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- Convenor:
-
Martina Santschi
(Swisspeace)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Michael Aeby
(University of Cape Town)
- Stream:
- Politics and International Relations
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.14
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Institutional and bottom-up accounts have dominated debates on state trajectories in Africa. Seeking to complement respective insights and to bridge the structure-agency divide, this panel discusses the role of elite actors in shaping divergent economic and political developments.
Long Abstract:
Why do some African countries exhibit a propensity to peace and prosperity, while others are marked by a sustained vulnerability to conflict and fragility? While policymakers have, since the end of the Cold War, increasingly proposed bottom-up approaches to escape war and poverty, prevailing scholarly accounts have primarily honed in on institutional frameworks in order to address this conundrum. Although different strands of scholarship have recurrently pointed to the central role of elites for understanding divergent state trajectories in both economic and political terms, agency-based approaches have largely remained underexplored. Mirroring elements of concepts such as 'growth coalitions' that had emerged in debates on developmental states in the 1990s, the prism of political settlements that has buoyed over the course of the past decade has heralded another opportunity to balance institutional approaches with perspectives of agency.
This panel is devoted to bridge the long-standing structure-agency divide in accounts of state trajectories. It invites contributions that hone in on the role of elites, elite alliances, and elite networks in shaping economic and/or political processes lying at the heart of state developments. In addition to theoretical advances, the panel welcomes original empirical and novel methodological contributions that shed light on understanding the communalities and differences of 'growth coalitions' and/or 'political settlements' across the African continent.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
In Madagascar, one of the main reasons for the country's problems is its poor ability to establish a stable political consensus surrounding the wealth accumulation and distribution processes. Power games, elites and the institutions they fashion to their advantage are obvicentral to the equation.
Paper long abstract:
Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world today. Not only has per capita GDP been trending downward since 1960, but every time the country has set out on a growth path, it has been stopped in its tracks by a socio-political crisis that has shattered the hopes it raised.
The inability to explain the particularity of Madagascar's trajectory using a purely economistic approach ultimately points to the need for an integrated political economy study. On this score, a promising conceptual framework has been proposed by North and his co-authors (2009 & 2012) with special emphasis on the role of elites and the coalitions they knit for the sharing economic rents and the control of violence. The conjunction of economic growth periods and political crises does indeed suggest that one of the main reasons for the country's problems might well be its poor ability to establish a stable political consensus surrounding the wealth accumulation and distribution processes.
Madagascar features a lack of stable, long-term coalitions of elites. The elites hence appear to be highly individualistic, and thereby atomised. It is only when a small group around the presidential clan obtains excessive power that temporary alliances form. This shortcoming provides a partial explanation for the country's instability.
The scant attention paid the populations and the fragility of the clientelistic connections do not afford broad-based popular support for the men in power. Malagasy farmers and many of the informal sector workers have not really been "captured" by either the political system or the economic system.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the political economy of Ethiopia and Rwanda through a causal mechanisms analysis of wealth and power concentration by the politico-military elites. Based on empirical work on oligarchic tendencies the paper debates the claims to 'developmental patrimonialism' by scholars.
Paper long abstract:
Ethiopia and Rwanda are branded as 'East African miracles' due to their fast-economic growth of the past decades. Some researchers have characterized this phenomenon as 'developmental patrimonialism' and suggested it as a model worth emulating by other African states. Yet, the sheer political power of the political and military elites and the use of that power in controlling the commanding heights of the economies and wealth concentration by politico-military elites is quite evident in both countries. This phenomenon, in many ways, has contributed to oligarchic politics than a 'developmental patrimonialism' political economy. The paper discusses the tendencies and mechanisms of 'wealth creation and defence' in Ethiopia based on empirical study of power and wealth concentration under the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) since 1991. Then, through a comparative process tracing, it applies the causal mechanism to the target case of post-1994 Rwanda. Theoretically, the paper benefits from a constructive engagement of the political settlement literature and the recent theoretical clarifications of the oligarchy thesis.
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork in provinces of former Katanga, this paper provides empirical evidence of the networks of patronage that connect provincial elites with central government elites and assesses their impact on decentralization policies.
Paper long abstract:
Expectations that Congolese decentralisation would result in improved provincial governance were predicated upon an understanding of provincial elites as autonomous from Kinshasa. In reality, they are deeply
embedded in informal patronage networks that reach out across the country, emanating from the presidency
outwards. These networks are highly centralised, weaving a web that largely neutralises the political, financial and administrative autonomy of provinces.
We show that features of this web include: the informal control of political and administrative appointments, that should be provincially allocated, by elites in and around the presidency; financial poaching of provincial actors; predatory extractive pressures by central elites; the use of political 'godfathers' to maintain indirect oversight of provincial elites; the use of provincial legislative authorities as tools
for sanctioning unreliable governors.
Under these conditions, effective decentralisation remains elusive.