An Africanist Perspective
Politics. Development Economics. Political Economy. General Social Science.
Legislative Development
Research and Papers
Tag Archives: James D. Fearon
No, the West should not have governed South Sudan
In light of the ongoing civil war in South Sudan, Chris Blattman posed the question of whether the West should have governed South Sudan. My simple answer is that neotrusteeship would not have helped much with regard to long-term institutional stability in South Sudan, for the following reasons:
Neotrusteeship would still entail the same logic of old-style colonialism, only with a shorter time horizon. Whichever entity was designated as the ruler of Sudan – be it the UN, the State Department or the Foreign Office – would be working on a fixed timeline, with an exit strategy in mind. As Fearon and Laitin (gated) aptly noted: "In sharp contrast to classical imperialists, neotrustees want to withdraw as fast as possible. References to "exit strategy" have led the policy discourse and debate surrounding international and U.S. operations in the Balkans, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and now Iraq." Assuming that South Sudanese elite are rational, they would play the game, if forced to, and bid their time until the overlords left and then they would get down to the business of settling their grievances. The building of institutions, unlike learning a language or programing, is not something that you are taught and then left on your own to practice. Institutions only work if they reflect the de facto balance of power, something that trusteeship would necessarily not provide. And what would be the time horizon? How long would it take to build good institutions? As Fearon and Laitin note, "….due to the sources of the civil wars that lead to collapsed states, successful exit from neotrusteeship will be extremely difficult in most cases. We have stressed the need to develop local tax-collecting capability as an incentive to move the country from international welfare toward self-governance and, in some cases, the notion of transfer not to full sovereignty but rather as a state embedded in and monitored by international institutions."
The proposed exit strategy would probably be elections. Such elections would most likely favor those that played the game well under neotrusteeship, possibly the favored choice of the Western administrators [to pay back Western tax dollars, time and connections, etc with contracts and influence in the post-trusteeship era]. But this is not the way to do it. Electoral democracy would then necessarily be used by disgruntled elites who were not given a seat at the table to correct the ills of the era of neotrusteeship. Depending on the outcomes, failure at the ballot would probably lead to armed conflict.
Also, the period 1952-1957 was not a benelovent neotrusteeship but the last mile of British Colonialism in Ghana. I would have liked to hear more discussion of post-1957 Ghana by Pascal Zachary and how it is a good lesson on the virtues of neotrusteeship. Are we to forget what Nkrumah did right after ascending to the Political Kingdom and all that happened in Ghana between 1957 and 1981 when Jerry Rawlings finally brought order to the political process with an iron fist?
Lastly, a Western-run neotrusteeship would fly in the face of current IR norms and the structural reality of the present international system. I think the myth of the benevolent disinterested Western institution-builder [known in an earlier time as a civilizer] should be put to rest. China and Russia [and probably the African Union] would oppose such a move and work to make it fail. So even if it were workable in theory, something that I highly doubt, reality would render the point moot.
In my view the talk about neotrusteeship as the solution to weak state institutions is an attempt to avoid the ugly face of the state-building process. No one likes paying taxes to another dude who uses it to buy a private jet. Throughout human history states have been imposed on people against their will, most of the time with force. The challenge in South Sudan is not that the leaders had not learned how to govern efficiently, and therefore all we need to do is train them for a few years, but rather that Kir did not have the capacity and full control over the army to credibly deter Machar and his allies from attempting to take power by force.
Put differently, state-building is not value-neutral because it requires the threat or actual use of force, which implies the taking of sides. The logics of local insatiability and time inconsistent preferences dictate that chaps will always want to reorganize existing institutional arrangements. The only thing that prevents them from doing so – from Denmark to CAR – is the difference in the costs of doing so. Even in democracies, people are restricted on how often they can throw out their elected leaders, with a credible threat of the use of force in place to make sure that people obey and accept the outcome of elections [PLEASE read Terry Moe on power and political institutions]. Democratic state-building (the means most preferred on account of our 21st century sensibilities) in the context of weak or severely truncated coercive capacity is very hard.
Seen this way, neotrusteeship can only be useful in the short-term to prevent mass atrocities, the creation of safe heavens for transnational terror networks, and provide an environment for a less violent process of institutional development. But it certainly cannot generate the state institutions required for long-term political stability.
I definitely appreciate the need for international assistance in the process of building institutions in young states. But with regard to strategies of long-term state-building I tend to lean more toward Jeremy Weinstein's idea of "autonomous recovery" which stresses the need to identity and understand
"internal processes of change that give rise to successful state-building, the conditions under which these internal mechanisms are likely to work, and the lessons international actors can draw from autonomous recovery for efforts to bring conflict to an end. Although it may be difficult to accept, one of the key lessons is that sometimes it makes sense not to intervene, or to intervene actively on behalf of one side.
To echo Weinstein:
……….. The durable resolution of the world's civil wars will depend to a large degree on how quickly international actors incorporate the lessons of history into current strategies. To reconstitute states with governments capable of projecting power, the international community must be prepared to identify and recognize legitimate and effective governance (in whatever form it takes). And if the political change that war produces is to survive the end of the fighting, international actors must develop new approaches to both support and constrain the winners as they consolidate power in the aftermath of conflict.
Posted By: Ken Opalo	Category: africa	Tags: Afghanistan, autonomous recovery, bor, Chris Blattman, Colonialism, David Laitin, east timor, give war a chance, iraq, James D. Fearon, jeremy weinstein, Juba, neo-colonialism, neo-trusteeship, pascal zachary, riek machar, Sierra Leone, south sudan, south sudan civil war
Governing on the cheap in Africa
What is striking and surprising here is just how easy it can be to take over some African states, or large parts of them. The post-independence historical record provides numerous examples where dozens or a few hundred armed men have done it. This is generally just assumed to be the way things are in Africa, but when you think about it it is actually really puzzling. Being the president in African countries (and many others besides) can be an incredibly lucrative deal. Why don't these rulers, in their own self-interest, take some of that money and use it to build crack units, presidential guards, or strong and loyal army divisions that would protect their hold on power against two dozen putchists, or a hundred or a couple thousand rebels armed with rifles and maybe some mortars?
I don't think we have really good explanations for this in the relevant Pol Sci literatures. Maybe the most promising hypothesis is that African presidents are so afraid of coups and attacks from inside their regime that they don't want to support the construction of any organization that would be competent at using force. Keeping the military weak may lower their coup risk somewhat, but effectively trades coup risk off against higher risks of rural rebellion, insurgency, and foreign depredations such as we are seeing in Eastern Congo.
That is Jim Fearon writing over at Monkey Cage. More on this here.
Jim's concern extends beyond security matters. Much of Africa remains under-governed in other regards as well – tax collection, garbage collection, provision of public goods like water and sanitation, roads, etc etc.
One key driver of this phenomenon, I believe, is the manner in which sectional elites (and those that they purportedly represent) are incorporated into the national system.
You see, many African national governments tend to have a president surrounded by a coalition of ethnic/sectional elites representing specific geographic regions or communities. This sort of incorporation of elites and the regions/social groups that they represent allows African central governments to govern on the cheap since as long as ethnic chief from region X can bring his people and sort of make them feel represented in the centre then the government has no reason to establish a strong presence in the chief's homeland region (unless that region is economically viable).
A keen observer may ask why co-ethnics of these "ethnic chiefs" never demand for more from their supposed representatives at the centre.
The answer lies in the nature of citizenship in most of Africa. In many countries citizenship (and the associated claims on the state) tends to be mediated through one's ethnic group. Talk of "our people" is common across much of the region. Even educated people have internalized the fact that you can only get jobs if a co-ethnic is in a high position in government. Everyone therefore invests in having a powerful ethnic representative at the centre that can effectively bargain with whoever is president (or in the core of the governing coalition) to get enough jobs for the boys and girls from back home.
But having such a person obviates the need for the central government to establish its presence at the local level since it is much cheaper to give the ethnic chief his own fiefdom in the name of a cabinet ministry. Barriers to entry allow for very long tenures for these ethnic chiefs thus breeding incompetence of the worst possible kind – like the case of Kenyan police officers accepting bribes from al-Shabab operatives to allow for passage of explosives destined for Nairobi.
From the president's/government's perspective, all you have to do to prevent an all out rebellion is be on good terms with enough of these ethnic chiefs or make it beneficial for them to live under your rule.
Seen this way, under-government is not just for the sake of coup-proofing but also an unintended consequence of the manner in which the masses and their representative elites are incorporated into the national government/state.
The best book out there that I have read on this subject is Catherine Boone's Political Topographies of the African State. Boone is best read with Jeffrey Herbst's States and Power in Africa, although Herbst's conclusions are too deterministic for my liking.
Posted By: Ken Opalo	Category: africa	Tags: Bukavu, Butiama, catherine boone, Coltan, Conflict Minerals, Congo, congo-kinshasa, Democratic Republic of COngo, eastern DRC, goma, James D. Fearon, James Fearon, jeffrey herbst, Kigali, kinshasa, Kisangani, kivus, lake albert, lake kivu, lubumbashi, M23, Mbuji-Mayi, Monkey Cage Blog, north kivu, Paul Kagame, Political topographies of the african state, puschists, Rutshuru, Rwanda, smuggling in the congo, south kivu, states and power in africa
Odd solution to homelessness. https://t.co/HIPbJk8V1J 37 minutes ago
Check out @dadakim's review of @Nanjala1's book: twitter.com/monkeycageblog… 1 hour ago
Follow @kopalo
Nigerians of Guangzhou: Institutional Adaptation in a Foreign Land
How quickly can you regrow a forest?
The Ethiopia-Somalia War of 1977
The disaster that is Kenya's new "competency-based"curriculum
There is less (ethnic) favoritism in the allocation of public sector jobs in Kenya and Uganda than you might think
Abuja Addis Ababa africa African Union angola burundi Chad China Corruption Dar es Salaam Democratic Republic of COngo development development economics drc Economic Development Ethiopia Ghana Jacob Zuma Juba Kampala Kenya Khartoum Kibaki Kigali kinshasa lagos Mogadishu Mwai Kibaki Nairobi Nigeria ODM PNU poverty Raila Raila Odinga Rwanda Senegal Somalia south africa Southern Sudan south sudan sudan tanzania Uganda Uhuru Kenyatta William Easterly william Ruto Yoweri Museveni Zambia Zimbabwe
The disaster that is Kenya's new "competency-based"curriculum
Brazil is officially the 2nd biggest black country, after Nigeria
Peter Singer and the Utility Monster
Turkish soldier killed, six wounded in operation in Iraq's north July 19, 2019
A Turkish soldier was killed and six wounded on Friday in an operation in northern Iraq during clashes with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Turkish defense ministry said.
Algerian protesters return to streets for demand reforms July 19, 2019
Tens of thousands of Algerians returned to the streets in the capital Algiers and other cities on Friday to demand radical political reforms and the departure of the ruling elite.
Spain's Podemos accepts key condition for coalition deal with Socialists July 19, 2019
The leader of Spain's far-left Podemos party said on Friday he is willing to give up a post in a coalition government, potentially opening a way out of stalled power-sharing talks with acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists.
Afromusing
Blattman's blog
Ghafla Guy
Global Observatory
Kenyan Pundit
Melina Platas
Misschee
View from the cave
world bank blog
wronging rights
Archives Select Month June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007
Kenyan Blogs Webring
KBW Aggregator
Home - KenyaUnlimited
616 Serra Street, Stanford, CA 94305