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Neopatrimonialism and the Political Economy of

Economic Performance in Africa: Critical Reﬂections
Article in World Politics · May 2015

DOI: 10.1017/S004388711500009X
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Neopatrimonialism and the Political Economy of

Economic Performance in Africa: Critical
Reections
Thandika Mkandawire
World Politics / FirstView Article / May 2015, pp 1 - 50

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Review Article
Neopatrimonialism and
the political economy
of Economic Performance
in Africa
Critical Reflections
By Thandika Mkandawire*
Introduction
D uring the past two decades, neopatrimonialism has become the

convenient, all-purpose, and ubiquitous moniker for African gov-
ernance. The idea that neopatrimonialism is central to unravelling the
facts behind Africa’s poor economic performance has been advanced by
what I refer to in this article as the neopatrimonialism school. Over the
years this school of thought has shaped the study of Africa through its
influence on key donors, its privileged access to leading journals, and
the constitution of tight self-referential networks of Africanist schol-
arship. It has produced an abundance of literature and its intellectual
triumph is that its analyses have become part of the general knowledge
of foreign policymakers and journalists reporting on Africa.1
The language of neopatrimonialism has permeated news coverage
of African affairs so much so that the flow of ideas and “facts” between
research results and the media has created a self-reinforcing discourse.
So deeply ingrained is the view that underneath every policy lurks
* I am grateful to Atul Kohli, Dwayne Wood, and three anonymous referees for insightful com-
ments and suggestions, as well as participants at the European Conference on African Studies in Up-
psala in 2011. I would also like to express gratitude to the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm
for hosting me while I wrote much of this article.
1
In effect, it has also been taken up by non-Africanist development scholars as an accurate char-
acterization of the state of Africa so much so that even for otherwise meticulous comparative politics
scholars such as Peter Evans and Atul Kohli, Africa provides prototypes of the predatory state that
require no further examination. Evans 1992; Kohli 2004.
World Politics, 1–50

Copyright © 2015 Trustees of Princeton University
doi: 10.1017/S004388711500009X
2 w o r l d p o li t i c s
neopatrimonialism, that invocation of the concept has the air of irrefut-

able common sense. The neopatrimonialism school does not confine it-
self to analysis and description; it also makes predictions, often drawing
from what is commonly referred to as the “logic of neopatrimonialism”
and/or associated case studies. Furthermore, it makes recommenda-
tions on how to improve governance, although some of its advocates
suggest that the task is inherently futile in Africa or, at best, likely to
take a very long time to accomplish.2
In this article, I argue that while neopatrimonalism can be used to
describe different styles of exercising authority, idiosyncratic manner-
isms of certain individual leaders, and social practices within states, the
concept offers little analytical content and has no predictive value with
respect to economic policy and performance. Because the concept of
neopatrimonialism is deployed in comparative analyses aimed at ex-
plaining why Africa underperforms in relation to other regions in the
developing world, I also touch upon some of these all-too-often in-
vidious comparisons and examine the empirical assertions and policy
predictions of some of its advocates. Due to space limitations I do not
discuss the varied and nuanced analytical tools of the paradigm.3�
There are many definitions of neopatrimonialism that invariably
incorporate a diverse range of subconcepts. As Daniel Bach puts it,
“Neopatrimonialism provided the ‘common denominator’ for a range of
practices that are highly characteristic of politics in Africa, namely des-
potism, clannish behavior, so-called ‘tribalism,’ regionalism, patronage,
‘cronyism,’ ‘prebendalism,’ corruption, predation, factionalism, etc. All
of these practices had . . . been frequently treated as a disparate collec-
tion of phenomena in the scholarly literature.”4 Aaron deGrassi refers
to it as a “conceptual muddle.”5 Partly because neopatrimonialism is
difficult to distill, detailed descriptions and often imaginative portray-
als of a local scene, replete with a kind of anthropological knowingness,
are often used to present examples of it. The literature on Africa is full
of vibrant metaphors and characterized by unbridled use of anecdotes,
pejorative vocabulary (what Michael Chege6� refers to as “brazen name
calling”), and vivid vignettes of the all-too-frequent cases of egregious
abuse of state resources and power.
2
Jean-François Bayart assures readers, “[T]he contemporary orbit of politics south of the Sahara,
inasmuch as it refers to the past trajectory, is capable of change one day. Seen in this light, the long
term prison is more like a probation.” See Bayart 1993, 263.
3
The differences derive from variations in emphasis on culture, society, or state components of
neopatrimonialism.
4
Bach 2012, 221.
5
deGrassi 2008, 112.
6
Chege 1997.
n e o pat r i m o n i a li s m & p o li t i ca l e co n o m y i n a f r i ca 3
Most scholars, however, agree with Christopher Clapham’s concise

definition of neopatrimonialism as “a form of organization in which
relationships of a broadly patrimonial type pervade a political and ad-
ministrative system which is formally constructed on rational-legal
lines. Officials hold positions in bureaucratic organizations with powers
which are formally defined, but exercise those powers . . . as a form of
private property.”7 Neopatrimonialism is, then, a marriage of tradition
and modernity with an offspring whose hybridity generates a logic that
has had devastating effects on African economies. To understand this
logic, it is necessary to step back and examine the preanalytical weltan-
schauung that provides the ontological presuppositions upon which it is
built. These suppositions enable the neopatrimonialism school to treat
as self-evident many empirical assertions and stylized facts that they
deem true and, as a result, African economic policies have been invested
with the irrefutability and inexorability of the logic of neopatrimonial-
ism. This logic is what makes the research program of the neopatrimo-
nialism school impervious to empirical falsification.8�
The concept of neopatrimonialism is not new. It was employed by
S. N. Eisenstadt in order to distinguish patrimonialism in traditional
and modern contexts.9� In its early incarnation, it was not about cor-
ruption or weakness of the state. Rather, it was simply a way to exer-
cise power that incorporated Weberian forms of patrimonialism and
rational-legal authority. Scholars in the mid-twentieth century made
no assumptions about neopatrimonialism’s efficacy in goal attainment,
and generally tended to view it as a form of social capital appropriate to
certain stages of development. Their perspective held that the coexis-
tence of modernity and tradition—dualism—represented an inevitable
phase in the process of development.10� The elites of developing coun-
tries might therefore use charisma and cultural symbols to mobilize
and galvanize their societies or to ensure political legitimacy and stabil-
ity.11 In any case, the linear, teleological view of history suggested that
patrimonialism, dictatorship, and even corruption could be treated as
inevitable, but not necessarily fatal, in the march to modernity.12�
This view began to change in the late 1970s, when the idea of neopat-
rimonialism was first used to explain why African societies were not
modernizing and why charismatic leaders failed to fulfill their promise.
7
Clapham 1985, 48.
8
Therkildsen 2005, 41.
9
Eisenstadt 1966.
10
Pitcher, Moran, and Johnston 2009 challenge this evolutionist interpretation of Max Weber.
11
Apter 1965.
12
Huntington 1968; Taylor 1979.
Yet presumably because of a combination of events—the good perfor-

mance of African economies for much of the decade and the rise of the
dependency school of thought (which focused on external factors), the
idea did not catch on.
By the 1980s, however, the concept of neopatrimonialism assumed
far greater prominence and became tethered to a new African prob-
lem—poor economic performance and the internal causes of it. While
previous scholarship argued that neopatrimonialism provided evidence
of underdevelopment as a stage in the process of development, ideas
emerging from the modernization school in the ’80s included causation
from neopatrimonialism toward the economy. The new way of thinking
held that the marriage between tradition and modernity was not only
unhappy (albeit inevitable), but also lethal to the partners and their
offspring; Africa had somehow managed to combine features of tradi-
tion and modernity into a debilitating witch’s brew. For some scholars,
the marriage became the object of derision—“no more than a decor,
a pseudo-Western facade masking the realities of deeply personalized
political relations.”13 Beneath the veneer of modernity flaunted by local
elites lurked a world of irrational belief, superstition, and a primor-
dial sense of selective interest. For those of a Panglossian bent, Africa,
miserable though it was, represented the best of all possible Africas.
According to the views of the time, the institutions that emerged were
what could be expected given Africa’s historicity and culture. It was,
simply, how Africa worked.14
Neopatrimonialism and the Microeconomic Foundations of

African Failure
According to Mark Blyth,15 the neoliberalism of the 1980s and 1990s
represented a crisis-defining idea that not only identified the overrid-
ing problem in Africa, but also posed questions on which much schol-
arly energy subsequently has been expended. The predicament was
suggested first by the World Bank in the famous Berg Report,16 and
later by Paul Collier and Jan Gunning who stated, “[I]t is clear that
Africa has suffered a chronic failure of economic growth. The prob-
lem for analysis is to determine its causes.”17 This fraught proposition18
13
Chabal and Daloz 2006.
14
15
Blyth 2003.
16
World Bank 1981. The report is widely known as the Berg Report, after the team leader Elliot Berg.
17
Collier and Gunning 1999, 4.
18
For a critique of the empirical basis of the proposition, see Jerven 2011. Much research time
led to the freighted questions, “Why is it that African leaders refuse to

implement what are obviously ‘Good Policies’ which have been fruit-
fully adopted by other parts of the world? Or why do they adopt poli-
cies that impoverish their citizens?’’19
The response has been dominated by two approaches: the public
choice view regarding rent seeking, formulated by Anne Krueger20 and
seminally applied to Africa by Robert Bates,21 and the neopatrimonial-
ism school view. In both cases, the answers point toward some form of
malevolent state simply acting on behalf of, or at the behest of, ruling
interests—a view advanced earlier by Vulgar Marxism. Bates summa-
rized this singular pursuit of self-interest thus:
Leaders act on behalf of private factions, be they social classes, military cliques
or ethnic groups. They engage in economic redistribution, often from the poor
to the rich at the expense of economic growth. These are the central policy for-
mation in Africa and their prominence serves to discredit any approach based
on a conviction that governments are agents of public interest.22
Significantly, both approaches induced a quest for the microeco-

nomic foundations of the macroeconomic process—the Holy Grail of
economics. With the upsurge in macroeconomic analysis in the 1980s,
microlevel analyses focused on a new issue—the microeconomic foun-
dations of policy failure. The public choice school was unambiguous
about its desire to build upon methodological individualism and sought
to derive a macrolevel phenomenon from individual, rational, utilitarian
behavior. While the neopatrimonialists did not always state this goal as
clearly, neopatrimonialism can be interpreted as building on method-
ological communalism where the community serves as the foundational
unit of analysis and from whence macrolevel phenomena are derived.
To rival or proximate the parsimony of the public choice approach
and the logic of rent seeking, the neopatrimonialism school advanced
its own syllogistic shortcut, the logic of neopatrimonialism. In a more
formulaic presentation, this logic provides its own spare framework for
reading African politics and its effect on economic performance. This
adaptation is not as far-fetched as it might seem. A number of schol-
has been devoted to explaining the “Africa dummy” whose coefficient proved negative in growth-
accounting analyses. The explanatory variables have included geography, colonial past, institutions,
ethnic diversity, and, of course, neopatrimonialism.
19
Bates 2008, 131.
20
Krueger 1974.
21
Bates 1981.
22
Bates 1983.
ars are quite explicit about the microfoundational role they assign to
the communities that they describe in often unflattering terms. Long
before recent theoretical attempts, Rene Lemarchand and Keith Legg
asserted that the idea of clientelism would provide “a useful theoretical
connection between micro- and macro-level or state-centered analyses
and theories of development.”23 Göran Hyden’s concept of the economy
of affection was also said to provide the microlevel foundation from
which “a myriad of invisible micro-economic networks would, if al-
lowed to penetrate society, gradually wear down the macro-economic
structures, and eventually the whole system.”24 J. P. Olivier de Sardan
argued that “[M]ost African villages are conglomerates of specific sub-
communities (families, peer groups, ritual societies, etc.), often exist-
ing in a climate of rivalry and antagonism, with no culture of ‘general
interest,’ ” and extrapolated from these microlevel conditions of African
society to account for the lack of a sense of the public domain at mac-
rolevel.25 Jean-François Bayart’s politique par le bas also provided a way
to derive macrolevel institutions from the microlevel, and advocates
of this view argue that the main cause for the failure of international
organizations’ macroeconomic policy prescriptions was their misunder-
standing of microlevel underpinnings of the African macroeconomy.26
When microeconomic level phenomena are extrapolated, what results
is a society with no sense of the public good, one that condones cor-
ruption and is inhabited by individuals who focus on their own bellies.
According to these views, the link between this society, the economy,
and the state produces Africa’s dysfunctional order.
With the ascendancy of the new political economy view in the 1980s,
neopatrimonialism took on the language of public choice, albeit selec-
tively and arbitrarily. This adaptation led to two problems. The first
involved delineation of the domain in which self-interest is pursued.
In most accounts, what is described as the logic of neopatrimonialism
amounts to the rational pursuit of self-interest by a “big man” and his
close cronies (very much like Mancur Olson’s rational, calculating, sta-
tionary bandit) in a context whereby the majority is driven by affection,
primordial ties, ritual, and superstition, and is so mesmerized by the big
man that its members often act in ways at odds with their own interests
in the forlorn expectation that some of the crumbs of patronage will
23
Lemarchand and Legg 1972.
24
Hyden 1983, 21.
25
He does add some words of caution, however: “The extrapolation of this state of ‘non-commu-
nalism’ from the village scale to that of the state is doubtless excessive, but there is something in it.”
Olivier de Sardan 1999, 31.
26
Hibou 2000; Chabal and Daloz 1999; van de Walle 2001.
fall their way. There is little explanation for the arbitrary restriction
of the domain of individuals’ rational behavior. As Abdul Mustapha
notes, it is “a reductionist perspective on African politics which robs
non-elite groups of political agency.”27 Furthermore, neopatrimonial-
ism is supposed to impose logics that run counter to the rational pursuit
of self-interest by the big man. As in the neoclassical model, minor
imperfections in the logic, for example when the big man does not be-
have to type, would lead to multiple equilibria and make it difficult to
render predictions. In addition, neopatrimonialists are unencumbered
by issues of time consistency that arise in all contractual arrangements.
Questions about loyalty and support—why would patrons believe that
their clients will continue to be loyal after they have gained from the
patronage and why would clients believe that their support will be re-
warded—are often skirted to sustain the logic of neopatrimonialism.
The second problem is that aggregation of individual or communal
pursuits poses formidable challenges. Neoclassical economic analysis
addresses these challenges by assuming a representative individual,
perfect information, or rational expectations, which produces identi-
cal individuals and basically obviates the problem of aggregation. The
neopatrimonialism school achieves the same obviation by assuming a
representative African community, or someone akin to a representative
African, in a manner that is profoundly reductionist, if not essentialist.
This legerdemain precludes the need to spell out how the aggregation
of communal interests actually takes place. In the case of Africa, one
solution to the collective action problem is an appeal to ethnicity—poli-
ticians care for the welfare of their own ethnic group. But such appeals
reduce the issue of policy-making to ethnic politics and tribalism, an
entirely different dynamic in which passions and ancient solidarities
rather than simple self-interest take charge, and what parsimony the
logic of neopatrimonialism may have provided simply disappears.
The Pathology of African Neopatrimonialism

While the neopatrimonialism school draws heavily from culture, many
scholars take great pains to distance themselves from the rampant cul-
tural determinism of the literature.28As a consequence, the literature is
full of hedging and qualifying asides regarding the pathology of African
27
Mustapha 2002.
28
In academic circles these writers have stated their culturalist inclinations in the interpretation
of African political economies as clearly as Chabal and Daloz 2006. For a critical appraisal of the
culturalist turn, see Moore 1997.
culture. Two rhetorical devices are employed to render the cultural link
politically correct. The first involves copious citations of Africans who
tell delectable tales of mischief in the tropics.29 The accounts are of-
ten drawn from day-to-day African discourse—familiarity with which
is indicated by use of African proverbs or popular jokes about power.
The empirical verisimilitude of such analyses is further underscored by
a tight mesh of cross-citation. This device tends to conceal the real-
ity that much of the evidence comes from sporadic empiricism that is
largely anecdotal in nature.
The second device involves perfunctory concession that there is
really nothing peculiarly African about clientelism, corruption, or
neopatrimonialism30—although some scholars qualify the concession
by arguing that Africa is, in a sense, the “epicenter of neopatrimonial-
ism.”31 The issue is not African neopatrimonialism per se that accounts
for Africa’s poor performance, but rather the pervasiveness, ubiquity,
and popular acceptability of it. As advanced by Michael Bratton and
Nicolas van de Walle, “although neopatrimonial practices can be found
in all polities, it is the core feature of politics in Africa and in a small
number of other states.”32 Moreover, “African states share . . . a gener-
alized system of patrimonialism and an acute degree of apparent dis-
order.”33 While the latter may be considered the norm when a modern
state is constructed in a preindustrial context, and neopatrimonialism
in Asia (cronyism) seems to have been associated with very high rates
of growth, the question is not one of neopatrimonialism by itself. David
Kang asks, “Why did corruption and cronyism impede growth in some
developing countries but not in others?”34 The Economist asks more
bluntly, “Does Africa have some inherent character flaw that keeps it
29
For some, these stories by Africans themselves lend objectivity to the account—the apparent
premise being that self-deprecation is more objective than self-adulation or self-exculpation. Africans
who argue that their confreres are afflicted by “unacceptable signs of backwardness” (Kabou 1991),
or are “lazy, irrational, fatalistic” and engage in “convivial excesses” (Etounga-Manguele 1991), are
extensively cited and praised. “What is new in such arguments is a self-critical approach rejecting the
habitual exculpating explanations of Africa’s predicament and focusing attention both on the putative
incompatibility of African culture(s) with modern economic development and on the hitherto virtu-
ally taboo question of mentalities.” Chabal 1986. The racism of the statements is shrugged off or goes
unperceived.
30
On the portability of the concept to other parts of the world, see Bach 2012; Bach 2011; Clap-
ham 1996.
31
Bechle 2010. He adds, “The operationalization of neopatrimonialism was thus mainly grounded
in African real types.”
32
Bratton and van de Walle 1994, 459.
33
Chabal and Daloz 1999, 44, 57. However, there have been several widely publicized cases of “big
men” prosecutions that have attracted scholarly attention. Taylor 2006; Taylor 2005.
34
Mkandawire 1988.
backward and incapable of development?”35 In other words, what is

wrong with African neopatrimonialism?
One answer, often following politically correct qualifying remarks
about culture, is that the African strain is particularly virulent or
pathological.36African neopatrimonialism is said to be characterized by
three features. The first is economy of affection,37 or moral economy of
corruption,38 which lends normalcy to corruption. Neopatrimonialism
provides a moral cultural gloss that somehow renders corruption un-
derstandable and its victims complicit.39 Although the statements upon
which such assertions are based may suggest some comparative context,
no evidence of cross-regional differences in corruption permissiveness
is provided. In any case, the limited evidence there is from comparative
research on these matters does not unequivocally support such state-
ments. For instance, Alejandro Moreno40 cites studies that suggest that
the few African publics included in the World Values Survey show that
corruption permissiveness at the citizen level is lower in Africa than in
other regions.
The second feature is untoward deference to authority. Such behav-
ior results not only in the big man syndrome,41 but also in a subor-
dinated people who are inextricably attached to clientelistic relation-
ships, quiescent, and complicit in their own exploitation. There is, in
the Hirschmanian sense,42 no “exit” and no “voice” outside the channels
35
Economist 2000. Similar questions have been posed more academically by Christopher Clapham.
“It would be necessary, rather, to postulate some distinctively African relationship between governance
and economic management, which inhibited in particular the consolidation of state authority and
autonomy, and the control of the state by a powerful and competent bureaucracy, to take the two
elements in Leftwich’s encapsulation of ‘developmental statehood’ that are most evidently lacking in
much of the continent. Is it therefore plausible to suggest that there is some continent-wide African
‘political culture,’ presumably deriving from the interaction between colonial statehood on the one
hand and embedded social structures and values on the other, that may help to account for African
exceptionalism?” Clapham 1996. He attributes the failure of others to raise these questions to political
correctness. “Apparently the only things that stopped such questions from being posed was political
correctness. Given the historical experience especially of peoples of African origin, it was understand-
able that any supposed explanation of their level of economic development in terms of their culture
should be regarded as deeply offensive.” Clapham 1985.
36
Kang 2003, 439.
37
Hyden 1980.
38
Olivier de Sardan 1999.
39
Bayart 2000; Olivier de Sardan 1999; Chabal and Daloz 1999.
40
Moreno 2003.
41
The sobriquet “big man” is so capacious that it includes not only Motubu Sese Seko, Idi Amin,
Charles Taylor, Francisco Macías Ngwema, and Ibrahim Babanginda, but also Nelson Mandela, Julius
Nyerere, and Kwame Nkrumah; see Moss 2007. The rapacity of Mobutu and the buffoonery of Amin
and their gross mismanagement of their nations’ affairs provided grist to the mill for the approach, and
lent plausibility to these narratives. But to place all African leaders in the tent of big men is to erase
significant differences among them.
42
Hirschman 1970.
dominated by the big men.43 This analysis tends to downplay observ-

able dissent and “discount rural and local politics and resistance.”44 The
prevalence of coercion on the one hand, and resistance, defiance, and
injustice on the other, clearly suggests that neopatrimonial relations are
not as self-stabilizing as often presumed.
The third feature is the nature of the African big man himself. His
distinct characteristics are, as Bayart suggests, insatiable greed and glut-
tony. Bayart additionally evokes the stereotypes of tropical lascivious-
ness, excessive conviviality, ostentatiousness, and sexual appetite.
In questions of economic development, culture matters. However, its
multidimensionality makes its overall effect indeterminate—there is no
isomorphic relationship between culture and economic performance.
Culture is comprised of such a broad repertoire of actual and potential
practices that any social practice can be accounted for by reference to it.
Given the wide range of African political practices, the neopatrimonial
model involves a select choice of cultural elements, though the selection
process is itself never specified.45 The subjective choice of cultural ele-
ments included often says more about the preanalytical predispositions
of the analysts than of the society being observed. In terms of gov-
ernance traditions, African societies range from nearly acephalous to
highly centralized regimes; the permutations of neopatrimonial states
are quite complicated and vary in significant ways. As a result, the ex-
ercise of extracting a logic that explains Africa’s poor economic perfor-
mance is extremely complex and ultimately arbitrary.46
Specific Mechanisms and Effects
Once the microeconomic foundations of economic policy are identified,
the analysis must next translate the microlevel practices into meso- and
macrolevel ones. To make their claims relevant to the development ques-
tion, neopatrimonialists specify the effects the logic of neopatrimonial-
ism has on the key variables identified as determinants of economic
growth: fiscal policy, industrial strategies, macroeconomic policies, po-
litical stability, savings, and technical progress. These pose difficult
questions in their own right, but the neopatrimonial school has not
43
Reflective of the short shelf life of concepts about African societies, the full-blown thesis of
neopatrimonialism was preceded by literature that suggested that African society was disengaging
from spaces occupied by the state by taking the “exit option.” Hyden 1980; Chazan 1983; Rothschild
1996. Indeed, Lemarchand 1988 even suggests that “in many rural areas patrons have ceased to pa-
tronise.”
44
Klopp 2000; deGrassi 2008.
45
Kunz 1991.
46
Le Vine 1980; Nugent 2010.
shied away from linking itself to the fundamental or proximate causes

of economic growth and structural change. I next turn to some of these
linkages.
bad governance
In the late 1980s, when growing evidence suggested that getting prices
right was not working, the World Bank turned to governance issues.47
Over the years, the neopatrimonialism school has become closely as-
sociated with the good governance agenda of the aid establishment.
Indeed, the World Bank’s extension of its remit to areas of governance
initially drew upon versions of this literature with its extrapolation of
all microlevel cultural and social practices, and led to regimes rife with
corruption, nepotism, and inefficiency. Neopatrimonialism undermines
governance not in the sense of Joel Migdal’s “strong society, weak
state,”48 but rather in the sense of bad society, weak state.
One of the difficulties in reading the literature on neopatrimonial-
ism in Africa is the task of deciphering the metaphors used to describe
state-society relationships. In one study, the state is so permeated by
society, so bogged down in social relations, and so overwhelmed by
the insatiable and unrelenting demands of the logic of neopatrimo-
nialism that it is reduced to a “lame leviathan.”49 In another, the state
“is suspended in mid-air” over society,50 although paradoxically “[t]he
economy of affection tended to swamp the public realm, limiting the
scope for decisions aimed at defending the foundation on which its
existence rested. . . . It has created one of the most problematic para-
doxes in contemporary Africa: the existence of a state with no structural
roots in society which is a balloon suspended in mid-air, is punctured
by excessive demands and unable to function without an indiscriminate
and wasteful consumption of scarce societal resources.”51 The images
of Bayart’s rhizome-like state and Hyden’s balloon do not have the
same implications for state-society relationships. One suggests capture
by societal forces while the other suggests splendid isolation of the state.
Yet both the immersion of the state in society and its disconnect from
it are displayed as evidence of bad governance, which is itself a major
outcome of neopatrimonialism.
With respect to new measures of good governance, neopatrimonial-
47
World Bank 1989.
48
Migdal 1988.
49
Callaghy 1987; Kurer 1996.
50
Hyden 1983, 7.
51
Hyden 1983, 19.
ism should reduce voice and accountability, weaken government effec-

tiveness and regulatory control, undermine the control of corruption,
dilute the rule of law, and compromise political stability. This means
that African countries should perform worse according to these widely
used indicators of good governance. However, as shown in Figure 1,
most African countries actually perform as well as could be expected for
their level of economic development and also exhibit considerable di-
vergence. The figure additionally suggests a close relationship between
levels of development and quality of governance as measured by the
indicators.
low savings
A recurring theme in the literature is that as a result of neopatrimo-

nialism, individuals and states in African societies tend to have low
savings because “the powerful distributive pressures inherent in clien-
telistic systems encourage consumption and redistribution of public
resources rather than savings and investments.”52 Some work suggests
that if Africans had a bit of the Weberian Protestant ethic, they would
do away with their culture’s “primacy of display” and use their resources
more productively.53 While the implication is that private savings in
Africa tend to be lower than would be expected according to the level
of development, no evidence of that is provided. Shopping malls, a new
phenomenon, and much of the increased consumption of recent years
are explained by other factors. There is empirical evidence that chal-
lenges these perceptions however, and shows that private savings in
Africa can be explained by standard behavioral models: low per capita
income, high young-age dependency ratio, and high dependence on
aid. The collapse of savings is a relatively recent development associ-
ated with the fiscal crisis and adjustment measures of the lost decades
(1973–95).54 High levels of consumption can be largely explained by
an increase in consumption by the middle classes, relaxation of credit
constraints induced by financial liberation, and the transitory boom in
credit and surge in property values experienced in states undergoing
financial liberalization.�55
Lewis 1996. For additional references see Noman 2013.

52
Chabal 1996, 1123. While the logic of neopatrimonialism would suggest that low domestic sav-
53
ings are due to high levels of ostentatious consumption, Africa’s problems seem to be more a problem
of hoarding and capital flight.
54
Elbadawi and Mwega 2000.
55
Bandiera et al. 2000.
2
Aggregate Governance Index
–1
–2
4 6 8 10 12
Log Per Capita Income
Figure 1
Relationship between Per Capita Income and Governance
Source: World Bank DataBank.
obstructed capitalist class
Among the effects of neopatrimonialism is the obstruction of produc-

tive investment by the private sector and of the emergence of a capital-
ist class.56 The logic of neopatrimonialism is said to produce an Africa
capitalism that is “culturally distinct and culturally deficient.”57 Three
arguments have been advanced against the anticapitalist posture of
neopatrimonialist states. The first simply involves authoritarian re-
gimes’ fear of the emergence of any alternative sources of power.58 The
argument is that acting on such fears thwarts the emergence of a na-
tional bourgeoisie. “The political explanations for the absence of such
a class lie, partly, in state leaders not wanting to give up the patronage
resources on which their governments are founded, and, partly, on state
elites not wanting business to become too successful and independent
56
As stated by Sandbrook 1986, “The economic effect of this mode of governance (and of the social
and economic conditions it reflects) is thus to waste public resources, discourage productive invest-
ment, and open opportunities for easy profits through political manipulation. This is obviously a recipe
for the stagnation of the formal capitalist sector.” See also Callaghy 1987.
57
Taylor 2012. Reacting to this characterization, Taylor argues that such assertions about neopat-
rimonialism have led to an inaccurate view of capitalism and business and occluded the varieties of
business-state relationships in Africa.
58
Konings 2007; Tangri 1998, 110.
and thus pose a potential political threat to their regimes.”59 This fear
also blunts the spirit of emergent capitalists as potentially productive
elites are drawn into a web of neopatrimonial strategies where they
respond to “perverse incentives” that undermine productive activities.60
Privatization, which should spur the emergence of a capitalist class, has
been slowed by neopatrimonial logic as the big men and their clients
acquire assets through corrupt means rather than transparent and com-
petitive processes.61
A second argument is that the redistributive bias of neopatrimonial-
ism undermines the social differentiation essential to capitalist develop-
ment62 and that the neopatrimonialist system would collapse if the full
force of capitalism was allowed break up the moral ties and networks
that nourish it. According to Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz:
Indeed, if class is defined (in keeping with standard sociology) as a self-con-

sciously constituted group organized to defend its economic interests and assert
these interests against other similar ensembles, then the continent is largely
devoid of social classes. . . . Even if it had achieved the economic means of its
hegemonic ambitions, any elite which became a ruling ‘class’ thus cutting itself
from the rest of society, would rapidly lose prestige, influence, and thereby le-
gitimacy.63�
The third argument is that neopatrimonialism does not provide an

institutional framework within which capitalism can flourish. With
its preference for relationship-based transactions, neopatrimonialism
has not been able to provide the bureaucratic order and predictability
that investors need to engage in long-term investment. It undermines
institutions that ensure property rights and thus increases uncertainty
through its arbitrariness.64�
Tangri 1998, 110.

59
Lewis 1994; Sandbrook 2005, 1123.

60
61
For Catherine Boone, the capital logic that would have seen capitalist maturation move
from primitive accumulation to modern capitalism collided with and lost out to the rentier-cum-
authoritarian regime in Senegal. “Political classes appropriated the lion’s share of economic surpluses
not drained overseas. The ways in which members of this social group deploy the resources have been
influenced by prevailing mechanisms and strategies of political control. Where clientelism emerges as
a strategy for consolidating political classes and where state-nurtured rentierism provides a material
base for the cohesion of this class, the political process works to channel private wealth into ad hoc
economic activities which are not self-sustaining and which do not involve investment in productive
assets or activities. If they can, rentiers remain rentiers, and thus dependent upon, and responsive to,
the discretionary exercise of political prerogative from above . . .  the strategy itself has reduced the
likelihood that fractions of political classes will have an interest in, or be capable of, using state power
to nurture the movement of private capital into productive investment.” Boone 1994a.
62
Chabal and Daloz 1999; Hyden 1983.
63
Chabal and Daloz 1999, 41.
64
Sandbrook and Oelbaum 1997; Callaghy 1988.
While the assertion that neopatrimonialism prefers relation-based

transactions may be true, there is ample historical and empirical evi-
dence to suggest that such transactions may not be the cause of weak
institutions but rather a consequence of them.65 As Raghuram Rajan
and Luigi Zingales put it, “[L]ending to related parties reflects financial
underdevelopment . . . rather than some cultural propensity towards
being devious.”66
The argument for economic liberalization is that it reduces the mo-
nopoly and discretionary power of government officials by denying the
state the largesse it had deployed to cement its clientelistic networks.
With fewer handouts to disburse, the state’s attractiveness to local elites
declines, and entrepreneurs shift to more productive, efficient activities.
Presumably, such liberalization, while being “promarket,” would under-
mine clientelism. However, it should be kept in mind that market liber-
alization is not necessarily a “probusiness” policy that includes measures
that support specific capitalist groups. Such measures are deemed by
the neopatrominialism school to invariably lead to cronyism, clien-
telism, and outright corruption.
T. S. Jayne and associates argue, “The main difficulty with patronage
systems is not necessarily the misappropriated state funds, but rather
the depressing effect of an uneven level playing field on the develop-
ment of competitive agricultural marketing systems.”67 Any sector-
specific policy to promote capitalists will be selective and generate un-
equal opportunities. The rejection of probusiness measures during the
era of liberalization may have been as much against African capitalists
as the antibusiness stance of most African governments, informed by
fear of alternative sources of power, was in earlier eras.68
The neopatrimonialism school’s contribution to the study of capital-
ism in Africa produces a sense of déjà vu. In the mid-1900s, the early
years of dependency theory, neo-Marxists and radical nationalists con-
sidered African capitalism in terms of comprador, petty, or a lumpen
bourgeoisie—drone capitalists confined to buying and selling—as op-
posed to a national bourgeoisie that produced captains of industry.69
65
de la Torre, Gozzi, and Schmukler 2007.
66
Rajan and Zingales 2004, 34.
67
Jayne et al. 2002 were writing about Kenya and Zimbabwe. The need to resort to the patronage
argument seems so overwhelming that they are left appealing to it, even when their own research raises
serious questions. Thus they appeal to path dependence to explain the higher prices paid to farmers by
marketing boards in former white settler economies, but somehow maintain neopatrimonialism when
explaining the agricultural policies in these countries.
68
Mkandawire and Soludo 1998.
69
Shivji 1980; Ake 1981; Amin 1972; Saul 1979.
Neopatrimonialism repeats many of the dependency theory views

through its own adjectival assault on the emergent and disorganized
African capitalist class without fully acknowledging the earlier work.70
Capitalist development does not always originate in a full-blown
capitalist class. It often takes place within a range of class coalitions,
cultural expressions, and logics. Many of the practices associated with
neopatrimonialism are at the core of primitive accumulation. It was
not, after all, Weber’s ideal type that managed the rapid industrializa-
tion of Germany in the late nineteenth century, but the alliance of iron
and rye that bound together the more feudal elements of cartels in
heavy industry in a process that Alexander Gerschenkron refers to as
the “feudalization of the bourgeoisie.”71 The relationship between the
state and national capital has involved forms of embeddedness close to
clientelism.72
Many features of the African state highlighted by the literature, such
as clientelism and presidentialism, are salient aspects of successful de-
velopmental states. Neopatrimonialization of the bourgeoisie can be
quite compatible with capitalist accumulation. It has been the case in
East Asia and in many instances in Africa. In writing on Botswana,
Anne Pitcher, Mary Moran, and Michael Johnston argue:
One of Africa’s success stories . . . may also be one of its most clearly “patrimo-
nial” or “neo-patrimonial” states. In Botswana, complex reciprocities link the
government and its citizens, legitimacy is created and reinforced through both
the rule of law and personal bonds and a mutually constitutive relationship ex-
ists between the personal and the public.73
The point is that in some places, neopatrimonialism and the forma-

tion of a capitalist class have occurred simultaneously, while in others
it has not, depending on the socioeconomic conditions at the time.
Whether or not African states obstruct the emergence of capitalism
cannot be answered by simply asserting the logic of neopatrimonialism.
It is ultimately an empirical question and the evidence is mixed, to say
the least.74
70
Such as Nyong’o 1989; Leys 1975; Cowen and Shenton 1996; Himbara 1994b; Kaplinsky 1980;
Kitching 1980; Langdon 1977; Lubeck 1987; Swainson 1980.
71
Gerschenkron 1962.
72
In the case of the East Asian developmental states, the dark side of embeddedness became ap-
parent during the financial crisis of 1997 as it morphed into cronyism.
73
Pitcher, Moran, and Johnston 2009.
74
The social barriers to the capitalist view has been critically examined by Mick Moore to suggest
that capitalism thrives under quite a diverse set of conditions—including those of neopatrimonialism
in the case of Africa. See Moore 1997.
Financial Policies and Crony Hyperinflation

In the era of structural adjustment, among the macroeconomic is-
sues neopatrimonialists have had to address is inflation. The logic of
neopatrimonialism is expected to produce high levels of inflation and
also “crony hyperinflation.”75 Where there’s low extractive capacity,
governments will seek revenue through seigniorage, issuing currency to
finance a deficit. The problem of inflation in Africa was not, as it may
have been in Latin America, one of excessive government stimulation
of the macroeconomy, and definitely not one of hyperinflation fuelled
by the maintenance of clientelistic social pacts, rather it resulted from
weakness in the supply side.76 Inflation rates in the precrisis decades
remained low in Africa and the standard deviation suggests widely di-
vergent experiences that do not denote continent-wide crony hyperin-
flation (see Table 1). As to the easy recourse to printing currency, in its
1994 report, the World Bank observed:
Most Sub-Saharan Africa countries have had low or moderate seigniorage,

consistent with the fact that inflation has also been relatively low. The median
rate of inflation was just 10.6 percent before the adjustment period, certainly
lower than in Latin America and no higher than in other developing countries.
By 1990, it had dropped to 8 percent. Even among the flexible exchange rate
countries, which have the highest inflation rates in the region, the median has
hovered around 20 percent—high by international standards but not a sign of
major macroeconomic imbalance.77
Similarly, the attribution of the 1997 banking crisis to excessive

credit growth driven by neopatrimonialism is both misleading and sim-
plistic. Here again, it is evident that a problem so common to develop-
ing countries is given a neopatrimonial twist for no apparent reason. As
Gerard Caprio and Daniela Klingebiel suggest, “[G]iven the tendency
of financial systems to deepen gradually as countries grow, real credit
growth of one to two times gdp [gross domestic product] growth might
be expected in normal times.” While in Latin America, the financial
crisis was preceded by high credit growth, many countries, “particularly
African and transition economies, show signs of a credit crunch.”78
75
Callaghy 1990.
76
Mosley and Weeks 1994.
77
World Bank 1994, 50.
78
Caprio and Klingebiel 1997.
Table 1
Consumer Price Inflation Rate, 1960–1980
Region Obs. Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max.
East Asia Pacific 235 16.32 78.10 –6.04 1136.25
Latin America and Caribbean 468 16.63 45.29 –100.. 504.73
Middle East and North Africa 186 7.87 10.21 –21.68 78.31
South Asia 74 7.00 7.01 –7.63 28.60
Sub-Saharan Africa 386 10.16 13.00 –10.03 116.45
Fiscal Matters and Neopatrimonialism

Neopatrimonial regimes are said to have “a structural tendency for fiscal
crisis.”79 Writing about Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, Thomas Callaghy
argues, “[T]he Achilles’ heel of neopatrimonial regimes is finance.”80
There are two opposing explanations for how the logic of neopatrimo-
nial policies leads to fiscal crisis. The first is its effects on the expendi-
ture side and the second is its effects on the revenue side.
The Expenditure Side and The Bloated State
The standard view of the African state is that it is “bloated,”81 a “lame
leviathan,”82 or a “swollen beast.”83 The contemporary perspective84 that
African governments are overextended was first expressed by the World
Bank in the Berg Report, which argued, “[T]he public sector is over-
extended.”85
To service their clientelistic networks or ensure the legitimacy
of their rule, power holders must spend excessively to create jobs,
which leads to bloated bureaucracies.86 In a neopatrimonial state,
redistributive impulses should be seen in atypically high govern-
ment consumption, salaries accounting for a large share of govern-
ment expenditure, and neglect of public investment. This assertion is
taken for granted by the neopatrimonialism school; there have been
no attempts to look at the numbers, which, as it turns out, point in
the opposite direction. One measure of the size of the state is pub-
lic sector employment as share of total population; or more simply,
van de Walle 1994, 135.
79
Callaghy 1994, 194.

80
von Soest 2007.

81
82
Callaghy 1987.
83
Theobald 1994.
84
There were earlier views that the African state was being overdeveloped, but these arguments
were built on entirely different epistemological premises. Alavi 1982; Shivji 1980.
85
World Bank 1981, 17.
86
Callaghy 1987; Gibson and Hoffman 2002; Englebert 2000.
the number of civil servants per 100 citizens. Table 2, which shows
civilian public sector employment as a percentage of the population,
does not suggest bloating in Africa. If anything, it suggests anemic
states. Against the idea of bloated state imagery, Arthur Goldsmith
argues:
[Sub-Saharan Africa] does not have inordinate public employment by world
standards. This is true even after adjusting for the level of national income. 
. . . Africa actually has fewer government workers per capita than any other de-
veloping region. . . . The average Asian country, for instance, reports 2.6 civilian
government workers for every one hundred people; the average Latin American
country reports 3.0 government workers. For a score of African countries, the
average ratio is only 1.5 government workers per one hundred people.87
Significantly, Mauritius and Botswana, the two most successful econo-

mies in Africa, were overbureaucratized, with more than five civil ser-
vants per 100 citizens.88
Another claim is that the size of African governments, measured in
terms of government consumption, is too large. The average African
state consumed around 23.5 percent of its gdp—less than the 25.7 per-
cent consumed in other developing countries—and within Africa, there
was considerable variation. The data does not suggest that neopatri-
monialism has pushed African governments to extremes in terms of
their consumption. Goldsmith concludes, “Without passing judgment
on the absolute levels of government activity anywhere, African states
are not singularly more likely to spend large shares of gross national
product, to employ high ratios of the population in bureaucratic jobs,
or to own extensive state-owned enterprises.”89
Complicating matters is that during the 1980s, African governments
drastically reduced the size of their bureaucracies and allowed wages to
fall precipitously, provoking the World Bank to claim that in efforts to
create the recommended minimalist state, African governments “some-
times tended to overshoot the mark.”90 Whereas it might initially be
assumed that this retrenchment amounts to further evidence against
the logic of neopatrimonialism, some argue that it is, in fact, evidence
in support of it. According to Francis Fukuyama, while donors sought
only to limit the scope of the state, “neo-patrimonial regimes, given
87
Goldsmith 1999.
88
Schiavo-Campo 1996.
89
See also Goldsmith 2000. This is true even on controls for levels of development as measured
for per capita income, type of system, and population; Booth 2011. In the much-cited study by Dani
Rodrik on openness and government spending, the African dummy is reported as negative or so barely
positive as to be statistically insignificant; Rodick 1996.
90
World Bank 1997.
their ultimate political dominance, used external conditionality as an

excuse for cutting back on the modern state sectors while protecting
and often expanding the scope of the neopatrimonial state.”91
The problem of Africa may be, then, that it is undergoverned.92 �The
small size of state budgets suggests that African neopatrimonial states
are, in fact, not redistributive. Van de Walle argues that Africa has elite
clientelism, which, unlike the mass clientelism found in developed
countries, is “primarily a mechanism for accommodation and integra-
tion of a fairly narrow political elite rather than the logic of mass party
patronage. Most of the material gains from clientelism are limited to
these elites. The stronger link between political elites and the citizenry
is through the less tangible bonds of ethnic identity.”93
The Revenue Side
Acknowledging that African states are not bloated in the sense dis-
cussed above, some scholars suggest that they are underfunded because,
in the logic of neopatrimonialism, they fail to tax their citizens.94 The
neopatrimonial African state is too anemic to spread wealth around.
The point about the low extractive capacity of these states is advanced
by van de Walle who argues:
. . . the real cause of the endemic fiscal crisis that has plagued most African
states following independence has been on the revenue side. Despite extensive
state intervention in the economy, cronyism and rent-seeking have siphoned off
potential state revenues. Taxes are not collected, exemptions are granted, tariffs
averted, licenses bribed away, parking fines pocketed. As a result, revenues al-
ways lag behind expenditures. It is often said that these regimes have low levels
of extractive capacity, but it is less a problem of capacity than the political logic of
a system in which the authority of the state is diverted to enhance private power
rather than the public domain. In sum, the consistent problems of unmanage-
able fiscal and balance-of-payments crises since independence have been an en-
tirely logical and predictable outcome of the manner in which politics have been
conducted south of the Sahara.95
Fukuyama 2004.
91
La Porta and colleagues, examining the “the quality of government,” find “consistently . . . that
92
the better performing governments are also larger, and collect higher taxes. Poorly performing gov-
ernments, in contrast, are smaller and collect fewer taxes . . . identifying big government with bad
government can be highly misleading.” La Porta et al. 1999, 266. See also Lassen 2000 on the size of
government and accountability in democracies.
93
van de Walle 2007.
94
Callaghy 1990; Lindberg 2001; von Soest 2007; Bräutigam, Fjeldstad, and Moore 2008; van de
Walle 2001.
95
van de Walle 2001.
Table 2
Civilian Public Sector Employment in Developing Country Regions
(Percentage of Population)
Sub-Saharan Latin American Middle East Asia
Africa and Caribbean and North Africa and Pacific
Circa 1980 1.9 4.6 4.9 3.1
Mid-1990 1.9 3.5 4.0 2.4
Source: Goldsmith 2000.
Oddly, van de Walle makes his argument by comparing African

countries with Organization of Economic Cooperation and Develop-
ment (oecd) members. A less invidious comparison would have been
with other developing countries. When such a comparison is per-
formed, two facts stand out. First, there are huge differences in tax
efforts among African countries and most of the variations are expli-
cable by the structural features, including the tax handles,96 they have
at their disposal, and their colonial legacy.97 Second, African countries
do, on average, collect a higher percentage of taxes than other develop-
ing countries. Indeed, they actually collect more than the International
Monetary Fund’s (imf) recommended minimum of 15 percent of gdp
for developing countries.98 In this respect, the conclusion of Emmanu-
elle Auriol and Michael Warlters is telling:
. . . everything else being equal African countries tax more than their other
economic and political economy variables would suggest. In view of the level
of their per capita gnp, the density of their population, their poor democratic
record and the level of their sunk cost to market entry, they are able to tax rela-
tively well. This result came as a surprise to us.99
To further reinforce this evidence, I use pooled ordinary least squares

and random panel data analyses. The dependent variable is the share of
tax revenue in gdp. I include all countries, excluding the former Soviet
bloc countries. We use dummy variables representing sub-Saharan Af-
rica,100 the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, while holding oecd
96
This refers to structural features of an economy that facilitates taxation.
97
Mkandawire 2010.
98
Ebeke and Ehrhart 2012.
99
Auriol and Warlters 2001.
100
This bivariate variable includes Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape
Verde, Congo Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya,
Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa,
Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The inclusion is based entirely on availability of data.
countries as the control group. Table 3 shows that the sub-Saharan

Africa dummy is significantly positive. It can, of course, be argued that
this positive Africa dummy is evidence of the pressures on neopat-
rimonialism to raise revenue. Indeed, good performance in terms of
tax collection has been used to establish the neopatrimonial nature of
African states. For example, when, with the help of donors, Zambia
increased tax collection following administrative reforms, the achieve-
ment was regarded as fueling neopatrimonialism; by strengthening the
administration, donors provided more resources to Zambia’s political
actors. According to Christian von Soest, the “larger consequence for
neopatrimonialism may therefore have been detrimental to its original
intentions . . . strengthening the collection of central state revenue has
been consistent with a neopatrimonial rationale, and may even have fed
neopatrimonialism overall, by providing increased resources for par-
ticularistic expenditure.”101 As it turns out, in a later study von Soest
and colleagues conclude, “there is no systematic relationship between
neopatrimonial trajectories and the strength of tax administration.”102
Finally, there is a claim that neopatrimonialism affects both the lev-
els and the patterns of taxation. Some scholars assert that neopatrimo-
nialism leads to the avoidance of personal taxes, which then compels
countries to rely on trade taxes.103 First, in higher tax, labor-reserve
economies, direct income taxes represent an important share of tax col-
lection.104 Second, the claim that reliance on trade taxes is a conse-
quence of neopatrimonialism overlooks the evidence that greater reli-
ance on indirect taxes is a common feature of developing countries.
Among these countries, trade taxes play an especially important role
that has little to do with neopatrimonialism; trade taxes have relatively
lower administrative costs related to collection than direct taxes.105
In sum, the fiscal crises of African states cannot be exclusively at-
tributed to profligacy induced by the need to meet the insatiable de-
mands of patronage or to low tax collection induced by neopatrimonial
favoritism.
Industrial and Trade Policy
Industrial policy has attracted considerable interest from the public
choice and neopatrimonialism schools because it is premised very obvi-
101
von Soest 2007.
102
von Soest, Bechle, and Korte 2011.
103
104
Mkandawire 2010.
105
Greenaway 1980; Prest 1970; Due 1988.
Table 3
OLS and Random Effects Models of Tax Revenue Share in GDP,
1995–2010
Pooled Pooled Random Random
Variables OLS OLS Panel Effects Panel Effects
Government Consumption 0.586*** 0.511*** 0.0745 0.00169
(lagged) (10.79) (8.489) (1.591) (0.0312)
Industry/GDP –0.00453 –0.0218
(–0.154) (–0.539)
Trade/GDP 0.0401*** 0.0447***
(7.981) (4.199)
Dependence –0.0434 –0.0172
(–1.587) (–0.513)
Aid/GNI (lagged) –0.128*** –0.00457
(–4.325) (–0.196)
Urbanization –0.0634*** –0.103*
(–4.574) (–1.828)
Log per capita income 0.885*** 0.627 2.411*** 2.897***
(5.290) (1.646) (3.620) (3.072)
Log population –0.826*** –1.688** –0.0995 0.297
(–2.593) (–2.322) (–0.526) (0.888)
Sub-Saharan Africa 2.285*** 4.327*** 4.269* 3.615*
(3.849) (6.872) (1.787) (1.732)
Latin America and –0.244 1.901*** –1.219 –0.901
Caribbean (–0.492) (4.075) (–0.979) (–0.710)
Asia –0.303 –1.248 –0.858 –3.195*
(–0.620) (–1.567) (–0.560) (–1.736)
Middle East and –3.643*** 1.051 –1.170 0.615
North Africa (–3.564) (1.070) (–0.332) (0.171)
Constant 0.581 6.496* –3.905 –3.044
(0.515) (1.720) (–0.692) (–0.452)

Observations 1,245 830 1,245 830
R-squared 0.350 0.431
Number of countries 118 89
Robust t-statistics in parentheses; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
ously on the state creating rents. The theoretical case for industrial
policy is robust—most reservations about its applicability to Africa
are related to the political economy characteristics of African coun-
tries.106 In the 1980s, explanations of the adoption of import substitu-
tion policies in Africa by the public choice school were attributed to
106
Altenburg 2011, 8.
rent seeking,107 but this approach had two weaknesses. First, it could
not be demonstrated empirically that industrial policies in Africa had
been pushed by rent seekers. Indeed, Bates and Krueger state, “One of
the most surprising findings in our case studies is the degree to which
the intervention of interest group fails to account for the initiation or
lack of initiation of policy reforms.” Second, the account is anachronis-
tic. Beneficiaries of industrialization were not the source of the policies,
but the product of industrialization.
In light of these observations, the public choice explanation had to
yield to neopatrimonialism for the microeconomic foundations of in-
dustrial policy in Africa. According to the logic of neopatrimonialism,
in the quest for new areas of predation, states will tend to interfere
in trade, foreign exchange pricing, and allocations that result in price
distortions.108 In this analysis, little attention is paid to the possibility
that factors other than neopatrimonialism could account for the cho-
sen strategies and policies. As John Waterbury argues, import substitu-
tions were overdetermined—that is, there are too many independent
variables to explain the dependent variable or its widespread adoption.
“History, culture, resource endowments, time of entry, international cri-
ses, strategic and military ambition, specific leaders, compelling ideas,
conceptual contagion, and the structure of interests in specific societies
and regions all played a part.” 109
For example, the case can be made that trade tariffs result from an
orthodox understanding of import-substitution industrialization. Vir-
tually all late industrializers (perhaps with the exception of city-states
such as Hong Kong and Singapore) have experienced a period of vig-
orous, policy-driven import-substitution industrialization.110 However,
even when other determinants were considered, the argument was that
the policies were also highly congruent with the political logics of Af-
rica’s new and insecure, but increasingly authoritarian rulers, and that
once in place, the policies were captured by neopatrimonial interest.
This position was followed by the argument that the logic of neopatri-
monialism ruled out trade reform. When reform took place, however,
it was argued that neopatrimonialism favored trade liberalization pre-
cisely to strengthen neopatrimonial relations.111
There has been considerable differentiation in industrial perfor-
mance across countries and across regions. In his study of industrial
107
Bates 1981; Krueger 1974, 291–303.
108
Englebert 2002; Levy 2007; Auty 1998.
109
Waterbury 1999.
110
Chang 2002; Chang 2007; Reinert 2007; Skarstein 2007.
111
Boone 1994b, 46; Theobald 1994, 705.
policy under neopatrimonial regimes, Tilman Altenburg argues that

Dutch disease or the resource curse and leadership’s commitment to
development and its time-horizon and ideation factors (“the intrinsic
development orientation of the national leadership”) trump neopatri-
monialism.112
Misuse of Foreign Exchange
Neopatrimonialism is said to involve the manipulation of foreign ex-
change to generate rents for the state and the favored clients.113 Cal-
laghy argues that foreign exchange is the lifeblood of neopatrimonial
regimes:
To support themselves as an emerging class and the expanded state with its
concomitant welfare subsidies and parastatal sectors upon which they were de-
pendent, the new rulers maintained overvalued exchange rates, import controls,
and foreign exchange licensing systems. In other words, political control of the
acquisition and allocation of foreign exchange was central to this syndrome.114�
This perspective feeds the widespread view that Africans somehow

squandered the opportunities provided by international markets. In-
deed, the impression is that African policymakers routinely mishandle
such gains: “These regimes have little flexibility to deal with interna-
tional price swings, even when they are positive. This may help explain
why countries like Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire . . . accumulated the bulk
of their debt during commodity booms of the 1970s.”115 Angus Dea-
ton and Ron Miller116 examine the sub-Saharan Africa experience with
commodity price stability and discuss whether poor macroeconomic
results can be attributed to the inherent difficulty of predicting com-
modity price fluctuations or to flawed internal political and fiscal ar-
rangements. They conclude that much of the evidence is not consistent
with the negative tone in the literature. Increases in prices are associ-
ated most strongly with increased investment and, subsequently, with
increased consumption and output. In other words,
commodity price booms have generally favorable effects on African economies;

they stimulate investment and generate additional gdp. There is no obvious
evidence that booms do not trigger gdp growth, nor do windfalls get immedi-
ately converted into government expenditure, at the rate of one for one or even
112
Altenburg 2011.
113
Englebert 2002; Levy 2007.
114
Callaghy 1984.
115
van de Walle 1994, 135.
116
Deaton and Miller 1995.
higher. Nor is there any sign of long-term trade imbalances beyond the initial
effects of some of the windfall being used to pay for imports. Admittedly the
evidence is relatively weak, and there is no doubt that there are some countries
where there have been horror stories. But the horror stories do not appear to
generalize to all countries in sub-Saharan Africa.117�
Looking back over the past half-century, we see that many of the
big attempts at industrialization took place during this period; poor
countries are likely to be lent money precisely during such booms; and,
while governments may not usually handle commodity fluctuations
properly, the effects of price increases have been generally benevolent.
Much of the expansion in infrastructure and educational facilities often
takes place during commodity booms, though the current expansion is
perhaps on a less pronounced scale than the expansion that occurred in
the 1960s and 1970s.
Neopatrimonialism and Social Policy

Social policy is of interest to neopatrimonialists because of their af-
finity to the political clientelism often associated with social transfer.
The neopatrimonial school focuses on two aspects of social policy—
its redistributive nature and the capacity of the state to provide social
services. With respect to redistribution, the logic of neopatrimonial-
ism leads to contradictory positions. The first assertion is that under
neopatrimonialism economic policy will tend be redistributive rather
than productive, with short-term redistributive policies preferred over
growth. However, the redistributive impulse is restrained by the chronic
penury of the state. Thus, scholars have, within the same paradigm,
challenged the redistributive imperative of neopatrimonialism. van de
Walle, for example, argues that Africa has “elite clientelism” that, un-
like the “mass clientelism” found in developed countries, confines its
redistributive activities to a tiny elite.118 He writes, “In sum and baldly
stated, state corruption in the region has been a mechanism for asset
accumulation and elite formation rather than poverty alleviation and
income redistribution.”119 The other position asserts that the state lacks
the capacity to provide social services.
The evidence cited for these assertions includes one or two elements
of social expenditure (often measured as the sum of social security
expenditure, health, and education).120 The claim is that African gov-
117
Deaton and Miller 1995, 45.
118
van de Walle 2007.
119
van de Walle 2009.
120
van de Walle 2001.
ernments will not spend much on education or health. I use panel data
from seventy-nine developing countries in the period 1995–2012 to
explore the link between social spending and the standard variables
used in such analysis. I include the dummy variable (Africa) for sub-
Saharan Africa121 to see whether the sub-Saharan neopatrimonialism
works against social expenditure, as suggested by one variant of the
neopatrimonialism school. The finding is that the African dummy
is significantly positive with the implication that, controlling for the
standard determinants of social expenditure, African countries spend
more on education and health than would be expected given their levels
of income and structural characteristics (see Table 4).
If expenditures on education and health are evidence of redistribu-
tion, then available evidence should support the view that neopatrimo-
nialism is redistributive without, of course, implying that it is opposed
to growth. Furthermore, to conclude that large expenditures in these
areas are distributive—or not—the incidence of such expenditures on
various groups needs to be examined. While African and East Asian
countries allocate similar shares of public expenditure to education,
East Asia spends more on general education than higher education.122
It is not clear how the redistributive imperatives of neopatrimonialism
would account for the difference.
The second assertion involves the impact of neopatrimonialism on
the state’s capacity to provide social services. Concerned with the pos-
sibility that social programs would fall prey to neopatrimonial inter-
ests, donors designed programs and institutions to circumvent the ones
dominated by such interests. Under the new public management view
developed in the 1980s, parallel incentive-driven delivery agencies and
autonomous project offices within ministries were set up, arguably un-
dermining the development of more accountable structures of gover-
nance.123 In addition, drawing on the idea of the bloated state, this
new public management view authorized drastic retrenchment in social
sectors on the grounds that such sectors were not contributing to social
welfare. In terms of social welfare, however, it is not clear that smaller
government is good government. Figure 2 plots a nonincome human
121
See for instance Baldacci et al. 2008; Rudra 2004; Segura-Ubiergo 2012; Haggard and Kaufman
2008. I measure social expenditure as the sum of the shares of education and health in gdp. Data on
other components such as social transfers and subsidies are not readily available.
122
Page 1994.
123
Hickey 2007. There is some evidence suggesting that the inequality in health as measured by
the Gini coefficient is higher in Africa than in other regions, confirming the view that African neopat-
rimonialism is not redistributive. However, we should bear in mind that the standard deviation in
the index is highest in Africa, ranging from .26 in Uganda to .78 in Zambia, suggesting considerable
variation in the distributive policies of various neopatrimonial regimes.
Table 4
OLS and Random Effects Models of Social Expenditure Share in GDP,
1995–2010a
Pooled OLS Random Effects
Log per capita –0.387 –1.114**
(–1.454) (–2.336)
Urbanization 0.0107 0.0271
(1.242) (1.050)
Trade/GDP 0.0243*** 0.00448
(7.078) (0.839)
Debt service/GNI –0.0808*** –0.0360**
(–4.658) (–2.263)
Population density –0.00416*** –0.00488**
(–6.837) (–2.533)
Population over 64 0.181** 0.171
(2.045) (1.058)
Aid/GNI 0.0566*** 0.0459***
(3.170) (3.245)
Infant mortality rate –0.0114** –0.0595***
(–2.137) (–7.597)
Military expenditure/GDP 0.0134 0.245***
(0.342) (3.553)
Industry/GDP –0.0521*** –0.0164
(–3.968) (–0.883)
FDI/GDP –0.0114 –0.0292***
(–0.472) (–2.808)
Agriculture/GDP –0.0992*** –0.0638***
(–5.973) (–3.073)
Sub–Saharan Africa 1.295*** 2.575***
(5.035) (3.550)
Constant 10.44*** 16.05***
(5.435) (5.230)
Observations 703 703
R-squared 0.370
Number of countries 79
Robust t-statistics in parentheses; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

a
Social expenditure is the sum of the shares of public education and public health expenditures in
gdp. All data are from the World Bank DataBank.
development index, including education and life expectancy and ex-

cluding income level, against the share of public sector employment in
the total population. The figure shows that the two variables are posi-
tively related with a bivariate correlation of .70. As in other developing
states, in African states a high level of employment in the public sector
is associated with high levels of human development, suggesting pro-
.8
Nonincome Human Development Index
.6
.4
.2
.5 1 1.5 2
Public Sector Employment as Share of Population
Figure 2
Human Deveopment by Public Sector Employment Average, 1987–1995
Sources: Lienert and Modi 1997; United Nations Development Program Human Development Index.
cesses different from those implied by neopatrimonialism. This finding

is perhaps not surprising. Although much of the anecdotal evidence
about public sector effectiveness is drawn from overstaffed headquarter
offices, most public sector employees are teachers and nurses.124
The limited empirical evidence advanced in this article and the
contradictory positions within the paradigm itself suggests that a one-
to-one correspondence between neopatrimonialism and social policy
cannot be claimed. Social policies in Africa are the result of a wide
range of factors, including ideas, interests, path dependence, and inter-
national norms. Many African social welfare systems trace their roots
to social pacts forged by nationalist movements, struggles by workers,
or government acceptance of international norms.125 The management
of these systems may be corrupt or clientelistic, but neither corruption
nor clientelism represent their origins or raison d’être. Nevertheless, the
overall effect of the neopatrimonialism discourse on social policy (in its
124
One argument of the neopatrimonial literature is that African governments favor generalist
administrative positions that are more amenable to neopatrimonial disbursement. However, studies
suggest that the most significant increase in civil service has been the hiring of additional teachers,
health workers, and police—careers tracks with specific skill requirements. Himbara 1994a.
125
Adesina 2009; Mkandawire 2012; Mkandawire 2009; Kpessa et al. 2011.
redistributive or elitist variants) has been “to delegitimize existing sys-

tems of social provision as simply an aspect of ‘patronage.’ ”126 Because
they are presumed to be underpinned by neopatrimonialism and thus
captured by elites who took the benefits for themselves or used them
for political manipulation, whole systems of social provision have been
allowed to deteriorate.
The Paradox of Macroeconomic Reform
and Neopatrimonialism
I have hinted in this article at some of the assertions related to macro-

economic policy. An argument insisted upon again and again over the
past three decades pertains to how neopatrimonialism rejects or under-
mines economic reform.127 Where governments and donors claimed
adjustment had taken place, the neopatrimonial school attributed poor
subsequent economic performance to what van de Walle calls partial
reform syndrome128—that they had not adjusted enough or that gov-
ernments hoodwinked donors into believing that they had adjusted,
“which often takes statistical manipulations or minimalist interpreta-
tions of reforms in order to show that conditionalities have been re-
spected,”129 ultimately rendering conditionalities and compliance as
nothing more than a trompe l’oeil. According to this argument, ad-
justment is a ruse by governments to get hold of aid money that they
desperately need to maintain clientelistic networks, and a temporary
ploy. As such, it reflects the inability of the state to provide anything
to clients.
To conceal the fact that they have been taken for a ride and driven
by perverse incentives that reward individuals by the volume of aid
dispersed, neopatrimonialists argue, aid officials become complicit in
the charade, pronouncing obviously flawed implementations success-
ful. And even if governments do adjust, some argue that the adjust-
ment cannot last; neopatrimonialism guarantees recidivism. As soon as
Hickey 2007.
126
van de Walle 2001. On financial reform in Nigeria, Lewis and Stein 1997 argue, “From a
127
prescriptive vantage, these circumstances raise a conundrum. The status quo, a state-administered
financial system under patrimonial auspices, is hardly an engaging option. On the other hand, more
rapid and radical deregulation would likely hasten the pathologies which we have discussed. A slower,
more deliberate scheme of reform, with greater attention to institutional development and regulatory
enforcement, presents an attractive alternative, yet this is also predicated upon a developmental (rather
than patrimonial) state elite, and a responsive private sector.”
Contrary to the logic of neopatrimonialism, the government of Nigeria made radical financial
reforms that gave birth to the huge bank that underpins the accumulation model.
128
van de Walle 2001.
129
Chabal and Daloz 1999; Hibou 2000.
names are inked on an agreement, local elites revert to their retrograde

neopatrimonial ways.130
But what if elites operated against type and actually did adjust? In
fact, contrary to the arguments of neopatrimonialists, African govern-
ments have, for better or worse, adjusted.131 This, according to Michael
Hodd, poses an intriguing question: “If vested political interest is op-
posed to market solutions and if the financial leverage of the imf and
World Bank acting alone is not decisive in imposing policy change, why
then have so many African countries begun substantial restructuring of
their economies on market economy lines?”132
Several stratagems are used to address this question. One is to argue
that neopatrimonial institutions are equipped with hydra-like resilience
and apparently so agile that they invariably come out on top. Thus, while
adjustment may indeed have taken place, factors related to neopatrimo-
nialism emerged and “hollowed out” its positive effects.133 Put another
way, the “old brigades and money bags”134 returned from oblivion, re-
asserted themselves, and destroyed many of the gains in policy reform.
A different explanation involves changes in the comportment of the
elite. Hodd’s answer to his own question is that past activities have
enriched the elite to such an extent that that they are able to gain more
from an expansion of the economy than from flows of patronage, or that
they have amassed so much wealth that they have become more gener-
ous. It is a state of affairs “analogous to many captains of industry in the
19th century in Europe and North America who turned to increasingly
philanthropy in the latter part of their lives.”135 With their bellies bust-
ing, the big men in Africa simply decided to reduce their gluttony and
turn philanthropic!
The Overall Economic Effects of Neopatrimonialism
Demonstrating that neopatrimonial logic does not produce the expected
effects on a number of economic indicators does not fully undermine
the neopatrimonialists’ fundamental assertion that it is impossible for
130
Hibou 1998; van de Walle 2001; Hodd 1987.
131
World Bank 2005; Mkandawire 2005.
132
Hodd 1987.
133
Callaghy 1994.
134
For the advocates of neopatrimonialism, the task of combating it is truly Herculean. As it has
many heads and hydra-like remerges, each time one head is cut off, its manifestations and conse-
quences are infinitely malleable. The title of one article, “. . . And yet They Persist” (Brownlee 2002),
captures this well.
135
Hodd 1987.
an African state to play a developmental role.136 Neopatrimonialism

is said to lock countries into low-level equilibrium traps. The litera-
ture seeks to explain the negative African dummy in economic growth
analyses. Much of it takes default World Bank positions as the norm or
the functional necessity—even when the bank itself is uncertain about
its models—against which African politics are prejudged despite het-
erodoxical success stories and evidence that these policies do not lead
to economic growth.
Neopatrimonialism results in flaws in the performance of the post-
independence state, especially in regard to society at large. Such a state
has not been able to distance itself from society enough to perform effi-
ciently. As a consequence of neopatrimonialism—due to the capture of
public resources and the direction of it toward private ends—the state
cannot allocate resources to productive public goods. The government’s
preoccupation with the day-to-day management of clientelistic rela-
tions means that it is mired in the pursuit of myopic short-term poli-
cies.137 The Asian “autonomous state” can be juxtaposed to the African
“lame leviathan.”138 On an ideological level, African states and elites are
uninterested in development and make deliberate attempts to block it.
It follows, then, that Africa’s poor economic performance is the logical
outcome of neopatrimonialism.
Interestingly, the data do not support the view of decline and stagna-
tion as the norm in African economic history, despite what the logic of
neopatrimonialism suggests. The actual trajectory of Africa’s postcolo-
nial development is captured in Figure 3. It shows an n-shaped curve
of economic growth rather than the downward sloping or inverted-
v curve implicit in neopatrimonial arguments. Neopatrimonialists
are focused on explaining the downward sloping parts of the curves,
draw their evidence from the lost decades of African economies, and
consequently have problems explaining earlier periods of growth and
the recovery of the last decade or so.139 Comparative research identi-
fies considerable differences in economic performance among African
countries140 and recent econometric analyses identify many periods of
136
I addressed this issue in an earlier article on the possibility of developmental states in Africa.
Mkandawire 2001.
137
Callaghy 1987; Bayart 1993.
138
Hodd 1987.
139
Alice Sidzingre, who seeks to reconcile neopatrimonialism with development economics, seems
to see this focus as neopatrimonialism. She argues that neopatrimonialism has “contributed to the
analysis of vicious circles and traps [poverty and corruption traps] which economists have conceptual-
ised in terms of threshold effects and stable low equilibria.” Sidzingre 2012.
140
See, for instance, the comparison of Uganda and Zimbabwe in Brett 2008. He stresses the im-
portance of contextualization in determining the success or failure of policy regimes.
“growth accelerations” of varying duration141 (such periods were more

frequent before the era of adjustment). Given these episodes of growth,
Michael Lofchie’s question seems an appropriate follow up. “The more
challenging project is to explain why African countries vary so greatly
in how well they do, both over time and in contrast to one another,” he
writes. “Is there room for differing developmental subcategories within
the neopatrimonial rubric?”142
The data Lofchie points to are facts the logic of neopatrimonialism
should explain. Apart from answering the wrong question, the neopat-
rimonial approach is not appropriate for examining cross-sectional and
longitudinal variations in economic performance. The problem is that
the neopatrimonialist view attempts to explain something volatile—
economic growth—with determinants that are almost eternal (ethnic
diversity) or stable (neopatrimonial institutions and culture). Moshe
Syrquin143 observes that with respect to many of the variables used in
current cross-country analyses of growth, there is a fundamental prob-
lem in relating variables with low time persistence, such as growth, to
highly persistent variables such as ethnic diversity or neopatrimonial-
ism. Since culturally determined neopatrimonialism has low temporal
variation, it is unlikely to determine growth, which varies both spatially
and temporally.
In light of such obvious intertemporal and interspatial variations
in economic performance, some neopatrimonialists now acknowledge
variation and suggest several possible ways out of the conundrum. With
every African locked into a dyadic relationship of reciprocity, it is dif-
ficult to imagine people breaking out. One solution to the troublesome
anomaly of neopatrimonial leaders presiding over high economic per-
formance is the recourse to such deus ex machina as expatriates, “oases
of integrity,”144 or “pockets of reform/islands of alternative systems,”145
that have inexplicably escaped the hold of neopatrimonialism. With
the logic of neopatrimonialism enjoying the status of inexorable force,
agents of change are either exogenous temporary aberrations con-
demned to revert to the neopatrimonial equilibrium, or opportun-
ists availing themselves of favorable conditions for ascendance in the
neopatrimonial pecking order—one big man replacing another.146 The
141
See Arbache 2006; Hausmann, Pritchett, and Rodrik 2005; Pattillo, Gupta, and Carey 2005.
142
Lofchie 2002, 846.
143
Syrquin 1998.
144
Jacobs 2011.
145
Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 2004.
146
Bratton and van de Walle capture this position thus: “Insiders in a patrimonial ruling coalition
are unlikely to promote reform. . . . Recruited and sustained with material inducements, lacking an
650
600
550
US$
500
450
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Year
Figure 3
Africa’s Postcolonial Development GDP Per Capitaa
Source: Elaborated by author from World Bank DataBank.
a
Constant 2000 US dollars.
possibility of enclaves of rationality in a universe of irrationality and

self-serving behavior is then advanced to suggest that there might be
such a thing as a “neopatrimonial developmental state”147 or “regulated
neopatrimonialism.”148 This varieties of neopatrimonialism approach
has been used to identify leaders of developmental or regulatory neopat-
rimonial states: Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi (1964–94), Jomo
Kenyatta (1964–78) of Kenya, and Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Ivory
Coast (1960–93). The problem with the association of regime type and
periodization is that in many cases, the same leaders were in power
when the economic decline began.149 This suggests that the association
independent political base, and thoroughly compromised in the regime’s corruption, they are depen-
dent on the survival of the incumbent. Insiders typically have risen through the ranks of political ser-
vice and, apart from top leaders who may have invested in private capital holdings, derive livelihood
principally from state or party offices. Because they face the prospect of losing all visible means of
support in a political transition, they have little option but to cling to the regime, to sink or swim with
it.” Bratton and van de Walle 1994.
147
Kelsall 2011; Cammack and Kelsall 2011.
148
Bach 2012. The regimes of Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta (1964–78) and the Ivory Coast’s Félix
Houphouët-Boigny (1960–93) are cited as such cases.
149
On Kenya, Morten Jerven observes, “Like most African economies, Kenya was hard hit by
economic shocks in the 1970s but weathered the storm much better than most African economies.
While it is still hard to disentangle growth effects arising from domestic policy and external market
of developmental or regulated neopatrimonialism with economic per-

formance may simply be a reflection of the cycles African economies
are prone to, which not only destroys the notion that neopatrimonial-
ism and predation are logically linked, but also raises questions about
the difference between the developmental neopatrimonial state and the
developmental state tout court. It also leads to tautological labeling of
economies by economic performance.
One way to avoid this tautological labeling of regimes is to identify
the different historical trajectories that spawned them. Some scholars
assert that particular conditions of tradition and modernity produced a
more felicitous type of neopatrimonialism. Pierre Englebert150 identi-
fies a type of neopatrimonialism that ensures the legitimacy of the state
in cases where the colonial order is somehow congruent with traditional
sources of authority. This approach is problematic. First, it assumes that
national identities of countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal
emerged with the attainment of independence in the mid-twentieth
century. In fact, Africans have lived within the borders delineated at
the Berlin Conference for more than 100 years; recognition of state au-
thority over borders is the norm. Second, it underestimates the success
of nationalist movements in creating new social contracts that evolved
out of the main social movements and social compromises. It is partly
this success that accounts for Africa’s “secessionist deficits.”151 In addi-
tion, legitimacy is not an independent factor with which to determine
state performance. It is all too often the outcome of state performance
and it is difficult to tell the direction of causality, which leads to serious
endogeneity issues.
To conclude, the monotonic mapping of some aspects of neopat-
rimonialism into a definite economic policy, let alone an outcome, is
based more on a leap of faith than on the existence of a tightly knit algo-
rithm or, as advocates of the neopatriomonial approach suggest, on the
impeccable logic of neopatrimonialism. The claim that neopatrimo-
nialism provides the microeconomic foundations with which to under-
stand the macroprocesses of Africa is unwarranted. As John Maynard
Keynes argued, macroeconomy is not reducible to microfoundations.
There are simply no nontrivial algorithms that will establish a one-to-
one correlation between microeconomic behavior and macroeconomic
conditions, this analysis turns the conventional story of Kenya upside down: in terms of aggregate
growth rates, Kenya did relatively well under Daniel arap Moi’s rule; its performance under Kenyatta
was not exceptional.” Jerven 2011.
150
Englebert 2000.
151
I should add that when size of population is taken into account, the legitimacy variable loses its
statistical significance.
outcomes. Similarly, there is simply no way that the logic accounting

for the macroeconomic problems in Africa and their possible solutions
can be derived from the myriad communities in the region, regardless
of claims about the logic of neopatrimonialism.
General Implications
The discourse on neopatrimonialism has had an enormous impact on
how Africa is perceived and to a large degree informs the attitudes and
knowledge of many individuals who deal with African governments
and societies. In addition to the analytical aspects of neopatrimonialism
discussed above, there are also more general implications related to the
school’s preeminence.
A World without Ideas and Passions
All human agency presupposes ideas. Policies are shaped not only by
interests and structures but also by ideas. In scholarship on Africa from
the latter part of the twentieth century, there is considerable interest in
the ideas and ideologues that shaped the continent’s policies and state
formation.152 Although some of this work borders on the hagiographic,
it nevertheless suggests that ideas matter in African political affairs as
much as elsewhere. In fact, neglect of the ideational factor by African
elites is status quo, and such behavior obscures learning in African poli-
tics. The policy failures of African states are never inadvertent or the
byproduct of diffusion; they are ineluctably linked to rent seeking and
neopatrimonialism, which leaves no room for learning or the interplay
of ideas.
Although the neopatrimonialism school claims that, unlike the struc-
tural determinism of the dependency school for example, it seeks to give
agency to Africans by permitting them choice about development tra-
jectories, its approach is predisposed to downplay ideas. Whatever ideas
the elite hold are dismissed by neopatrimonialists as rationalization of
interests and the crude excrescence of neopatrimonialism. Thus, al-
though much is said about human agency and individual and collective
initiative, it turns out that individual choices are ultimately determined
either by the ubiquitous logic of neopatrimonialism or huge doses of
ignorance. Where social actors do what they do reflexively, or even
compulsively, agency ceases to have much meaning. In other words,
how agency and choice are brought into play is ultimately limited by
152
Ake 1979; Gana 1986; Keller and Rothchild 1987; Young 1982.
the logic of neopatrimonialism. Marrying public choice to neopatri-

monialism produces communities whose members are attracted by the
possibility of material gain. There are no ethnic bonds, no sentiments
of place and past, no loyalty, no passion, and no belonging—except
perhaps as smokescreens to conceal crass material interests.
The Antidemocratic and Antipolitical Thrust
of Neopatrimonialism
The neopatrimonialism school’s antidemocratic stance takes two forms.

The first is related to the nature of African citizens and their inability to
vote intelligently. For Chabal and Daloz, the notion of representation
has no meaning in Africa because when people vote,
they are expected, or “asked” to do so or perhaps because it is indispensable to

be seen to be voting a certain way. On the whole, they do not vote because they
support the ideas of a particular political party but because they must placate the
demands of their existing or putative patron.153
Since the focus is on insulating policymakers from encumbrances of

domestic politics—especially in its rent-seeking or neopatrimonial
variant—it is suggested that calls for democratization to curb the pow-
ers of despots is to miss the point.154
The other has to do with concern over the permeability of the state.
This concern has generated minatory warnings about the danger of
politics interfering with the work of authoritarian leaders deemed to
be pursuing the correct policies with respect to institution building and
economics, but which ultimately leads to states impervious to and un-
encumbered by society. From its inception, structural adjustment was
viewed as an essentially technocratic issue on which there was consen-
sus. Informed by a political economy that blames distortions on pursuit
of interests, structural adjustment seeks a political order that shields
policymakers from the encumbrances of politics. Although the politi-
cal elite does at times appeal to civil society, the logic of the analysis
gravitates toward an aversion to locally constituted social movements
and leans toward the nongovernmental organization (ngo) world of
nonmembership organizations. The elite are shielded through these,
presumably, from the ravages of their culture. For all its populism and
153
154
Bienen and Herbst 1996; Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993. Callaghy 1994 predicts a future for
Africa in which the “bedrock of political reform will remain weak, authoritarian clientelist and inef-
ficient,” and urges the West not to allow its rhetoric to get in the way of helping military regimes
committed to market reform.
railing against the big man, the neopatrimonialist approach is pro-

foundly suspicious of the culture in which the mass of African people
live. And as indicated above, it constitutes an underworld that wreaks
havoc on the coherence of the state and political society. Arguing that
“ascription has not disappeared with democratization,” Hyden hypoth-
esizes that, “the more competitive elections are, the greater the risk of
falling back on ascriptive criteria for conducting politics.”155
Several options to overcome this state of affairs have been suggested.
One is a shift to bureaucratic authoritarianism that would be auton-
omous, escape capture by rent-seeking or clientelistic networks, and
lend coherence to statecraft. Another is reliance on ngos or external
agents of restraint that, because their membership is comprised largely
of foreigners or is an organized national group, are not beholden to the
domestic social forces that hold down the state. Democratization has
also been suggested, but only grudgingly.
The antidemocratic thrust of the neopatrimonialism school can be
traced back to its Weberian roots. There is a strong antidemocratic and
militaristic aspect to some presentations of the rational-legal Weberian
framework. As Tom Bottomore� notes, “Democracy as a political idea,
and as a social movement inspired by that idea, which is valuable in its
own right, finds no place whatsoever in Weber’s thought.” 156 However,
as Hazel Gray and Mushtaq Khan point out, “Weber saw a permanent
tension between the logic of bureaucratic rule, which was inherently
rational, and the logic of political leadership and charisma operating
through democratic processes.”157 Thus for Weber, the ideal type was
not necessarily desirable; indeed, for him, taming the bureaucracy was
a major preoccupation. Much of this tension is ignored in the current
discourse on democracy, for example, with calls to allow greater au-
tonomy for enclaves of rationality in contexts where democratic politics
are taking root. This means that the rational-legal order is the ideal and
political order is its nemesis.
Conclusion
A number of authors have deployed neopatrimonialism as something
that provides the microfoundations of policies and outcomes at the
macrolevel. Together with evidence of egregious cases of misrule and
lachrymose images of Africa, neopatrimonialism has become a potent
155
Bottomore 1989.
156
Bottomore 1989.
157
Gray and Khan 2010.
force not only in academic terms but also in framing policies toward Af-
rica by providing a kind of institutionalized common sense. Many in-
dividuals interacting with African states base their actions on the views
of the neopatrimonialism school. The metaphors it has generated allow
certain predictions that are, in terms of the metaphors themselves, ir-
refutable and ineluctable, and have had a powerful influence on many
policymakers.
This article has focused more on the explanatory value of the concept
of neopatrimonialism than on the characterization of social actors in
Africa. Indeed, the neopatrimonialism school does not confine itself to
the characterization of the key social actors, but also predicts the of-
ten pernicious outcomes in terms of economic performance. If it turns
out that the outcomes are indeterminate, then much of the writing on
neopatrimonial politics in Africa is not particularly helpful. Advocates
of neopatrimonialism claim that their approach can “explain what is ac-
tually happening on the ground in Africa,” and that they use “universal
analytical tools” in order to do so.158� As is the case with many paradigms,
the standards of evidence required for those operating with it are often
set quite low.159 The easy acceptance by researchers and policymakers
of the school’s claims in the absence of empirical evidence suggests that
there are strong preconceptions and prejudices about African politics
that are unlikely to be dispelled by a more accurate measurement of the
phenomenon in question.
The literature, with its penchant for evocative epithets, is plagued
by anomalies, non sequiturs, and false paradoxes—all evidence of the
functionalist origins of neopatrimonialism. Institutions, ideas, and in-
dividuals are said to exist because they serve a particular function; the
paradoxes arise when they do not seem to serve their assigned role or do
not produce the predicted outcomes. Such incongruities of interpreta-
tion should dispel notions that African policies are singularly driven by
the inexorable logic of neopatrimonialism. But even where theory and
evidence plead against too ready an acceptance of the impact of neopat-
rimonialism suggested by various authors, the literature itself seems
deaf to such appeals. Many of the neopatrimonialist claims about cau-
sality are spurious and much of what is attributed to neopatrimonialism
could, with equal justification, apply to other factors. Most specifically,
158
159
As Therkildsen 2005 observes, “Proponents of neopatrimonialism do not explicitly test its main
propositions but take them as given.” deGrassi 2008 makes the same point: “[A]nalysts need to avoid
a priori assumptions about the existence of neopatrimonialism and hasty invocations of the phenome-
non . . . without thorough documentation of the precise forms, characteristic, origins, transformations,
contestations, extent, and other important features of neopatrimonialism.”
many features of underdevelopment in Africa are given a cultural twist

that is not particularly informative and in a way is passé. A more com-
parative approach to Africa’s experience would caution against such
generalizations and stereotypes.
The analytical template forged by the neopatrimonialism school has
had the effect of flattening the African political and economic land-
scape—often rendering monochromatic the many colorful and varied
characters who have taken the African political stage over the last half
century. This flattening extends beyond space to time as well. There
is simply no sense of conjuncture or periodization within the analysis.
By neglecting the cross-sectional and longitudinal variance of the Af-
rican experience, the neopatrimonialist view provides an impoverished
understanding of the complexities of the continent. It also oversimpli-
fies the many contradictions of the continent. Adverbial caveats do not
diminish the essentially leveling effect of the term “neopatrimonial.”
What ultimately results is not a rich tapestry of case studies but rather
reportages of one damned country after another.
The attribution of all African ills to neopatrimonialism simply un-
dermines internally driven change by occluding the real problems: cor-
ruption, vertical and horizontal inequality, ethnic and gender discrimi-
nation, weak state capacity, wrong ideas, political chicanery, and the
machinations of the many external actors who seek to exploit Africa in
some form or other. These problems could, were there a will to do so,
actually be addressed. Much of the scholarship tends toward a deter-
ministically pessimistic view of development in Africa with the logic of
neopatrimonialism unavoidably pushing the analysis toward ontologi-
cal despair, hence its association with Afro-pessimism.
Neopatrimonialism is too blunt and too formulaic an instrument for
understanding the great variety of African experiences and the contra-
dictory interests, ideologies, and motivations of social actors. The call,
therefore, is for more concrete studies of the African continent and an
approach that enjoys a healthier relationship with the empirical world
than the procrustean concept of neopatrimonialism does. Economic
policy-making is a highly complex process involving ideas, interests,
economic forces and structures, path dependence, and institutions, and
it cannot be reductively derived from the logic of neopatrimonialism.
Understanding the ideas, interests, and structures that shape or hinder
Africa’s development efforts requires serious work.
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D uring the past two decades, neopatrimonialism has become the

World Politics, 1–50

neopatrimonialism, that invocation of the concept has the air of irrefut-

Most scholars, however, agree with Christopher Clapham’s concise

Yet presumably because of a combination of events—the good perfor-

Neopatrimonialism and the Microeconomic Foundations of

led to the freighted questions, “Why is it that African leaders refuse to

Significantly, both approaches induced a quest for the microeco-

The Pathology of African Neopatrimonialism

backward and incapable of development?”35 In other words, what is

dominated by the big men.43 This analysis tends to downplay observ-

shied away from linking itself to the fundamental or proximate causes

ism should reduce voice and accountability, weaken government effec-

A recurring theme in the literature is that as a result of neopatrimo-

Lewis 1996. For additional references see Noman 2013.

obstructed capitalist class

Among the effects of neopatrimonialism is the obstruction of produc-

Indeed, if class is defined (in keeping with standard sociology) as a self-con-

The third argument is that neopatrimonialism does not provide an

Tangri 1998, 110.

Lewis 1994; Sandbrook 2005, 1123.

While the assertion that neopatrimonialism prefers relation-based

Neopatrimonialism repeats many of the dependency theory views

The point is that in some places, neopatrimonialism and the forma-

Financial Policies and Crony Hyperinflation

Most Sub-Saharan Africa countries have had low or moderate seigniorage,

Similarly, the attribution of the 1997 banking crisis to excessive

Fiscal Matters and Neopatrimonialism

Callaghy 1994, 194.

von Soest 2007.

Significantly, Mauritius and Botswana, the two most successful econo-

their ultimate political dominance, used external conditionality as an

Source: Goldsmith 2000.

Oddly, van de Walle makes his argument by comparing African

To further reinforce this evidence, I use pooled ordinary least squares

countries as the control group. Table 3 shows that the sub-Saharan

Robust t-statistics in parentheses; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

policy under neopatrimonial regimes, Tilman Altenburg argues that

This perspective feeds the widespread view that Africans somehow

commodity price booms have generally favorable effects on African economies;

Neopatrimonialism and Social Policy

Robust t-statistics in parentheses; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

development index, including education and life expectancy and ex-

cesses different from those implied by neopatrimonialism. This finding

redistributive or elitist variants) has been “to delegitimize existing sys-

I have hinted in this article at some of the assertions related to macro-

names are inked on an agreement, local elites revert to their retrograde

an African state to play a developmental role.136 Neopatrimonialism

“growth accelerations” of varying duration141 (such periods were more

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

possibility of enclaves of rationality in a universe of irrationality and

Robust t-statistics in parentheses; * p<0.01, p<0.05, * p<0.1

Robust t-statistics in parentheses; * p<0.01, p<0.05, * p<0.1