Abstract
This paper draws insights from theories of institutional change to analyze the interface between indigenous and contemporary socio-political institutions of governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. It shows that, although critical junctures are assumed to be path-departing moments, they canresult in fundamental divisions in overall institutional structures by grafting new institutions onto existing ones while at the same time re-enforcing the reproduction of existing institutional logics. Tracing the politics of institutional development and change in SSA over time, the paper shows that colonial rule left an unintended legacy of institutional dualism—the formal and the informal—which the recent processes of structural adjustment and democratizations have reenforced. Thus, the development of governance institutions in SSA is far from over as actors and interests associated with both formal and informal institutional settings compete for legitimacy and sovereignty, while at the same time introducing new goals to enhance their efficiencies, and combining existing elements within the overall institutional repertoire in a process of change within and beyond path dependence.KEY WORDS: Governance, Socio-Political Institutions, Institutional Transformation, Political Theories
Highlights
This paper has offered a complex understanding of institutional development and change of major political institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over time
From the perspective of institutionalists’ theory, the general resurgence of traditional political institutions is relevant because it shows that over time, indigenous political institutions have created vested interests that promote the reproduction of their institutional logics in a manner that has been aided by the very strategies designed to foster their discontinuity and path-departing economic and political change in SSA countries
The main lessons here are that because indigenous political institutions, like their modern counterparts create large constituencies and are embedded in cultural and customary practices that are based on long-term affinities spanning several generations, they cannot be pushed aside
Summary
How do socio-economic and political transformations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) contribute to our understanding of institutional development and change? Until recent, works by Thelen, (2003), Hacker (2004), Campbell (2004), Beland (2007) and Weyland (2008) that provide some insightful models for mapping and explaining institutional change, institutionalist analyses had, for a long time, focused on institutional stability (Mahoney 2000, 2006; Pierson 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004) and generally neglected the processes of change (Clemens and Cook 1999). Structural adjustment and democratization programs were introduced to reinforce the stability and continuity of the institutional frameworks grafted during the colonial era, they have produced unintended consequences of resuscitating African traditional political institutions as well as peoples’ faith in them in ways that challenge the autonomy and legitimacy of the postcolonial state While this has provided indigenous political institutions and the actors associated with them windows of opportunity (Kingdon 1995), to reconfigure their institutional goal through “conversion” (Beland 2007; Hacker 2004; Thelen 2003); actors associated with the institutions of the post-colonial state (politicians and policy makers) have resorted to “bricolage” (Campbell 2004) as a strategy to transform the overall institutions of governance in SSA countries. Contribution of the paper by situating the empirical discussions in the broader theoretical debates on institutional change
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