani reality. In a book that he published in 1997, Karimov listed regionalism and clans among the seven most important threats to the country’s security. Karimov therefore acknowledged that the phenomenon of ‘clans’ had not disappeared after years of anti-corruption campaigns during the Soviet period (1997: 59). What Karimov did not add was that, as a politician and head of the state, he was himself the product of ‘clan’ politics. During his brief tenure as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, Karimov established himself as a leader capable of meeting the expectations and hopes of various informal elite factions in the pursuit of key negotiations with Moscow. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Karimov’s election to the presidency, his government gained control over the most important economic resources, including cotton, precious and non-ferrous metals and other minerals. Once independence was proclaimed, Karimov also presided over the rehabilitation of Sharaf Rashidov and the amnesty of dozens of other
192 A. Ikhamov government officials and regional elites who had been arrested and jailed in connection with Moscow’s anti-corruption campaigns in the middle and late 1980s (Carlisle 1995). A number of local officials associated with Sharaf Rashiov and his patronage networks were also granted key positions in the government. This was the case for Shukrullo Mirsaidov and Timur Alimov, two key members of the Tashkent ‘network’, who respectively became Prime Minister and Presiden tial Adviser; Ismail Jurabekov who represented the Samarkand-Jizzak region was also appointed Deputy Prime Minister, a position that involved control over water management and agriculture. Karimov, however, soon distanced himself from factional groups and even assumed the posture of a referee, as Moscow used to do. This enabled him to manipulate inter-factional rivalries so as to promote a ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy. As he strengthened his grip over power, Karimov’s dependency on previous allies and partners loosened. Karimov, however, did not use this opportunity to build and enforce democratic and legal institutions that would have curbed the spread of neopatrimonialism. He strengthened instead his personal rule through neopatrimonial practices and by playing factions off one another. The outcome was a kind of check-and-balance system that remained, however, limited to the sphere of informal relationships within the executive government. The elimination of old ‘clan’ leaders was supplemented by limitations installed on the capacity of local elites to get access to the profitable mining and cotton sectors (Ilkhamov 2004: 1). Step by step, major export resources became concentrated in the hands of the central government and fell under the personal supervision of Karimov. The seizure of major national resources went along with the preservation of a command economy. The introduction of elements of free market in the economy remained limited and highly selective. As had been the case during the Soviet period, the planned economy and the monopoly exercised over power by a single political grouping created a favourable turf for the re- emergence of ‘clan’ formations and inter-clan rivalries. So as to diminish the sway of regional leaders, Karimov adopted a policy of frequent rotations of the regional hokims (governors), ousted from their posts every three years on average as estimated for the period between 1993 and 2002 (Ilkhamov 2004: 170). The reason invoked for these dismissals was usually the corruption of the office holders. In a number of cases, dismissals were also followed by criminal charges brought against the ousted hokim. Despite the frequent occurrence of these corruption charges, nothing was done to reform the system and reduce the opportunities for abuse of power among local governors. The regional hokims kept being appointed by the President himself and were employed to strengthen the repressive apparatus and surveillance over local gov ernments, institutions and population. What such a policy also achieved was a reduction of the likelihood of conspiracies plotted by local hokims against Karimov himself – who also happened to have been one of them in the past. Minimizing the risk of conspiracy by the local hokims coincided with the rise of influence of a new type of patronage networks within key ministries in the central government. Structures responsible for security, law enforcement, tax
Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 193 collection, custom, finances and export procurement became particularly power ful. Thus, fierce competition grew between the Interior Ministry and the National Security Services, a rivalry tacitly encouraged by the President, as part of the same check-and-balance system. The power of these two administrations stemmed from wielding almost unchecked coercive power, as much as from the acquisition of considerable economic power. Much of this was achieved by gaining informal control over spheres of economic activity that range from export trade, retail and catering businesses to drug trafficking. This pattern still remains unchecked today, perhaps because President Karimov sees it as a retribution for loyalty and an opportunity to keep the respective patronage leaders on leash by threatening them to the use of compromising evidence collected while tracing their corrupt deeds. Law enforcement agencies have also actively contributed to the enrichment of the presidential family. Building familial wealth has become quite an extensive business, resulting in the emergence of what may be described as a kind of ‘mega-clan’, centred on the Presidential family. Usage of this term to describe a phenomenon observed in several other post-Soviet authoritarian regimes, enables to stress the existence of a hierarchy that combines personal rule and patronage through access to administrative structures and support from other resource affluent ‘clans’. Karimov’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova, until recent times was considered as one of most probable candidates to his succession. She also played a key role in the creation and expansion of this ‘mega-clan’. From the late 1990s onwards, the growth of Gulnara Karimova’s business empire was spectacular, both in terms of economic might and political clout. Thanks to the support of her father, and backing up from the administrative apparatus of law enforcement and the secur ity agencies as well as some ‘clan’ groupings, business structures reportedly associated with Gulnara Karimova acquired one asset after another. Early in 2011, she featured among the 300 richest people in Switzerland where her assets were estimated around US$600 million.8 This ‘mega-clan’ phenomenon highlights a key distinction between Karimov style of neopatrimonial rule and Stalin’s. Unlike Stalin, Karimov has, like other post-Soviet rulers, embraced the market economy, albeit in a very selective and ‘kleptocratic’ manner. He clearly had little concern for the egalitarian ideals which were putting certain limits to the egoistic aspirations of office holders in Soviet times. This also gives a clue to the specific slant of Karimov’s neopatrimonial rule, namely the combination of two mutually supportive factors, namely the hyper-centralization of the administrative system due to exceptional control of power assumed by the President, and, secondly, the selective adoption of market economy and its institutions so as to allow the ruling elite to legalize its capture of resources and capital. This mix between monopolistic patterns of political control and elements of market economy is the hallmark of Uzbekistan’s brand of neopatrimonialism. Such a pattern, needless to say, represents one of major obstacle to the economic, political and institutional development of the country.
194 A. Ikhamov
The exploitation of the ‘grey’ zones in the legislative norms Neopatrimonial regimes combine personal rule with modern forms of legal- rational government. The outcome is a varying ability to address the country’s daily needs and pursue developmental agendas. The intrinsically dual nature of the dynamics associated with neopatrimonial rule often turns into a conflict between logics of governance – personal vs legal-rational, or patrimonial vs developmental, for instance. The conflict, when it takes place, usually results in the emergence of grey zones where a written law exists but means little or nothing as the conduct of public affairs is dictated by the interests of a ruling clique or of influential ‘clans’ and factions. Uzbekistan is a relatively developed nation with an almost 100 percent liter acy rate, good social infrastructures and an army of legal professionals, not to mention an extensive legislation. Yet, in practice, some of legal norms are dorm ant and not applied in daily reality. Arbitrary decisions due to personal rule and the influence of patronage affect more specifically the business sector’s inter actions with the government, for instance, abusive conduct of local hokims vis-àvis the farmers, but also civil society’s relations with the state. Take, for example, the relationships between business and government. It has become an established practice of the local governments to extort money from local businessmen for various charity purposes, for instance support to local soccer clubs, or for the renovation of public buildings. Even more systematic is the practice of paying bribes to secure favourable administrative decisions. The bribes routinely range from petty amounts given to traffic police and rank-and-file staff at local administrations, to big deals when businessmen grease the palm of officials and secure their protection for large scale cross-border smuggling activities. Among other notable examples features the cotton industry due to its large scale use of forced child labour,9 a practice orchestrated by the central and local govern ments. Despite the adoption of legislation that unequivocally bans child labour,10 these practices concern hundreds of thousands of school kids who are mobilized each harvest season. This suggests that the adoption of laws meant to prevent such practices should be better understood as an exercise in ‘window-dressing’, the exercise designed to mask a well established system that maximizes profits to the benefit of ruling and local elites. More generally, most of the spheres of social, economic and political life in Uzbekistan are, at least to some extent, permeated by patrimonial practices. In many cases these practices, which involve, for instance, forced child labour or the abuse of farmers’ rights, have become routinized to the extent that they constitute the institutional environment of its own. In Uzbekistan, as in many other states that emerged out of the former Soviet Union, a legacy of institutional underdevelopment has allowed patronage networks to flourish and penetrate public offices and state institutions. Post-Soviet leaders have done little to mend this institutional gap. At the same time, among the post-Soviet states, the Uzbek regime presents characteristics that are quite unique, due to a style of governance based, like Stalin’s on the combination of arbitrary rule with legal-rational forms of government. Just as Stalin’s rule
Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Uzbekistan 195 coexisted with some developmental projects run by the executive government (take, for example, the genuine successes achieved in the fields of industrialization, sciences and education), Karimov’s personal rule similarly coexists with elements of modern statehood and market economy. Personal rule and its related incentive to patrimonial practices and relationships exists side-by-side with legal-rational norms of government. The outcome is the production (and reproduction) of ‘grey’ zones, or institutional gaps: affairs are run and decisions are made in accordance with double standards; written law and formal regulation, even when they exist, mean little or nothing, while oral instructions (the so called phone ‘law’) prevail over legislative rules and norms. Given President Karimov’s age – he was 73 in 2011 – the question of regime change in Uzbekistan is bound to arise in a not too distant future. The question is not so much what form it will take – revolution, state coup or a quiet succession by one of Karimov’s associates – but whether the transition will depart from the system of personal rule which has been the main predicament to institutional development. Without such a transformation neopatrimonial practices will retain their tight grip over state and society. Due to the combination of institutional inertia and authoritarianism under the Karimov regime, Uzbekistan is unlikely to rapidly complete its protracted trans ition towards a modern nation state. Even in case of regime change, it may take quite a long time to entrench the rule of law, namely a system where political change is routinized and well regulated, and where government is accountable and public policy-minded. It is difficult to imagine that the successor to President Karimov, unless he or she comes on the wave of a democratic revolution, will have enough strength and determination to give up the temptation to cultivate patrimonialism. Neighbouring Turkmenistan is an example of such an unfortunate outcome. An offspring of the previous regime, the new Turkmen president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, was unable or unwilling to implement institutional reforms that would also have meant limiting his own power. What he has managed to achieve is a break away from the most ridiculous and eccentric forms of authoritarianism represented by his predecessor, Saparmurad Niyazov. As recent developments in Russia, Ukraine and Armenia also illustrate, the democratic regimes that emerge in countries with a long history of neopatrimonial rule face the risk of sliding back into authoritarianism that, in turn, reinforces and brings back neopatrimonial practices and relationships.
Notes 1 On May 13, 2005 a mass protest meeting in Andijan was violently suppressed by the army. See: Preliminary Findings on the Events in Andijan, Uzbekistan, May 13, 2005 (‘With Information as of ’ June 13, 2005), OSCE-ODIHR, June 20, 2005; Bullets ‘Were Falling Like Rain, The Andijan Massacre’, May 13, 2005, Human Rights Watch 17(5-D), June 2005; ‘Uzbekistan: The Andijon Uprising’, Asia Briefing, International Crisis Group 38, May 25, 2005. 2 According to one informant who used to work in the government, each top official has an adviser who accumulates knowledge about the informal hierarchy and ranking
196 A. Ikhamov within the government and makes recommendations to his boss on how to act in some situations in accordance with this ranking. 3 On the Uzbeks’ loss of social memory on their tribal origins, see Ilkhamov (2004: 23). 4 The exception may apply for Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Turkmen ethnic minorities in Uzbekistan. 5 The supreme decision making body of the CPSU. 6 This was the case for such famous politicians as Ismail Djurabekov, Timur Alimov and Abdulaziz Kamilov. In the Karimov administration they had respectively occupied the positions of First Deputy Prime Minister, Presidential Advisor and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Source: The database of personalities, Centrasia.Ru at: www.centrasia.ru/person.php4 (data accessed on April 25, 2011). 7 Political dissidents are held in the prison of Jaslyk, located in Karakalpakstan and frequently compared with the Gulag system. 8 RFE/RL at: www.rferl.org/content/Does_PMs_Rise_Energy_Firms_Demise_Shed_ Light_On_Uzbek_Succession_Question/2048173.html (retrieved on March 20, 2011). 9 See more on the subject: Invisible to the World: The Dynamics of Forced Child Labour in the Cotton Sector of Uzbekistan, SOAS, 2008, www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/ events/cotton-sector-in-central-asia-2005/file49842.pdf; What has changed? Progress in eliminating the use of forced child labour in the cotton harvests of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, SOAS, 2010, www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/centres-publications/file64329.pdf; www.cottoncampaign.org. 10 The Uzbek Parliament has ratified the ILO Conventions 29 and 105 on forced labour, Convention 111 on discrimination in the sphere of labour, 138 on minimum age for admission to work, and 182 on the worst forms of child labour. Article 37 of the Uzbek Constitution prohibits the use of any form of forced labour. The Law ‘On guarantees of the rights of a child’ adopted in 2007 recognizes the right to work from 16 years old onwards and the right to combine work and education provided this is not detrimental to compulsory schooling from 14 years old onwards (see section 7.2 for details). On top of this, in September 2008, a Cabinet of Ministers resolution approved a National Action Plan for the implementation of ILO conventions 138 and 182.
14 Berlusconismo as a case of ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’ Mauro Barisione
Italian democracy in the past 20 years has often been presented as a kind of political laboratory in which many shared tendencies of contemporary demo cracies are translating into extreme forms. Dominated by the central figure of Silvio Berlusconi, who was in turn and several times either prime minister or opposition leader, the Italian political stage can be effectively analyzed through Berlusconismo, at least in so far as the purpose of the analysis is to highlight the neopatrimonial components associated with the public sphere and the exercise of power. As a political phenomenon, Berlusconismo only makes sense if related to the historical and social framework in which it emerged and thrived. The neopatri monial elements that may be detected in the widespread privatization of public matters and, conversely, the publicization of private concerns are the ingredients of a more complex dynamics, combining structural as well as contingent factors. Sources of political legitimization are indeed diversified in this case: they may be found in the charismatic dimension that emerged out of an extraordinary junc ture of national crisis, but also in ideological elements of political representation that relate to deeper social structures. In order to analyze the kind of hybrid neopatrimonialism that seems to define Berlusconismo, I will first examine the genesis of the phenomenon in its histor ical context and national specificity; secondly, I will then discuss the interactions between such patrimonial ingredients as the political use of mass media resources on the one hand, and the charismatic strand connected to the public recognition of a leadership widely perceived as ‘extraordinary’, on the other hand. Finally, I will focus on the most typically neopatrimonial elements, while at the same time underscoring a problem which I consider to be the crucial reason for S. Berlusconi’s success: the difficulty of clearly disentangling these components from the political discourses, the ideological utterances and the sociological justifications which contribute, as a result of sustained strategic efforts and communication performances, to ensure the public legitimization of Berlusconian domination.
198 M. Barisione
The genesis of Berlusconismo: the systemic and cultural contexts Berlusconismo relies both on the systemic and cultural specificities of the Italian context. At the systemic level, we must emphasize the role of political parties as key institutional anchors for the consolidation and maintenance of democracy which, during the republican era that came after World War ii, only enjoyed limited legitimacy within civil society (Morlino 2001). The party system was also marked by ‘imperfect bipartism’ (Galli 1966), owing to the presence of the biggest communist party in the West, which resulted in incomplete polarization because, under the existing international order, the party was barred from con quering political power and democratic alternation was thus impossible. As for political culture, it must be noted that Italian democracy has functioned under the influence of two phenomena which nineteenth century historians had already highlighted: a tendency toward ‘transformism’ – or the capacity for political metamorphosis – within the political class, and the wide diffusion of clientelist practices at the various échelons of power (Tullio-Altan 2000). Grasping Berlusconismo also necessitates that, beyond this primary informa tion, we look at the genesis of Berlusconi’s political itinerary as tied to the con tingent political events of the early 1990s. The entry of Silvio Berlusconi into the political arena must be connected to the unprecedented deficit in public representation that the sudden disappearance of the main political parties of the first Republic had created in the political system and in Italian society. The famed anti-corruption investigations that started in 1992 had tainted major repre sentatives of historically ruling parties, such as Christian Democracy, the Social ist Party, the Republican Party, the Liberal Party and the Social-Democratic Party. After losing their capital in credibility and their public legitimization in just a few months, the parties had literally imploded. None of these, which represented a moderate electorate, rather heterogeneous ideologically but sharing a clear anticommunist attitude, were to survive the judicial scandals. As a result, there was a significant deficit in political supply on the eve of the early general election of 1994. The main post-communist party – the Democratic Party of the Left – which was traditionally in the opposition and had been relatively spared by the investigations, looked then destined to an easy win. In the early 1990s, S. Berlusconi was a well-known businessman who had initially made his mark in the area of real estate before diversifying his activities into sectors as varied as television, financial services, advertisement, mass market retailing and soccer. While he was not directly involved in politics, per sonal connections brought him closer to the Socialist Party’s intensely modern izing leader, Bettino Craxi, who was considered his political ‘godfather’ within the government. On the other hand, everything seemed to move him away from the post-communist world: value systems, cultural styles, financial horizons and business strategies.1 Two issues, both of them related to the activities of Fininvest, the key corpo ration owned by Berlusconi, seem to have led to his decision to enter the political
Berlusconismo as ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’ 199 arena: the incipient extension to the Fininvest group of some of the judicial investigations that were going on at the time, and the heavy indebtedness of the group. These assumptions would also tend to strengthen the notion that the polit ical and economic resources of patrimonial leaders are interchangeable (Médard 1991b). Accordingly, a change in the political setup in favor of the post- communist democratic left might have had nefarious consequences for the stability of Fininvest, which was dependent on banks still mostly under public ownership. Direct access to the centers of political decision could also help miti gate the damage that was expected from expanding judicial procedures. After the collapse of the main Italian political forces, Berlusconi’s consecra tion as a political actor came about through a statement supporting Gianfranco Fini during Rome’s municipal elections in November 2003. Fini was the leader of the Italian Social Movement, a small right-wing outfit that grew on memories of the fascist experiment of the Republic of Salò (1943–5). This new public posture was the prelude to the launching, a few weeks later, of a political party, Forza Italia, followed up by the conquest of the leadership of a wider political coalition. Besides Fini’s party, which had to give up its post-fascist aura and was renamed the ‘National Alliance’, that coalition included the Northern League, a federalist outfit with xenophobic tendencies, and the more conservative sections of old Christian Democracy. If we go by the hypothesis that a ‘rich man cannot achieve the full status of a big man unless he moves into politics’ (Médard 1991b: 343), then Berlusconismo fits the ideal-type. However, the more or less latent goals of self-defense and of promoting personal and private interests appear hard to dissociate from the publicly stated quest for a political alternative to a leftist government. The rhetoric of anti-communism offers a paradigmatic example for this, as it expressed itself in its most elementary forms, mixing old techniques of ideo logical propaganda with the mobilization of newer media channels of political communication. Anti-communism would also provide the guiding rod for all subsequent electoral campaigns. This helped to (re)mobilize an electorate that was predominantly hostile to communism or not identified with the communist tradition. To that ideological dimension should be added a more complex socio logical factor: the kind of social representation that Berlusconi’s political engagement managed to foster – albeit in all probability in a much more ‘sym bolic’ than ‘substantial’ vision of representation (Pitkin 1967) – within important sections of the population, in particular the socio-professional categories con nected to independent labor. It is in effect necessary to bear in mind that, in Italy, both society and the eco nomy rely upon a high proportion of mostly family-based small and medium- sized enterprises. A sizeable portion of the working population is also self-employed (small business, professionals, traders, craftsmen). Furthermore, the number of laws which regulate productive activities is significantly higher than in other major European countries (Ginsborg 2003). These important seg ments of the Italian population are caught between the need for the daily inven tion of forms of adaptiveness and evasion towards regulatory constraints and
200 M. Barisione adherence to a type of individualistic and particularistic civic culture inspired by ‘amoral familism’ (Banfield 1958). The outcome is a deep-seated suspicion towards the state – perceived as an inspector that must be circumvented in mat ters of taxation and labor regulation, but also towards the public sector, seen as an economic burden and an obstacle to competition. Members of these social categories which are so emblematic of Italian soci ety, proved particularly receptive to Berlusconi’s political discourse which heavily dwelt on the ‘robbery’ perpetrated by the state in requesting half the gains made by entrepreneurs, but also openly condoned the exceptionally wide spread practice of tax evasion. These segments of the population were also receptive to his anti-state and neoliberal ideological stance that combined with populist inflections and elements from popular Catholic tradition. It was not a coincidence if the center-right coalition led by S. Berlusconi obtained, at the general elections of 2006, 67 percent of votes among independent workers, a pattern underlining one of the most significant explanatory factors for voting decision in contemporary Italy.2 One last element – charisma – must be underscored before getting to the most typical neopatrimonial components of Berlusconian domination on a day to day basis, namely the propagation of informal politics, the personalization of power, the publicization of private matters and the rise of conflicts of interests. The next pages are devoted to the ‘extraordinary’ dimension of a process of political lead ership legitimization that, during its critical initial stages, often led observers to refer to the Weberian notion of charisma. However, the charismatic component itself cannot be dissociated from the use of the media tool and control over tele vision. These shaped decisively the peculiar post or pseudo-charismatic relation ship between the given leader and his supporters. And yet such a relationship cannot either be dissociated from the patrimonial element that is present under the guise of the ‘contextual-persuasive resources’ (Lacam 1988) since the leader, in our case, owned these very communication means that contributed to the con struction of his ‘charismatic’ domination. As a whole, these elements – patrimo nial, media‑charismatic, ideological and social representational – set the foundations for Berlusconi’s ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’.3
Between charismatic leadership and television ownership Among the necessary conditions for the advent of charismatic leadership (Weber 1972) features an exceptional context of crisis, namely, in the case of Italy’s 1992–4 period, an institutional crisis and a state of political ‘anomy’ accompa nied by the disappearance of the landmarks of traditional party affiliations. It is in effect in extraordinary historical circumstances that a man endowed with qual ities that are held to be exceptional will be recognized by the masses as a charis matic leader vested with the mission to save the country. The narrative strategy used by Berlusconi to introduce his candidacy to national leadership in early 1994 abides very much to this outline. His mission is presented as that of a suc cessful outsider – the famous phrase ‘as far as business skills go, you cannot
Berlusconismo as ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’ 201 argue with Berlusconi’ is the most pervasive stereotype for this. Haloed with an exemplary life of individual achievements, Berlusconi offers himself up as the savior of the country, confronted with the communists, and the bearer of a brave new era of prosperity and national success (Cavalli 1994). The crisis context, a personal trajectory meant to be exemplary and the mes sianic overtone of his message are elements that coincide with the ideal-type of charismatic legitimization of power. The same applies for the popular endorsement factor, which stemmed from the surprising electoral victory secured, in March 1994, at the helm of a political coalition based upon a ‘per sonal’ party (Calise 2000), the recently founded Forza Italia. Even then, Berlusconian leadership does not squarely fall under the charismatic heading for several reasons. First, if charismatic leadership is by definition tied to the exceptional character of the context, such characterization no longer applies when it comes to the ordinary and enduring exercise of power. Berlusconi would thus have been a charismatic leader only partially and in the course of the statu nascendi of his political experience. This ceased to be true with the unavoidable process of the institutionalization of his leadership, completed with his successive appointments as Prime Minister (April 1994, May 2001 and May 2008). Second, it has also been noted (Poli 1998) that his message, because it targeted too explicitly the conquest of a majority consensus and the maximization of economic results (personal as well as national) contrasted with the heightened selflessness and the visionary and revolutionary stamina that are the proper traits of charismatic leader ship. Finally, the use of television as the key instrument for building charismatic leadership may well harbor an inherent contradiction, notably owing to the effects of ‘space restructuring’ generated by the electronic media in so far as the relations between leader and voters are concerned (Thompson 1995). More precisely, televi sion tends to reduce the distance between the actor (the leader) and the spectator (the citizen). It therefore contributes to trivialize the leader, to demystify him, by taking him down to the level of his audience (Meyrowitz 1985). In this way, tele vision negates the possibility of genuinely charismatic leadership, based on an aura of greatness and the perception of a superiority which requires the preservation of a certain amount of physical and symbolic distance (Katz and Kahn 1978). In this respect, Berlusconi, like other leaders in contemporary media-democracies, might be at best a pseudo-charismatic leader, endowed with ‘phony’ (Bensman and Givant 1975) or media-driven charisma – much in the same way as journalistic and daily parlance use the adjective ‘charismatic’ as a metaphor for ‘communica tive’ or ‘telegenic’. The term ‘post-charismatic’ has also been used to refer to a communicative, television-driven and utterly digitalized era where charisma in the Weberian sense has become structurally unworkable (Barisione 2006). The charisma that may be applicable to Berlusconi’s leadership should there fore be considered as a hybrid phenomenon, far removed from the pure type. It is also worthwhile connecting such hybridization with the strong contamination of the media-charismatic component by patrimonial elements, related to owner ship and the control of the means used to define charismatic leadership when it is publicly staged.
202 M. Barisione The debate around the contribution of Berlusconi’s television channels to his electoral successes has long been central in Italy. Outside observers, when adopt ing the journalist’s (Jones 2003) vantage point, cannot but ponder on the strange reluctance of Italian analysts to see television as the barely hidden secret of Ber lusconi’s political appeal. Indeed, the statement, ‘Berlusconi won the election because he owns TV channels’ has been discarded, as happens to worn out tools. Uttered far too often in the early years of the Berlusconi era, it has been sub jected to such intense criticism that it became considered as the unbearable mark of simplistic considerations and trivial judgments. It would be of course quite unrealistic, from both a methodological and an epistemological view point, to secure empirical data providing conclusive evid ence as to the electoral effects of Berlusconi’s Mediaset TV channels. To be sure, an econometric model elaborated on the basis of field data (Ricolfi 1994) seems to confirm that these channels have had a decisive effect in terms of vote displacement towards the center-right. Other voting analyses conducted at an aggregate level have, however, highlighted a significant stability of electoral behavior at the territorial level (D’Alimonte and Bartolini 1995). More gen erally, experts in political communication have denounced the risk of a return to naïve behavioralism in interpreting the effects of the media on voting choices (Mazzoleni 1998). What they did observe during the Italian electoral campaigns of the 1990s and 2000s was a net effect of the media on the mobilization and reactivation of existing political identities (anti-Communism versus anti- Berlusconism), but a less significant pattern of vote conversion and shift from one camp to the other (Schadee and Segatti 2002; ITANES 2006). These cam paigns, largely conducted through television, resulted in a very small amount of vote conversion from one coalition to the other, notably due to the dual mechan ism of selective exposure and perception: voters who watch the news on the Mediaset channels were already closer to Berlusconi.4 Voters from the center left essentially preferred public channels of the RAI for political information, and interpreted in negative terms any information related to the center-right leader.5 The imprints of a patrimonial contamination on Berlusconi’s mediatic cha risma may have taken other forms than an instant and straightforward electoral impact. First, we must consider the hypothesis of a long term ‘cultivation effect’, a kind of cultural harmonization between a specific genre of television supply and a given political and symbolic demand. Accordingly, the Mediaset channels would assert and foster the social dominance of cultural styles and modes of consumption particularly suited to the leadership proposal embodied by Berlus coni. This might also have entailed the implicit validation of the neoliberal and individualistic ethos that was coherent with his ideological and political mix.6 Second, the very fact of entering the political arena at a time of crisis and upheaval favored the development of new political identifications for voters deprived of their traditional political landmarks. As newer and still fuzzy polit ical identities emerged, Berlusconi’s private television channels proved most effective in broadcasting the image of their owner as a media-charismatic leader strongly rooted in a new center-right political space.7 Finally, even though it is
Berlusconismo as ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’ 203 impossible to determine the direct impact of the Mediaset channels on voting, and therefore on access to power, the way their news programs covered the electoral campaigns was, predictably and perhaps inevitably, marked by the framing of information in a manner that was qualitatively favorable to the candidate-owner, and quantitatively lopsided in his favor.8 The general effect of the qualitative and quantitative imbalance in the communication flows originat ing from the Mediaset channels was crucial, if not for the conversion of new voters, at least for the maintenance of a capital of consensus acquired during the early critical stage – the one related to the definition of newer political identities.
Neopatrimonialism and political discourse A significant neopatrimonial dimension in Berlusconismo can be earmarked both over the years during which he governed the country and as the new party was being launched, not to mention the preliminary conditions of that experience. The most obvious preliminary element is related to the already mentioned theme of the media and political information resources available to one of the running candidates. The circumstance led ab origine to a paradoxical situation of competitive imbalance, by opening the door to a personal and partisan use of private resources secured through state concessions granted to fulfil a public ser vice. On that score, Berlusconi’s strategy appears to have been ever inspired by the logics of patrimonialism: for instance, through the transfer – whenever this proved necessary – of formal ownership to relatives or very close collaborators, while retaining substantial control even after the sale of property shares to exter nal partners.9 The foundation of Forza Italia – a private law entity drawn out of civil soci ety – provides a palpable instance of the unfolding of neopatrimonial practices, given ‘the immediate correspondence between party structures and corporate cadres’ and a complete ‘identification between leadership and ownership’ (Pros pero 2003: 54). From the onset, Forza Italia drew its strength, for all its consti tutive activities – managers, local officials, candidates, but also logistics, communication, marketing, surveys, territorial organization – from the main group owned by Berlusconi (originally named Fininvest, it included the channels of the yet to be created Mediaset group) and from its advertising branch (Publi talia). The entire party organization chart looked like a kind of ‘personal appar atus’ (Maraffi 1995) and was reflective of a system of relationships based on loyalty and proximity to the person of the leader. These features helped in creat ing a kind of clannish dimension that dissolved every distinction between party and business (Raniolo 2006). The Forza Italia model was also unique in terms of funding, since it prefigured a system in which a party would depend on a single corporation and its boss. In that sense, the ‘symbiotic relations between Forza Italia and Fininvest bring about conflicts of interests on an unprecedented scale’ (Hopkin 2005: 55). Despite a partial institutionalization process of the organizational model and the growth of the party’s roots within the national territory over the years (Poli
204 M. Barisione 2001), the labels of ‘corporate party’ and ‘personal party’ still stick to characteri zations of the original party model of Forza Italia. This has led to re-emphasize the hybrid nature of Berlusconi’s political supply due to the combination of neo patrimonial and post charismatic features. The central issue with neopatrimonialism remains, however, the intertwining of private and public interests, of business and government, of ‘patrimony’ and state. What is at play here is the ability to generate business profit from regula tions and constraints that are adopted as part of the management of public affairs. In one word, the problem of ‘conflicts of interests’ looms at large if we retain the hypothesis of a shift from a kind of corporate party towards a ‘corporate govern ment’ that penetrates core state institutions. The issue was extensively discussed during Berlusconi’s first candidacy and went along with a debate on the opportunity of a law that would have restricted access to public office for people holding large economic interests. Already then, a potential paradox was exposed: the possibility that a cabinet meeting would have to discuss or approve bills on matters such as insurance, publishing, the allocation of television wave lengths, etc., in which the Prime Minister had per sonal interests. On such occasions, the strategic will to promote a specific eco nomic interest may be deemed secondary, for an objectively favorable outcome may well be independent from any explicit intent. In effect, the successive center-left governments which ruled between 1996 and 2001 were never able to frame a law on conflicts of interests – they were too keen on keeping a dialogue going with the Berlusconi-led opposition so as to achieve a larger constitutional reform. The Berlusconi government itself (2001–6) rejected the adoption of measures that would have been more constraining than the ‘Frattini Bill’, which did not see any problem in ownership interests for public office seekers. Even then, the problems generated by the interpenetration of political and eco nomic resources occurred in various ways and on several occasions. The bill that decriminalized balance sheet fraud and the ‘Gasparri reform’ on telecommunica tions are two particularly explicit examples. In the first instance, the immediate effect was the direct annulment of whole chapters related to lawsuits against Ber lusconi’s companies.10 In the case of the telecommunication sector’s reform, how ever, the benefits were more diversified. Let us mention here the waiver to the decision of the Constitutional Court which had imposed broadcasting only via sat ellite to one of the Mediaset channels. There was also a de facto rise of the regu latory ceiling that previously restricted ownership concentration in the media, or the confirmation of a near-monopoly situation on the advertisement market by private channels. In this way, the group belonging to the then Prime Minister was able to consolidate, through legislative means, its dominant position on the national stage, in the sectors of television and advertisement (Hibberd 2007). Beyond the weak differentiation between the spheres of politics and econom ics, the pursuit of private interests from within the state also became apparent through a confusion between the political and the judicial domains which truly marked Berlusconismo. So-called ‘liberal’ measures aimed at reducing the judges’ range of action were on the priority list of the successive governments
Berlusconismo as ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’ 205 that S. Berlusconi headed: a bill, passed in the summer of 1994 (while the ‘Clean Hands’ investigations were in full swing) helped to restrict the preventive imprisonment of people under investigation; the ‘Cirami Law’ of 2002 also granted to attorneys the right to request that the location where the trial was to be held be moved, whenever there was ‘legitimate suspicion’ on the fairness of judges; in 2003, the ‘Lodo Schifani’ Law guaranteed the immunity of the Prime Minister and of the holders of the higher state offices. At any rate, the repercus sions of these legislative provisions were beneficial to Berlusconi or to those representatives of his companies and personal collaborators who were personally implicated in various lawsuits. All of these actions corroborated the image of a political leader intent on ‘using to his own advantage, subverting or dodging’ the rules and constraints of public and institutional life (Lazar 2006: 19). Out of the complex neopatrimonial interplay between party organization, governmental action and economic and judicial interests, also emerges the enun ciation of a structured political discourse. This discourse asserts goals that are both ideological (the invocation of a liberal state confronting an alleged ‘judges’ republic’) and pragmatic (the claim that there is need to consolidate national cor porations so as to face global competition). As a result, it is not easy to disen tangle ideals from a posteriori rationalizations and mere propaganda in the public decoding of the Berlusconian discourse. Measures such as tax cuts on high incomes or the abrogation of inheritance taxes on great fortunes were coherent with a neoliberal scheme tending toward the reduction of state interventions. In effect, they also meant objectively that Berlusconi himself saved every year sub stantial amounts of money, both as a private citizen and as a businessman. It might therefore be argued that the profits earned as a result of such extreme intermingling between public discourse and private position were the primary goal of Berlusconi’s decision to step into the political arena. While announcing this move, Berlusconi had also begun to develop the arguments which would systematically guide his public defence. Then as in the numerous lawsuits in which he was implicated in the following 15 years, he would denounce the fundamentally political and partisan nature of the ‘judicial attacks’ against him. In addition to the issue of potential conflicts of interests, another manifesta tion of neopatrimonialism has been associated with the experience of Berlusco ni’s governments. It can be detected in the process of diffusion of informal politics toward the sphere of formal institutions, in parallel with the personaliza tion of his power. Among the more telling instances of this process, we may point out: the appointment of some of Berlusconi’s judicial counsels as ministers or presidents of parliamentary commissions; the use of his Roman home as a place for government meetings, or of his villa in Sardinia as an informal recep tion venue for foreign heads of state with whom he claimed relationships of per sonal friendship (Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair). In addition, one may also refer here to the weekly dinners, systematic after 2001, with Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League, the party which brought about the fall of the first Berlusconi government in 1995, and more generally, the interplay of personal relationships and loyalty networks based on the distribution of substantial
206 M. Barisione ‘personal and retributive resources’ (Lacam 1988). Moreover, as soon as he secured, in his capacity as head of the government, a power of formal supervi sion over the appointment of the managers of the public television (RAI), Ber lusconi appeared to focus on the expansion of his loyalty network within formal institutions, through the appointment of some of his trusted collaborators to key positions in the public television administration. After wire tapping records were made public in the press in 2007, these appointments emerged as launching pads toward the homogenization of political information on the channels of the RAI and Mediaset, leading to the capture of state news channels. Finally, Berlusconismo reveals a general and paradoxical reversal of the terms of the debate on the privatisation of politics due to its combination with a pattern of publicization of private matters linked to the media exposure of personal issues. This phenomenon may be related to a more general process of personali zation and mediatization of modern politics, but also to the correlative expansion of media attention paid to the private lives of public personalities. Berlusconi’s communication strategy has been systematically drawn from personalistic and private elements, such as family life anecdotes, the public exhibition of family quarrels, the distribution of dozens of millions of copies of a self-glorifying biography or of posters flaunting his image at the expense of local candidates of his party. Since 2009, this pattern has also been fuelled by the disclosure in the media of various scandals with a sexual connotation. To be sure, these outbursts and their judiciary implications were clearly not the outcome of a Berlusconian strategy of publicization of private matters. They, however, confirm the broaden ing of the reach of the media so as to encompass the most intimate aspects of the life of public personalities. The hybrid nature of Berlusconismo stems from a tendency to condense the various components – neopatrimonial, charismatic and communication-driven, ideological and socio-political – in a unicum. Here is the core and essence of what has been designated and variously defined as Berlusconismo. This phenom enon, which might well be a mere variation on processes of a greater magnitude that are emerging in other contemporary democracies, can be accurately described as the claim – translated in ideological and sociological terms and propagated through mediatic and personalized channels – to both the privatiza tion of public matters and the publicization of private ones.
Notes 1 For instance, in 1989, the PCI (the Italian Communist Party) fought in Parliament to reduce the amount of commercial breaks, deemed culturally debilitating, on Berlusco ni’s three channels (Canale 5, Rete 4, Italia 1). The same year, Berlusconi started a fin ancial battle with many judicial twists and turns (Lodo-Mondadori lawsuit on judicial bribery) in order to secure the control of a series of weeklies and dailies, including L’Espresso and La Repubblica, two reputedly left-leaning magazines and newspapers. 2 A similar phenomenon was also noted at the 2001 elections, won by a center-right coalition (Diamanti and Mannheimer 2002; Italian National Election Studies [ITANES] 2006).
Berlusconismo as ‘hybrid neopatrimonialism’ 207 3 Neopatrimonialism as an analytical category always appears, at least in contemporary democracies, under a ‘hybrid’ form, grafted on a basis of legal-rational domination. The hybridization phenomenon alluded to here must be located at a more specific level, marked by the inextricable intertwining of the patrimonial, charismatic, political-ideological, and social representational dimensions of Berlusconismo. 4 Research shows strong correlations between the TV news shows habitually watched (RAI vs Mediaset) and voting choice (center-left vs center-right). These relationships are however interpreted as the expression of ‘incorporation’ models (of political pref erences into news exposure) rather than as an indication manifesting ‘influence’ models (from the news to political preferences) (Legnante 2002). 5 Such a personal feature as honesty provides an obvious case of perception shaped by the ideological and affective orientations of the perceiver: 77 percent of center‑right respondents believed Berlusconi to be fundamentally honest, against only 16 percent of center-left respondents (Barisione 2006). 6 The significant correlation between the length of daily exposure to television and the Forza Italia vote seems to corroborate that hypothesis (ITANES 2001). 7 It is precisely in political junctures of crisis, conflict or upheaval that people become more receptive to media influence, as well as more dependent on them (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach 1989). 8 During the two months long official campaign for the legislative elections of 2006, the law compelled news channels to grant equal airtime to the two main leaders of the coalition. Despite the economic sanctions to which they could be subjected, the Medi aset channels allocated, on the whole, 74 percent of airtime to Berlusconi, with the 26 percent remaining slots going to Prodi (data from Pavia’s Observatory). 9 Berlusconi’s brother officially owns the daily Il Giornale. The vice president is none other but his son, Pier Silvio Berlusconi. His daughter Marina presides over Fininvest. Mediaset’s president is Berlusconi’s lifelong friend Fedele Confalonieri. 10 Lawsuit Fininvest All-Iberian, Sme-Ariosto, Mediaset TV broadcasting rights.
15 Clientelism and patrimonialism in international relations The case of France’s African policy Daniel Bourmaud
France’s relations with Africa are frequently described as ‘special’. The specific features of such relations have always been puzzling to specialists and account for conclusions that mix analysis with forceful condemnations. Indeed, France’s African policy clearly does not invite benevolent neutrality due to its frequent association with corruption, patrimonialism, and ‘dirty tricks’. Although firm evidence is not always available, probabilities are strong enough for political scientists to accept the materiality of such practices. This raises the question of the conclusions to be drawn. For Jean‑François Médard, who devoted a significant part of his work to the study of this ‘special relationship’, the underlying question was to determine how the former colonial power managed to keep playing such a pre-eminent role within and beyond its former sphere of influence. Asking such a question implied focusing on the instruments used rather than on the causes. Accordingly, Médard insisted on the imprint of networks, the key role played by emblematic personalities such as Jacques Foccart, and the prevalence of family-type relationships. In short, emphasis was laid on a set of players and practices that contributed to an apparently exceptional and hardly refutable overview of France’s African policy. Yet, focusing on policy instruments sidetracked the issue of the foundations upon which such policies were built. The following pages discuss France’s African policy from a contextual perspective, an angle of approach to which J.‑F. Médard (1999b) himself was not entirely impervious. Indeed, an analysis confined to the study of clientelism and patrimonialism would neglect that there was always an international dimension to the relationship between France and Africa. In that respect the relations should not be merely analysed through the actors’ practices but also through the structures within which these practices occur. More specifically, clientelism in Franco-African relations has been part and parcel of a more global policy with its own determinants. Whenever these have happened to evolve, the practices were necessarily altered, and may have become unsuitable. The policy orientations adopted by France in the aftermath of the independence of its African colonies were shaped by ideological and systemic considerations. Ideology refers here to the French authorities’ conception of foreign policy, but also to the role they believed France should play in international relations. The second variable refers to the type of international relations at a given time. It is in the broad
France’s African policy 209 framework shaped by these two interacting variables that clientelism and patrimonialism manifested themselves whenever they did. During three decades – roughly between 1960 and 1990 – France’s African policy was embedded into a process of empowerment fostered by the bipolar international system. Since then, France’s policy has followed the erratic course of a foreign policy which is still to be redefined in the new globalized world. Whereas patrimonialism prospered in the first period, the era ushered in by the fall of the Berlin wall has significantly reduced its relevance and usefulness.
Patrimonialism as a source of international power Rarely has a policy been so deeply shaped by its conceptors. Decolonisation initiated a peculiar type of relations between France and Africa. This exceptional policy, if we compare it with those implemented by other former colonial powers, was intimately linked with General de Gaulle. How is it then that it endured, with hardly any change, with his successors? The reason is that, beyond the ideology professed by the first President of the Fifth Republic, Gaullism was, in Africa, embedded into a vision of the world shared by all French political elites. Such a consensus gave rise to a system of Franco-African relations within which the instrumentalization of clientelism and patrimonialism were of central significance. It would be impossible to make sense of the relations between France and Africa without referring to General de Gaulle’s political project. Although history cannot be rewritten, it seems unlikely that France’s African policy would have taken the course that it followed had the Fourth Republic not come to a brutal end due to the war in Algeria. The political leaders of the time were not left unconcerned by the situation in Africa. In spite of its limitations,1 the Enabling Act (Loi‑cadre), voted in 1956 upon the initiative of the French Minister of Overseas Affairs Gaston Deferre, had paved the way towards international sovereignty. General de Gaulle’s return to power also gave specific overtones to the policy that France would adopt towards its former colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first reason was the special linkages between de Gaulle and Africa, a continent that he had learnt to appreciate during the Second World War – the pages devoted to Africa in his Mémoires de guerre and Mémoires d’espoir confirm this. Another reason was that the ‘Man of 18 June’ had a vision of France’s role in the world that led him to regard Africa as one of the pillars of French influence. French interests, in his view, were attuned to the ‘generosity’ and ‘genius’ of France (Quantin 1982). France had been able to recover from its defeat in 1940 thanks to Africa which had remained loyal, despite the influence of Petainist ideas that permeated some colonial lobbies. France had also been able to meet the challenges of the new post-1945 world thanks to the strong and institutionalized links that it had managed to preserve in Africa. The aborted Community project of 1958–1959 was also part of a political vision that, thanks to Africa, should make it possible for France to remain a great power. General de Gaulle was obsessed by what he saw as a quasi-physical law that, through the
210 D. Bourmaud combination of geography with demography, led to the marginalisation of France. Decolonisation, with which de Gaulle finally came to terms, ought not to abolish relations between France and Africa that combined reciprocal affection with necessity. The cooperation policy, carefully mapped out from 1962 onwards, was to be the instrument of de Gaulle’s vision. Even though the African states were formally independent, the foundations upon which the new alliances between France and its former colonies were built were best described as co-sovereignty. Indeed, key areas of sovereignty remained under the direct control of metropolitan France. The CFA franc, created in 1948 and maintained after the decolonisation process, gave African states access to foreign exchange thanks to the free convertibility of CFA francs into French francs. Accordingly, African states were controlled by the French Treasury which monitored current payments. In addition, the modus operandi of the Treasury prevented African states from exercising total freedom in matters of money creation (Vallée 1989). While this system carried some advantages, it strictly constrained a competence widely considered as emblematic of the sovereign powers of a state. The security of the African states was also placed under the benevolent supervision of France. Defence agreements, signed with eight African states, guaranteed their protection from any external aggression. In addition, so-called ‘special’ agreements also meant that France could be called upon to intervene in internal security.2 In five out of the eight countries mentioned above, France maintained military bases which hosted what was officially known as ‘pre-positioned troops’. We should also mention the agreements on technical military assistance concluded with 23 states over a period of 30 years. These concerned former French colonies, but also Belgian colonies and even the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea. In short, money and defence policies were directly supervised by France. France’s cooperation policy also included cultural and technical programmes relayed by numerous aid workers known as coopérants – teachers, doctors, engineers, experts, advisors – who filled positions in administration, universities, and secondary schools, thus working towards the preservation of French influence in Africa. Through this unique system, France was able to fend off the risk of marginalisation. Thanks to Africa, it was able to rebuild a sphere of influence, its socalled pré-carré (home turf), attuned to its ambitions. Substance was instilled into the notion of grandeur through the French language and the institutionalisation of Francophonie, the CFA franc currency zone and the French armed forces. These could, at least in Africa, ‘change the course of History with 500 men’, as former French Foreign Minister Louis de Guiringaud once bragged. The implementation of this Africa-focused approach to power enhancement survived after the resignation of de Gaulle from the presidency in 1969. Each of his successors endorsed the Gaullist legacy and tried to enrich it with some personal added value. George Pompidou innovated through the organisation of the first Franco-African summit in Paris on 13 November 1973.3 The summit, conceived as a direct continuation of de Gaulle’s policy, was expected to strengthen
France’s African policy 211 existing links with French-speaking Africa. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing would institutionalise these summits on a yearly basis. Simultaneously, he also broadened the scope of France’s Africa policy which opened up to English-speaking Africa, notably Nigeria (Bach 1984). But the real test came as François Mitterrand became President. The French Socialist party was traditionally sensitive to the rhetoric of Third Worldism (Biondi and Allende Gossens 1976), and called for a departure from capitalism while denouncing imperialism and neo-colonialism. The party, thus, seemed ill-equipped to follow de Gaulle’s footprints. In the event, ‘Mitterrand the African’ (Marchesin 1995; Bayart 1984), broke away from the generous utopian ideals of Socialist intellectuals and activists and adopted a policy of continuity that required little adaption since he had, after all, been familiar with it for a long time. As a former Minister of Overseas Affairs (colonies) under the Fourth Republic, Mitterrand had expressed his own views in a book published under the title: Aux frontières de l’Union française: Indo‑ chine, Tunisie. His description of France’s African empire as ‘a colossal bloc that was over seven thousand kilometres long and three thousand kilometres wide, [and ranged] from Lille to Brazzaville and from Abéché to Dakar’, concluded the future emergence of a single entity ‘from the Congo river to the Rhine’ (Mitterrand 1953). Mitterrand’s views also sounded like a premonitory expression of de Gaulle’s conception of Franco-African relations as he referred to their merger into a ‘nation-continent’ (Mitterrand 1953: 34–35) united by the consciousness of and the desire for a common destiny. This heralded what Felix Houphouët-Boigny, the President of Côte d’Ivoire, would immortalise under the appellation ‘France–Afrique’. Three decades later, the conversion of the socialist president to the Gaullist doxa was therefore not entirely surprising. The convert was already a believer! He would also be able to win over to his own vision the left wing of his party that was, a priori, reluctant to adhere to a course of action that smacked of neo-colonialism. Just as de Gaulle had done before, Mitterrand’s policy fitted into a wider global vision where France played a central role, as defender of the oppressed masses under the banner of international solidarity against exploiters – Mitterrand’s Cancun speech in 19814 would echo de Gaulle’s 1967 speech in Phnom Penh. The Franco-African pill was made all the easier to swallow since it was sugar-coated with Third World rhetoric. Realism can take the appearance of idealism in order to ensure easier acceptance of the brutal rules of the game. Upholding France’s position in the international pecking order did not go smoothly. The France–Afrique nexus was born and grew during the Cold War. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were prepared to accept initiatives that would enable other states to challenge them and emerge as autonomous powers. In such a context, de Gaulle’s main achievement was his capacity to impose France as a power to be reckoned with. This continued with his successors. There has been much rambling on the bombastic dimension of what was interpreted as typically Gallic pretensions based on words rather than acts. There may have been some truth in these criticisms since de Gaulle’s vision mobilised symbols as an alternative to a deficit in the material elements of power.
212 D. Bourmaud However, we should not forget that Gaullist France also secured during these years instruments that conferred international power: permanent membership of the UN Security Council and the development of France’s own arsenal of nuclear weapons were the most tangible expression of this movement. Africa was party to this trend as it enabled France to secure the necessary votes at the UN General Assembly, notably through its self-portrayal as the ultimate guarantor of Western interests in a continent which, initially at least, was not deemed favourable to them. Conversely, France managed to free itself from the constraints of bipolarity through its acknowledgement as a major power without which nothing could be done, at least within its own pré-carré. While France gained the status of a ‘great’ power, its former colonies were insulated from direct competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Admittedly, this distinctive pattern would not have been possible without the consent of the US which, after being initially puzzled by and reluctant towards French ‘claims’, finally endorsed a division of labour that suited Washington. Accordingly, France gave up its neutral position and performed as the warden of Western interests in ‘its’ African turf, thus sparing the US the need to get directly involved in a continent which was not one of its priorities. France isolated Sékou Touré’s Guinea, supported the end of the socialist regime of Modibo Keita in Mali, systematically contained Libya’s ambitions in Chad, or came to terms – probably better than Benin’s citizens themselves – with the Marxist pranks of Mathieu Kérékou, thus contributing to maintain an order which was not its own. France also drew from this period a source of international power that was out of proportion with what it could have claimed on its own. Through its assertion as guardian of Western interests, Paris was also able to take advantage of opportunities to expand its influence into the Sub-Saharan region. Although supporting Biafra (Bach 1980: 259–72) failed to secure the enlargement of France’s sphere of influence against the often fantasized Anglo-Saxon ‘enemy’, its growing weight in the former Belgian colonies, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire), or the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, gave substance to the idea of France as a power without any real competitor in Africa. What France only needed was the necessary means to legitimise its ambitions in the eyes of those who were directly concerned: the Africans themselves. Exceptional policies call for exceptional instruments. These ranged from currency to military bases, from the constant flows of coopérants to the institutionalisation of Francophonie, with the result of the establishment of a network of relations between France and Africa that was unparalleled if one excludes the relations imposed by the Soviet Union on its satellite states. Exceptionalism, however, was not merely due to the importance of the means and resources deployed. The strength and uniqueness of the Franco-African relationship also stemmed from its intensity. Beyond France’s power politics and the asymmetric domination exerted over its former colonies, lay a truly exceptional ingredient: a commonly shared register of interactions between the dominant and the dominated countries. The classical understanding of foreign policy as a mix between negotiations, power struggle, self-interested motives, and intimidation cannot
France’s African policy 213 give a full account of the substance of Franco-African relations. These ingredients were clearly present, but they were dressed and sweetened according to a recipe concocted not so much by France as by the Africans themselves. The main interest of studying Franco-African relations through the lenses of patrimonialism, as suggested by J.‑F. Médard, resides in seeking to adapt to the sphere of the international relations of African practices previously confined to the sphere of domestic politics. Just about everything has been said or written on the confusion between the public and private domains in Franco-African relations, on the spread of rampant corruption, on the central role of networks related to the Gaullists or to other French political parties. Much has also been written on the ambivalent role of French state-owned companies, such as Elf, or on the African outgrowths of official or semi-official institutions that cast Gaullists, free masons, intelligence agents, adventurers, advisers of all sorts, and spooks (bar‑ bouzes) into a giant melting pot. History as a science is still in its infancy when it comes to studying properly the undercover agents and underground organisations who crafted France–Afrique. Even then converging facts and clues are too many for the reality of the matter to be questioned. The most common mistake made in this domain resides in the interpretations suggested for this nexus of interactions. Ethical grounds – the most commonly adopted viewpoint – are not particularly relevant, unless one seeks to imply that successive French governments and elites were all, from de Gaulle to Mitterrand, fundamentally immoral and intrinsically corrupt (Vershave 1998). What emerges as an alternative explanation is how the successive Presidents of the Fifth Republic (Wauthier 1995) did reproduce a patrimonial model because it was viewed as a pre-condition to the consolidation of France’s international power. Each president committed himself to extending and perpetuating existing institutions and their unwritten rules. France’s foreign policy – the preserve (domaine réservé) of the President of the Republic according to a tradition which has nothing to do with the Constitution – was pursued with remarkable consistency, including when the specific patterns of interactions with Africa were involved. It is the famous and secretive ‘Africa cell’ that oversaw the country’s specific policy orientations. There was no reason why such an institution should have lasted after de Gaulle’s presidency but for the necessity to supervise, organise, and articulate France’s quest for power with the personalisation of relations that African leaders imposed. The classical conduct of diplomacy, with its rituals and codes, was not apt to respond to the exigencies of a relationship that carried its own rules. The functions performed by J. Foccart (Médard 2002), the shadowy figure in charge of de Gaulle’s African policy, were subsequently undertaken by René Journiac under Giscard d’Estaing’s presidency, then by Guy Penne and even François Mitterrand’s own son.5 They all followed the lessons of their master by turning ‘Foccartism’ into the fundamental doctrine of Françafrique. Thanks to these men, the successive Presidents of the Republic maintained direct relations with the African leaders, with the result of a mix between state affairs and family concerns for the sake of efficiency! Reading J. Foccart’s memoirs is highly instructive in this respect (1995; 1997). The author may not say much about the darkest episodes of
214 D. Bourmaud Franco-African relations, be they political assassinations or coups, but describes at length the intimate relations maintained between French presidents and African leaders. Special favours, endless conversations and meetings, support to improbable godsons, etc. A related outcome was the much publicised display of affection between heads of state. Such close personal links guaranteed the climate of trust necessary to strengthen political ties. French institutions had to adapt to this iron law. The Ministry of Cooperation was informally known as the Ministry of the Africans, a state of affairs that reflected on the special status of Africa in the French governmental bureaucracy. This context makes it easier to understand the depth of the crisis triggered by Jean‑Pierre Cot, the Minister for Cooperation and Development in the first Socialist government of 1981. His intention to dilute the specificity of relations with African states through their incorporation into the somewhat blurred and unspecific group of developing countries was part of an attempt to moralise Franco-African relations. By doing so, the newly appointed minister broke the code of courtesy painstakingly established with France’s former colonies since their independence. Through his rejection of the language of the Françafrique family, J.‑P. Cot undermined symbols of trust and confidence without which France’s quest for power was bound to fail (Cot 1984). In the end, his dismissal was seen as an inevitable and necessary precondition to the pursuit of such objectives.
Erratic power and the trivial pursuit of patrimonialism Today, Françafrique has been pronounced dead by hard facts if not by its longstanding opponents who fear they might become activists without an enemy to fight. The structural requirements for its preservation have subsided within just a few years and no substitution model has yet emerged. The rhetoric of grandeur upheld by French elites has imperceptibly been replaced by the rhetoric of powerlessness, while the institutional pillars of France’s African policy progressively crumbled. Clientelist practices have lost in the process the foundations that accounted for their reproduction and intensity. If we are to endorse perceptions conveyed by the media, activist groups and even at times academic circles, France’s African policy has remained unchanged. Such a vision, occasionally buttressed by unquestionable facts, tends to assimilate the tails of the Françafrique comet with the resilience of a system capable of reproducing itself. They tend to forget that the political foundations of the system have collapsed one after the other due to unanticipated changes in international politics. The end of the Cold War was a major event in this respect: France’s African policy should not be apprehended in isolation from a redistribution of international power that affected both France and Africa. Africa, which had been largely spared by bipolar rivalries, found itself caught in a maelstrom of contradictions, notably due to macro-economic adjustment policies that challenged pre-existing patterns of regulation. France was also compelled to relinquish the Gaullist vision of the international system and reconsider its insertion into the new globalised world. Neither Africa nor France were prepared to face
France’s African policy 215 such a challenge and all the parties involved had to improvise. France’s foreign policy was brutally bereft of the overarching consensus that prevailed since de Gaulle. Two viewpoints, transcending the left–right party divide, progressively emerged (Bourmaud 2000: 27–36; 1996: 431–442). By contrast with the traditional conception upheld by the heirs to the Gaullian world view, a new, radical, and heterogeneous vision emerged, supported by a fraction of the French politicaladministrative elite that was at odds with the classical political culture. Less statist and openly committed to the regulating laws of the market, this modernist group also had little affinity with Africa. It regarded the African continent as devoid of any interest in the post-bipolar world shaping up. In its view, Françaf‑ rique was a relic of the past. Dysfunctional in its effects, it hampered the development of Africa and exhausted the resources of France through arrangements which had become of little value. Emphasis on Francophonie no longer meant much as English had grown to be the international language for communication. In short, the notion of grandeur was outdated or even dangerous. This trend of thought, which could be dubbed liberal, has been reinforced by a second ideological mutation that originated from activist and intellectual circles. While the Gaullist matrix exercised an hegemonic imprint, the NGOs engaged in Africa remained ideologically close to the prevailing paradigm. Their role was seen as contributing to France’s support to the development of the young nations. The key words were then ‘cooperation’ and ‘development’. The most active NGOs in the 1960s and 1970s were known as the Volontaires du progrès or the Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement – the humanitarian discourse had not yet emerged. Then came the 1980s, which represented a turning point for the NGOs. Emphasis on development and cooperation was progressively superseded by values of compassion for situations of intense suffering and extreme poverty. What may be termed the Biafra syndrome, in reference to the Biafra war which saw the creation of Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders), strongly influenced the agenda and vision of NGOs. Africa had become the epitome of universal poverty. Emotion prevailed over reason and short-term action became the norm. Indeed long-term aid was no longer seen as apt to respond to critical situations, and highly bureaucratic state-backed programmes were all of a sudden regarded as incapable of meeting these new challenges. In the process, the Françafrique institutions became stigmatised as redundant, competing, and inefficient bureaucracies, thus generating additional feelings of culpability. France was also put in the dock for having created, organised, and benefited from corrupt practices in conjunction with its support for rogue governments. The 1994 tragedy in Rwanda crystallised a moral perception that went along with allegations of French complicity in the genocide. Here again, what matters is less the evidence – it has been hotly debated – than the ideological interpretations and their historical context.6 Indeed, during at least the first two decades after decolonisation, there was hardly any criticism of Françafrique secretive practices. The written press, including the respected daily newspaper Le Monde, fully adhered to the official discourse. Was it collusion? Such an explanation would be too simple unless we adopt the conspiracy theory
216 D. Bourmaud approach to history. We should rather speak of a communion of ideas between the elites and their adhesion to the vision of France as a power. The ideological watershed of the 1980s brought together – rather paradoxically – the proponents of a new, modernised African policy in the name of their essentially economic liberal ethos and the supporters of cleaner and purer Françafrique for the sake of idealism. The direct consequence of this liberal and moralistic approach was that it clashed with the rhetoric of power politics by suggesting converging visions of a powerless France: if the new world would not condemn France to anonymity, moral grounds would do so by prevailing over all the other analytical models meant to make sense of the real world. In both cases, this created a fertile ground for the loss of specificity in the relationship between France and Africa. The speech delivered by F. Mitterrand at the 16th Franco-African summit of La Baule, in 1990, was an emblematic moment and a turning point for Françaf‑ rique.7 It would be, however, a mistake to believe that the French president was the architect of the new African policy of France. A faithful heir to the Gaullist model, he also acknowledged the strength of diverging constraints that were at work. The socialist president lucidly drew the conclusions from the emergence of a new post-bipolar world which made France’s power politics obsolete, while an ideological mutation made change compulsory. Subsequent governments, left and right alike, namely from Edouard Balladur and Alain Juppé to Lionel Jospin, have contributed, each in their own way, to undo the Françafrique institutions. The two main pillars of co-sovereignty accordingly underwent a drastic overhaul: the devaluation of the CFA franc by 50 per cent, unilaterally decided by France on 11 January 1994, was groundbreaking. Until then it had been assumed, at least implicitly, by the various actors concerned, that the exchange rate between the French franc and the CFA franc was at fixed rate. The very idea of challenging the exchange parity was felt to be an infringement on the post-colonial pact concluded between France and its former colonies. As previously mentioned, all the parties concerned drew economic and political benefits from the CFA area (OPCF 1995). Calling into question this monetary regime meant that France could no longer unilaterally maintain a monetary zone without taking into account its internal dysfunctions and their external consequences. The international power of France was no longer what the country claimed it was. The decision-making process had excluded de facto the African heads of state, thus ending the family atmosphere that presided until then over the adoption of common decisions. Everybody, including the former colonial ruler, was subjected to economic constraints. The E. Balladur government had announced the adoption of the so-called Abidjan doctrine a few months earlier, in September 1993. As part of its official decision to rally to the policies of external agencies, the IMF and the World Bank, France now compelled African states to conclude an agreement with them before they would be entitled to French budgetary aid. Monetary and financial co- sovereignty conjointly exercised by France and the member countries of the CFA area was replaced by a system governed by rules that were above all the actors concerned.
France’s African policy 217 There was a similar shift in the domain of security as France decided to reduce both the number of its military bases and that of the French soldiers deployed in Africa. This was a measure of considerable significance since it meant that France renounced its claims to act as the gendarme of Africa. The ReCAMP doctrine, adopted in 1997, further confirmed this policy shift.8 France’s pledge to train African armies and the restriction of its role to logistical support made it explicit that Paris no longer wanted to be directly involved in African conflicts. As war and peace were now considered the preserve of African actors, the defence agreements signed just after independence became largely devoid of significance. Finally, the reform of the cooperation system symbolised above all the end of an era. Initially envisaged by A. Juppé’s government, the reform was eventually implemented by L. Jospin’s. The incorporation of the Ministry of Cooperation into the DgCiD,9 located within the Foreign Affairs Ministry, deprived the Africans of ‘their’ ministry. The pré-carré was dissolved into a continental entity that gathered practically all the African states plus the countries of former Indochina and a certain number of Caribbean islands. The resulting so-called Priority Solidarity Zone (Zone de solidarité prioritaire) contributed to bring to an end the special and privileged treatment previously granted to francophone African states. What is the space left for clientelist relations? All the institutions in charge of Françafrique have been dismantled or drastically transformed. With what kind of resources is it possible today to sustain personal bonds of allegiance? And, above all, with what men? In the French state apparatus, the ‘clan of the Africans’ does not carry much weight any longer. The civil servants who were at the heart of France’s relations with Africa for three decades have been progressively side-tracked. A question linked to the rise of a new generation, of course, but also the outcome of the desire to put aside the most dubious agents, those who represented what was left of ‘Foccartism’, as was the case with Michel Dupuch, in charge of the Africa cell until August 2002. Where are the likes of Charles Pasqua, Michel Roussin, or Charles Debbasch, to name but a few? Today, the refined codes of diplomacy are supposed to have been reinstated in the conduct of Franco-African relations. The intrusion of judges into the Elf case from 1995 onwards has also ruined one of the founding principles of Françafrique, widely associated with cronyism and trafficking of all kinds. The condemnation of Loïc Le Floch‑Prigent, among others, strengthened the general feeling that the rule of law was no longer compatible with patrimonial rules. In June 2007, the condemnation of Bob Denard, one of the most emblematic ‘spooks’ of Françafrique, offered additional evidence of the deep changes that have taken place in France’s African policy. Change has not only affected France. The special relationship between France and Africa was based on shared bonds of affection, the feeling of belonging to the same family, with a common destiny. Personalities as different as F. Houphouët-Boigny, Jean Bedel Bokassa, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Mobutu Sese Seko, or Omar Bongo were, each in their own way, outstanding symbols of these relations. Beyond its elites, France had also established peculiar linkages with
218 D. Bourmaud Africa through successive waves of coopérants over a period of some 25 years. There was indeed an attraction to France and an attraction to Africa that conferred on Franco-African relations a social and cultural base. This sociological dimension has disappeared or is progressively disappearing. It has not been replaced by any systematic feeling of hostility, even though we may find some traces of it. The case of Côte d’Ivoire offers one of the best examples of this dilution of the close links between France and Africa. On the whole, some form of attraction may remain in a few African countries. The expression of feelings that are often somewhat contradictory signals the end of 30 years of unanimously felt fascination for the former colonial ruler. The outcome is the emphasis on rational calculation, as when Jean‑Paul Ngoupandé, a former Centrafrique minister, argues that the CFA franc ‘prevents further difficulties’ and ‘guarantees minimum stability’.10 At the other end of the spectrum, strong disapproval was voiced by many African intellectuals after President Sarkozy’s speech in Dakar on 26 July 2007, in which he declared that ‘the African man has never really entered into History’.11 The words, deemed arrogant by some, represent, symbolically, a breaking point in Franco-African relations. Indeed, it is unconceivable that any of his predecessors could have pronounced such a speech. Who could have predicted that France’s political elites would be conspicuously absent from Dakar on the occasion of the funerals of former President Senghor in 2001? The first President of Senegal was clearly not the archetype of Françafrique – he actually symbolised the ‘acceptable’ side of Franco‑African relations. Precisely for this reason, the conspicuous absence of French officials at the ceremony confirmed that a page has been turned and that Africa has lost its exceptional status in the eyes of the French elites. The structural variables which contributed to the patrimonialisation of Franco-African relations have almost completely disappeared. Does it imply that all clientelist practices have also vanished? Sceptics will rightly mention the persistence of patrimonial tendencies within institutions that are supposed to have been ‘sanitized’. The truth is that there have been many lapses in the great transformation process observed over the last 15 years. Congo, Chad, and Centrafrique exemplify the fact that France still retains interests in Africa and that the means used today to preserve these are not necessarily very different from those employed in the past. Networks, even though they may be residual, can be reactivated efficiently, as confirmed when France opposed the US intervention in Iraq in 2003. For a short period, France renewed its status as a great power. The pure Gaullist style that was being adopted gave rise to spontaneous support from almost all African states, with a few exceptions, notably Rwanda. France’s readiness to fall back on an active neo-Gaullist stance could equally mean renewing exceptionalism in Africa (Chafer 2002: 343–63). Indeed, the African policy conceived by Dominique de Villepin, as Foreign Affairs Minister and later as Prime Minister, drew much of its inspiration from the Gaullist legacy (Bourmaud 2005: 17–27). A new and voluntarist France could open a new chapter – modernised and therefore unblemished – in the long history of Franco-African relations. The Marcoussis agreement and France’s commitment in the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire
France’s African policy 219 might be interpreted as a renewal of its role as the policeman of Africa, this time for more laudable motives since the objective was to contain the possible extension of a civil war and, by capillary action, of a regional war. But, in doing so, wouldn’t France be mechanically induced to turn back to patrimonial practices due to a new fascination for its past power? Others have argued that some secret forces are still at work in the background and that the imprint of ‘white sorcerers’ (Hugueux 2007) remains of key relevance. They will add that the case of Mr Borel, a French magistrate killed in Djibouti in 1995, exemplifies the continuation of the shady practices of France’s highest authorities when Africa is involved. Even then, the ‘depatrimonialisation’ process seems unlikely to be stopped and replaced by the practices of the past since the structural conditions that we have analysed above have disappeared. There is no longer, in France, any paradigm capable of shaping a new, proactive, and consensus-based African policy. Although D. de Villepin made an attempt, there is a dominant trend of thought in the French elite in favour of the streamlining of the Franco-African relationship. L. Jospin’s policy (1997–2002) offered the best illustration of this point. The French elites’ lack of ideological framework is echoed by a very weak, if not totally absent, desire for France on the part of the African elites. Finally the structure of the post-Cold War international system no longer enables France to act as or keep the appearance of a great power. This does not mean that the country is condemned to marginalisation, nor does it signal that corruption is a thing of the past. There would be a significant dose of innocence and a total absence of comparative perspective in such an idyllic vision. If we turn towards other horizons, we have to admit that corruption is rampant in international relations. A good illustration was offered in 1997 by the adoption of the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (Montigny 2007: 41–48). Each state, whenever its interests are at stake, is prone to build clientelist relations and to establish privileged linkages with politicians or civil servants. In that respect, France cannot claim to have had any monopoly of such practices in Africa or elsewhere. The United Kingdom was caught not so long ago in a major scandal that shook British institutions. The BAE Systems affair – with the payment of a £2bn ‘commission’ to Prince Bandar bin-Sultan of Saudi Arabia for the renewal of arms deals since 1985 – condenses all the elements associated with clientelist practices. Although the sums involved were enormous, the British Labour government actively tried to block the inquiry on the grounds that it would threaten national interest.12 Germany has similarly been recently confronted with the Siemens scandal due to the firm’s use of secret accounts to pay bribes for contracts.13 Similar examples may be found in almost all countries. The difficulty from an IR perspective is to provide an interpretation. The notion of ‘collective clientelism’ put forward by John Ravenhill (1985) highlights the asymmetry in the relations between actors and their reciprocal advantages, the weaker actor being in a position to reverse a negative situation a priori, by using blackmail for example. It would be tempting to use this concept in the case of Franco-African relations. But the difficulty is that we are insidiously led to confuse the interests of private actors with those of
220 D. Bourmaud state actors. There may be some similarities but the respective motives and constraints are not the same. Private actors are motivated by specific interests, such as getting richer. State actors behave according to the environment in which relations of domination prevail and in accordance with their perception of these. Clientelist relations and personal ties are convenient means to implement a specific policy. They do not shape it but are part and parcel of it. It goes without saying that it may open up opportunities for private interests. The Gaullist project for Africa, in the name of France’s grandeur, enabled many interests to converge and thrive. As this project faded away, both the institutions which gave it substance and the whole ‘structure of opportunities’ have collapsed. They have dragged in their fall a Franco-African relationship that was not so exceptional after all.
Notes 1 The Enabling Act made provision for the creation of Councils of government (Conseils de gouvernement) in the overseas territories, but the voting system was biased against the indigenous population. 2 The defence agreements signed just after the independence contained secret clauses or agreement. 3 The summit, which was organised at the request of some African leaders, gathered ten French-speaking heads of state. 4 The so-called Cancun speech was actually delivered by F. Mitterrand in Mexico City. 5 René Journiac was Jacques Foccart’s collaborator between 1967 and 1974 before taking over from him as head of the ‘Africa cell’ in the Élysée after the election of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Following Journiac’s accidental death in 1980, Martin Kirsch took up his position. He was soon replaced after the victory of François Mitterrand in 1981. 6 Facts have not been fully established and have thus given rise to controversies. Seeing things from a distance in the respect of the historical analytical model is the only way to potentially determine the respective responsibilities. 7 In his speech, F. Mitterrand praised political liberty and announced that French aid would henceforth give priority to the countries respecting democratic principles. 8 ReCAMP stands for Renforcement des capacités africaines de maintien de la paix (Reinforcing African peace-keeping capacities). 9 Direction générale de la Coopération et du Développement (Directorate General for Cooperation and Development). 10 Libération, 15 September 2004. 11 Libération, 2 August 2007. 12 Guardian, 21 September 2007, ‘Labour tries to block new BAE inquiry’; also Guardian, 6 February 2010 ‘BAE admits guilt over corrupt arms’. 13 The Economist, 18 December 2008, ‘Bavarian baksheesh: The stench of bribery at Siemens signals a wider rot in Europe’. www.economist.com/node/12814642.
Conclusion Neopatrimonial and developmental – the emerging states’ syndrome Daniel C. Bach
The dissemination of the concept of neopatrimonial rule in Africa cannot be dissociated from its more parsimonious mobilisation outside the continent. When this neologism was carved out of the Weberian sub-type of patrimonial domination in 1973, there was little indication that such a pattern would emerge. Pre- existing discussions of patrimonial rule within contemporary political systems were more prone to focus on Latin America and Asia. Following its initial application to Cameroonian politics in the late 1970s, the concept of neopatrimonial rule gathered stamina in Africa as an alternative to the notion of charismatic rule, against a backstage of rampant unsatisfaction with developmental and dependency theories. Neopatrimonialism provided the ‘common denominator for a range of practices that are highly characteristic of politics in Africa, namely nepotism, clannish behaviour, so-called “tribalism”, regionalism, patronage, “cronyism”, “prebendalism”, corruption, predation, factionalism, etc.’ (Médard, 1991b: 330). All of these practices had, until then, been frequently treated as a disparate collection of phenomena in the scholarly literature. As the contributions to this book have shown in detail, the concept of neopatrimonial rule has stimulated research on a widening range of issues and areas pertaining to African politics since the 1980s. The concept has contributed to promote intermediary grids of interpretation that invite to caution, without calling for the straightforward rejection of ‘grand’ theories or exclusive agency- focused perspectives. The concept has also encouraged explanations that are both more complex and more modest due to their location at the cross-roads of a plurality of opportunities and rationales. The trajectories of the African states are treated as the outcome of dynamics that combine endogenous with exogenous components, just as, depending on circumstances, the strategies pursued by elites reproduce or challenge imported models. It is therefore not surprising that, today, a large number of scholars and analysts, whether explicitly or in metaphorical ways, refer to the concept or what it stands for. The dissemination of the concept does not mean a dearth of interrogations or challenges with respect to its relevance and heuristic value. A number of authors have preferred notions that, albeit related, did not formally endorse the post‑Weberian concept – Jackson and Rosberg’s emphasis on ‘personal rule’, Jackson’s notion of ‘quasi states’ or Bayart’s discussion of ‘belly politics’ offer
222 D.C. Bach good examples of this trend. Other scholars have firmly rejected a concept that they considered prone to reductionism due to its tendency to tie corruption or clientelism to some sort of African exceptionalism (Tshiyembé, 1998). More recently, the rise of metaphoric references to the concept has also prompted its stigmatization as a catch-all notion and a paradigm ‘for all African “seasons” ’ (Therkildsen, 2005: 36). This is not altogether surprising: since the 1990s, demo cratisation, governance, development policies and state reforms or state reconstruction have been central concerns of development practitioners (World Bank, IMF, UNDP, NGOs . . .) and academics alike. The confusion between the public and private spheres, clientelism and personal rule – distinctive ingredients of neopatrimonialism – featured prominently in theories of the state and democrat isation, or in the normative debates on governance. One of the outcomes is that neopatrimonialism is no longer insulated from the criticisms that were addressed to patrimonialism by authors like Theobald in the 1970s – namely metaphorical, allusive and laxist usage. Such a strand calls for closer monitoring of the genesis, intellectual ramifications and complexity of concepts that are often employed without due considera tion for their epistemological implications. References to Max Weber and his conceptualisation of patrimonial domination give all too often the impression of being purely decorative elements notes Hinnerk Bruhns. Similarly, discussions of neopatrimonialism in Africa often overlook what constitutes its essence: dualism and hybrid patterns of interaction between patrimonial and legal- bureaucratic decision-making. Unlike what is often assumed, the concept, does not automatically infer the domination of the former over the latter. Depending on the dynamics of interactions between its constitutive elements, neopatrimonialism is associated with considerable empirical variations. Neopatrimonialism may combine with a pattern of stable production of public policies in some sectors, just as it may, conversely, be embedded into a process of dilution of the state into informal and even criminal networks. The systematic reduction of institutions and bureaucratic procedures to mere ‘facades’ proceeds from a flawed metaphor (De Haan, 2010: 108). The concept of neopatrimonialism does not postulate the state or ruler’s incapacity to implement public policies. Nor does neopatrimonialism preclude the coexistence of democratic practices within neopatrimonial systems. The progressive transformation of the African neopatrimonial state into a quasi-ideal type of the anti-developmental state also deserves to be reviewed. A string of implicit assumptions accounts for the emergence of a neopatrimonial doxa based on a peculiar reading of African politics and polities. Depictions of African states as empty shells or quasi-states rely upon the lack of any opera tional distinction between regulated or capped and integral or predatory forms of neopatrimonialism. This contrasts with what can be observed outside Africa, where patrimonial practices within the state have kept being dissociated from cases where patrimonialisation perverts the entire state, with the result of a thorough dissolution of the public sphere into private interests and networks. Reasserting the relevance of such a dichotomy in Africa is long overdue. It is also a
Conclusion 223 federating concern of the rising number of studies on pockets, sectors or enclaves that reveal the efficiency and/or the developmental slant of policies conducted within African neopatrimonial states.1 Monitoring neopatrimonialism within the state also lifts impediments to broader cross-regional approaches, as illustrated by the contribution of Mauro Barisione on Sylvio Berlusconi, the chapter of Daniel Bourmaud on Franco- African relations and the study of Dominique Caouette on the Philippines. Yves-André Fauré’s reassessment of neopatrimonialism in Brazil provides another instance of the heuristic value of shifting away from entrenched models and frameworks. The value of such comparisons resides in the detailed case studies provided as much as in the discourse on the method that they aspire to promote. Debates on the neopatrimonial state in Africa have for all too long crystallised on the issue of institutionalisation and interactions between the public and private sphere within the state. This has not been the case in Latin Amer ica, where ongoing references to caciquismo and to the ‘bureaucratic- patrimonial’ state mirror the resilience of interpretations stressing the legacy of colonial rule. Following the rise of military regimes in the 1970s, such ref erences were supplemented by a corporatist component so as to account for the promotion of private oligarchic interests within the state. Even then, patrimonialism or neopatrimonialism were never considered as structural impediments to the production of public policies. In contrast with the Africanist and Latin-American emphasis on institutionalisation and bureaucratisation, the South East Asian literature has generally focused on the nexus of state- business relations and interactions. Underlying concern at the emergence of competitive and developmental capitalist states has also prompted the adoption of a specific lexicography, illustrated by references to oligarchic patrimonialism, crony capitalism and even ‘ersatz’ capitalism. In Russia and Central Europe, it is the related idea of state ‘capture’ by oligarchic and/or criminalised networks that similarly gained widespread currency after the collapse of communism. Regional variations in interpreting the interplay between private interests and public policies point to a key assumption, largely overlooked in the Africa debates until recently: a state can be both developmental and neopatrimonial, just as bad politics can produce good policies (Moene, 2011). The relevance of such a paradigmatic shift is also at the core of the emerging states’syndrome, namely their ability to combine rapid economic transformation with poverty reduction despite the persistence of high levels of corruption and, at times, authoritarian/totalitarian rule. In many respects, the emerging countries’ syndrome reasserts the key significance of empirically based and domestically driven processes that combine the implementation of structural adjustment pol icies on a sustainable basis with the preservation of a state capacity to craft and implement public policies. This postulates in fine that neopatrimonial practices should not be so pervasive as to prevent any capacity to craft public policies, or disentangle national interest from the rulers’ private concerns.
224 D.C. Bach
Note 1 Cf., inter alia, the Tracking Development Programme of the Afrika-Studiecentrum of Leiden; the Nigerian research project coordinated by Michael Roll on Pockets of Effectiveness: The Politics of Public Sector Performance in Nigeria; also ‘The Persistance and Change of Neopatrimonialism in Various Non-OECD Regions’ programme coordinated by Christian von Soest at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) of Hamburg.
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Index
Page numbers in italics denote tables. Abinales, P.N. 159 accumulation, power and money 54 Acemoglu, D. 101–2, 104 Adedibu, Chief Lamidi 134–7 administrative staff 17 Africa: clientelism 26; corruption 52; French policy 6; neopatrimonial state as model and prototype 26–34, 43–4; see also France’s African policy Africanization 54 Ahidjo, Ahmadou 27, 30 aid 32, 104–5, 215 Akinsola, Latif (Tokyo) 135 Alao-Akala, Christopher 135, 136 aluguel de mandatos 181 Amoroso, D.J. 159 Anderson, B. 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167, 168 anti-developmental state 33–4 apadrinhados 172–3 aparelhamento do estado 176 aparelhar 173 Aquino, Corazon 163 Arafat, Yasser 37 Arroyo, Gloria 157, 164–6 articulação política 173 Atkin, M 189 authoritarian-bureaucratic regimes 36 authoritarianism 4, 162, 186, 187, 190 authority, patrimonial 18 autonomy, customs officers 143 Badie, B. 46 Bailey, F.G. 49–50 baixo clero 173 Balladur, Edouard 216 Banfield, E.C. 47 Bayart, J.-F. 32, 33, 58 Beetham, D. 79 Bell Act 160 Bello, W. 164 Below, G. von 13
Berdimuhamedov, Gurbanguly 195 Berlusconi, Silvio 5–6; early political career 198–200 Berlusconismo: charisma and media 200–3; communication 206; context and overview 197; genesis of 198–200; hybridism 206; neopatrimonialism and political discourse 203–6; personalization of power 205–6; scandals 206; use of legislation 204–5 big men 5–6, 28, 30, 46, 53–4, 86, 132–3; see also Njonjo, Charles Bigo, D. 30 Bill, J.A. 37 Blondel, J. 2 Blundo, G. 11 Bøås, M. 124, 125, 128, 129 Bockarie, Sam 129 Bokassa, Jean-Bédel 30–1 Bolshevik revolution 41 booty capitalism 39, 162 bosses 47 Botelho, J.E. 36 Botswana 52 Bourmaud, D. 28, 29 Bratton, M. 28, 31, 33, 54, 80, 82–3, 85, 100, 111, 120 Brazil 5, 34, 35–6; ‘affairs’ 173–4; bargaining in legislative assemblies 178–9; context and overview 169–71; corruption 171–2, 173–4, 180–1; electoral campaigns 177–8; enrichment through public office 181–3; godfatherism 172–3; military dictatorship 176–7; nepotism 179–80; patrimonialism 170–1; political alliances 177; political costs 181–3; prebendalism 175–81; public tenders 177–8; renting elected offices 181; summary and conclusions 183; trading of votes and offices 180–1; use of terms 171–5 Breuer, S. 21 Brezhnev, Leonid 190–1 Bukhara 189–90 bureaucracy 15–16, 18, 21
Index 255 bureaucratic-authoritative communism 41 bureaucratization, patrimonial 36 cacique democracy 168 caciques 158, 172 Callaghy, T. 27, 33 Cameroon 27, 30, 32 capital flight 96 capitalism 19 capitalist states 34 captive civil society 46 capture 97–8 cargas comissionadas 173, 175 Carothers, T. 85–6 caudillos 35 Central African Republic (CAR) 30–1 CFA francs 210, 216 Chabal, P. 33 Chad 148 charismatic authority 25, 47, 200–3 Chehabi, H.E. 31 child labour 194 chopping 55 civil society: captive 46; Uzbekistan 194 civil wars: overview 124–5; summary and conclusions 131 clanoviost 187–8 clans 187–9 clientelism 4, 97, 103–4, 112; Africa 26; and democracy 116; rationalized 29; see also political clientelism cliques 53 cohesive capitalist states 34 collective clientelism 219 Collier, P. 86 colonial state, deconstruction of 32 colonialism 36–7; Philippines 158–60; Sierra Leone 127–8 communist regimes 41 condotierre 47–8 Confucianism and Taoism 12, 16 constitutional reform 54 coronelismo 172, 183 corruption 3, 5, 47, 97–8, 100–1, 103; Africa 52; Brazil 171–2, 173–4, 180–1; Charles Njonjo 65–8, 76; curbing 105–6; extent of 55–6; godfatherism 141; increased awareness of 122–3; Niger 146–8; Philippines 166; scandals 219; Sierra Leone 128; Southeast Asia 39; state as powerless 152–3; Zaïre 31 Cot, Jean-Pierre 214 Côte d’Ivoire 27, 29–30 Craxi, Bettino 198 credibility, of public institutions 104 credit, political entrepreneurs 50 crime and impunity 136, 141 Critchlow, J. 187 cronyism 38–40, 98; oligarchal domination 161–3; Soviet Union 187; Zimbabwe 54–5 Crook, R. 30, 32
Crouch, H. 38 cultural ideals 19 culture of democracy 121 customs, evasion 146 customs officers 143; bypassing the state 144–5, 146; impunity 151 customs services: failure to combat corruption 152–3; Niger 142; rules 148–9 Dahl, R.A. 51 Daloz, J.-P. 33, 54 De Boeck, F. 129 de Gaulle, Charles 209–10 de Lima, K. 171 decentralized despotism 27 decentralized patrimonialism 27 decolonization 209–10 deconstruction, of colonial state 32 democracies, typologies 86–7 democracy: and authoritarianism 4; and clientelism 116; contradictory norms 85–9; defining 79; institutions 121–2; Italy 198; legal and informal norms 83–5; and neopatrimonialism 95–6; oligarchic 160–1; overview 79; survival of 121; tension with neopatrimonialism 80–3 democratization 33; and political clientelisms 117–20, 122; political parties 120; as slow process 121; third wave 82–3 despachante 172 development economics 4; context and overview 90–1; neopatrimonialism as multidimensional 92–3; neopatrimonialism as political process 94–5; reconciling with neopatrimonialism 106; regimes and neopatrimonialism 95–6; shared conceptualizations 99–106; states and development 92–6; summary and conclusions 107; trajectories of post-independence states 93–4 developmental states 34; East Asia 95 Diamond, L.J. 85, 86–7, 88, 120 diamonds, Sierra Leone 127–9 diversity, political entrepreneurship 51–6 dominant-power systems 86 domination: distinction between forms 84; hybridism 20; legitimate and non-legitimate 21; patrimonial 19–20; sociology of 14–16; Weber’s typology 16–23 Drazen, A. 100 Dunn, K.C. 124 East Asia, developmental states 95 Easterly, W. 100 economic characteristics, consolidation of 102 economic crisis 32 economic growth, and democracy 121 economic institutions, and rulers 103 economic liberalization, Niger 142 economic redistribution 119–20
256 Index economic reforms: attitudes to 104; Niger 142 economics: of development 4; theoretical approaches 90 economy, effects of traditional domination 19 Egypt 186 Eisenstadt, S. 1, 9–10, 25, 92 electoral autocracies 120, 122, 133 electoral campaigns 177–8 electoral politics 117; impact of 119–20 Elias, N. 81 elite clientelism 113–14, 116–19 elites, self-interest 34 emergent countries 34 emerging states’ syndrome 221–3 Engel, U. 10–11, 79, 85, 86–7, 89, 111 Englebert, P. 30, 93, 96 enrichment, personal 54 equilibria 103, 104 Erdmann, G. 10–11, 79, 85, 86–7, 89, 111 Estrada, Joseph 164 Ethiopia 26 ethnicity 46, 101 Evan, P. 34 external influences 82 extractive industries, Sierra Leone 127–9 factions 50 Faoro, R. 35–6 Fauré, Y.-A. 28, 55 federalism, Nigeria 133 feudalism 15, 20 Fininvest 198–9 fisiologismo 5, 172 Fithen, C. 126, 131 Florescano, H. 35 Foccart, J. 213 followers, of political entrepreneurs 49–50 Forrest, J. 33 Forza Italia 199, 201, 203–4 Fox, J. 121 France: as a major power 211–12, 215; policy towards Africa 6 France-Afrique 211, 214–16, 217–18 France’s African policy: collapse 214–17; context and overview 208–9; depatrimonialization 218–19; Gaullism 209–10; instruments of 212–14; military involvement 210, 216; patrimonialism as source of power 209–14; perspective 208–9; reform of cooperation system 216–17; special relationship 208, 217; zone of influence 210 fraud, Niger 146–7 Gaxie, D. 48 gerontocracy 18 Gil Sánchez, I. 35 Giscard D’Estaing, Valéry 211 godfatherism 5; Adedibu, Chief Lamidi 134–7; Brazil 172–3; corruption 141; crime and
impunity 136, 141; defining 132–3; expectations and demands 133–4; influence on government 137, 138; kidnapping 138; sponsorship 135, 137–8; spread and prevalence 139–41; Uba, Andy 139; Uba, Chris 137–9; use of violence 134, 135–6, 138–9, 141; see also Nigeria Gorlizki, Y. 40, 41, 43 Grégoire, E. 145 guerrilla entrepreneurs 54 guided democracy 38 Haller, K.L. von 13 Hanke, Edith 14 Hatløy, A. 128 Hawes, G. 158, 159, 160, 162 Hellman, J.S. 42 Helmke, G. 121–2 Herrschaftssoziologie 14–16 hokims 192 Honwana, A. 129 hostage taking 130 Houphouët Boigny, Felix 27, 29–30, 211 Hughes, J. 41 humanitarianism 215 Hunter, J.E. 39 Hutchcroft, P. 38–9, 157–8, 159, 162, 166, 168 hybridism 25, 85, 86–7, 88, 120–1; Berlusconismo 206; Brazil 170; of domination 20 Hyden, G. 34 ideal types 22–3, 84 Ilchman, W.F. 50 Iliffe, J. 54 Ilkhamov, A. 43, 192 illiberal democracies 120–1 import-substitution industrialization (ISI) 161 imported state 46 impunity 141; godfatherism 136 incomes 103 Indonesia 38, 39 inequality 119 influence peddling 120 informal free zones 146 informal institutions 121–2 informalization, of politics 200 institutional intermediation 150 institutionalization: of neopatrimonialism 31; weakness of 54 institutions: of democracy 121–2; nature of 106–7; underdevelopment 194–5 interface bureaucracies, Niger 142–3 intermediate state 34 intermediation practices 150–2 international financial institutions (IFIs) 93–4 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 93, 115, 128, 142 international relations 122 Ishiyama, J. 186
Index 257 Italy 5–6; attitudes to state 200; democracy 198; patterns of employment 199–200; taxation 205; see also Berlusconismo Jackson, R. 26, 32, 33, 94 James, R. 96 jeitinho 5, 172, 183 Joseph, R. 32, 120 Jospin, Lionel 219 Jowitt, K. 190 judicial systems 105 Kang, D. 40 Karimov, Islam 43, 186–7; rise of 191–3; see also Uzbekistan Karimova, Gulnara 193 Kaufmann, D. 42 Kazakhstan 188 Keen, D. 124, 128 Kenya 29–30 Kenyatta, Jomo 29, 68–9 Kibaki, M. 69 kidnapping 129–30, 138 Kingsbury, D. 163–4 kinship 46, 53, 188 Kitschelt, H.B. 41 Kittel, B. 100 kleptocracy 31 Kohli, A. 34 Krushchev, Nikita 190–1 Kuchma, Leonid 43 La Baule speech 216 Lacam, J.-P. 50, 51, 200, 206 Ladoja, Rashidi 135–6 Lamprecht, Karl 13 Landesherrschaft 13 Latin America 35–7; mass clientelism 119 law, attitudes to 105–6 Le Vine, V. 26–7 leadership see political entrepreneurship legal-rational bureaucracy 11 Legal-rational domination 17; 80 legitimacy 10, 100, 104; Weber’s view of 16–17, 19 legitimate coercion (domination) 169 legitimate domination, Weber’s typology 16–23 Leiden, C. 37 Lemarchand, R. 31 lending, international financial institutions (IFIs) 93–4 Levitsky, S. 86, 121–2 Lewis, P. 38 Liddle, W. 38 Lindberg, S.I. 120 Linden, R. 41 Linz, J.J. 31 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio 170 Malaysia 39 Marchal, R. 54
Marcos, Ferdinand 40, 161–3, 166 Marcoussis agreement 218 Maslovski, M. 42 mass clientelism 114, 117; Médard, J.-F. 1, 3, 10, 11, 20–1, 22, 23, 27–9, 30, 32, 46, 52, 55–6, 79, 92, 96, 97, 132, 169, 221; neopatrimonialism and democracy 82 media 200–3 Mediaset 200–4 mega-clans 193 merchants 143; Niger 145; rules and practices 148–52 Merkel, W. 88 Messiant, C. 54 mestnichestvo 187, 188 Mexico 35 middle classes 96 Middle East 37 military dictatorship, Brazil 176–7 military regimes 100 militia groups, and elites 130 mining, Sierra Leone 127–9 Mitterand, François 211, 216 Mkandawire, T. 33 Mobutu, Sese Seko 27, 29, 31, 126 modelling 91, 99–102 Moi, Daniel 64, 68–9, 75–7 Momoh, Joseph 128 money, accumulation 54 monopolization 81 moral economy 29 Morse, D. 35 Movement for Emancipation in the Niger Delta (MEND) 129–30, 131 multi-party polyarchies 33 multidimensionality 92–3 Muthemba affair 73–4, 75 national accommodative communism 41 national sovereignty 81 Nda-Isaiah, Sam 137 neopatrimonial state, as model and prototype 26–34 neopatrimonialism: application to Africa 43–4; Eisenstadt’s conception of 25; increasing theoretical role 221; key aspects 187; overview of research 1–2; predatory forms 30–1; predominant view of 111; regulated forms 29–30; scope of research 221; summary and conclusions 221–3; use of term 1, 9–11, 27–9 nepotism 179–80, 187–8 new democracies, contradictory norms 85–9 Ng’ang’a, Amos 70 Ngige, Chris 138–9 Niger: bypassing the state 144–5, 146; corruption 146–8; customs administration 144–5; customs officers 143; economic reforms 142; exploiting rules 149–50; fraud 146–7; informal free zones 146;
258 Index Niger continued interface bureaucracies 142–3; intermediation practices 150–2; lump sum clearance 147; merchants 143, 145; privatization 145; rules and practices 148–52; state as powerless 152–3; transit convoys 147–8 Niger Delta 129–31 Nigeria 34; impeachment 135–6; overview 132–3; see also godfatherism Niyazov, Saparmurad 195 Njonjo, Charles 5, 28, 46, 53; attempt to seize power 68–76; basis of power 62–3; biography 60–1; as candidate and MP 69–73; Commission of Inquiry 66, 68, 71, 76; defeat and disgrace 74–6; domestic perceptions of 61–2; economic resources 65; influence on President 64; institutional strategy 68–9; latitude of action 65–8; leadership style 61–2; networking 64–5; overview of career and importance 58–9; positions held 63–4; reasons for downfall 77; summary and evaluation 77; system of power 63–5; violence 73–4 norms 2–3; contradictory 85–9; legal and informal 83–5; social 105–6 North Africa 37 Obi, Peter 139 Offerlé, M. 48 offices, trading 180–1 Oginga, Raila 73–4 oikos 13, 15, 19 oligarchal domination 161–3 oligarchic democracy 160–1 oligarchic patrimonialism 38–9 Olivier de Sardan, J.-P.. 29, 143 Olson, M. 103 one-party state 52 Oszlak, O. 36 Ottaway, M. 33 Palestine 37 paradigms, development of 31–3 paramount chiefs 60, 127 Park Chung-hee 40 parliamentary rule 121 Partido dos trabalhadores 170, 174 paternalism 172 path-dependency 125 patriarchalism: and patrimonialism 13; primary 18 patrimonial authority 18 patrimonial bureaucracy 15–16 patrimonial bureaucratization 36 patrimonial communism 41–2 patrimonial domination: relevance to Africa 26; Roth’s forms of 25; Weber’s concept of 12–23 patrimonial oligarchic state: defining 157–8; see also Philippines
patrimonialism: application of concept 25, 41; Brazil 170–1; and bureaucracy 18; bureaucratic 21; and capitalism 19; continuity and change in 26–7; decentralized 27; state bureaucracies 143–4; use of term 9–11; Weber’s concept of 12–23 patronage 114, 116 patronage networks 187–9, 190 peripheral countries 34 personal rule 30–1, 32, 35–6, 58; Karimov, Islam 192; limits to 33 personality, influence of 29–31 personalized patrimonialism 41 Philippines 5, 38–9, 40; American colonization 159–60; context and overview 157–8; corruption 166; elections 167–8; Japanese occupation 160; oligarchal domination cronyism 161–3; oligarchic democracy 160–1; oligarchies 167; as patrimonial oligarchic state 158–61; patronage and clientelism 166; politicization of military 167; post-independence 161; rebellion 165; return to oligarchy 163–8; Spanish colonization 158–9; state of emergency 157; US military 165; see also patrimonial oligarchic state political alliances 177 political careers, as enterprise 51 political clientelisms: adapting to democracy 120–2; causal relationships 116; characteristics and correlates 118; defining 113; and democracy 122; economic risks 119; elite clientelism 113–14, 116–19; impact on state capacity 116; mass clientelism 114, 117; patronage 114, 116; prebendalism 114, 116; prevalence 113; summary and conclusions 122–3; theoretical approaches 117–20; tribute 113; and wealth 115; see also clientelism; Sub-Saharan Africa political discourse, Berlusconismo 203–6 political economy, of neopatrimonialism 34 political elites, and militia groups 130 political entrepreneurship 4, 46; concept of 47–51; diversity 51–5; summary and conclusions 55; and tradition 92–3 political intermediation 151 political parties: and democratization 120; effect of presidentialism 121 political process, neopatrimonialism as 94–5 political resources 51 politicians, professional 47–8 politics: informalization of 200; professionalization of 51 politics from below 32 politics of the belly 32 Politique africaine 32 Pompidou, Georges 210–11 popular sovereignty 81 post-colonialism 3–4 post-Communist states 40–3
Index 259 post-independence states, development trajectories 93–4 post-patrimonialism 9 poverty 103; Sierra Leone 128 power: accumulation 54; neo-patrimonial conception 10; personalization 205–6; from war 48 pragmatism 50 prebendalism 20, 32, 35, 114, 116; Brazil 175–81 predatory neopatrimonialism 30–1 predatory state 34 presidentialism 31, 112, 121 press freedom 122–3 prestige 53 primary patriarchalism 18 privatization, Niger 145 professional politicians 47–8 professionalization, of politics 51 Przeworski, A. 79, 100, 121 public institutions, credibility of 104 public office, as means of gain 181–3 public tenders 177–8 Putin, Vladimir 42 quasi-states 32, 33, 94 Ramos, Fidel 163–4 Rashidov, Sharif 190, 191–2 rationalized clientelism 29 Ravenhill, J. 219 rebel groups: images of 125; motivation 124; Niger Delta 129–31; social banditry 129–31; summary and conclusions 131; and warlordism 126–9; worldview 124–5 recruitment, patrimonial and extra-patrimonial 18 redistribution, scope for 119–20 reform programmes 32 regimes: authoritarian, democratic and hybrid 87; Carothers’ binary classification 86; and economic performance 100; effects of transitions 122; links to neopatrimonialism 95–6; traditional and neo-traditional 25 regionalism 187, 188 regulated neopatrimonialism 29–30 regulatory capture 98 religion, and political entrepreneurship 54 Remmer, K. 36 Reno, W. 33, 43, 127, 128 rent capture 39 resources: accumulation 175–81; extraction and redistribution 125–6; liquidity 53; neopatrimonial systems 112; of political entrepreneurs 50–1; privatization of 92, 93; for redistribution 119–20 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) 125, 126, 131 Ribeiro, D. 182
Richards, P. 124, 126, 131 Robinson, J.A. 101–2, 104 Roett, R. 35–6 Romania 41 Rosberg, C. 26, 32, 94 Roth, G. 10, 21, 25 rouba mas faz 174–5 ruling cliques 53 Rwanda, 215 Sandbrook, R. 30, 32, 33, 34 Sankoh, Foday 129 Schattsneider, E.E. 121 Schatz, E. 188 Schedler, A.P. 120, 133 Schemeil, Y. 37 Schumpeter, J.A. 48–9 Searle, P. 39 shadow state 33, 43, 127 Sierra Leone 33; as colony 127–8; context of civil war 126–7; diamonds 127–9; independence 128; smuggling 128 Sindzingre, A. 100, 105 small open economies 93 smuggling, diamonds 128 social banditry 129–31 social intermediation 152 social norms 105–6 social practice, neopatrimonialism as 125–6 socialization 55 sociology of domination 14–16 Soekarno 38 South Africa 53 South Korea 34, 40 Southeast Asia 38–40, 98–9 sovereignty 81 Soviet Union 40–1, 187–8; legacy of 189–91 spoils system, Brazil 175 sponsorship, godfatherism 135, 137–8 stability 88, 96, 100 Stalin, Joseph 40–1, 190–1, 194–5 state: bypassing 144–5; as opportunity monopolization process 81 state-building 82 state bureaucracies, patrimonialism 143–4 state capacity, impact of clientelism 116 state capture 42–3 state formation, neopatrimonialism as outcome 102 state structures, size of 115 states: and development 92–6; differentiation criteria 84–5 Stevens, Siaka 128 stratification 119 strong men 132–3 structural adjustment programmes 145 Sub-Saharan Africa: capital flight 96; context and overview 111–12; democratization 95–6; post-independence states 93; see also political clientelisms
260 Index Suharto 38 sultanism 18, 31, 32, 54, 80 Syngman Rhee 40 Tajikistan 188–9 tanho 189–90 taxation, Italy 205 television, Berlusconismo 200–4 Thailand 39 The City 15–16 Theobald, R. 116 theoretical approaches 221–2 theory of institutional transformation 91 third wave democratization 82–3 Tidjani Alou, M. 143, 145, 147, 149 Tocqueville, A. de 83 Tolstov, S.P. 189 totalitarianism 36 trading, of votes and offices 180–1 tradition: loss of force of 10; move away from 92 traditional domination 16, 18–19, 80 traditionalism, in patrimonialism 19 transit convoys 147–8 traps 93–4 tribute 113 troca-troca 181 Tunisia 186 Turkmenistan 195 Turner, T. 26, 31 Tydings Rehabilitation Act 160 Uba, Andy 139 Uba, Chris 137–9 Ukraine 42–3 United States: bosses 47; patronage 116 Uphoff, N.T. 50 Uzbekistan 5, 43; civil society 194; clans and patronage 187–9; context and overview 186–7; grey zones in legislative norms 194; hokims (governors) 192; institutional underdevelopment 194–5; regime change 195; Soviet legacy 189–91; see also Karimov, Islam
van Zon, H. 42–3 Vidal, N. 31 Villepin, Dominique de 218, 219 violence: Charles Njonjo 73–4; godfatherism 134, 135–6, 138–9, 141; and political entrepreneurship 54 votes, trading 180–1 vulnerability: of neopatrimonialism 126; young people 129 Wallenstein, Albert von 48 Wantchekon, L. 100 war, and power 48 warlordism 4–5, 33, 94; and rebel groups 126–9 wealth 101 Weber, Max 3, 4, 26; forms of domination 80; ideal types 84; interpretations of 10–12; legitimate domination 169; meaning of patrimonialism 12; neopatrimonialism and democracy 83–4; patrimonial domination 12–23; patrimonialism, concept of 12–23, 28; political entrepreneurship 47, 48–9; references to patrimonialism 13–14; sociology of domination 14–16; types of domination 16–23 Whimster, S. 84 Willame, J.-C. 27 Willerton, J.P. 190–1 Wilson, J.Q. 47 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society) 12, 13–14 World Bank 93, 128, 142 Wurfel, D. 166, 167 Yacouba, D.M. 151 Yeltsin, Boris 42 Young, C. 26, 31, 32, 83 Zabludovsky, G. 36 Zaïre 27, 29, 31, 126 Zakaria, F. 86, 88, 120 Zimbabwe 54–5 Zolberg, Aristide 25