Book Reviews

Guy Martin
Africa Today, Volume 47, Number 3/4, Summer/Autumn 2000, pp. 177-181 (Review)
Published by Indiana University Press

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Book Reviews

Bayart, Jean-Franois, Stephen Ellis, and Batrice Hibou. 1999. THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE STATE IN AFRICA. Oxford: James Currey. 126 pp. Chabal, Patrick and Jean-Pascal Daloz. 1999. AFRICA WORKS: DISORDER AS POLITICAL INSTRUMENT. Oxford: James Currey. 170 pp. It is fortunate that in the same year, the excellent African Issues series of Londons International African Institute gives us the best that French Africanist scholarship has to offer. The Criminalization of the State in Africa is exemplary of the cole de Paris, whose chef de le is none other than Frances premier Africanist, Jean-Franois Bayart, and which includes such other luminaries as Jean-Pierre Chrtien and Achille Mbembe. Africa Works is representative of the cole de Bordeaux, centered around that Universitys famed Centre dtude dAfrique noire and the journal Politique africaine, led (inter alia) by Patrick Chabal, Jean-Franois Mdard, and Daniel Bourmaud, a School which ostensibly differs frombut often agrees withBayarts group in its approach to the study of African politics and society, as this review will demonstrate. First published in French in 1997 as La criminalisation de ltat en Afrique (Editions Complexe), The Criminalization of the State in Africa denitely bears Bayarts intellectual imprint and builds on the authors earlier seminal work, The State in Africa (Longman, 1993), in which he developed the concepts of la politique du ventre (the goat grazes where it is tied, those in power intend to eat) and of the rhizome state (socalled because of its metaphorical resemblance to a tangled underground root system). Resolutely taking a longue dure historical perspective la Fernand Braudel, the authors suggest that contemporary Africa is returning to Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness: a slide towards criminalization throughout the subcontinent is a strong probability (pp. 3031). Furthermore, following Charles Tillys Coercion, Capital, and European States (1990), they argue that in Africa, the interaction between power, war, capital accumulation, and various illicit activities constitutes a specic political trajectory which must be viewed in a long-term historical perspective. According to the authors, this process of criminalization of politics and the state in Sub-Saharan Africa reects the increasing normalization of patently criminal practices: the relationship between economic accumulation and tenure of political power in Africa now exists in new conditions. These have been created by the restoration of authoritarian regimes, . . . through a process of economic and nancial rot, by the erosion of state

sovereignty, and by the multiplication of armed conicts covering entire regions (pp. 89). Each of the authors then proceeds to give substance to this argument by focusing on various dimensions of the criminalization of the state in Africa: the political (Bayart), the economic (Hibou), and South Africa as a case study (Ellis) (in my view a better sequence than the books outline, where South Africa is sandwiched between the two disciplines). In an incisive and thought-provoking chapter strangely entitled The Social Capital of the Felonious State, or the Ruses of Political Intelligence (by which he really means: the political resourcefulness of African actors), Bayart argues that historically war was endemic to Africa: Inasmuch as the pax britannica or the paix coloniale ever existed at all, it was no more than a brief parenthesis in a history haunted by the specter of war (pp. 434), and that the current political economy of low-intensity conict linked to international organized crime would be no more than an illustration of the reappearance of this mode of government in Africa (p. 44). Indeed, Bayart goes as far as to argue that war has, in fact, become the dominant mode of state formation in contemporary Africa: Perhaps what is really at stake in these conicts is less the disintegration of the state, but the opposite, its formation . . . . Dissidence, war and banditry . . . do not necessarily threaten the formation or existence of a state. They can, on the contrary, [facilitate] its centralization (pp. 44, 115). Further evidence of these disquieting developments is adduced by Batrice Hibou. In an exhaustive, carefully documented, and aptly argued chapter on the ruses of economic intelligence (by which she really means: the economic resourcefulness of African actors), Hibou shows how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Banks Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed on African countries have, in fact, led to the opposite of the outcome sought, namely the further erosion of the states administrative capacity, and the privatization and criminalization of public authority, government services, public administration, and development assistance, all in the name of liberalization and privatization. Finally, in an informative and well-documented chapter entitled The new frontiers of crime in South Africa, Stephen Ellis chronicles in painstaking detail the origins and underlying causes of the wave of crime which is currently affecting the country. Ellis clearly shows that from the mid-1980s to 1994, South Africas major black townships became the site of a struggle for control between the security forces of the apartheid regime and the ANC-SACP alliance, both arming their supporters in the townships in pursuit of this strategy. As a result, the criminalization of security forces, the privatization of security, regionally based warlordism, and a culture of violence have become endemic in South Africa. While presenting a fresh and intriguing perspective on African politics and society, Bayart et al.s thesis may be faulted on a number of counts. To begin with, Bayart paints a resolutely pessimistic (and somewhat inaccurate and ethnocentric) picture of African history, referring to the his-

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torical trajectory of a sub-continent whose main characteristics have included a limited development of its productive capacity, a limited degree of social and cultural polarization, and a relatively feeble amount of political and administrative centralization as a result of social struggles, ecological or demographic constraints, and foreign interference (p. 42). In a strange, postmodernist rewriting of history, Bayart further argues that Africas dependence has often been created by Africans (pp. 423), and that while initially introduced by the French colonizers, the long thread of forced labor has never been completely broken South of the Sahara (p. 45). In other words, African leaders are held responsible for their own dependence (as if they were somehow dissociated from their European masters), and they have maintained to their benet the hated colonial practice of forced labor! More signicantly, however, and except for the richly textured case studies of Ellis and Hibou, this work is long on theory, but short on substance. In particular, Bayarts argument that war has now become the dominant mode of state formation in Africaechoing William Renos concept of warlord politicsdoes not resist closer scrutiny, particularly if one takes into account the progress of democratization in such countries as Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Libya, Mali, Mauritius, and Niger. Furthermore, Bayart misinterprets Tillys argument (conrmed by an analysis of Africas precolonial history) that various European states used either capital, coercion, and/or war in state formation, which explains their different trajectories. And while there are grounds for an Afro-pessimistic reading of recent developments in the DRC (Congo) or Sierra Leone, one could also argue that far from descending into the Heart of Darkness, Africa is, in many ways, showing clear signs of hope and promise because out of the ashes of the postcolonial state, a new and improved state will rise. While the objective of the authors of The Criminalization of the State in Africa was wisely modest, that of the authors of Africa Works is far more ambitious and aims at nothing less than to attempt to make sense of what is happening in Africa today, to provide the analytical framework . . . which we believe can help explain the condition of contemporary Africa (p. xv), and to offer both a much sharper understanding of presentday politics in Africa and a more plausible framework for comparing Africas evolution with that of the rest of the world (p. 143). Having set themselves such lofty objectives, they (unsuccessfully) struggle to achieve them in the books remaining 170 pages. Evidently, Chabal and Daloz are irritated by the absence of innovative thinking on Africa: the motivation for our book lies partly with our impatience with existing intellectual sloth in respect of Africa (p. xx). As they point out, their approach is ve-dimensional in that: (1) they stress the importance of actual events (empirical observation of contemporary realities); (2) they use universal analytical tools (a Weberian conception of the state and bureaucracy) rather than Africa-specic concepts; (3) they adopt a multidisciplinary approach; (4) they use a comparative method of

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analysis which integrates the experience of contemporary Africa with the rest of the world; and (5) they ground their analysis in a long-term historical perspective, i.e., Braudels longue dure (pp. xvixviii). Starting from the observation that contemporary African political systems are characterized by patrimonialism and an acute degree of disorder and chaos, Chabal and Daloz undertake to explain why Africa works in the absence of proper political institutionalization or sustained economic development. To do so, they put forth a new paradigm which they call the political instrumentalization of disorder, which refers to the process by which political actors in Africa seek to maximize their returns on the state of confusion, uncertainty, and sometimes even chaos, which characterizes most African polities (p. xviii). They claim that their paradigm is distinct in that it attempts to show how the political, social, and economic logics of contemporary Africa come together in a process of modernization which does not t with the Western experience of development (p. 143). In this context, they argue, to understand African politics is to understand the ways in which individuals, groups, and communities seek to instrumentalize the resources which they command within this general political economy of disorder (p. xix). This they proceed to demonstrate by analyzing successive political, social, and economic registers, namely: (1) informal politics: the state, civil society, the African elites; (2) the retraditionalization of society: ethnic and national identities, witchcraft and religion, the political economy of war and crime; and (3) the productivity of economic failure: corruption, dependence, and development. This leads them to an overly pessimistic conclusion, namely:
that there prevails in Africa a system of politics inimical to development . . . . The dynamics of the political instrumentalization of disorder are such as to limit the scope of reform . . . . There is inevitably a tendency to link politics to realms of increased disorder, be it war or crime. There is therefore an inbuilt bias in favor of greater disorder and against the formation of the Western-style legal, administrative, and institutional foundations required for development. (p. 162)

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Alas, it is this reviewers considered opinion that Chabal and Daloz fail miserably in their overly ambitious and ill-conceived attempt to propose a new paradigm that would help us better understand contemporary African politics, as I try to argue in what follows. Let us rst note the high degree of analytical convergence between the approach of the authors and that of Bayart et al. Both stress the potentially positive and systemically functional role played by such otherwise disruptive and dysfunctional factors as war, crime, corruption, witchcraft, and economic dependence in contemporary African politics. While ostensibly adopting a neopatrimonial conception of the state, la Jean-Franois Mdard, Chabal and Dalozwho, like Bayart et al., adopt a longue dure

historical perspectivein fact tend to adhere to the formers concept of the rhizome state as a case of reappropriation and successful adaptation of the Western state model to the African context (pp. 810). And Chabals and Dalozs Section III on The productivity of economic failure takes more than a leaf from Batrice Hibous excellent chapter on The social capital of the state as an agent of deception in Bayart et al. Unfortunately, Chabals and Dalozs preposterous claim of theoretical and analytical innovation does not withstand closer scrutiny. Eerily reminiscent of that of Bayart et al., i.e., that war has become the dominant mode of state formation in Africa, the authors paradigm of the political instrumentalization of disorder posits disorder and chaos as the norm (rather than the exception) in contemporary African politics. While it is true that a situation of endemic political violence now prevails in parts of Africa, most notably in Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia/ Eritrea, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, and Angola, most of Africa is experiencing a basically peaceful transition to democratic governance. Second, Chabal and Daloz make much of the fact that their approach is primarily empirical in that they want to explain what is actually happening on the ground in Africa, but they immediately go on to indicate that they also want to use universal analytical tools (p. xvii), failing to explain how they reconcile their empirical approach with a broader theoretical perspective, or how they marshal the empirical data to demonstrate the validity of their paradigm. Worse still, by taking Max Webers concept of law, state, and bureaucracy as the ideal type against which African institutions should be measured, the authors fall into the trap of the modernization theories unilinear evolutionism, which posits that Third World/African states are bound to follow the developmental path opened by the Western states before them. Last, but not least, Chabal and Daloz bring very little, if any, hard empirical evidence and concrete case studies to bear on their analysis, beyond the merely anecdotal personal reminiscences of the authors. It is thus with a profound sense of disappointment at unfullled promises and expectations that one is left after reading both The Criminalization of the State in Africa and Africa Works. While Bayart et al. were understandably cautious in their theoretical ambitions, Chabal and Daloz were far more daring, and thus were bound to fail, in this regard. Finally, the conclusions reached by both with regard to the essentially chaotic and criminal nature of the state and politics in Africa, while valid for certain parts of Africa, are evidently not borne by the reality observable in most African countries today, and thus have no general validity. Unless further case studies will adduce more convincing data and empirical evidence, these new approaches to the study of African politics and society run the risk of ending up on the scrap heap of the many untested and obsolete social science paradigms in African studies. Guy Martin University of Virginia

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