Power, Peasants and Political Development: Reconsidering State Construction in Africa

Abstract

Recent writing on political development in Africa has shown a marked tendency to de-privilege the state. We might discern three broad, related, reasons for this trend. The first is the deepening political crisis involving what Crawford Young has described as “shrinkage in the competence, credibility and probity of the state.” The second is the growing dissatisfaction among scholars with the narrow analytical focus of state-centered scholarship on state structures and elites. The third is the re-emergence of civil society as an analytical concept (sparked by political crises in Eastern Europe) and a renewed emphasis on market institutions as appropriate arbiters of social provision.Many scholars, despairing of the political and economic decline of African countries and seeking more compelling explanations, have moved the state out of the explanatory spotlight. They have stressed the fragmentation of politics, processes of economic disengagement from the realm of state control, and expanding areas of social life that fall outside of the ambit of state authority. For some, the relationship between the state and civil society has offered a more appealing focus for analysis.2 Society-centered research has even suggested that the state is not (or is no longer) the main organising principle of politics in Africa.