Jeffrey Herbst

States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control

Preface to the New Paperback Edition xi Introduction 3 PART ONE: THE CHALLENGE OF STATE-BUILDING IN AFRICA 9 1 The Challenge of State-Building in Africa 11 PART TWO: THE CONSTRUCTION OF STATES IN AFRICA 33 2 Power and Space in Precolonial Africa 35 3 The Europeans and the African Problem 58 4 The Political Kingdom in Independent Africa 97 PART THREE: NATIONAL DESIGN AND DOMESTIC POLITICS 137 5 National Design and the Broadcasting of Power 139 6 Chiefs, States, and the Land 173 PART FOUR: BOUNDARIES AND POWER 199 7 The Coin of the African Realm 201 8 The Politics of Migration and Citizenship 227 PART FIVE: CONCLUSION 249 9 The Past and the Future of State Power in Africa, Revised for the New Paperback Edition 251 Index 273

War and the State in Africa

that in Africa, as elsewhere, states will eventually become strong. But this may not be true in Africa, where states are developing in a fundamentally new environment. Lessons drawn from the case of Europe show that war is an important cause of state formation that is missing in Africa today. The crucial role that war has played in the formation of European states has long been noted. Samuel P. Huntington argued that “war was the great stimulus to state building,” and Charles Tilly went so far as to claim that ”war made the state, and the state made war.”’ Similarly, two of the most successful states in the Third World today, South Korea and Taiwan, are largely ”warfare” states that have been molded, in part, by the near constant threat of external aggression. However, studies of political development and state consolidation in Africa and many other parts of the Third World have all but ignored the important role that war can play in political development. The role of war has not been examined because the vast majority of states in Africa and elsewhere in the world gained independence without having to resort to combat and have not faced a security threat since independence.2

The creation and matintenance of national boundaries in Africa

A paradox is central to the nature of political boundaries in Africa: there is widespread agreement that the boundaries are arbitrary, yet the vast majority of them have remained virtually untouched since the late 1800s, when they were first demarcated. This article argues that, contrary to current theories, the present boundary system represents a rational response by both the colonialists and the present-day African leaders to the constraints imposed by the demographic and ethnographic structure of the continent. Using this framework of analysis, the article examines the institutions that formulated the decision-making rules for the creation and maintenance of boundaries in Africa, discusses the conditions under which cooperation among states has occurred, and explores the prospects for future changes in the borders of African states.

African Militaries and Rebellion: The Political Economy of Threat and Combat Effectiveness

War in Africa has recently attracted significant attention because the continent seems more prone to conflict than others and because any disruption in security is especially threatening to populations, like those in most of Africa, where people are already living at the margins. A growing and productive literature has emerged focussing on the motivations of rebels during these wars. Important econometric work has attempted to explain the economic and political motivations of rebels; there have been case studies of different guerilla movements; and cross-national analysis of the organization of rebellion. However, there has been no corresponding literature on, quite literally, the other side: the political economy of how and why national militaries perform during civil war. This article will examine the geographic, political, and economic determinants of how African militaries face the threat of rebellion and of differential levels of effectiveness in combating insurgents. The size of the country appears to be an important determinant of the initial course of an insurrection: in small countries there is often a battle for the capital that can end fairly quickly, but in big countries different armies can occupy important pieces of territory far from each other and avoid having to fight an immediate battle to the death. Once conflicts have begun, it appears that the nature of the rebel threat - especially whether it is internal or external - and the degree of fungible resources provided by the international community are both important determinants of how well African armies are able to mobilize to fight. The article concludes that the international community must consider how to help African countries strengthen militaries as well as police and intelligence agencies, so that it is possible for governments to respond quickly to rebel threats.

The Structural Adjustment of Politics in Africa

Abstract It has long been recognized that the structural adjustment programs currently being proposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Africa have important political consequences. However, there has been almost no attention devoted to what structural adjustment, if implemented, means for the way that politics is actually carried out in African nations. The failure to examine the long-term consequences of economic reform for politics is particularly surprising given that the major instruments of structural adjustment — public sector reform, devaluation, elimination of marketing boards—threaten to change not only the constituencies that African leaders look to for support but the way in which leaders relate to their supporters in the countries south of the Sahara. The paper examines how structural adjustment, if actually implemented, would affect politics in African countries. The paper finds that structural adjustment makes the political climate much riskier for leaders while weakening the central apparatus of the state on which rulers have long relied to stay in power. The implications of the analysis for donors are also discussed.

Launching democracy in South Africa : the first open election, April 1994

South Africas first ever non-racial and multi-party election was one of the key global events of 1994. From the ashes of a repressive, segregated and racist state emerged - miraculously and relatively free of bloodshed - a multiracial and potentially compassionate new nation, led by one of the political icons of the late-20th-century, Nelson Mandela. In the year before the April 1994 election R.W. Johnson and Lawrence Schlemmer assembled a team of leading South African social scientists and political analysts to monitor the coming poll and its aftermath. The study was based at the non-partisan Institute for Multi-Party Democracy and the Human Sciences Research Council and a large network of observers of all political persuasions and many walks of life was put in place. The team monitored the campaign, party organization, the media and voter education efforts throughout the crucial and populous areas of the Western Cape, Natal and the Reef. The information generated was made available as a public information service to the media election monitors, voter educators and to all political parties equally and without charge. The team was invited to brief international observers from the UN, the OAU, the Commonwealth and the European Union. Using the resulting information base, this text looks at the course and context of the election, the results, the new constitution, party affiliation and loyalty, and the construction of policy consensus in the new South Africa. As a source of information and work of analysis, it represents a detailed account of the election and the polity that emerged from it.

The future of Africa : a new order in sight?

INTRODUCTION 1. The African Development and Security Record The overall record is poor Growing heterogeneity Size counts Assessing Africas insecurities.. ...and the impact on the West 2. Western Responses to Africas Crisis The endless search for African partners Energetic conservatism 3. Paradox and Parallax: The Special Case of South Africa Political parallax and economic delivery South Africas foreign policy: a bridge for the West in Africa 4. NEPAD and the AU: Towards a New Order NEPAD in detail The need for roll-out and momentum Regional integration and insecuirty Business and government 5. Tasks for the Future The aid Africa needs The trade Africa needs: what the West can do for Africa The security Africa needs: what Africa can do for itself The states Africa needs The leadership Africa needs CONCLUSION NOTES

Africa and the war on terror

An analysis of the links between weak states and terrorism; strategies to combat the spread of terrorism in countries where populations may be vulnerable; and a look at Africas situation in the USs war against terror.

Political Impediments to Economic Rationality: Explaining Zimbabwe's Failure to Reform its Public Sector

After Many years of exhortations, it is now widely claimed that African governments are beginning to implement the reforms needed to fundamentally alter their economies. 1 Zimbabwe, after achieving independence 15 years later than most of the continent, has been singled out as a country that immdiately recognised the lessons of African economic failures and therefore adopted more rational policies. 2 However, efforts to rationalise the public sector have often proceeded much slower than other reforms designed to reverse ‘the trend of chronic economic decline’, notably by reducing over-valued currencies, increasing agricultural prices, and lowering real urban wages. 3 Even Zimbabwe, despite its record of relatively good economic management, has not been able to adopt a package of policies which would resolve the severe problems of its parastatals, namely those companies/corporations/other organisations owned by the state that operate outside the formal governmental apparatus. In Zimbabwe specifically and in Africa generally, the political imperatives of leaders have often prevented the adoption, let alone the implementation of comprehensive public-sector reforms.

Racial reconciliation in southern Africa

The last stage of racial reconciliation in Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, began in November 1987 when President Robert Mugabe announced the voluntary appointment of 11 whites to parliament. The British-sponsored constitution adopted at independence in 1980 required Zimbabwes new black leaders to have 20 white seats in the parliament of 100 (even though whites accounted for less than 2 per cent of the population) for the first seven years of independence, but the black government was free after April 1987 to remove all the mandated seats. By keeping white representation so prominent when no longer required to do so, Zimbabwes leaders have dramatically illustrated the extent of reconciliation in a country that suffered from a brutal 15-year civil war between blacks and whites. As racial reconciliation in Zimbabwe is one of the few signs of hope for stability in the bleak landscape of southern Africa, many scholars and observers have cited the country as a model for racial reconciliation in a post-apartheid South Africa. This article will argue that the process of racial reconciliation that has occurred in Zimbabwe cannot be duplicated in South Africa, because of crucial differences in the white population there. Examining the Zimbabwe experience still yields valuable lessons, however, for what must be done if there is to be peace after apartheid in South Africa.