Paper long abstract:

Author: Sheku Conteh

The thesis addresses the following question: How did senior politicians and bureaucrats manage corruptly to use their positions to acquire personal wealth in Sierra Leone?

The investigation focuses on the workings of a neopatrimonial state under APC rule where there was a lack of political accountability within formal state institutions. I argue that bureaucratic values within formal state institutions – never rigidly adhered to – were subverted by clientelism and patrimonial logic, as foreign aid helped those in power to both reap the rewards of office and meet the expectations of their favoured constituents.

I suggest that under APC rule, both neopatrimonial rule and clientelism were key features of political corruption. Consequently under the regimes of both presidents Siaka Stevens and Joseph Momoh, I use the example of foreign aid as a way of illustrating how patrimonial logic and clientelist politics best explains how political corruption worked under APC rule. I cited three specific types of foreign aid: Lomé aid (that which emanated from the European Community under the Lomé Conventions), food aid from the European Community and PL 480 food aid from the United States, to illustrate how political corruption worked under APC rule.