Reflections on State-Centrism as Ideology in Africa

Abstract

This chapter asks the question: ‘what role can ideology play in establishing the norms by which power is exercised and policy is made in African states today?’. The discussion is aided by the distinctions made by Franz Schurmann between pure and practical ideology,2 and by Robert Lane between forensic and latent ideology.3 Pure ideology reflects the beliefs of leaders; practical ideology grows out of the experience of organizations in implementing policy; forensic ideology represents political goals as expressed in public speeches; latent ideology describes the political beliefs and values applied by ordinary people to their own lives. Our argument is that the pure ideology of the post-colonial African state focuses overwhelmingly on the creative and positive aspects of a single line of authority for politics and state control of the economy, failing to justify a role for non-state institutions as practical ideology. But the actual practice of authoritarian and bureaucratic rule to implement a monistic state conflicts with the latent ideology of patronage-clientage. Economic decline and conditions for outside aid are creating pressures for a reduced state role in the economy, thus creating conditions for the uneasy co-existence of authoritarianism and client-age as a system of rule, but also some possibility for reducing the gap between rhetoric and reality, i.e., between the forensic ideology of leaders arid the latent ideology of the masses.