Modern African Politics Authors and Concepts

G.W.F. Hegel/Hegalian view

Sees Africa as being made out of small communities closed in upon themselves, brought into history by colonisation

Bertrand Badie

The State as a 'pure import product' which has led to state failure in Africa from failed transplantation of a foreign model

Georges Balandier

Africans states appropriated the colonial states, reshaping it through local political and social forces. African states are shaped by interaction between colonial influences and local societies. Africans were not passive recipients of imported institutions

Jean-François Bayart (1)

The paradigm of the yoke -- African states are seen as passive victims carrying the "yoke" (burden) of foreign domination. Bayarts alternative - Indigenisation of the state -- Africans actively appropriated and transformed state institutions. The African state is a hybrid of imported bureaucratic structures and indigenous political practices.
Emphasises African agency rather than victimhood

Crawford Young (1)

Postcolonial rulers (African elites) inherited relatively unchecked power from the colonial administrations, which were highly centralised and authoritarian

Jean-François Médard

Neopatromonialism - African states formally adopt Weberian legal-rational institutions (bureaucracy, law, offices).
But in practice, these institutions are constantly influenced by informal networks and personal relationships

Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz

Africa as an empty shell - Formal state institutions often exist largely on paper ("empty shell"). What looks like disorder is actually a different form of political rationality. African politics should be understood on its own terms rather than judged against European models.

Ranger & Hobsbawm

Constructivism - Ethnic identities ("tribes") were largely created in the colonial period. Colonial administrators, missionaries, and African elites codified and fixed fluid identities into rigid ethnic categories. Ethnicity is therefore historically manufactured, not pre-existing or natural.

John Peel

Critique of Ranger & Hobsbawm - These "inventions" only worked because they built on some existing local practices and gained real social meaning. Emphasises African agency in making ethnicity meaningful and functional. Africans appropriated ethnic identities strategically to - Access education, jobs, and political representation, and to mobilise solidarity and protection

Leroy Vail

Ethnicity as historically produced, but multi-directional ("from above AND below") Ethnicity is a historically constructed identity shaped mainly in the late colonial and early colonial period through processes of economic disruption, missionary activity, labour migration, and African "cultural entrepreneurs" who actively redefined and fixed group identities for political and social advantage

John Illife

Goes further than Ranger & Hobsbawm to say not only did colonisation invent ethnicity, but they purposely imposed ethnic division as a tool of colonial governance and control - divide and rule. Colonial administration used ethnicity to - Organise populations, simplify governance, enforce indirect rule through chiefs

Mahmood Mamdani

The Bifurcate State - Colonial Africa was governed through a "bifurcated state" consisting of two forms of authority under one colonial regime. 1) Civic authority in town 2) Ethnic/customary authority in rural areas. Result -"decentralised despotism" where local chiefs wield unchecked power over rural populations under the guise of "customary law"

Paul Nugent

Three sources of authority
Formal Power - Official authority granted by state institutions
Influence - Ability to shape decisions even without formal authority
Prestige - Cultural legitimacy and symbolic authority

Carolyn Logan

Resilience and Legitimacy Perspective - States and Traditional Authorities compete for local legitimacy. TAs survive because they retain social legitimacy and local support. Their authority cannot be explained solely by state weakness or state recognition

Fredrick Cooper

Gatekeeper state - Many post-colonial African states inherited a colonial structure in which governments exercised strong control over the "gate" between Africa and the outside world, but had much weaker control over society within their own territories. After independence, instead of transforming institutions, many states continued to derive power from controlling access to external resources

Bruce Berman

Big Men and uncivil nationalism - Colonial rule created systems of ethnic patronage by governing through local "Big Men" (chiefs, local elites, brokers), embedding ethnic categories into systems of administration and resource distribution. After independence, these patronage networks survived and became central to politics. This produces "uncivil nationalism", where moral community identities (moral ethnicity) intersect with competitive struggles over state resources (political tribalism). As a result, democratic institutions are weakened, and elections often reflect struggles over patronage and access to the state rather than purely ideological competition

Maggie Dwyer

African militaries became deeply involved in politics because colonial and post-colonial states relied on the military for internal security and regime protection rather than external defence. This made the military a key political actor and increased coups

Nic Cheeseman

Competitive authoritarianism - Many African regimes are neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian. Instead, they are competitive authoritarian regimes, where elections exist and opposition parties are allowed, but incumbents manipulate institutions to ensure they retain power

Crawford Young (2)

First military takeover of power in Africa (Nasser (1952) in Egypt overthrows King Farouk) sets a model that military officers elsewhere could imitate.
1) Possibility of rapid consolidation of a new regime
2) Availability of standard narrative of legitimation - cleansing corruption and introducing radical reforms

Nelson Kasfir

De-participation - Challenges the claim that one-party states increased political participation. He argues that many one-party regimes actually produced "de-participation"—the gradual reduction of meaningful citizen involvement in politics

Max Weber

Types of Authority

1) Traditional authority (patrimonialism)

2) Charismatic authority

3) Legal-rational authority

Anne Pitcher

Rethinking patrimonialism - Modern political science uses patrimonialism as a "catch-all" to describe corrupt, autocratic, and neopatrimonial regimes in Africa. The authors counter that Weber defined patrimonialism as a legitimate type of traditional authority with clear reciprocal obligations between rulers and subjects, relying on voluntary compliance built on shared norms

Jean-François Bayart (2)

"Politics of the belly" is a term describing a system of governance where political power is used primarily for personal enrichment, resource accumulation, and the distribution of favours.

The state = "national cake"

Politics = struggle over who "eats"

Didier Péclard

State formation is a historical process of conflict, negotiation, and compromise. He argues that civil wars do not merely destroy political orders, they help shape new ones. State formation is an outcome of struggles for power, not institutional design

Hoffmann and Kirk

State Failure - A state's inability to deliver basic public goods and enforce the rule of law. State failure occurs when the state can no longer perform core functions -
The monopoly of violence collapses
Public services break down
Authority loses legitimacy

Hangman and Péclard

Negotiated statehood - Statehood is produced through ongoing negotiation between multiple actors

State officials

Local authorities (chiefs, elders)

Armed groups/rebels

NGOs and international actors

Hagmann and Hoehne

Critique of "state failure" concept -
Conflates absence of government with anarchy
Ignores empirical statehood (actual functioning governance)
Uses the Western model as a universal benchmark

Jonathan Hill

States should be analysed "for what they are, not for what they fail to be" Avoid normative comparison to Western ideal states Focus on -

Actual governance practices

Hybrid political orders

Informal institutions

Ruth Marshall

Political spirituality - Nigerian Pentecostalism operates as a "political spirituality" in which being "born again" reconfigures how people understand power, citizenship, and the state, offering believers a way to make sense of—and morally respond to—postcolonial crises such as corruption, poverty, and failed development by relocating political hopes into spiritual transformation and divine authority

Mamoudou Gazibo

Argues that the question of whether democracy is possible on the continent is outdated. The primary challenge in Africa is not the concept of democracy, but the arduous process of consolidating it. Identifies major hindering factors, including -
State weakness and fragility
Entrenched autocratic mindsets among certain political elites
Fragile, divided political and civic organizations
Identity politics and ethnic cleavages that complicate national cohesion

Aili Mari Tripp

Types of Hybrid Regimes

1) Semi-authoritarian/competitive authoritarian regimes

2) Semi-democratic regimes

Oumarou Hamani

Ordered informality - States function through informal practices, practical inventiveness and unofficial norms that patch the state to keep it functioning

Alcinda Honwana

Waithood - Prolonged period of suspension when young people's access to social adulthood is delayed or denied. While their chronological age may define them as adults, they have not been able to attain the social markers of adulthood

Van Gyampo and Nana Akua Anyidoho

Youth as agents of political change - Rejects the idea that youth are passive. Youth are politically active but excluded from formal institutions and patronage politics, meaning they function as constrained agents of change rather (through protest and digital activism) than autonomous political decision-makers

Bamba Ndiaye

Explores how hip-hop serves as a powerful tool for civic awareness, political resistance, and social change. Rap enables youth to bypass traditional media and political gatekeepers