CLIENTELISM AND NEOCOLONIALISM: CENTER-PERIPHERY RELATIONS AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICAN STATES
BRUCE J. BERMAN Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario)
enter-periphery relations possess a dual meaning in the study contemporary Africa. On the one hand, there are the relationships within African states between the centers of economic and political power and the peripheral hinterlands; on the other hand, there are the relations o f these states, as peripheral nations in the world capitalist system, to metropolitan centers o f power in Western Europe and North America. These internal and external dimensions of center-periphery relations are structurally similar, interlocked and mutually consistent. They are crucial factors shaping the character o f the socioeconomic and political systems emerging in Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this essay is to extrapolate from visible trends in the area a model depicting the consequences o f the two dimensions of center-periphery relations for the patterns o f structure and process in African states, especially the continuity of political and economic underdevelopment. While substantial variation exists between African states in the extent and pervasiveness of these patterns, and the governments of a few have even made concerted efforts to escape the effects of dependence, the model presented here unequivocally drives trends to their logical limits with little concern for the effect of intervening variables. It is not intended to correspond precisely to the reality of any particular society, but rather as an exercise in the construction o f an ideal type that can serve as a starting point for the formulation of theory and stimulate search for the empirical factors that produce significant
C of
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variation. As such it can provide an alternative paradigm for the understanding of African underdevelopment from the model of an industrialized, secular nation-state that is implicit in both Marxist and liberal development theory. Preoccupation with the failure of either socialist revolution or liberal democracy to emerge in Africa has led to an analytic focus on the "constraints" felt to be inhibiting the development of the desired system (Lofchie, 1971). This view has obscured the possibility explored in this paper that the various constraints may be intimately interlocked and form part of a distinctive political system that is the expression of internal and external dependence. African States as Peripheries: Dependence and Neocolonialism Economically and politically weak, African states are and will continue to be peripheral areas in relation to centers of economic and political power in wealthy nations. Independence for these former colonies has meant trading the direct political control of colonialism for the indirect economic, political and cultural controls of neocolonialism. They continue in imperialistic relations of dependence to the former ruling powers, Britain and France, and, more diffusely, to Western Europe (through the European Economic Community) and to the United States. Johan Galtung (1971) has defined imperialism as a form of dominance relationship among collectivities which cuts across national boundaries and establishes a bridgehead linking the center in the center nation to the center in the periphery in relations of harmony of interest, while at the same time creating disharmony of interest between the periphery in the center nation and the periphery in the periphery nation. There are two basic mechanisms of imperialism. First, it is characterized by vertical interaction processes consisting of asymmetrical relations of highly unequal exchanges and differential beneficial spin-offs. Second, the vertical interaction processes are imbedded in a feudal interaction structure characterized by a lack of interaction between different peripheries of the same center, a lack of multilateral interaction involving all of them, and the monopolization of contact with the outside world by the center, so that periphery interaction with other centers and the interaction of a center and its periphery with
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the peripheries of other centers is missing. A form of divide and rule, the feudal interaction structure defends and reinforces the vertical interaction process. Neocolonial linkages in contemporary Africa along economic, political, military, communications and cultural axes are well documented. Available evidence suggests that these relations are not only durable, but also increasing in scale and intensity. In economic terms, vertical interaction processes and feudal interaction structures are found in commodity and trade concentration which ties African states in relations of dependence to the former colonial centers in particular and to the world capitalist system in general (Stallings, 1971: 28-30). The foundations of dependence were laid during the colonial period, especially during the era of "colonial development" after 1945, when commodity agreements, tax systems, monetary policies, customs arrangements and subsidies were tailored to the advantage of the metropolitan powers (Balogh, 1962). The result has been vulnerable economies severely affected by fluctuations in internal commodity markets, and externally oriented economies with systematic structural biases and discontinuities resulting from their being shaped to serve the needs of the metropolitan centers. The developmental performance of African economies during the 1960s was uneven, marked by wide areas of stagnation, and generally disappointing. Even where significant growth has been achieved, it tended to be confined to narrow enclaves of modern production that left the structure of the economy largely unchanged. The syndrome of growth without development has been visible in many areas and has served to intensify rather than moderate international dependence. It is in these enclaves of growth that we find the center in the periphery created and sustained by foreign aid and investment and linked to the metropolitan center by ties of common interest. Foreign private investment has increasingly taken the form of direct investment by huge, vertically integrated multinational corporations representing concentrations of economic resources many times larger than the economies of the states in which they invest, a As in the colonial period, the bulk of investment is concentrated in the production of unprocessed primary products, mainly minerals and petroleum, for export to the metropolitan centers. The development plans and infrastructure investments of many African states have been
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shaped to facilitate the exploitation of these resources (Seidman, 1970: 256). The bulk of the profits derived from this production is also shipped back to the metropolitan centers, and Africa is already experiencing a net outflow of capital with regard to private investment. 2 These enclave investments are largely unintegrated with the rest of the local economy and do not produce the spin-offs or backwards and forwards linkages that can stimulate wider development in the surrounding hinterland. Direct investment in manufacturing tends to be concentrated in light industry for export substitution, particularly final-stage assembly plants, and in intermediate goods. Manufacturing using local raw materials tends to be oriented towards luxury production for the small markets within the developed enclave. Both sectors of direct investment also show a strong bias against the production of capital goods and in favor of capital intensive techniques. These tendencies have both intensified dependence and seriously limited the employment opportunities created by industrial growth (Arrighi, 1970: 226-29). Outside of the development enclaves, the production of primary cash crops by African farmers has been encouraged by foreign investments and aid programs, as well as the development policies of African states. This has served the interests of international corporations seeking agricultural raw materials by reducing the need for their own investments while at the same time ensuring them of an increasing source of supply. However, the competitive expansion of commodity export production by numerous countries in Africa and other parts of the Third World has oversupplied markets and driven prices down to the benefit of corporate profits and the detriment of national export earnings (Seidman, 1970: 257-59). Worsening terms of trade, coupled with rapidly increasing imports of manufactures, has led to serious balance of payments problems that have, in turn, been intensified by the transfer of profits back to the metropolitan centers. Bilateral and multilateral foreign aid programs have been linked to the maintenance of existing market structures and to the expansion of foreign investment opportunities to the extent that they have preserved rather than promoted the change of the dependent structures of African economies. Bilateral aid, in particular, has been shaped to serve the domestic interests of the granting nations. Moreover, debt servicing charges already consti-
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tute a heavy and increasing burden for African governments. In the t960-67 period amortization and interest on foreign loans amounted to U.S. $ 2.145 billion (Stallings, 1972: 23). The political and military dimensions of neocolonial dependence are intimately linked. Military alliance systems with the former colonial powers have been the most visible mechanisms of politico-military penetration and influence, especially in the former French colonies (Stauffer, 1971: 235-36). African armies have remained the most neocolonial and dependent of institutions, intimately tied to the metropolis for arms, training, advisers and basic military doctrine. As a result, they have been particularly sensitive to external pressures. Political dependence has been expressed in the first instance through vertical linkages which leave many major decisions affecting African states in the hands of organizations and institutions in the metropolis. Within African states external influence is felt most generally in pressures constraining the range of ideological and policy options within limits acceptable to the metropolis. Direct external intervention tends to take more subtle forms than the blatant intrusions of earlier eras. While most coups have been internally generated by local cleavages and power conflicts, external encouragement or discouragement has been crucial to their success or failure. The metropolitan centers, especially France, have assumed the role of arbiters of the survival of particular regimes in African states (First, 1970: 422-24). The communications dimension clearly displays the feudal interaction structure and vertical interaction processes of dependence in the highly developed vertical transport and communications linkages to the metropolitan centers and the weak horizontal /inks among African states at the periphery (Galtung, 1971: 88-89). This pattern is replicated internally in the persistence of colonial communications systems vertically linking the hinterland to the developed enclave centers with minimal horizontal interaction (Soja, 1968; Riddell, 1970). Vertical interaction is also evident in the monopoly by the centers of the production and sale of transport and communications equipment to the periphery. The cultural aspects of neocolonialism appear in continued African dependence on ideas and methods produced in the metropolitan centers. This is visible in the import of teachers from, and the export of students to, the center, and the continued
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use of the languages of the metropolitan centers as the official vehicle of communication at key levels of political and economic decision making. It is also found in the felt need in African governments to achieve and maintain standards of technical and administrative performance defined by Western powers (on the use of "standards" as a technique of colonial control see Symonds, 1966: 234-50, 258-61). Finally, ideological hegemony has a particularly heavy impact on the orientations, preferences and styles of African elites. The Policy Process in African States: External Penetration and Dominance A key insight into the nature of imperialism is the recognition of the establishment of common, harmonious interests between the center in the metropolis and in the periphery. A number of African specialists have noted that the pattern of dependent enclave development creates mutually beneficial links between African elites and external interests that give the former a vested interest in the preservation of the status quo (Seidman, 1970: 262-63, 268-69; Stauffer, 1971: 237, 242; Arrighi, 1970: 256-57; Helleiner, 1971: 91-93). 3 This emphasis on the mutual benefits involved for elites both in the center and the periphery receives corroboration from no less a figure than a former director of the CIA who explicitly stated that the key to covert influence in underdeveloped countries was to find local allies and create convergences of internal and external interests (see the remarks of Richard Bissell in First, 1970: 415-17). The African elite with whom such mutually beneficial relations are created is overwhelmingly bureaucratic in character. The principal political legacy of colonial rule has been the creation of large administrative infrastructures staffed, in Ren6 Dumont's (1969: 78-87) vivid phrase, by a "bourgeoisie of the civil service." With government almost invariably the largest employer, the principal industry of most African states is administration (Burke, 1969a: 345-75). The primary indicator of elite or subelite status in Africa is thus public employment. The power elite consists mainly of top level "power bureaucrats" in the army and civil service and politicians who have been able to entrench themselves in state and para-state
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structures. In contrast to Western experience, politicoadministrative power is the principal avenue for access to economic power and personal wealth. A second, as yet much smaller, element of the elite and subelite is found in the local officials and, possibly, the "labor aristocracy" employed by the major international combines in the development enclave (Arrighi, 1970, passim). 4 This element shares the interest of the politico-bureaucratic elite in the maintenance of the existing system of dependence. In the future there is likely to be increasing overlap between the two sectors, particularly in the form of the movement of bureaucrats and politicians into lucrative positions in the local operations of multinational corporations. The nature of the African elite has facilitated the penetration of the policy process by external interests on a regular and routine basis. The actors in the policy process are the African elites at the top levels of formal state structures and external interests consisting of foreign governments, multinational corporations and international agencies. The resulting interactions are not necessarily free of conflict, but are nonetheless continual, orderly and generally businesslike. Virtually every significant government agency and every important politico-administrative actor has frequent contacts with external organizations and interests to an extent that makes the distinction between domestic and international affairs meaningless. The concentration of resources, information and negotiating skill in the hands of expatriate groups gives them a decided edge in their dealings with the local government. This influence is felt not only in specific policy decisions, but also, as noted earlier, in the establishment of tacitly accepted boundaries of the policy process that effectively eliminates various ranges of ideological, organizational and policy options from political discourse. This policy process, penetrated and dominated by external interests, proves to be quite compatible with increasing state control of economic enterprise and ostensible policies of economic nationalism, neither of which significantly modify the existing structures of dependence. Private corporations have actively sought participation in joint enterprises in which much of the capital is supplied by African governments and which enjoy substantial tax benefits and protection (Seidman, 1970: 267). The extension of state control of the economy also serves the interests
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of the African elite by opening up new resources of profitable jobs and partronage and providing access to economic resources in organizations in which risks and losses are shifted to the public exchequer. The policy process is powerfully reinforced by the continuing cultural hegemony of the metropolitan centers. As Pye (1967: 9-11) has pointed out, there is an international political culture rooted in the continuity of the nation-state system. It is primarily a culture of organizations dominated by bureaucratic and technical specialists who place a predominant value on order, predictability and rational calculation. The linkages of neocolonialism are primarily in the form of contacts between the officials of formal organizations who share, at least outwardly, the same professional orientation and vocabulary. This international culture finds expression in an understanding of development that emphasizes "objective" quantitative indices, notably the growth rate of the gross national product. The tenacity of this culture in the face of efforts to define "African socialism," "Negritude" and other indigenous approaches to socioeconomic and political change is rooted in the racist heritage of colonialism which makes the self-assured command of the ideas and techniques of the metropolis both a personal vindication and an assertion of collective equality. At the same time as external factors have shaped the policy process in African governments, indigenous political factors have acted to largely exclude the great majority of the population from any direct influence at the level of policy formulation. This process has worked on a number of dimensions stemming from the retention of colonial administrative structures oriented towards command and control, rather than consultation and participation, as well as the preoccupation of African political leaders with eliminating all possible internal threats to their power and to national unity. The years preceding the end of colonial rule saw both a hurried process of institutional transfer and innovation by the metropolitan powers to equip the colonies with the formal appearance of "democratic" government, and a lively process of organizational innovation by Africans in ethnic and transethnic associations, youth groups, trade unions, farmers' associations, cooperatives and nationalist parties. Since independence there has been a clear trend to bureaucratic dominance in the formal structures of government, s Formal
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authority has been increasingly concentrated in the administrative structures at the center as tacked-on representative institutions have atrophied and local government units have been progressively stripped of any significant discretion and autonomous powers of decision (Burke, 1969b). The apparently powerful nationalist parties, the cornerstones of the heralded party states of a decade ago, have tended to fade into insignificance or have been overthrown (Wallerstein, 1966). Secondary associations of all types, especially trade unions and youth and student groups, have been subdued and tamed by African governments to the point where they no longer possess any internal autonomy or any independent power capability with which to penetrate the policy process and compel attention to their interests. As a result, a marked decline in popular participation has been apparent in the political process of most African states (Kasfir, 1973). The African state at the center is thus itself an enclave, oriented towards and responsive to external interests, and largely impenetrable at the policy-making level to the population of its own periphery. Internal political conflict is largely confined to struggles for access to the relatively few positions within the policy process, rather than over policy issues themselves, and for control over secondary sources of power that determine the distribution of the resources created by dependent growth. Politics deals primarily with efforts to influence policy implementation and it is at this level that the mass of the population can attempt to find some degree of access to the poltical process. The avenues for this access are provided by patron-client networks. Patron-Client Networks and Center-Periphery Linkages The pattern of enclave growth linking the center in African states to metropolitan centers results in growing cleavages between the African center and its peripheral rural hinterland. Development in social and economic terms has been concentrated in urban areas, and the interdependent linkages between the cities, especially the national capitals, and the hinterland have attenuated, limiting the spread of development stimuli from the center (Arrighi, 1970: 239-40). The salaries of the elite in state employment have been maintained at or increased beyond the levels paid to former expatriate colonial officials. Rural areas have experienced general stagnation punctuated by
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sectors of rapid growth of cash crops for export. The latter areas experience increasing dependence on unstable world commodity prices and are vulnerable to boom and bust cycles. Even more important, rural stagnation has been most apparent in the production of food crops (Amin, 1970: 320-22). Nevertheless, significant changes have been occurring in rural societies. Sub-Saharan Africa has traditionally been considered to be primarily the domain of tribal societies. In contrast to Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, most Africans were tribesmen rather than peasants. Only a dozen years ago Lloyd Fallers (1961) could advise against classifying Africans as peasants. Recently, however, Chodak (1971) and Leys (1971) have offered persuasive arguments that trends of change are resulting in the emergence of genuine African peasantries and the growth of peasant societies in African states. There is increasing evidence of the growth of peasant capitalism in some areas, as well as emerging patterns of stratification among the peasantry and the beginnings of land concentration in the hands of wealthy farmers and members of the elite from the center (Leys, 1971, passim; Seidman, 1970: 261-63; Amin, 1971: 320-22). The characteristic mode of center-periphery linkage in peasant societies is found in various forms of patron-client relationships. In Africa these ties have become the subject of increasingly intense empirical investigation and theoretical analysis. Patron-client relationships existed in the past in some, although far from most, traditional societies in Africa. What is important for the model developed here is not so much that such traditional relationships have often survived, but that patron-client linkages have been extended throughout African states, including the " m o d e m " institutional sectors, and have developed in states such as Kenya where they were not an important part of the local traditional societies. The basic characteristics of patron-client relations are that they are asymmetrical linkages between individuals of unequal wealth, status and power based upon personalized face-to-face contacts and dependent upon regular and reciprocal exchanges of material and nonmaterial benefits (Lemarchand and Legg, 1972: 151-52; Sandbrook, 1972a: 108-9). Personalism, affectivity and the pursuit of individual interests are paramount in patron-client relations, leaving no room for impersonal, universalistic and collective
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goals or modes of action. The asymmetrical character of the relationship is also crucial. Clientelism is rooted in patterns of social stratification and yet cuts across vertical cleavages to link individuals at different levels in the socioeconomic and political hierarchy. While patron-client relationships do provide, in circumstances of scarcity and uncertainty, some degree of protection, assistance and social mobility for clients through the limited exchange of resources, they are also relations of domination perpetuating the inequalities between patrons and clients. Patrons have a vested interest not only in the maintenance of the asymmetry of the relationship, but also in the widening of the inequalities between themselves and their clients in order to enlarge their control over them by increasing the cost of a withdrawal of support or of the failure to find a patron. At the extreme, clientelism can become indistinguishable from extortion: the "protection" racket of peasant society. The element of domination limits the degree of resources distributed by patrons to clients. Any significant shift of resources moves the relationship towards greater equality of status and the transformation of clientelistic ties into bargaining relationships among equals (Lemarchand and Legg, 1972: 152). Clientelism is thus conservative and status quo oriented, predominantly serving the interest of the patron elites. However, since the loyalty of clients must be maintained, some resources and benefits must be distributed and the power of patrons over their clients is subject to clear limits. There are three distinguishing characteristics of contemporary patron-client relations in Africa. First, emphasis is increasingly shifting away from the symbolic and affective exchanges of traditional clientelism towards a focus on transactions involving concrete, short-run material benefits (Lemarchand, 1972: 79; Foltz: 153). This has been linked to the introduction by colonial regimes and extension by national elites of new ranges of material benefits and politico-economic resources concentrated at the center in the administrative structures of the state and the economic organizations of the neocolonial enclave. Motivated by mercenary and material considerations, contemporary patronclient ties are increasingly conditional and shifting as both patrons and clients maneuver for the most profitable arrangement. Second, patron-client ties are increasingly imbedded in networks consisting of hierarchically ordered series of patron-client
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relationships reaching from the rural grass roots into the center to a central patron, usually a powerful member of the politicobureaucratic elite (Sandbrook, 1972a: 109-10). The crucial intervening links in the network connecting the political figures at the center with the rural periphery are provided by local elites acting both as patrons distributing their own resources and as brokers providing access to formal governmental structures through their personal contacts (Lemarchand, 1972: 79; Lemarchand and Legg, 1972: 152-53). These local patrons can be not only the incumbents of traditional roles, but also new men of power such as wealthy farmers, businessmen and local teachers and officials. Patron-client networks also extend into public and private institutions at all levels of the society in which officeholders have access to resources to attract their own following and can provide valuable support for the most powerful patrons at the center (Sandbrook, 1972b). Third, there is substantial competition and conflict among a number of patron-client networks. These competing networks emerge out of conflicts within the politico-bureaucratic elite at the center. Given the nature of the policy process, intraelite conflict tends to deal not with issues of ideology or policy, but rather with access to high office and its spoils. The need for support and resources to achieve the available prizes pushes the politically ambitious to seek allies and clients wherever they can find them. In this way conflicts at the center penetrate into the periphery, politicizing the entire society and breaking down the boundaries between politics and other social subsystems. This conflict is largely expressed through clashes of factions, i.e., segments of patron-client networks operating within specific institutional and organizational arenas in the center and the periphery (Sandbrook, 1972a: 111). At intermediate and lower levels the cleavages of the center are also intertwined with parochial issues and conflicts to create a degree of two-way flow along the clientelistic networks. The competition among various networks gives the system a fragmentary and shifting character, emphasizing the conditional nature of patron-client links and opening possibilities for complex and fluid patterns of vertical coalition formation (Barrows, 1971: 318-21; Lemarchand and Legg, 1972: 167). This encourages political entrepreneurship at the various levels of the networks and permits clients to play competing patrons off against each other in
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a manner that moderates but does not eliminate the element of domination in clientelistic relationships. The relationship between clientelism and the horizontal cleavages of ethnicity in contemporary Africa is complex and by no means unidirectional. Where the patron-client networks of individual political figures operate exclusively within their own ethnic groups or where there are clear ethnic differences between patron elites and client masses, ethnic conflicts are promoted. However, where politicians of the same ethnic origin set up competing networks, they can stimulate intraethnic conflict as well. Conversely, clientelism can promote interethnic linkages where networks penetrate multiethnic organizations. The grand patrons at the center do more than simply fight, they also bargain amongst themselves and through the division of resources effect a minimum degree of consensus and short-run integration (Sandbrook, 1972a: 105-6). Patron-client relationships are strikingly similar to the external imperial linkages of neocolonialism. They possess the same vertical interaction pattern of asymmetrical exchanges between superior and inferior. The inequalities of exchange reside not so much in the direct transactions as in the differential benefits received by patron and client. The patron uses the resources and support provided by his clients to gain access to offices and resources that substantially exceed the value of goods and services he distributes. Patron-client ties also possess the feudal interaction structure of imperialistic linkages. Clientelism is a relationship entered into on an individual basis between the patron and each client. The flow of communication and patronage is vertical with little lateral contact among the clients at any level of a patron-client network. Conversely, closer examination of neocolonial dependence relations on the external level reveals a clientelistic element. There is no reason to assume that patron-client networks necessarily end with the African elite. They can extend into an international dimension through the personal contacts of African politicians and bureaucrats with the representatives of foreign governments and multinational corporations. These clientelistic contacts can be an important source of both the spoils of office and political resources for shifting the balance of power among competing factions. They form the operational linkage between external interests and their local allies. The motivations of foreign interests
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in forming these linkages become clear if we recognize the competition between metropolitan governments and corporations for dominant positions within particular countries. This competition generally pits the established former colonial powers, Britain and France, against metropolitan centers seeking to expand their influence in Africa, notably the United States, West Germany, Japan, and from a different ideological perspective, the Soviet Union and China. 6 The relationship between neocolonialism and clientelism may be best understood if we view them as different facets of the same reality, the latter constituting the microsociological behavioral patterns contained in the macrosociological structures of the former. There is thus considerable justification for seeing clientelism and the internal pattern of center-periphery relations in Africa as aspects of a structure of "internal colonialism" (this concept is developed in Gonzfilez Casanova, 1969, 1970). The Death of the Polity and the Retardation of Social Classes A number of scholars (Powell, 1970: 423-25; Lemarchand, 1972: 88; Lemarchand and Legg, 1972: 171-72) have interpreted clientelism as a transitional stage in the process of modernization and as a phenomenon that establishes wider networks of interpersonal linkages and loyalties that contribute to political integration and nation-building. From the perspective adopted in this paper, however, dependency relations of the neocolonial and clientelistic type cannot serve as the basis for the development of secular nation-states in Africa, and there is no reason to assume they represent a transitional stage. The neocolonial clientelistic state is a specific type of social order representing a pattern of socioeconomic and political change different from that experienced in Western industrial states: the pattern of dependent development characteristic of nations peripheral to metropolitan centers of power. Insofar as internal and external structures of domination remain intact, clientelistic systems will not automatically evolve into something else. Liberal capitalist and socialist models of development have both assumed the development of the secular nation-state as the necessary political infrastructure of modernization. Weber (Gerth
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and Mills, 1948: 78-83,224-28) noted long ago the crucial linkage between the growth of the nation-state and legal-rational authority. Within the context of such authority relations national institutions provide explicit arenas for the resolution of political conflicts at the center, as well as impersonal rules for the resolution of conflicts, by means short of force, among individuals and groups at other institutional levels. Values are allocated through impersonal and universalistic rules, i.e., public policies, that are supposed to be administered and applied to the citizenry without regard to special privilege based on invidious distinctions of wealth, status and power. This is admittedly an ideal formulation, and personalistic ties and patronage certainly persist in secular nation-states, both capitalist and socialist. Nevertheless, it does depict a set of real normative expectations about the performance of the polity and the rule of law in which personalistic relationships and distributions of spoils are generally regarded as deviations from the norm. 7 The secular nation-state, by providing the infrastructure for both collective organization and demands and administrative response and control, makes possible the conscious pursuit of developmental goals through rationalpurposive action expressed in authoritative p u n i c decisions. It is increasingly apparent that secular nation-states are not developing in Africa, regardless of the nationalist rhetoric and ceaseless exhortations on nation-building of ruling elites. The inability of clientelistic systems to serve as the basis for such development becomes apparent when we examine the pattern of authority relationships on which they are based. Clientelism in its contemporary form is a mercenary and materialistic version of traditional authority relations directly linking ruler and ruled. As we noted earlier, personalism, particularism and the pursuit of narrow self-interest are its salient qualities. The individual is effectively related to the political process not through the universalistic role of citizen in the national community, but through being the client of a specific patron. In clientelistic systems, personalism and particularism are not deviations from the norm, they are the norm. We are dealing with a different political universe. Patron-client relationships express and perpetuate a political system with several salient characteristics. First, formal political institutions are largely moribund and cannot serve as effective
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allocators of values, arenas for conflict resolution or meaningful foci for civic loyalty. As Sandbrook (1972a: 109) points out, clientelism flourishes where civil societies are absent and social and political integration is low. In Africa the essentially politicobureaucratic nature of the elite ensures that patron-client relations pervade the polity from top to bottom and that public office becomes the typical form of patronage. The clientelistic state in Africa is thus primarily a patrimonial state. Only at the highest rungs of government do roles carry any possible input into the policy process dominated by external interests. In such circumstances factional conflicts among the elite focus not on issues but on the pursuit of personal ambition. This is reflected in the virtual end of serious ideological debate and the atrophy of the intellectual dimensions of politics in most African states. The institutions of government become property to be acquired for the benefit of oneself and one's followers. The masses in the periphery cannot expect that their interests or grievances can be submitted to state agencies simply through their roles as citizens, nor can they expect impartial treatment from the hands of public officials. Excluded from any direct influence on policy, they must resort to seeking preferential treatment, at a price, through personal ties with patrons and brokers who can get them jobs, scholarships, trading licences, agricultural credits, etc., available in limited numbers for distribution. The key subjective element in the integration of the political system, civic loyalty to the institutions of the polity itself-what Silvert (1963: 18-24; 1968: 261-64) has defined as nationalism as a social value involving the acceptance of the nation-state as the ultimate and impersonal arbiter of secular dispute-cannot develop in a clientelistic setting. Political loyalties in African states are to persons and, even more important, to the flow of patronage itself. The result is organizational weakness and low levels of institutionalization in the polity. Second, clientelistic states are marked by a basic lack of interpersonal trust in the conduct of affairs. No one can be trusted, either as a patron or client, unless their loyalty or support has been ensured by a favor or a payoff. Clientelism is the politics of quid pro quo. This lack of trust severely circumscribes the subjective legitimacy of political authority. Barrows (1971: 312-15) has pointed out that the growth of public trust in political leadership permits the latter to move away from the immediate
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barter reciprocities of clientelism and acquire a more diffuse and universal authority that can be concentrated and invested not in the satisfaction of immediate material demands, but in the creation of public policies to deal with the collective issues of social structure. This trust is a more immediate extension of the abstract institutional loyalties discussed above. In clientelistic systems not only is the growth of political legitimacy thwarted, but also competition among the elite for patronage resources destroys public morality and makes corruption and nepotism a pervasive mode of political action. 8 Third, the precarious legitimacy of African governments makes them easy to overthrow. Since loyalty is ultimately directed more towards the flow of patronage than individuals, those who can seize the principal patron roles at the center and sustain the flow of material benefits to their predecessors' clients will receive the conditional allegiance of the clientage networks. No outraged citizenry rises up to defend constitutional legality and the civil order. The general response to coups in Africa is public apathy (First, 1970: 452). This political turmoil among the elite leaves the basic structure of the political system untouched. Fourth, clientelism retards the development of social classes by fragmenting and dividing individuals sharing similar socioeconomic circumstances and interests, and negating the emergence of collective class consciousness (Sandbrook, 1972a: 118-19). In the African context, class consciousness and conflict can play a genuinely integrative role in the polity by cutting across the horizontal cleavages of ethnicity which produce conflicts over the boundaries of the political community. Instead, openly expressed class issues produce conflicts about social structural relationships that are national in scope and demand resolution in public policies channelled through central political institutions. Class consciousness promotes collective organization and action. The mass mobilization inherent in class politics is a direct challenge to the structure of the clientelistic state, and it is precisely this form of political action that is excluded as a possible course by the influence of metropolitan powers on African states. Clientelism, by linking individuals across class lines and holding out the possibility of individual protection and advancement, prevents the spread of consciousness of common interests and promotes fragmentary conflict and competition for spoils among members of
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the same social strata. In the end, clientelism becomes a mechanism of cooptation for the maintenance of elite domination. The Latin Americanization of Africa Peasant society and the clientelistic state are largely new phenomena in Sub-Saharan Africa, even where their roots go back to traditional patterns and the era of colonial rule. Class cleavages and the attendant patterns of unequal exchange and differential access to wealth, status and power are yet fluid and stilI very much in the process of formation rather than full-blown social-structural realities. Nevertheless, the African experience appears to be a variation on an old theme. Almost a decade ago Ren6 Dumont (1969: 239-42) expressed his fears of the potential South Americanization of Africa, and the economic and political trends of the ensuing years give substance to his concern. The political and economic similarities between Africa and Latin America are clearly structural rather than cultural. That the structures of neocolonial dependence have developed so rapidly in Africa in the last decade suggests that Frank's (1969) conceptualization of the development of underdevelopment is of general theoretical importance. The clientelistic political system plays a role in sustaining that pattern of change as important as that played by external metropolitan interests. The rapid succession of military coups in Africa in the late 1960s provoked considerable discussion about whether that continent would replicate the Latin American pattern of political instability and unpredictability. Such comparisons missed the flexibility and resilience of Latin American political systems and the degree to which violence, often highly stylized, has been an intrinsic part of the political process. In a noted passage Silvert (1968: 19) pointed out: "If the normal way of rotating the executive in a given country is by revolution, and there have been a hundred such changes in a century, then it is not facetious to remark that revolutions are a sign of stability-that events are marching along as they always have." With this in mind, closer examination reveals that much of the "instability" in African states has little impact on the structure of the clientelistic system. The seeming turmoil of coups and sporadic violence at the center derives from frequent changes in the relative power of competing
CLIENTELISM AND NEOCOLONIALISM
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factions and in the incumbents of patron roles. To the extent that political energies are expended in such competition, the system is reinforced, not challenged. The political turmoil of clientelistic systems does not seriously disrupt the neocolonial relations of dependent enclave development. Insofar as metropolitan powers and multinational corporations are competing for hegemony in a particular country, coups or other rapid shifts in the balance o f power among competing factions at the local center may be very much in their interest by improving the position of their local clients. Foreign intervention into the African political process will tend to focus on efforts to encourage or discourage such system-reinforcing "instability." Clientelistic political systems cannot generate the political pressures for policies that will transform internal and external structures of dependence and domination. Within these systems there are few means to articulate and implement broad developmental goals. As Bretton (1973, passim) cogently argues, it is doubtful whether development is even an actively pursued goal in African polities in the face of the more immediate exigencies of political survival and personal economic security. The sole yardstick of development policy is the volume and quality of patronage payoffs it can generate. The stability of the system rests on both the magnitude of patronage resources and their distribution across vertical cleavages of class and horizontal divisions of ethnicity (Lemarchand, 1972: 89; Lemarchand and Legg, 1972: 177). Social cleavages in clientelistic systems are dealt with through short-run allocations of material benefits via tenuous processes of intraelite bargaining. The political turmoil and short-run consumption of resources that are intrinsic characteristics of clientelistic systems make it exceptionally difficult to reform these systems from within. Potential reformers who attempt to operate within the bounds of the accepted rules of the game are quickly coopted and corrupted. The fundamental transformation of a clientelistic system and the patterns of dependence that sustain it requires deliberate collective organization and action, particularly on a class basis. The possibility of such challenges emerging in African states depends upon potential failures of the existing system at the mass and elite levels. Where widening socioeconomic inequalities increasingly outstrip the limited redistribution of resources through patronage,
22
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the willing and even eager complicity of rural and urban clients will eventually be transformed into grudging and bitter acceptance. At the elite level a serious challenge can emerge from the relative success achieved in the development of education. The maintenance of the clientelistic system will increasingly depend on the skillful cooptation of school leavers at all levels, but especially the aspirants to elite and subelite positions coming out of universities and secondary schools. Where existing patterns of economic growth are incapable of generating the thousands of new positions required, the possibility is open for the explosive linkage of a discontented intelligentsia and mass of floating unemployed in the urban areas with an impoverished peasantry in the rural periphery that has been the formula for revolution in this century (Wolf, 1970). Since clientelistic polities are intimately linked with metropolitan governments and centers of corporate power, their transformation cannot be dealt with simply in indigenous terms. As long as the world capitalist system persists the probability of a successful escape from underdevelopment in black African states will remain small. Even where genuine revolutionary movements succeed in taking power, the pressures generated by metropolitan powers for the reconstitution of the existing socioeconomic and political linkages are likely to prove irresistible. In Africa no less than in Latin America the struggle for progressive development involves both center and periphery. The model presented here may be more useful in its failures than its successes. At those points where expectations derived from the model fail to describe the empirical reality of particular societies, attention is focused on other, less obvious factors which may inhibit the emergence of or lead away from the dependent clientelistic policy. By identifying such factors we can gain a more sophisticated and policy-relevant understanding of the development process, especially the conditions of success or failure in those nations, such as Guinea and Tanzania, striving to achieve autonomous patterns of political and economic transformation. NOTES 1. In a combined ranking of African states (by GNP) with the largest multinational corporations (by gross annual sales), only four African countries appeared in the first hundred. The highest ranked was Nigeria (39th) followed by Algeria (61st), Morocco (64th) and Ghana (78th) (First, 1970: 463).
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2. In the period 1960-67 private investment into Africa totalled U.S. $2.249 billion, while repatriated profits amounted to U.S. $3.6 billion. The continent maintained a surplus on its capital account only through substantial aid grants and loans (StaUings, 1972: 22-23). Arrighi (1970: 247-48) has estimated that foreign investment would have to grow at a rate of 10-12 percent per year (considerably faster than past and present rates) in order to offset the outflow of profits. 3. The analysis of the role of compradore classes.in imperialism owes much to the work of Paul Baran (1957). See also Ronald Robinson (1972: 117-40). Robinson, however, errs in an otherwise insightful essay by assuming that collaboration between indigenous and metropolitan elites comes to an end with formal "decolonization." 4. The issue of whether the miners and workers in the extractive and manufacturing industries of the foreign-controlled enclaves constitute a labor aristocracy identifying with and sharing the interest of the elite in the continuity of dependence is currently a matter of some controversy. For a statement of the labor aristocracy thesis see Arrighi (1970, passim). Criticism of the thesis and counterevidence is presented by Sandbrook and Cohen (1974). 5. In an attempt to assess the degree of bureaucratic influence in the political process, Sigelman (1972), using admittedly crude "judgemental" data, found all of the 19 Sub-Saharan African states in his sample to be characterized by overparticipation in political and governmental functions. 6. Payments are made by foreign governments to African politicians in various forms: direct cash transfers, expensive "visits" to the metropolitan country and scholarships to supporters. Some politicians have been quite candid in acknowledging this support (see, for example, Odinga, 1967: 187-92). Private corporations provide directorships and stock in local subsidiaries, as well as cash payments in return for decisions favorable to their intersts (Seidman, 1970: 268-69). 7. This aspect of the values of capitalist industrial states may well be in the process of change. The increasing executive dominance of the political process and interlocking of public agencies with large-scale corporate bureaucracies appears to be breaking down universalistic values and expectations of impartiality. Individuals gain access to the political process not directly as citizens but through an intervening membership in a specific group or social category that has a claim to "a.piece of the action." I have explored this development of interest-group liberalism towards a modern and highly bureaucratized form of corporatism (Berman~ 1973). 8. As Horowitz (1972: 414-19) points out, the penetration of the bureaucracy by particularistic conflicts and loyalties turns information into a weapon in factional competition and disrupts the interpersonal trust and informal communications process which provide much of the basis for effective administration. REFERENCES AMIN, SAMIR 1971
"Development and Structural Change: The African Experience." In Barbara Ward, et al. (eds.), The Widening Gap. New York: Columbia University Press. ARRIGHI, GIOVANNI 1970 "International Corporations, Labor Aristocracies, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa." In R.I. Rhodes, Imperialism and Underdevelopment. New York: Monthly Review Press. BALOGH, THOMAS 1962 "The Mechanism of Neo-Imperialism: The Economic Impact of Monetary and Commercial Institutions in Africa." Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics 24 (no. 3): 331-46.
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BARAN, PAUL 1957 The Political Economy of Growth. New York: Marzani and Munsell. BARROWS, W.L. 1971 "Rural-Urban Alliances and Reciprocity in Africa." Canadian Journal of African Studies 5 (no. 3). BERMAN, BRUCE J. 1973 "Richard Nixon and the New Corporate State." Queen's Quarterly 80 (Fall): 425-33. BRETTON, HENRY L. 1973 Power and Politics in Africa. Chicago: Aldine. BURKE, FRED G. 1969a "Public Administration in Africa: The Colonial Legacy." Journal of Comparative Administration 1 (no. 3): 345-75. 1969b "Research in African Local Government: Past Trends and an Emerging Approach." Canadian Journal of African Studies 3 (no. 1): 73-80. CHODAK, SZYMON 1971 "The Birth of an African Peasantry." Canadian Journal of African Studies 5 (no. 3): 327-47. DUMONT, RENE 1969 False Start in Africa. New York: Praeger (2nd ed.). FALLERS, LLOYD A. 1961 "Are African Cultivators to be Called Peasants?" Current Anthropology 2 (no. 2). FIRST, RUTH 1970 Power in Africa. New York: Pantheon. FOLTZ, WILLIAM J. n.d. "Social Structure and Political Behavior of Senegalese Elites." Yale Papers in Political Science (no. 33). FRANK, ANDRE GUNDER 1969 Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution? New York: Monthly Review Press (rev. ed). GALTUNG, JOHAN 1971 "A Structural Theory of Imperialism." Journal of Peace Research (no. 2): 81-117. GERTH, H.H. and C. WRIGHT MILLS (eds.) 1948 From Max Weber. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. GONZALEZ CASANOVA, PABLO 1969 "Internal Colonialism and National Development." In Irving Louis Horowitz et al. (eds.), Latin American Radicalism. New York: Vintage. 1970 Democracy in Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press. HELLEINER, G.K. 1971 "Structural Change in Africa." In Barbara Ward et al. (eds.), The Widening Gap. New York: Columbia University Press. HOROWlTZ, IRVING LOUIS 1972 Three Worlds of Development. New York: Oxford University Press (2nd ed.). KASFIR, NELSON 1973 "Departicipation and Political Development in Black African Politics." Montreal: presented at the IXth World Congress of the International Political Science Association (August). LEMARCHAND, RENE 1972 "Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building." American Political Science Review 66 (March). LEMARCHAND, RENE and KEITH LEGG 1972 "Political Clientelism and Development." Comparative Politics 4 (no. 2). LEYS, COLIN 1971 "Politics in Kenya: The Development of Peasant Society." British Journal of Political Science 1 (no. 3): 307-37.
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LOFCHIE, MICHAEL (ed.) 1971 The State of the Nations: Constraints on Development in Independent Africa. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ODINGA, OGINGA 1967 Not Yet Uhuru. London: Heinemann. POWELL, JOHN DUNCAN 1970 "Peasant Society and Clientelistic Politics." American Political Science Review 64 (June). PYE, LUCIAN 1967 Aspects of Political Development. Boston: Little, Brown. RIDDELL, J. BARRY 1970 Spatial Dynamics of Modernization in Sierra Leone. Evanston, IlL: Northwestern University Press. ROBINSON, RONALD 1972 "Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration." In R. Owen and B. Sutcliffe (eds.), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism. London: Longrnan. SANDBROOK, RICHARD 1972a "Patrons, Clients, and Factions: New Dimensions of Conflict Analysis in Africa." Canadian Journal of Political Science 5 (March): 104-19. 1972b "Patrons, Clients, and Unions: The Labour Movement and Political Conflict in Kenya." Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 9 (March). SANDBROOK, RICHARD and R. COHEN (eds.) 1974 Towards an African Working Class. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. SEIDMAN, ANN 1970 "Old Motives, New Methods: Foreign Enterprise in Africa Today." In C. Allen and R.W. Johnson (eds.), African Perspectives. London: Cambridge University Press. SIGELMAN, L. 1972 "Do Modern Bureaucracies Dominate Underdeveloped Polities? A Test of the Imbalance Thesis." American Political Science Review 66 (no. 2): 525-28. SILVERT, KALMAN H. 1963 "The Strategy of the Study of Nationalism." In K.H. Silvert (ed.), Expectant Peoples. New York: Random House. 1968 The Conflict Society: Reaction and Revolution in Latin America. New York: Harper Colophon (rev. ed.). SOJA, EDWARD 1968 The Geography of Modernization in Kenya. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. STALLINGS, BARBARA 1972 "Economic Dependency in Africa and Latin America." Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics 3. STAUFFER, ROBERT B. 1970-71 "Great-Power Constraints on Political Development." Studies in Comparative International Development 6 (no. 11): 231-51. SYMONDS, RICHARD 1966 The British and Their Successors. London: Faber. WALLERSTEIN, I. 1966 "The Decline of the Party in Single Party African States." In J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development'. Princeton: Princeton University Press. WOLF, ERIC 1970 Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper and Row.
