Negative statecraft and the Social Worse-offs in the modern African state: Exploring the concept of political utilitarianism for ethical leadership and governance

Abstract

This work makes two fundamental claims. First, the problem of negative statecraft has persisted in Africa, causing a negatively upward shift in the general curve of poverty as well as what John Rawls calls the social worse-offs on the continent. Preliminary research shows that this problem is usually mainly addressed from the social scientific perspective in Africa. Second, the present work normatively reacts to this implicit challenge, from the social sciences, through an ontologically ethical submission that the problem of negative statecraft is largely reducible to the moral deficit of leadership in Africa. Therefore, the work argues that a constitutional emphasis on political utilitarianism, a derivative from normative utilitarianism, largely addresses the problem. Just as normative utilitarianism reduces the rightness or wrongness of human conduct to the extent and intensity of the good produced or failed to produce, to satisfy the greatest number, political utilitarianism also analyzes the performance or non-performance of political leadership in Africa by the extent and intensity of the good produced, or failed to produce, to benefit the greatest number. Ultimately, this normative turn reinvents ethical leadership and governance, making the political leadership more responsible and responsive to the people in the modern African state.