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into an all-but-indecipherable footnote to something larger than itself. Just such a scaling down of human enterprise can also be found in the Dickens and Conrad passages, both of which center on an apparent reversion to prehistori- cal time and, given the futile movement of their subjects, convey a sense of being caught in a static, primal flux.
—RODNEY STENNING EDGECOMBE, University of Cape Town Copyright © 2009 Heldref Publications
KEYWORDS
Lewis Carroll, Christmas Stories, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Heart of Darkness
WORKS CITED
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. New York: Grosset, 1946. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973. Print. Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories. Intro. Margaret Lane. London: Oxford UP, 1956. Print. ———. “The Perils of Certain English Prisoners.” 1857. Dickens, Christmas Stories 161–208. ———. “The Wreck of the Golden Mary.” 1856. Dickens, Christmas Stories 131–60. The Holy Bible. London: Collins’ Cleartype, 1957. Print. Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. Thomas Cooley. New York: Norton, 1999. Print.
Emotions in THE STORY OF AN HOUR
In “The Story of an Hour” (1894), Kate Chopin focuses on a late nineteenth- century American woman’s dramatic hour of awakening into selfhood, which enables her to live the last moments of her life with an acute consciousness of life’s immeasurable beauty. Mrs. Mallard, who suffers from a weak heart, seems to live a psychologically torpid and anemic life until she hears the news of her husband’s death. This news comes from her husband’s friend, who says that Brently Mallard has died in a railroad accident. Mrs. Mallard’s sister, Josephine, mindful of Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition, breaks the news to her “in broken sentences” and “veiled hints” (193). But when Mrs. Mallard hears the shocking news, she undergoes a profound transformation that empowers her with a “clear and exalted perception” (194). As Chopin demonstrates, this heightened consciousness comes to the protagonist because of her awakened emotions. Revealing her own dynamic and avant-garde understanding, Cho- pin rejects the tradition of attributing supremacy to the faculty of reason in the act of perception, and she attributes it instead to the faculty of emotions.
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When she hears the news of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard’s oblivious- ness to the beauty of life breaks down under the powerful impact of emotion. Until this moment, Mrs. Mallard hardly thinks it worthwhile to continue her existence; as the narrator of the story says, “It was only yesterday [Mrs. Mal- lard] had thought with a shudder that life might be long” (194). Her life until this point seems devoid of emotion, as the lines in her face “besp[ea]k repres- sion” (193). Upon hearing the news, her sorrow gushes out in a torrent: “She wept at once with sudden, wild abandonment” (193). The narrator points out, however, that Mrs. Mallard is not struck, as “many women” have been, by “a paralyzed inability” to accept the painful sense of loss (193). On the contrary, she is roused from her passivity by an uncontrollable flood of emotion. This “storm” that “haunt[s] her body and seem[s] to reach into her soul” (193) ultimately purges her of the sufferance of a meaningless life, as it becomes the impetus for the revelation that leads to her new freedom.
Until her moment of illumination, Mrs. Mallard’s emotions have been sti- fled and suppressed to fit into the mold of hollow social conventions. As Cho- pin implies, Mrs. Mallard’s “heart trouble” (193) is not so much a physical ailment, as the other characters in the story think, as a sign of a woman who has unconsciously surrendered her heart (i.e., her identity as an individual) to the culture of paternalism. This repression has long brewed in the depths of Mrs. Mallard’s heart (emotionally speaking), and it causes her to be gener- ally apathetic toward life. The physiological aspect of Mrs. Mallard’s heart ailment appears to be, then, a result of the psychological burden of allowing another individual’s (i.e., her husband’s) “powerful will” to smother and silence her own will (194). In the patriarchal world of the nineteenth-century United States that Chopin depicts, a woman was not expected to engage in self-assertion. As Norma Basch observes of the American legal and economic milieu of the period, the patriarchy of that time “mandated the complete dependence of wives on husbands,” making marriage “a form of slavery” (349, 355). The virtuous wife, in Mrs. Mallard’s world, was the submissive woman who accepts the convention that her husband has “a right to impose a private will” upon her—as Mrs. Mallard realizes has been true of her marriage (194). So insistent is this artificial life of empty conventions for Mrs. Mallard that it tries to assert itself even after its barriers are broken, as she sits in her room and begins to comprehend the freedom that awaits her as a widow: “She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will” (194). But the excitement in her heart, which is supposed to be frail, is uncontrollable, and her fear soon transforms into joy (193, 194). That is, the power of her emotions conquers the force of conventionality.
As she sets aside the world of social conventions, her emotions underscore the individuality that is awakening in her. “[T]his thing” that is approaching
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her is her consciousness of her own individuality, and she waits for it “fear- fully” (193). Accompanying it is “a monstrous joy” that highlights the colos- sal significance of self-discovery at the expense of the hollow conventions that would dismiss her joy as horribly inappropriate and unbecoming (194). Now, however, joy and hope lead her to an awareness that she has become, as she realizes, “Free! Body and soul free!” (194). Just as she locks herself in her room and locks out her social world, she also locks out social conventions. And thus, purging her repressed emotions, she awakens to all the individual elements of her natural environment: she notices, as she looks out her bed- room window, the trees, the rain, the air, the peddler’s voice, the notes of a song, the sparrows, the sky, and the clouds (193). Because her emotions are no longer bottled, Louise Mallard attends to “the sounds, the scents, the color” in the natural world (193), and they teach her of the sounds, the scents, and the color within her own soul. That is, they teach her of the particular combination of attributes within her soul that make her a unique individual. Clearly, her new emotional freedom leads to the awakening of her mind.
Chopin’s investigation of emotion in this story clearly fits R. J. Dolan’s argument that emotion influences not simply attention, but also “preattentive processing” (1191, 1192). As Chopin shows through Louise, the act of watch- ing nature and engaging in sense perception is the act of processing emotional stimuli: “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air” (193). These objects inspire joy and hope in her, which, in turn, stir Louise’s attention: “[S]he felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air” (193). The “it” that she feels emerging from nature is the vision, or perception, of her freedom, which occurs through her aroused emotions. The presence of emotion signi- fies Louise’s sensitivity, responsiveness, and mindfulness.
Indeed, it is not the rational faculty that enables Louise’s discovery of her individuality. As Chopin carefully points out, the coming of consciousness occurs suddenly, spontaneously, intuitively. As Louise looks out her window, her face shows “not a glance of reflection, but rather . . . a suspension of intelligent thought” (193). The discovery of her individuality is “too subtle and elusive” for the rational faculty to analyze and grasp. It can only be “felt” first with instinct and then with emotions (193). Alone and unencumbered in her room, Louise spontaneously opens herself to the sublimity and grandeur of the physical world around her, of which she herself is a part.
As Chopin demonstrates through the physical changes in Louise, emotion connects the soul to the body. As her body responds to her emotions, she feels a rhythmic connection to the physical world. As John Deigh defines emo- tion, it is “a state through which the world engages our thinking and elicits our pleasure or displeasure” (829–30), for it is the “turbulence of the mind”
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that “captures our attention, orients our thoughts, and touches our sensibili- ties” (829). Fittingly, Louise’s emotions enable her to feel harmony between her body and soul. According to William James, a psychologist who was a contemporary of Chopin’s, “bodily feelings” are “characteristics” of “various emotional moods” (1066). Fittingly, Chopin underscores Louise’s physi- cal state: “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously” (194). At this point Louise’s apparent emotional anemia has given way to healthy blood circula- tion: “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (194). Indeed, if James argues that “the immediate cause of emotion is a physical effect on the nerves” (1073), Chopin demonstrates that emotion is accompanied by physical changes: Louise’s “coursing blood” reflects her profound joy about her new sense of life’s sacred beauty (194).
Chopin also shows the influence of Romanticism in her emphasis on the creative role of emotions. As M. H. Abrams argues, for the Romantics, the poet “modif[ies] or transform[s] the materials of sense” (55): “objects of sense are fused and remolded in the crucible of emotion and the passionate imagination” (54). Similarly, Louise’s passion influences her imagination: “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her” (194). Evidently, her feelings of curiosity and wonder influence her “fancy,” which here is synonymous with the creative faculty of imagination. But, in using the word “fancy” instead of imagination, Chopin suggests that it is emotions that are prompting the creative work. As Abrams interprets the Romantic viewpoint, “[f]eelings project a light—especially a colored light—on objects of sense” (54). Stepping beyond the Romantics, not only does Chopin make Louise’s flooding emotions vitalize the landscape, but she also makes the latter’s emo- tions create a meaningful, purposeful landscape: it symbolizes the stirring, creative, dynamic forces of life.
Further, Chopin uses nature—the objects of sense—as a symbol of the powerful faculty of emotions, which creates design and harmony. Just as spring symbolizes the “new . . . life,” so the natural world symbolizes the vigor and power of Louise’s “wild abandonment,” her passionate outburst (193). As nature returns to life after winter, so Louise’s emotions return to life after a prolonged winter of patriarchal confinement. Furthermore, just as nature awakens instinctively, so do Louise’s repressed emotions. That is, as nature bursts with energy and vitality, so does Louise’s love of life. Louise’s emotions bring together all the individual elements of the natural world in such a way that they form a new pattern, a unique living picture. Because her husband, the source of her suppressed and repressed emotions, suddenly seems to have disappeared, her bottled emotions gush out to taste freedom just as the world of nature (“the sounds, the scents, the color that fill[] the air”) breaks out spontaneously (193). And yet her society rejects this natural world of emotions and associates it with illness. Thus Josephine implores, “Louise,
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open the door . . . you will make yourself ill” (194). While Chopin associ- ates emotions with sound health, the nineteenth-century patriarchy associates them with ill health. Louise’s responsiveness to the sounds, scents, and color is her excited and intense responsiveness to beauty. To feel life’s beauty, then, is to see the beauty of one’s own life. For to look at the world of nature is to feel life’s innate, spontaneous beauty: “she was drinking in a very elixir of life through the open window” (194). Indeed, the base metal of her own life is now transformed to invaluable gold because of her “abandon[ment]” to her own nature (194). As Chopin illustrates through Louise’s sense of freedom, the latter engages in an interpretive act that shows how the individual cre- ates meaning for herself through the faculty of emotions. So profound is this awakening that in that one hour of self-fulfillment, Louise experiences a taste of eternity.
In that one hour, then, Louise sees and creates a new identity with her newly awakened faculty of emotions (193). Chopin illustrates the role of the emotions in creating the moment of illumination by highlighting the connection between her eyes and her emotions: “The vacant stare and the look of terror . . . went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright” (194). The awareness that transforms Mrs. Mallard into Louise, the individual, and that makes her “[see] beyond” the stifling past into a promising future is the product of acute emotions: “There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory” (194). Louise breaks the shackles of the patriarchal culture as she comprehends that she can “live for herself” instead of living the life that her husband sanctions for her (194). And this comprehension has to be felt with emotions. Thus Chopin shows how Louise’s faculty of emotions influences her faculty of reason: she now comprehends her “possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being” (194). As Dolan observes, there is a strong relationship between emotion and cognition: “the growth of emotional awareness informs mechanisms that underwrite the emergence of self-identity and social competence” (1194). Standing confidently at the top of the stairs, the height of which represents Louise’s exalted state, she has reached the zenith of self-awareness.
Thus it is no surprise that Louise suffers an acutely painful—and ulti- mately fatal—shock when her husband returns home. It turns out that he has missed his train and thus has been spared the accident that otherwise would have killed him. He arrives home and enters through the front door just as Louise, at the end of her “brief moment of illumination” (194), is making her symbolic descent down the stairs. When she spots her husband, Louise seems to realize in an instant not only that her husband, as a proponent of patriarchal culture, would never allow for a woman’s self-discovery, but also that she could never reverse her progress and once again take up the
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confinement of her former life. At the sight of her husband she is at once pro- foundly aware of her newfound freedom and the fact that it will not last. The shock that kills her must, then, be the realization that she has lost this freedom, and with it her human individuality. Her emotions spread through her entire being so profoundly that they lead to another severe physical change, and she dies immediately.
As Chopin demonstrates, then, so powerful is emotion that it enables clarity of perception in Louise. It allows her to perceive life’s immeasurable beauty, without which, as she realizes with the suddenness of acutely shocking pain at the sudden entry of her husband, there is only death: the “joy” that kills Louise is the joy that (unbeknownst to the doctors who ironically assume that it is joy at her husband’s return that kills her [194]) she refuses to surrender, as the patriarchy would require her to do at Brently’s return. But, for one cli- mactic hour of her life, Louise does truly taste joy. For one hour of emotion, Louise does glimpse meaning and fulfillment. To be fully alive, then, is to engage in heightened consciousness, to observe and connect with the world around one’s self. Indeed, Chopin makes clear that to simply observe the world through one’s rational faculty is nowhere near as powerful as observing it with the vibrant, vigorous, acute, and heightened awareness that emotion makes possible.
—S. SELINA JAMIL, Prince George’s Community College Copyright © 2009 Heldref Publications
KEYWORDS
Kate Chopin, emotion, freedom, patriarchy, perception, “The Story of an Hour”
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to thank the Explicator editors who aided in the revision of this article.
WORKS CITED
Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1953. Print.
Basch, Norma. “Invisible Women: The Legal Fiction of Marital Unity in Nineteenth-Century America.” Feminist Studies 5.2 (1979): 346–66. JSTOR. Web. 30 Oct. 2008.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 6th ed. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Boston: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2007. 193–94. Print.
Deigh, John. “Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions.” Ethics 104.4 (1994): 824–54. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2008.
Dolan, R. J. “Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior.” Science 298.5596 (2002): 1191–94. JSTOR. Web. 2 Nov. 2008.
James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981. Print.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
r NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES
AND POLITICAL TRANSITIONS IN AFRICA
By MICHAEL BRATTON and NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE *
INTRODUCTION: COMPARING POLITICAL TRANSITIONS
THE current wave of scholarly studies of democratization and political transition is not fully comparative. Conceptually, these studies employ
models of political change that are useful in explaining the demise of bureaucratic forms of authoritarianism but cannot account for transitions from more personalistic types of rule. Empirically, entire regions of the world are excluded. Whereas most studies of democratization have focused on Latin America and Southern Europe and latterly on Eastern Europe, Africa has received much less attention. In this article, we examine recent patterns of political change in Africa and on that basis propose revisions to the theory of political transitions.
Africa is not immune from the global challenge to authoritarianism. Between 1990 and 1993 more than half of Africa's fifty-two governments responded to domestic and international pressures by holding competitive presidential or legislative elections. The dynamics and outcomes of these transitions have been highly variable: in some cases, a competitive election has led to an alternation of political leaders and the emergence of a fragile democratic regime; more often the transition has been flawed (with the incumbent stealing the election), blocked (with the incumbents and oppo- sition deadlocked over the rules of the political game), or precluded (by widespread civil unrest).1 While democratization is clearly incomplete in Africa, it has already discredited military and one-party regimes, few of which are likely to survive intact. And recent African experience poses
* This article was prepared with support from National Science Foundation Grant no. SBR- 9309215 and an All-University Research Initiation Grant from Michigan State University. Van de Walle gratefully acknowledges additional support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Research assistance was provided by John Davis and Sangmook Kim. Useful comments on earlier drafts were received from Robert Ayres, Naomi Chazan, Larry Diamond, Rene Lemarchand, Dean McHenry, Donald Rothchild, and Richard Snyder. Any remaining errors can be attributed to the authors.
1 Of the 18 presidential elections held in Africa between 1990 and March 1993, 9 were vouchsafed as "free and fair" by international observers, and 8 resulted in the peaceful replacement of the incum- bent ruler. In all cases where the incumbent survived, the opposition charged electoral fraud. See Michael Bratton, "Political Liberalization in Africa in the 1990s: Advances and Setbacks" (Paper pre- sented at a donors conference on Economic Reform in Africa's New Era of Political Liberalization, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., April 14-15,1993).
World Politics 46 (July 1994), 453-89
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interesting general questions: Why do some regimes undergo transitions from authoritarian rule while others do not? Are there different paths of transition? Why do some transitions occasionally result in democracy but others fall short? Why, in Africa, are transitions to democracy generally problematic?
In this article, we argue that the nature of the preexisting regime shapes the dynamics and outcomes of political transitions. Our thesis is as follows: contemporary political changes are conditioned by mechanisms of rule embedded in the ancien regime. Authoritarian leaders in power for long periods of time establish rules about who may participate in public deci- sions and the amount of political competition allowed. Taken together, these rules constitute a political regime. Regime type in turn influences both the likelihood that an opposition challenge will arise and the flexibil- ity with which incumbents can respond. It also determines whether elites and masses can arrive at new rules of political interaction through negoti- ation, accommodation, and election, that is, whether any transition will be democratic.
We cast the argument comparatively in order to highlight differences among political regimes, initially between Africa and the rest of the world and subsequently among African countries themselves. First, we compare African transitions with those in Latin America and Southern Europe and find that transition dynamics in Africa have been distinctive. We attribute this to the neopatrimonial nature of African authoritarian regimes, which we contrast to the corporatist regimes that democratized in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s and in Latin America in the mid-1980s. Thereafter, we compare transitions within Africa. Based on the degree of political participation and contestation tolerated under the ancien regime, we distinguish several regime variants under the general rubric of neopat- rimonialism and show that here, too, regime characteristics can help explain transition processes. The argument, though driven by African examples, can be generalized to neopatrimonial regimes elsewhere.
Especially for Africa, the scholarly study of political transitions has vac- illated between ideographic case studies (with detailed description of events and actors) and abstract ruminations about principles of democracy supported by little systematic evidence. This article makes a modest effort to bridge the gap between these two extremes. We emphasize political institutions in a bid to develop midlevel generalizations and to help make the study of regime transitions more comparative.
The article is divided into four sections. The first section argues that the literature on political transitions has focused excessively on the contingent interactions of key political actors and underestimated the formative impact of political institutions. A second section defines neopatrimonial-
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 455
ism as a regime type and describes its characteristic features in Africa. Third, we discuss how the features of neopatrimonialism are likely to mold transitions in patterns quite different from those observed in transitions from other regime types. A fourth section distinguishes variants of the neopatrimonial regime, which we use to explain transition dynamics and outcomes observed recently in sub-Saharan Africa. A conclusion extends the argument about the distinctiveness of transitions from neopatrimonial rule and discusses its implications.
REGIME TYPE AND POLITICAL TRANSITION
Are there relationships between regime type and the likelihood, nature, and extent of political transition? Scholars have so far only scratched the surface in understanding political transitions in terms of the structure of the preceding regime. Karen Remmer argues that once one recognizes the "enormous range of variation concealed within the authoritarian (and democratic) categor(ies)," political outcomes vary systematically with regime type.2 From recent Latin American experience she proposes that inclusionary democracies tend to collapse as a result of intrigue among the political elite, whereas exclusionary democracies are more likely to suc- cumb to pressure from below. Moreover, once inclusionary regimes have held power, the reimposition of an exclusionary regime requires heavy doses of state coercion.3 It is unclear, however, whether Remmer's gener- alizations apply to the demise of autocracies as well as to the breakdown of democratic rule.
Huntington's analysis of "third wave" democratic transitions in thirty- five countries finds little overall relationship between the nature of the incumbent authoritarian regime and the pattern of political transition.4
He contends that whereas political transitions are most likely to be initi- ated from the top down, such dynamics are equally likely in one-party military or personalistic regimes. Nevertheless, leaders of one-party and military regimes are somewhat more likely than personal dictators to engage the opposition in a negotiated transfer of power. Indeed, person- alistic regimes are more susceptible than other regime types to collapse in
2 Remmer, "Exclusionary Democracy," Studies in Comparative International Development 20, no. 4 (1986), 64-68.
3 Ibid., 77-78. 4 Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Huntington classifies transitions into three main types: trans- formation, replacement, and transplacement. These labels are unnecessarily jargonistic; we prefer to speak of three routes—top-down, bottom-up, and negotiated political change—distinguished accord- ing to whether state elites, opposition forces, or both take the lead in pressing transition forward. On this theme, see Dankwart A. Rustow, "The Surging Tide ofDemocracy," Journal of Democracy 3, no. 1 (1992), 119-22.
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the face of a popular protest. Huntington notes that dictatorial leaders usually refuse to give up power voluntarily and try to stay in office as long as they can.5
The notion of an underlying structure to regime transitions runs counter to the most penetrating and influential contemporary work on this subject. Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter eschew the possibility of systematic causality and instead advance what can be termed a contingent approach to transitions. They argue that transitions are abnormal periods of "undetermined" political change in which "there are insufficient structural or behavioral parameters to guide and predict the outcome."6 Compared with the orderliness of authoritarian rule, transi- tions are marked by unruly and chaotic struggles and by uncertainty about the nature of resultant regimes. Analysts cannot assume that the transi- tion process is shaped by preexisting constellations of macroeconomic conditions, social classes, or political institutions. Instead, formerly cohe- sive social classes and political organizations tend to splinter in the heat of political combat, making it impossible to deduce alignments and actions of any protagonist. Political outcomes are driven by the short- term calculations and the immediate reactions of strategic actors to unfolding events.
There is much merit in this contingent approach, which captures well the chaotic nature of regime transitions, but we remain dissatisfied with the open-ended implication that any one transition process or outcome is just as likely as any other. The excessive voluntarism of O'Donnell and Schmitter's framework has been criticized by other commentators. Nancy Bermeo notes that "the authors' emphasis on individual actors . . . consti- tutes a most significant challenge to the structuralist perspectives that have dominated . . . (comparative) political science scholarship."7 Terry Lynn Karl makes a case for what she calls structured contingency, an approach "that seeks explicitly to relate structural constraints to the shaping of con- tingent choice."8 In her words:
Even in the midst of tremendous uncertainty provoked by a regime transi- tion, where constraints appear to be most relaxed and where a wide range of outcomes appears to be possible, the decisions made by various actors respond to and are conditioned by the types of socioeconomic structures and political institutions already present.9
5 Huntington (fn. 4), 588. 6 O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about
Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 3. See also Guiseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
7 Bermeo, "Rethinking Regime Change," Comparative Politics 22 (April 1990), 361. 8 Karl, "Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America," Comparative Politics 5 (October 1990). 9 Ibid., 6; emphasis added.
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We agree that there are potentially fruitful avenues for research at a "meso" level between individual choice and structural determinism.10 To date, most propositions in the transitions literature concern the effects of deep socioeconomic structures. For example, Bermeo posits that "author- itarian regimes do not seem to collapse during periods of relative prosper- ity";11 Karl suggests that democratic consolidation depends on "the absence of a strong landowner elite engaged in labor-repressive agricul- ture." Important as the condition of the economy and the formation of classes may be, we feel that these propositions focus on structures that are too deep. There are more proximate, political institutions—which togeth- er constitute a political regime—that are likely to have a direct bearing on transitions.
The argument that the political institutions of the preceding regime condition historical transitions is of course not novel; it runs through the historiographic literature, notably on revolutions.13 But the recent transi- tions literature has not grappled with regime types, in part because the universe of relevant country cases has displayed a relatively uniform set of dominant political institutions.14 It has tended to assume the presence of the corporatist institutions that predominated in the bureaucratic author- itarian regimes of Southern Europe and Latin America.15 In Africa, how- ever, political institutions have on the whole evolved within neopatrimo- nial rather than corporatist regimes, forcing us to assess the impact of regime type.
10 For general theoretical discussions of this point, see Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: An Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 1984); and Michael Taylor, "Structure, Culture and Action in the Explanation of Social Change," Politics and Society 17, no. 2 (1989).
11 Bermeo (fn. 7), 366-67. 12 Karl (fn. 8), 6-7. 13 This central point is made in relation to the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville, The
Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955); and in a comparison of the Russian and German revolutions by Barrington Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1978), 357-75, where differences in outcomes are linked to differ- ences in the strength of political institutions.
"Interestingly, two recent comparative studies of regime change are based on the analysis of polit- ical institutions. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
15 Not all extant analyses assume corporatist institutions and ignore regime variations. See Robert M. Fishman, "Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe's Transition to Democracy," World Politics 42 (April 1990); and Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe Schmitter, "Modes of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe," International Social Science Journal \2% (May 1991). See also the interesting analyses of the role of political parties as an explanatory factor in Brazil's transition in Scott Mainwaring, "Political Parties and Democratization in Brazil and the Southern Cone," Comparative Politics 21 (October 1988); and idem, "Brazilian Party Underdevelopment in Comparative Perspective," Political Science Quarterly 107 (Winter 1992).
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES
In the main, African political regimes are distinctly noncorporatist. Leaders of postcolonial African countries may have pursued a corporatist strategy to the extent that they promoted an organic ideology of national unity and attempted to direct political mobilization along controlled chan- nels. But African leaders have rarely used bureaucratic formulas to con- struct authoritative institutions or granted subsidiary spheres of influence to occupational interest groups within civil society. Contemporary African regimes do not display the formal governing coalitions between organized state and social interests or the collective bargaining over core public poli- cies that characterize corporatism. At best, African efforts to install corpo- ratist regimes have been a "policy output" of an ambitious political elite rather than a reflection of organized class interests within domestic society.
Rather, the distinctive institutional hallmark of African regimes is neopatrimonialism. In neopatrimonial regimes, the chief executive main- tains authority through personal patronage, rather than through ideology or law. As with classic patrimonialism, the right to rule is ascribed to a person rather than an office.16 In contemporary neopatrimonialism, relationships of loyalty and dependence pervade a formal political and administrative sys- tem17 and leaders occupy bureaucratic offices less to perform public service than to acquire personal wealth and status. The distinction between private and public interests is purposely blurred. The essence of neopatrimonialism is the award by public officials of personal favors, both within the state (notably public sector jobs) and in society (for instance, licenses, contracts, and projects). In return for material rewards, clients mobilize political sup- port and refer all decisions upward as a mark of deference to patrons.18
Insofar as personalized exchanges and political scandals are common in all regimes, theorists have suggested that neopatrimonialism is a master concept for comparative politics. Theobold argues that "some of the new states are, properly speaking, not states at all; rather, they are virtually the private instruments of those powerful enough to rule."19 And Clapham maintains that neopatrimonialism is "the most salient type (of authority)"
16 Max Weber, Economy and Society (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968). See also Robin Theobold, "Patrimonialism," World Politics 34 (July 1982).
17 Samuel N. Eisenstadt, Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism (London: Sage, 1972); Christopher Clapham, ed., Private Patronage and Public Power (London: Frances Pinter, 1985); and Richard Snyder, "Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships," Comparative Politics 24, no. 4 (1992).
18 See Richard Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second R£public (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), esp. chap. 5. On the recent evolution of these phenomena, see the excellent analysis in Rene Lemarchand, "The State, the Parallel Economy, and the Changing Structure of Patronage Systems," in Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan, eds., The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988).
"Theobold (fn. 16), 549.
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in the Third World because it "corresponds to the normal forms of social organization in precolonial societies."20
We draw a finer distinction, namely, that while neopatrimonial practice can be found in all polities, it is the core feature of politics in Africa and in a small number of other states, including Haiti, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Thus, personal relationships are a factor at the margins of all bureaucratic systems, but in Africa they constitute the foundation and superstructure of political institutions. The interaction between the "big man" and his extended retinue defines African politics, from the highest reaches of the presidential palace to the humblest village assembly. As such, analysts of African politics have embraced the neopatrimonial model.21
Neopatrimonialism has important implications for the analysis of polit- ical transitions. On the one hand, one would expect transitions from neopatrimonial rule to be distinctive, for example, centering on struggles over the legitimacy of the discretionary decision making by dominant, per- sonalistic leaders. On the other hand, one would also expect the dynamics of political change to be highly variable, unpredictably reflecting idiosyn- cratic patterns of rule devised by strongmen. Hence the need to emphasize both the commonalities and variations in transition dynamics and out- comes. Bearing this in mind, let us now turn to our central questions: how does neopatrimonialism influence whether transitions ever begin, how they unfold, and how they turn out?
COMPARING REGIMES AND TRANSITIONS
The recent literature on democratization in Europe and Latin America22
converges on a modal path of political transition. The transition begins when a moderate faction within the state elite recognizes that social peace and economic development alone cannot legitimate an authoritarian regime. These soft-liners promote a political opening by providing
20 Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics: An Introduction (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 49.
21 John Waterbury, "Endemic and Planned Corruption in a Monarchical Regime," World Politics 25 (July 1973); Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Thomas Callaghy, The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of African Economic Stagnation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Joseph (fn. 18); Jean Francois Bayart, L'Etat au Cameroun (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques, 1985); and idem, L'Etat en Afrique (Paris: Fayard, 1989).
22 In addition to works already cited, see Enrique A. Baloyra, ed., Comparing New Democracies: Transitions and Consolidation in Mediterranean Europe and the Southern Cone (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987); James M. Malloy and Mitchell A. Seligson, eds., Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transitions in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987); Robert A. Pastor, ed., Democracy in the Americas: Stopping the Pendulum (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1989); Karen L. Remmer, "New Wine or Old Bottlenecks? The Study of Latin American Democracy," Comparative Politics 23 Qulyl991).
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improved guarantees of civil and political rights and later conceding the convocation of free and fair elections. The greatest threat to democratic transition comes from a backlash by elements of a hard-line faction, most commonly when the military executes a reactionary coup. To forestall hard-liners and complete the transition, government and opposition lead- ers meet behind the scenes to forge a compromise "pact" to guarantee the vital interests of major elite players.
We propose that political transitions in neopatrimonial regimes depart from this modal path in the following major respects:
1. Political transitions from neopatrimonial regimes originate in social protest. As is well known, the practices of neopatrimonialism cause chron- ic fiscal crisis and make economic growth highly problematic.23 In addi- tion, neopatrimonial leaders construct particularistic networks of personal loyalty that grant undue favor to selected kinship, ethnic, or regional groupings. Taken together, shrinking economic opportunities and exclu- sionary patterns of reward are a recipe for social unrest. Mass popular protest is likely to break out, usually over the issue of declining living stan- dards, and to escalate to calls for the removal of incumbent leaders. Unlike corporatist rulers, personal rulers cannot point to a record of stability and prosperity to legitimate their rule.
Endemic fiscal crisis also undercuts the capacity of rulers to manage the process of political change. When public resources dwindle to the point where the incumbent government can no longer pay civil servants, the lat- ter join the antiregime protesters in the streets.24 Shorn of the ability to maintain political stability through the distribution of material rewards, neopatrimonial leaders resort erratically to coercion which, in turn, further undermines the regime's legitimacy. The showdown occurs when the gov- ernment is unable to pay the military.
Przeworski has argued that the stability of any regime depends not so much on the legitimacy of a particular system of domination as on the presence of a preferred opposition alternative.25 It may be true that a pow- erful autocrat can coerce unwilling popular compliance over very long peri- ods of time if he retains control over the executive and military bureaucra- cies. But regimes built on personal loyalty rather than bureaucratic author- ity are susceptible to institutional collapse when patronage resources run
23 See Sandbrook (fn. 21); and Callaghy (fn. 21). 24 Thus, Allen argues that "in failing to pay salaries [the Kerekou regime in Benin] . . . signed the
death warrant it had drafted by its own gross corruption, for it led to the actions of 1989 that in turn caused the regime's collapse." See Christopher Allen, "Restructuring an Authoritarian State: Democratic Renewal in Benin," Review of African Political Economy 54 0uly 1992), 46.
25 Adam Przeworski, "Some Problems in the Study of the Transition to Democracy," in Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 51.
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out. In these cases, a crisis of legitimacy may be a sufficient condition to undermine or topple a regime, and there need not yet be an organized opposition offering a programmatic alternative.
As a result of twin political and economic crises, political transitions are more likely to originate in society than in the corridors of elite power. The existing literature is inconsistent on this point. O'Donnell and Schmitter assert that "there is no transition whose beginning is not the conse- quence—direct or indirect—of important divisions within the authoritari- an regime itself."26 Yet the same authors note that authoritarian rulers usu- ally miss opportunities to open up when the regime is riding a wave of eco- nomic success and that instead they "attempt liberalization only when they are already going through some serious crisis."27 We read this as implying that political liberalization is an elite response rather than an elite initiative. It also begs the question of how leaders apprehend the existence of a "cri- sis"; presumably, elites are awakened to the necessity of reform by an out- pouring of popular protest.28
The well-known distinctions between top-down, bottom-up, and nego- tiated transitions are helpful here.29 One might be tempted to predict that neopatrimonial regimes would undergo elite-initiated transitions, since personal rulers concentrate so much decision-making power in their own hands.30 But in an earlier analysis, we found instead that transitions in Africa seem to be occurring more commonly from below. Of twenty-one cases of transition in sub-Saharan Africa between November 1989 and May 1991, the initiative to undertake political reform was taken by oppo- sition protesters in sixteen cases and by incumbent state leaders in only five cases.31 In general, neopatrimonial rulers are driven by calculations of per- sonal political survival: they resist political openings for as long as possible
26 O'Donnell and Schmitter (fn. 6), 19. 27 Ibid., 17. 28 Elsewhere, O'Donnell and Schmitter (fn. 6) concede that ordinary citizens commonly take a
leading role in transitions: whereas "political democracies are usually brought down by conspiracies involving a few actors . . . the democratization of authoritarian regimes . . . involves . . . a crucial com- ponent of the mobilization and organization of large numbers of individuals" (p. 18).
29 Juan Linz, "Crisis, Breakdown and Reequilibration," in Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Samuel Huntington, "How Countries Democratize," Political Science Quarterly 106, no. 4 (1992); Rene Lemarchand, "African Transitions to Democracy: An Interim (and Mostly Pessimistic) Assessment" (Revised version of a paper presented at a seminar on Democracy and Economic Development, Oslo, February 1992).
30 Samuel Huntington finds only six cases of transitions by "replacement," that is, from below, see Huntington (fn. 29).
31 See Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, "Popular Protest and Political Reform in Africa," Comparative Politics 24 (July 1992). The five exceptions were Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, Sao Tome, and Tanzania. Of these, only Cape Verde and Sao Tome have completed a protest-free full transition. See also M. Cahen, "Vent des lies: La victoire de l'opposition aux lies du Cap Vert et a Sao Tome e Principe," Politique Africaine 43 (October 1991). In Madagascar massive protests erupted in mid-1991, when it became clear that President Ratsiraka's reforms were only window dressing. The
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and seek to manage the process of transition only after it has been forced upon them.32
The structure of political incentives in neopatrimonial regimes helps to explain why state elites rarely initiate political transitions. When rule is built on personal loyalty, supreme leaders often lose touch with popular perceptions of regime legitimacy. They lack institutional ties to corporate groups in society that could alert them to the strength of their popular sup- port. Instead, they surround themselves with sycophantic lieutenants who protect their own positions by telling the leader what he wants to hear and by shielding him from dissonant facts. Thus, even skillful personalistic leaders lack a flow of reliable information on which to base sound judg- ments about the need for, and timing of, political liberalization. Instead, they react to popular discontent by falling back on tried-and-true methods of selective reward and political repression. To make themselves heard—to penetrate the conspiracy of silence surrounding the supremo—ordinary citizens therefore have little choice but to persist with protest and raise the volume of their demands.
Ironically, neopatrimonial rule also undercuts civil society, thus weaken- ing the foundation for antisystemic change. Because personal rulers are sensitive to threats to their authority, they set about weakening all inde- pendent centers of power. Migdal shows how fear of rivals drives dictators to emasculate the very state institutions that could institutionalize their rule.33 The same irrational logic of political survival informs the attitudes of personal rulers toward the institutions of civil society. Most African leaders have demobilized voters and eradicated popular associations except those headed by hand-picked loyalists. Therefore, when political protest does erupt in neopatrimonial regimes, it is usually spontaneous, sporadic, disorganized, and unsustained. Because civil society is underdeveloped, the completion of the transition and the consolidation of any subsequent democratic regime are problematic.
2. Neopatrimonial elites fracture over access to patronage. By arguing for popular agency, we are not stating that elite factionalism is unimportant in African political transitions. But we side with the view that "political strug- gle . . . begins as the result of the emergence of a new elite that arouses a
elections of February 1993, which brought the opposition to power, were clearly the result of popular pressures. See "Madagascar: Hanging on in the Face of Change," Africa Confidential, September 1991, p. 7. Finally, in Tanzania and Guinea Bissau, political liberalization has fallen well short of a full tran- sition.
32 African states with particularly acute fiscal crises were also vulnerable to donor pressures to engage in political liberalization. See Bratton and van de Walle (fn. 31) for a discussion of the relative role of domestic and international factors in recent African transitions.
33 Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), chap. 6.
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depressed and previously leaderless social group into concerted action"34
rather than with "a move by some group within the ruling bloc to obtain support from forces external to it."35 At issue is whether the leadership of the reform coalition comes from inside or outside the incumbent group. We favor the latter interpretation.
At face value, one would expect elite cohesion to be particularly prob- lematic in governing coalitions built on the quicksand of clientelism. But the dimensions of elite factionalism are distinctive in personalistic regimes.36 The conventional distinction between hard-liners and soft-lin- ers does not capture the essential fault line within a neopatrimonial elite.37
Instead of fracturing ideologically over whether or not to liberalize, neopatrimonial elites are more likely to take sides on pragmatic grounds in struggles over spoils. Their political positions come to be defined accord- ing to whether they are insiders or outsiders in relation to the patronage system.
Fragmentation occurs as follows. Neopatrimonial regimes are charac- terized by rapid turnover of political personnel. To regulate and control rent seeking, to prevent rivals from developing their own power base, and to demonstrate their own power, rulers regularly rotate officeholders.38
Moreover, few rulers tolerate dissent; they typically expel potential oppo- nents from government jobs, from approved institutions like ruling par- ties, or even from the country itself. Even if most individuals can expect eventually to be forgiven and brought back into the fold, such practices establish a zero-sum, nonaccommodative pattern of politics. Whereas insiders enjoy preferential access to state offices and associated spoils, out- siders are left to languish in the wilderness. The more complete their exclusion from economic opportunity and political expression, the more strongly outsiders are motivated to oppose the incumbent regime. Outsiders take refuge from official institutions in civil society, the parallel economy, or international exile. From these locations, they mount a cam- paign against the incumbent regime that attributes economic decline to the personal failings of the supreme ruler and his coterie. These oppo-
34 Dankwart Rustow, "Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics 2 (April 1970), 352.
35 Przeworski (fn. 25), 56. 36 A large literature analyzes factional conflict within the African state elite; see, for example,
Sandbrook (fn. 21); and Bayart (fn. 21). 37 In Huntington's work (fn. 29), for example, the success of democratization hinges largely on the
ability of "liberal reformers" within the government to outmaneuver the standpatters. 38 As Waterbury (fn. 21) argues with respect to the monarchy in Morocco, "The king's degree of
political control varies directly with the level of fragmentation and factionalization within the sys- tem. . . The king must always maintain the initiative through the systematic inculcation of an atmos- phere of unpredictability and provisionality among all elites and the maximization of their vulnerabil- ity relative to his mastery" (p. 552).
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nents grasp for control of popular protest movements, usually by promot- ing symbols (such as multiparty democracy) that can convert economic grievances into demands for regime change.
Meanwhile, the insiders in a patrimonial ruling coalition are unlikely to promote political reform. Stultified by years of obeisance to the official party line, they have exhausted their own capacity for innovation. Recruited and sustained with material inducements, lacking an indepen- dent political base, and thoroughly compromised by corruption, they are dependent on the survival of the incumbent regime. Insiders typically have risen through the ranks of political service and, apart from top leaders who may have invested in private capital holdings, derive their livelihood 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 and to sink or swim with it.
Even if the state elite does begin to fragment over the pace of political reform, such splits are governed more by considerations of self-interest than of ideology. As patronage resources dwindle, incumbent leaders try to tighten their grip on revenues (especially export returns and foreign aid) in order to reward the loyalty of remaining insiders and to attempt to buy back the outsiders.39 At some point during the transition, waverers may calculate that their access to rents and prebends is best served by crossing over to the opposition.
Thus, the operations of neopatrimonialism tend to create simultaneous- ly a defensively cohesive state elite and a potential pool of alternative lead- ers outside of the state. The neopatrimonial practice of expelling rather than accommodating dissenters is a primary cause of the emergence of organized opposition. For this reason we stress the cleavage between insid- ers and outsiders rather than the divide within the ruling clique between hard-liners and soft-liners. Given the weakness of civic associations and the repression of opposition organizations, it is striking how commonly opposition in Africa today is led by former insiders who have fallen out of official favor.
3. Elite political pacts are unlikely in neopatrimonial regimes. Pacts are "more or less enduring compromises . . . (in which) no social or political group is sufficiently dominant to impose its ideal project, and what typi- cally emerges is a second-best solution."40 They figure prominently in the literature because of their role in the transitions of countries like Spain,41
39 Nicolas van de Walle, "Neopatrimonialism and Democracy in Africa, with an Illustration from Cameroon," in Jennifer Widner, ed., Economic Change and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
« O'Donnell and Schmitter (fn. 6), 38. 41 Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurua, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1979).
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Brazil,42 and Venezuela.43
Some conditions conducive to pact making, such as the inability of any single political actor to impose a preferred outcome, are present in the late stages of neopatrimonial rule. But other conditions are absent. First, incumbent and opposition leaders are usually so polarized as a result of winner-take-all power struggles that there is slim possibility that moderate factions from either side can negotiate an agreement. Instead, transitions unfold along a path of escalating confrontations until one side or other loses decisively. To the extent that transitions occur without setting a precedent for compromise, the chances are reduced that any resultant democratic regime can be sustained and consolidated.
In addition, the likelihood of pacts is a function of the degree of formal political institutionalization in a regime. In corporatist regimes the parties to a political pact are the acknowledged leaders of major interest blocs within state and society; by carrying their supporters along, they can make agreements stick. In neopatrimonial regimes political leaders may represent no more than a tiny coterie of clients and may be unable to build a politi- cal consensus around any intraelite agreement. The emerging political par- ties and civic organizations typically lack traditions, experience, and funds, and find it difficult to escape factionalism.44 As a result, contending oppo- sition leaders within a pluralistic social movement do not usually have the authenticity and legitimacy to strike a deal on behalf of all dissident fac- tions. Pacts are only likely where well-developed institutions—for example, the military on the government side or political parties on the opposition side—present cohesive bargaining positions and demonstrate credible political clout. In other words, pacts tend to form after leaders build insti- tutions that replace the shifting alliances of convenience that characterize neopatrimonial regimes.
Under neopatrimonialism, the prospect of political compromise depends more on the personality, management skills, and governing insti- tutions of the incumbent ruler. A leader who has attempted to legitimate a personalistic regime with populistic rhetoric—for example, of "peoples'" democracy or "African" socialism—is more likely to respond positively to demands for political liberalization than is a leader who has ruled on the basis of claims of traditional paternalism or revolutionary purity. A leader who has allowed political rivals to live freely within the country is more
42 Frances Hagopian, "Democracy by Undemocratic Means? Elites, Political Pacts and Regime Transition in Brazil," Comparative Political Studies 23, no. 2 (1990).
43 Terry Lynn Karl, Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela, Latin America no. 107 (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 1981).
44 Thus, by 1991, some 76 parties had been officially recognized in Cameroon, 42 in Guinea, 27 in Gabon, and allegedly over 200 in Zaire. In these countries, as well as in the Ivory Coast, the opposi- tion's credibility and strength has been undermined by internal divisions, ethnic rivalries, and personal disputes. See Yves A. Faure, "Nouvelle donne en Cote d'lvoire," Politique Africaine 20 (December 1985).
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likely to strike a deal on the rules of transition than is a leader who has sys- tematically eliminated opponents. But we contend that neopatrimonial practice reduces the possibility of the "grand" compromise of power shar- ing. Rather, a common condition of political transition is that the strong- man and his entourage have to go.
4. In neopatrimonial regimes, political transitions are struggles to establish legal rules. As struggles over the rules of the political game, political transi- tions determine the future constellation of winners and losers in the socio- economic realm. Here, too, regime type shapes the status of rules and the nature of rule-making conflicts. Corporatist regimes elsewhere in the world may have been installed by extraconstitutional means and may have suspended constitutional rights. But to the extent that corporatist rule is bureaucratic, it is rule governed and elites and masses are acculturated to an orderly rule of law.
But because personalistic leaders enjoy sweeping discretion in making public decisions, political transitions in neopatrimonial regimes are con- cerned fundamentally with whether rules even matter.45 The opposition leadership, which commonly includes lawyers within its ranks,46 calls for a rule of law. Indeed, the law, in its different national and international man- ifestations, is one of the more potent weapons the opposition has at its dis- posal. In an effort to establish the primacy of legal rules, it challenges the regime to lift emergency regulations, allow registration of opposition par- ties, hold a sovereign national conference, limit the constitutional powers of the executive, or hold competitive elections. At some moment in the struggle, the contents of the constitution and the electoral laws become key points of contention. In other words, the opposition attempts to reintro- duce rule-governed behavior after a prolonged period in which such niceties have been suspended.
Part of the opposition's objective in establishing legal rules is to gain access to resources monopolized by the ruling clique. In the context of a democratic transition, the opposition is most immediately interested in the regime's control of the media and other electoral campaign assets. In the longer run, business interests in the opposition may be keen to alter the rules of government intervention in the economy permanently. At this point, internal conflicts may emerge within the opposition over the extent
45 Confronted by a journalist on national television with evidence that the government had disre- garded its own laws in the manipulation of voter lists on the eve of the legislative elections of March 1992, the Cameroonian minister of territorial administration explained that "laws are made by men, and are no more than reference points." Cited in Celestin Monga, "La recomposition du marche poli- tique au Cameroun (1991-1992)" (Unpublished paper, GERDES, Cameroon, 1992), 10.
46 The national bar associations played leading opposition roles in Cameroon, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Togo. See Paul John Marc Tedga, Ouverture democratique en Afrique Noire? (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1991), 64-72.
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of regime transition, with old-guard politicians seeking to limit rule changes and thereby ensure that they can benefit from state patronage once they capture state power. Thus, the struggle over political rules is often a pretext or a prelude to even more fundamental economic struggles that are laid bare in efforts to strip neopatrimonial rulers of their power.
5. During transitions from neopatrimonial regimes, middle-class elements align with the opposition. Struggles over the status of property rights reveal the deeper structure of a regime's social base. The relationship between state and capital in Latin America and Southern Europe is very different from that in African countries. Corporatist regimes promote accumulation through "triple alliances" with foreign and national private capital, and they draw domestic political support from the expanding entrepreneurial mid- dle classes.47 This structure of political support has maintained or deepened great inequalities of wealth and income, which in turn limit the options for transition. Under capitalism, democracies can be installed gradually only if the distribution of assets is not to be disrupted; if they occur by a popular upsurge, a rapid transition, and the introduction of redistributive policies, right-wing forces may be prompted to intervene to reverse the transition. Some analysts argue that in order to achieve a stable democracy, the Right must do well in a founding election and the Left must accept the inviola- bility of the bourgeoisie's property rights.48
Because neopatrimonial regimes are embedded in precapitalist societies, one would expect a different transition scenario in Africa. The pervasiveness of clientelism means that the state has actively undermined capitalist forms of accumulation. Property rights are imperfectly respected and there are powerful disincentives against private entrepreneurship and long-term pro- ductive investments. Unlike in Latin America, governing alliances between military rulers and national bourgeoisies are uncommon. Instead, the weak national bourgeoisies of Africa are frustrated by state ownership, overregu- iation, and official corruption. Rather than regarding the incumbent regime as the protector of property rights, private capital opposes the use of the state machinery by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie to appropriate property for itself. Thus, instead of demanding that property rights be ruled out of bounds, would-be capitalists want to use a transition from neopatrimonial- ism as an opportunity to include them in the new rules of the political game.
This explains the tendency of emergent middle classes in Africa to side with the democratic opposition rather than to uphold the incumbent gov-
47 Pe te r Evans , Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); David Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
48 O'Donnell and Schmitter (fn. 6), 62,69. For a critique of these arguments, see Daniel H. Levine, "Paradigm Lost: Dependence to Democracy," World Politics 40 (April 1988).
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ernment. Businessmen and professionals often take on political leadership roles in the opposition, drawing in other middle-class groups, like public servants, whose downward economic mobility is a powerful impetus to forge an alternative ruling coalition. These elements are unlikely to pose a threat to the acceptance of a new government established by a founding election, not only because any new government is likely to be more eco- nomically liberal than its predecessor but also because bourgeois elements are unlikely to turn to military officers in a quest to reverse democratiza- tion. In transitions from neopatrimonial rule, the threat of backlash comes mainly from the military acting alone, with the emergent middle classes being the strongest and most articulate advocates of civilian politics.
VARIATIONS IN NEOPATRIMONIAL TRANSITIONS IN AFRICA
The unifying theme of this paper is the concept of neopatrimonial rule. So far, we have defined the concept and explored its general implications for the dynamics of political transitions. Yet the variety of transition trajecto- ries—occasionally democratic but more commonly blocked or flawed— that unfolded in Africa between 1989 and 1993 demands further explana- tion. Hence, recognizing that not all African leaders govern in identical ways, we now explore variations on the theme of neopatrimonial rule. Meaningful variants exist within the general type of African regime. These differences are due in part to the proclivities of individual leaders but, more importantly, to institutional structures that have evolved historically in response to political crises and needs.
First, regime variation can be traced to the political dynamics of the immediate postindependence years.49 The circumstances in which different leaders consolidated power partly determines the degree of pluralism that came to characterize the existing regime. When a dominant party emerged early during the period of competitive party politics at independence, that party was typically able to integrate, co-opt, or eliminate other political parties and to install stable civilian single-party rule, at least until the first leader retired.50 In the absence of a dominant party, ensuing regimes have been characterized by instability and a greater reliance on coercion, notably through military intervention.51
49 Ru th Berins Collier, Regimes in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 50 Numerous studies have chronicled and analyzed this process. T h e locus classicus remains Arist ide
Zolberg, Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). But see also H e n r y Bienen, Tanzania: Party Transformation and Economic Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); and William Foltz, "Political Opposition in Single-Party States of Tropical Africa," in Robert Dahl, ed., Regimes and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).
51 Henry Bienen, Armies and Parties in Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1979); Samuel Decalo, "The Morphology of Military Rule in Africa," in John Markakis and Michael Waller, eds.,
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 469
Partly overlapping this first set of factors, distinct variants of neopatri- monial regimes emerged as a result of specific historical attempts to over- come tensions created by ethnic, linguistic, and regional heterogeneity. Very few regimes in Africa adopted a discourse of exclusivity;52 the pref- erence instead was to expend resources to promote cultural assimilation and a sense of nationhood.53 Some leaders extended material inducements and social concessions to promote stability through various kinds of intraelite accommodation, arrangements that have resulted in relatively high levels of elite participation.54 Governments have agreed to ethnic, communal, or regional quotas for official positions and rent-seeking opportunities, and traditional chiefs have been allowed to retain at least limited authority over their domains. Other regimes have pursued approaches that rely more extensively on a mixture of ideology, coercion, and strong limits to pluralism to maintain national unity and political sta- bility. This has often been the case for radical military regimes, such as Ethiopia under Mengistu or Burkina Faso under Sankara, where state leaders have sought to rely less on material inducements or to place strict limits on beneficiaries.55
Various typologies of African regimes have been advanced in the recent literature to capture such institutional differences.56 Following Dahl's clas- sic formulation,57 we find it is useful to distinguish the neopatrimonial regimes in sub-Saharan Africa according to two distinct dimensions: the extent of competition (or contestation) and the degree of political partici- pation (or inclusion).
First, African regimes have varied in the extent to which members of the political system are allowed to compete over elected positions or public pol-
Military Marxist Regimes in Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1976); and idem, Coups and Army Rule in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
52 The exceptions include South Africa, of course, but also arguably present-day Sudan and Mauritania, where Arab/Islamic regimes are increasingly excluding non-Arab/non-Muslim segments of the population.
53 See, for example, Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), esp. chap. 3.
54 Bayart (fn. 21,1989). See also Donald Rothchild and Victor Olorunsola, eds., State versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983).
ss On Ethiopia, see Christopher Clapham, "State, Society and Political Institutions in Revolutionary Ethiopia," in James Manor, ed., Rethinking Third World Politics (New York: Longman, 1991). On Burkina Faso, see Rene Otayek, "The Revolutionary Process in Burkina Faso," in Markakis and Waller (fn. 51), 95-96.
56 For a proposal of seven regime types based loosely on seven diverse criteria, see Naomi Chazan et al., Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1988). For compet- ing typologies, see also Crawford Young, Ideology and Development in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Roger Charlton, "Dehomogenizing the Study of African Politics: The Case of Interstate Influence on Regime Formation and Change," Plural Societies 14, no. 1-2 (1983); and Dirk Berg-Schlosser, "African Political Systems: Typology and Performance," Comparative Political Studies 17, no. 1 (1984).
s7 Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).
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icy. Even when state elites have worked to eliminate, control, or co-opt opposition parties, they have sometimes tolerated pluralism within the sin- gle party or lobbying activities of nonstate associations. At one extreme, opposition parties have formed and even been allowed into the legislature in a small number of countries. At the other extreme, some regimes have banned any contestation of the policies formulated by an inner group of politicians. In between, islands of contestation have been tolerated, either independently of the state or formally under the authority of the ruling party.
Second, African regimes have varied in the degree of political participa- tion allowed, most obviously, through the timing and frequency of legisla- tive and executive elections. Postcolonial African regimes that have held elections have rarely limited the franchise. In contrast to the historical record in Europe or Latin America, women in Africa have generally enjoyed the same formal political rights as men. Nor have African states instituted literacy, property, or income requirements for the right to vote. Nonetheless, decision making in public affairs in African regimes is typi- cally restricted to elites with a narrow social base. Only rarely is the popu- lation at large consulted in policy-making, and then through a single party or approved membership associations such as farmer cooperatives or trade unions.
Competition and participation may vary independently of each other. We use these two dimensions to construct a schema of political regimes in Africa, as presented in Figure 1. The axes of the figure depict the extent to which a regime is competitive (along a scale from authoritarianism to democracy) and participatory (along a scale from exclusiveness to inclu- siveness). By using the Dahlian dimensions, we endeavor to ensure consis- tency with existing theoretical literature and comparability across world regions. At the four corners of the table lie four ideal regime categories, for which we adopt Remmer s conceptual terminology: exclusionary authori- tarianism, inclusionary authoritarianism, exclusionary democracy, and inclusionary democracy.58
Actual regimes occupy real-world locations within the space bounded by the idealized extremes. The specific coordinates of actual regimes derive from the extent to which they are more or less competitive and participa- tory. While transition from exclusionary authoritarianism involves changes along both dimensions, democratization is essentially a process of securing increased opportunities for political competition. Hence we draw finer dis- tinctions along this dimension. We thus derive six regime variants for Africa.
58 Remmer (fn. 2).
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High
o p g PL, oo
Med
Low
EXCLUSIONARY DEMOCRACY
Settler Oligarchy
Military Oligarchy
Personal Dictatorship
EXCLUSIONARY AUTHORITARIANISM
INCLUSIONARY DEMOCRACY
Multiparty Polyarchy
Competitive One-Party System
Plebiscitary One-Party System
INCLUSIONARY AUTHORITARIANISM
Low Med
PARTICIPATION
High
FIGURE 1
REGIME VARIANTS IN AFRICA
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472 WORLD POLITICS
Four of these regime variants are consistent with personal rule and can be regarded as varieties of neopatrimonialism: personal dictatorship, mili- tary oligarchy, and plebiscitary and competitive one-party systems.59 They are distinguished by whether the strongman's following is broadly or nar- rowly mobilized (participation) and by the plurality of political association within governing institutions (competition). When the supremo "subcon- tracts" executive functions to subordinate barons, power is divided and decisions are made only after some degree of competition and bargaining has occurred among the powerful. But because these barons recruit clients and operate state agencies as personal fiefdoms, they tend to reproduce varieties of neopatrimonialism rather than another genus of regime. Although party and military organizations may have been built to buttress a regime, these structures have not been institutionalized to the extent that they inhibit a strong leader from taking personal control of decision mak- ing.
We wish to stress that the proposed regime variants are neither rigid nor immutable. Actual African regimes reflect their own peculiar histories, which even during the postcolonial period may encompass shifts from one regime variant to another. In part as a result of these changes, actual regimes may display characteristics of more than one variant, with combi- nations of personal dictatorship with military or single-party structures being quite common. In fact, this possibility is inherent in the logic of our framework, which proposes neopatrimonial rule as a master concept that embraces a variety of subsidiary regime variants. But even if a given regime at a particular time is not a perfect exemplar of one of the variants in our model, it can usually be categorized roughly for analytic purposes (see Figure 2).
The remaining regime variants found in Africa are settler oligarchy and multiparty polyarchy. Since they are not neopatrimonial regimes, we limit our discussion to a few comments.
Multiparty polyarchies display relatively high levels of both participation and competition and have already completed a democratic political transi- tion.60 A plurality of political parties contest open elections and voters enjoy guarantees of a universal franchise and equality before the law. African regimes that have sustained this type of regime for at least a decade include Botswana, Gambia, Mauritius, Senegal, and Zimbabwe. Each of these
59 These categories and labels build on existing typologies. Ruth Collier distinguishes military, mul- tiparty, and two types of one-party regime: plebiscitary and competitive. Huntington identifies four regime types: personal, one-party, and military regimes, plus the special category of racial oligarchy for South Africa.
60 Dahl (fn. 57) labeled regimes that had been "highly popularized and liberalized" as polyarchies rather than democracies because, he argued, no large system in the real world is fully democratized (p. 8).
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) Personal dictatorships
Military oligarchies
I Plebiscitary one-party systems
Competitive one-party systems
Settler oligarchies
Multiparty polyarchies
Zaire, Malawi, Equatorial Guinea, Somalia, Djibouti, Swaziland, Guineab
Nigeria, Ghana, CAR, Uganda, Sudan, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger, Comoros, Lesotho
Gabon, Togo, Congo, Benin, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon15
Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Sao Tome, Seychelles
South Africa, Namibia
Botswana, Gambia, Mauritius, Senegal, Zimbabwe
FIGURE 2
AFRICAN COUNTRIES BY REGIME VARIANT
(IN 1989>
' That is, before the emergence of recent democracy protests. b All countries have particular histories that cannot be neatly encapsulated within static analytic
categories. In the figure above, African countries that experienced regime changes in the postcolonial period were categorized according to the regime variant that prevailed for the longest interval and that therefore had the most formative influence on the structure of political institutions. For example, whereas Guinea may have become a military oligarchy by 1989, it had been a personal dictatorship for the previous three decades. And whereas President Biya officially introduced a measure of political competition within the ruling RPDC in 1985, Cameroon had formerly displayed—and in important part still displays—the institutional attributes of a plebiscitary regime. In some countries, notably Angola and Mozambique, internal war since independence has precluded the consolidation of any clear regime variant.
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regimes could be further democratized by curtailing intimidation of opposi- tion supporters (Zimbabwe), guaranteeing the neutrality of electoral officials (Senegal), or strengthening opposition parties to enable an electoral change of government (Gambia, Botswana). While these regimes are imperfectly democratic, personal power is significantly checked by formal-legal rules, leadership turnover, and a measure of objectivity in decision making.
Settler oligarchies approximate exclusionary democracy. This form of bureaucratic regime is found in places in Latin America and Africa where European settlers gained independent control of the state.61 We consider the settler variable to be just as formative of the institutional structure of postcolonial politics as the culture of the colonizer. In these regimes the dominant racial group uses the instruments of law to deny political rights to ethnic majorities, usually through a restrictive franchise and emergency legislation. At the same time, however, because settlers permit a good degree of political competition within their own ranks, settler oligarchy, while exclusionary, is also competitive.62 The classic contemporary case in Africa is, of course, South Africa, but at least half a dozen other African countries, mostly in the eastern and southern subcontinent, have a settler colonial heritage. Comments on the transition prospects of this regime type can be found in the conclusion.
We now examine in greater detail the characteristics of the four main neopatrimonial regime variants and predict the distinct dynamics of polit- ical transition in each case.
PERSONAL DICTATORSHIP
This regime variant is the quintessence of neopatrimonialism. It is highly exclusionary because the strongman rules by decree; institutions of partic- ipation exist in name only and cannot check the absolute powers of the chief executive. The regime disallows even a semblance of political compe- tition, for example, by physically eliminating or indefinitely incarcerating opponents. The strongman may even preempt his own removal from office by declaring himself "president for life."
A personal dictator can emerge from either the army or a dominant political party but then consolidates power by weakening these formal political structures or by asserting total control over them.63 He rules per-
61 See Michael Bratton, "Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment: Toward a Comparison," International Studies Quarterly 26, no. 3 (1982); and Remmer (fn. 2), 71—76.
62 Remmer (fn. 2) even holds that "it is possible for exclusion to be achieved even more effectively under competitive political arrangements than under authoritarian ones. Exclusionary democracy not only makes it possible to secure regime support from dominant social groups in a highly stratified soci- ety, it obviates the costs of coercion and problems of regime legitimacy that are associated with exclu- sionary authoritarianism" (p. 74).
63 Writing about Mobutu's consolidation of power, Callaghy (fn. 21) speaks of the systematic "dis- mantlement of inherited structures, especially departicipation and depoliticization," including the
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 475
sonally by controlling the flow of public revenues and selectively disbursing rewards to a narrow entourage of familial, ethnic, or factional clients. He takes exclusive charge of policy-making (rather than relying on techno- cratic planning) and implements instructions through personal emissaries (rather than formal institutions). In recent times, the archetypal personal dictators in Africa have been Idi Amin of Uganda, Bokassa of Central African Republic, and Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. Of those still in power and currently confronting demands for political transition, we refer below to Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and Hastings Banda of Malawi (see Figure 2).
The personalization of power in these regimes has several implications for the dynamics of political transition. First, transitions are likely to be driven almost completely by forces outside of the state, either in domestic society or from the international arena. Personal rulers are unlikely to ini- tiate political liberalization from above or relinquish power without a struggle; they have to be forced out.64 Self-generated reform is problemat- ic because the regime has no mechanism of competition or participation to bring alternative ideas to the surface. Power is so concentrated that the dis- position of the regime is synonymous with the personal fate of the supreme ruler. Real political change is unlikely as long as the ruler remains, since he has made all the rules. Likewise, opportunity for regime change occurs only with the death, deposition, or flight of the strongman, which becomes the primary objective of the opposition throughout the transition.
For his part, the supreme leader tends to identify the sustainability of the regime with his own political survival and is likely to make major efforts to ride the wave of protest. This confusion between self and national interest is not unique to personal dictatorships, but it has more serious implications there, given the institutional realities of these regimes. Leaders in other regimes might believe themselves to be essential, but they are rudely reminded of the need to compromise by other institutions, for example, when the military and judiciary refuse to repress protest. Because personal dictators can deploy public revenues (however limited these may be) in support of personal survival, they can avoid accountability to the state's own institutions.65
emasculation of parliament, the elimination of the position of prime minister, the banning of all par- ties and youth organizations, and the centralization of state power away from the provinces to Kinshasa (p. 171).
64 For a similar argument, see Snyder (fn. 17). 65 News reports in mid-1992 indicated that Zaire's national currency, printed in Germany, was
being flown directly to Mobutu's luxury yacht on the Zaire River, for use as he saw fit Africa News, May 24, 1992). Amidst a crumbling economy, in which the average civil servant had not been paid in months, Mobutu was still personally ensuring the support of key followers, including elements of the armed forces charged with protecting him. See also "Mobutu's Monetary Mutiny," Africa Confidential, February 5, 1993; and "Zaire, a Country Sliding into Chaos," Guardian Weekly, August 8, 1993.
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The willingness of personal dictators to step down often depends on whether they fear prosecution for their egregious abuse of state powers and privileges. They tend to cling desperately to power. Even when friendly powers promise protection from extradition demands as an inducement to accept retirement, leaders with a poor human rights record and a history of state violence may hesitate to give up the protection of office. They believe the opposition's promises to prosecute them and, recalling the ignominious exile of Marcos of the Philippines or the Shah of Iran, fear they can never be safe.
As a result, the demise of personal dictators is usually protracted and painful, with incumbents tenaciously attempting to control the transition. President Mobutu of Zaire provides perhaps the best example of this process. Although officially acceding to popular and Western pressures to democratize, he has exercised considerable guile to manipulate events and maintain effective power. He has flouted his own reforms, subverted the constitution, manipulated the electoral process, and tried to bribe, intimi- date, and co-opt the opposition; he has been willing even to destroy his nation's economic and political structures.66 Over time, the state's authori- ty over territory and the very existence of the state as an organized body may become a fiction. The leader shrinks to little more than a local war- lord who survives by controlling residual resources and retaining the loyal- ty of a segment of the old coercive apparatus.
Transitions in personal dictatorships are also conditioned by the weak- nesses of political institutions. In the absence of institutional mechanisms for political competition, the protagonists find difficulty in reaching a com- promise formula to end the regime. Because it provides few institutional channels for negotiation over rules and power sharing, personalistic rule instead gives rise to all-or-nothing power struggles. As far as participation is concerned, personal dictatorships are characterized by an absence of civic associations. Even if the crisis has generated an outpouring of social protest against the regime, there are few mass organizations capable of effectively contesting the regime. True, opposition parties, human rights organiza- tions, and trade unions mushroom as soon as the regime's repressive capa- bilities weaken, but they are fragmented, impoverished, and themselves lacking traditions of participatory politics. In this context, the emergence of the church as a primary actor in the transitions reflects, as much as its own prestige and power, the scarcity of credible secular candidates to lead the opposition.67 The absence of institutions and habits of competition and par-
66 Rene Lemarchand, "Mobutu and the National Conference: The Arts of Political Survival" (Manuscript, University of Florida, 1992).
67 See Tedga (fn. 46).
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 477
ticipation combine virtually to eliminate the chances that a transition from personal dictatorship will end in the consolidation of a democratic order.
PLEBISCITARY ONE-PARTY SYSTEM
This is a more inclusionary form of authoritarian regime in which a per- sonal ruler orchestrates political rituals of mass endorsement for himself, his officeholders, and his policies. Voters are mobilized and controlled through the mechanism of one-party "plebiscites."68 Electoral turnout rates and affirmative votes for the president typically exceed 90 percent, results that cannot be achieved by electoral fraud alone. Between elections, the regime employs a party machine to distribute patronage to a wider array of economic and regional interests than is customary in personal dictator- ships. While more inclusive, plebiscitary one-party systems are neverthe- less decidedly undemocratic because they preclude genuine political com- petition.69 Opposition political parties are proscribed and only one candi- date from the official party appears on the ballot. As rituals of ratification, plebiscites can postpone but not eradicate a legitimacy crisis.
One-party plebiscitary systems in Africa are usually headed by first-gen- eration leaders, whether civilian or military. If civilian, the leader is usual- ly the "grand old man" of nationalist politics who won independence in the early 1960s; if military, he commonly came to power in the first round of coups in the late 1960s or early 1970s. This latter group of leaders typical- ly tries to civilianize and legitimize the regime by abandoning military rank and uniform and attempting to construct mass mobilizing political parties. Examples include Presidents Eyadema in Togo and Bongo in Gabon.
In these regimes, national conferences are the distinctive institution and watershed event of the transition. Patterned on both traditional village assemblies and the Estates General of the French Revolution, national con- ferences bring together national elites to address the country's political prob- lems and attempt to formulate new constitutional rules. National conferences have been held in over half a dozen West and Central African states, result- ing in governmental changes in Benin, Congo, and Niger, and the exertion of intense political pressure on incumbent rulers in Zaire and Togo.70
We argue that the characteristics of the plebiscitary one-party regime make the national conference appealing to both opposition and ruling elite. These regimes have a tradition of participation, notably within the single
68 Collier (fn. 49), 104-8. 69 For country examples of these practices, see Bayart (fn. 21) on the Ahidjo regime in Cameroon
(pp. 141-84); and Comi M. Toulabor, Le Togo sons Eyadema (Paris: Karthala, 1986), on Togo. 70 See Lemarchand (fn.29); Pearl T. Robinson, "The National Conference Phenomenon in
Francophone Africa" (Paper presented at the colloquium on the Economics of Political Liberalization in Africa, Harvard University, March 6—7, 1992); and Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga, Les conferences nationales en Afrique Noire: Une affaire a suivre (Paris: Karthala, 1993).
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party, but much less real effective political competition. The regime has sustained a modicum of legitimacy through ritualistic plebiscitary elections that, while seriously flawed as democratic instruments, nonetheless provide the citizenry with a limited political voice.71 The regime is attached to these rituals, which it considers politically useful. When the crisis of legit- imacy erupts, it is predisposed to holding a national conference—an insti- tution that harks back to familiar forms of direct democracy but poses lit- tle real threat to the regime. Such a forum will allow the regime to make minimal concessions, let off steam, and perhaps even end up with a show of support. Rulers believe that they can turn such events to their advantage, just as they have always done.72
But the plebiscitary tradition has created enough political space for the emergence of a nascent opposition, to whom the national conference also appeals for several different reasons. First, the existing rules of the political game provide considerable built-in advantages to the regime, and the opposition quickly understands that reform of those rules is a prerequisite for political change. The opposition conceives of the national conference as an impartial public forum in which to refashion more advantageous ground rules that for the first time will include provisions for genuine political competition. Second, participatory structures are strong enough that the regime is incapable of completely disregarding or repressing calls for a national conference. Unlike more competitive systems, however, they are too weak for the transition to advance without a forum such as the nation- al conference; the opposition is too divided and inexperienced to contest elections successfully, particularly if they are carried out by the administra- tion under the current rules. The opposition is typically composed of sev- eral dozen parties, few of which have a national appeal or program; fur- thermore, they are poorly organized outside of a few urban areas. As in Ivory Coast and Gabon, when the regime organized quick elections, oppo- sition leaders know they are likely to lose an electoral contest in which the regime holds all the cards. The national conference appeals to the opposi- tion for strategic reasons, therefore, because it is perceived as a forum that will less expose its weaknesses.
Leaders and oppositions thus proceed toward a national conference with very different expectations. The former see it as a harmless participatory ritual that will provide the regime with a much needed boost, whereas the latter see it as the first step in a democratic takeover. Such a misunder-
71 Collier (fn. 49), 119-24. See also Aristide Zolberg, "The Structure of Political Conflict in the New States of Tropical Africa," American Political Science Review 62, no. 2 (1968).
72 As Allen (fn. 24) argues in relation to the national conference in Benin: "It was conceived origi- nally by the government as a means of discussing mainly the political and economic problems of the time . . . and of co-opting the opposition into a joint solution in which the government would retain the leading role" (p. 48).
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 479
standing cannot last long, and the critical point comes when the national conference demands full sovereign power. The regime resists, recognizing that real political competition would pose grave dangers to its hold on power. The ultimate outcome, which for these transitions is hard to pre- dict, then depends on the relative strengths of the parties: strong leaders Eke Biya or Eyadema were able to avoid the conference or limit its impact; more desperate leaders like Kerekou and Sassou Nguesso gave in, convinc- ing themselves it had become the best alternative.
Although the national conference is a logical extension of the institu- tional configuration of plebiscitary regimes, it is important to note that contingent forces do influence whether or not they occur. In particular, specific leaders have learned from the transition experiences in neighbor- ing countries. Initially, leaders in Benin and Congo quickly agreed to national conferences in the belief that their regime would survive largely unscathed. In each case, however, the conference turned into a devastating public inquisition into patrimonial malfeasance and incompetence: it ulti- mately stripped the leaders of executive powers. Other leaders learned the lesson that there was little to be gained from agreeing to a conference, and they have steadfastly resisted opposition demands. Plebiscitary forms con- tinue to appeal to these leaders, but they now seek them elsewhere, for example, in organized mass marches on behalf of the regime.
MILITARY OLIGARCHY
Military oligarchies are exclusionary regimes in the sense that elections (even mock elections) are suspended and all decisions are made by a nar- row elite behind closed doors. Although there is a visible personal leader, power is not concentrated exclusively in his hands. Rather, decisions are made collectively by a junta, committee, or cabinet that may include civil- ian advisers and technocrats in addition to military officers. There is a degree of debate within the elite, and objective criteria may be brought to bear in assessing policy options. A relatively professional civil or military hierarchy implements policy, and executive institutions are maintained in at least a token state.73
Military oligarchies in Africa tend to be led by a younger generation of junior military officers that came to power in a second, third, or later round of coups during the late 1970s and the 1980s. Political participation is severely circumscribed because there are no elections of any kind, especial- ly in the early years of military rule. Existing political parties and many civic associations are banned, although in self-professed radical regimes such as Ethiopia or Congo, the military has usually established "people's
73 Bienen (fn. 51), 122-45; Decalo (fn. 51, Coufs and Army Rule in Africa), 231-54.
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committees" or a vanguard party to disseminate its message.74 Even when military oligarchs espouse a populist ideology, however, their methods of rule do not include genuine participation, at least not until these leaders begin to make good on promises to return to civilian rule—as Huntington noted, most militaries harbor a deep distrust of politics.75 Yet, even when they would like to, military elites lack the organizational capability to develop grassroots support.76 This variant of neopatrimonial regime is exemplified by the governments of Jerry Rawlings in Ghana and Ibrahim Babangida in Nigeria.
Managed transitions from above are most likely in a military oligarchy. Because leaders come to power by force and govern with force, these regimes commonly encounter a crisis of legitimacy, which also results from their inability to deliver the economic growth they had promised during the takeover, the population's democratic aspirations, and the military's own promises of an eventual return to civilian rule. Yet the eventuality of a polit- ical transition is inherent to the logic of most military regimes: military oli- garchs can respond to the crisis by renewing promises of a managed tran- sition and agreeing to a more precise and perhaps shorter timetable. Thus, in Guinea and Ghana popular discontent in 1990 and 1991 compelled the regimes to speed up a managed transition that had been allowed to lapse. Military regimes as varied as Burundi, CAR, Guinea, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, and Uganda have all been undergoing managed transitions since 1991. On the other hand, the annulment of the May 1993 Nigerian elec- tions by General Babangida indicates dramatically that many of these promises to hand back power may be less than genuine.77 And the reac- tionary coups that followed elections in both Nigeria and Burundi empha- size that military forces are loath to abdicate power and may easily reverse democratic gains.
The degree of military penetration of polity and society is a key regime variable in determining the prospects for regime transition. Where the mil- itary is not immersed in governmental affairs, it can easily adopt a hands- off attitude; but where it has led or participated in the governing coalition,
74 Even then, the military has sought to limit the power and au tonomy of the party, despite Leninist principles regarding the supremacy of the party over all o ther political insti tutions. See Decalo (fn. 51, "Morphology of Mili tary Rule in Africa"), 134 -35 .
75 Samuel H u n t i n g t o n writes: "The problem is military opposit ion to politics. Mil i tary leaders can easily envision themselves in a guardian role; they can also picture themselves as the far seeing impar- tial promoters of social and economic reform in their societies. B u t wi th rare exceptions, they shrink from assuming the role o f political organizer. In particular, they condemn political parties." See Hun t ing ton , Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1968), 243 .
76 Henry Bienen, "Military Rule and Political Processes: Nigerian Examples," Comparative Politics 10 January 1978).
77 On these events, see "Nigerian Military Rulers Annul Election," New York Times, June 24,1993; and "Nigeria: About Turn!" Africa Confidential, July 30, 1993.
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it necessarily plays a more directive role. The latter is true of the regimes we classify as military oligarchies, in which small networks of military men dominate decision making with a shallow stratum of senior civil servants, and participatory politics is severely limited. In contrast to Latin America, however, African military rulers are more reticent about handing power back to civilians, and they initiate managed transitions either without great sincerity or in response to popular protest and pressures.78 In this sense, among others, transitions from military oligarchies remain typical of the general neopatrimonial pattern.79
A managed transition appeals to the military for several reasons. First, it flatters the military's idealized view of itself as a rational, orderly, and orga- nized force trying to impose order on a discordant civilian political process. For military oligarchs, the biggest challenge is the gradual introduction of political participation. The efforts of Babangida and Rawlings to engineer the transition process, specifying rules about the formation of voluntary associations, political parties, and phasing in elections, are revealing in this respect. Second, the military's near monopoly on the means of coercion sig- nificantly enhances its control over the dynamics and outcomes of the tran- sition. Maintaining popular support and legitimacy during the transition is less crucial for military governments, which can resort to force and repres- sion more systematically than can civilian regimes.80
Moreover, because military oligarchs have repressed participatory poli- tics, the transition unfolds with little or no organized opposition powerful enough to contest the regime's timetable. Military oligarchies have, for example, typically imposed a ban on party activity. In more pluralistic sys- tems, political leaders may want to manage the transition unilaterally, but their plans are overturned by civic organizations strong enough to push their disagreements with the regime. In military oligarchies, by contrast, these organizations are weak and have no choice but to accept the govern- ment's plans. Moreover, whatever defects the managed transition may have, it does have the advantage of reducing uncertainty and imposing on the state a kind of accountability that weak social actors may find advanta- geous.81 For its part, the regime finds the reduction in political uncertain-
78 Christopher Clapham and George Philip, "The Political Dilemmas of Military Regimes," in Clapham and Philip, eds., The Political Dilemmas of Military Regimes (London: Croom Helm, 198S).
79 For a discussion of this point, see Claude Welch, "Cincinnatus in Africa: The Possibility of Military Withdrawal from Politics," in Michael F. Lofchie, ed., The State of the Nations: Constraints on Development in Independent Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
80 Nonetheless, the military coup by junior officers that toppled the Traore regime in Mali in March 1991 shows that there are limits to the extent to which even a military regime can rely on force to main- tain its power. See Jane Turrittin, "Mali: People Topple Traore," Review of African Political Economy 52 (November 1991).
81 As Lemarchand (fn. 29) argues: "Transitions from above are the more promising in terms of their ability to 'deliver' democracy in that they tend to be rather specific about the time frame, procedural
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ty appealing; it can promote political compromises that bring outsider* back in, protect the position of the military as an institution, limit the pos* sibilities of getting punished for its role in various abuses of power, and slow down or halt the transition if it begins to evolve in an unfavorable direction.82
COMPETITIVE ONE-PARTY SYSTEM
This variant of the one-party system is as inclusive as the plebiscitary vari- ant but also (as the label suggests) somewhat more competitive. This regime is distinguished from the military oligarchy by the locus of limited competition at the mass level. Elections in these systems allow for two or more candidates in party primaries or parliamentary elections. Voters pos- sess a restricted electoral choice among candidates from a single official party with an established policy platform. They seem sufficiently attracted by the available choices to sustain turnout figures at relatively high, though declining, levels.83 Such regimes have also been relatively stable, resisting military intervention.
As an aspect of institutional longevity, competitive one-party regimes are often headed by nationalist founding fathers like Kaunda of Zambia and Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast.84 In some cases, the original ruler has previously engineered a smooth but nondemocratic leadership transi- tion to a hand-picked successor (such as Moi of Kenya or Mwinyi in Tanzania). In these regimes, long-serving leaders have consolidated and
steps and overall strategy of transition. Unlike what often happens with transitions from below, the net result is to reduce uncertainty" (p. 10).
82 In addition to the aborted transition in Nigeria, one might note events in Ghana, where Rawlings lifted the ban on political parties in May 1992 in preparation for pluralist elections in November, while simultaneously having the constitution rewritten to protect members of the ruling Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) from prosecution by future governments. Rawlings won the elections of November 1992, in a contest widely perceived to have been marred by extensive fraud; see David Abdulai, "Rawlings Wins' Ghana's Presidential Elections," Africa Today 39 (Fall 1992), 66-71. In Uganda, President Museveni slowed down his country's managed transition in order to give himself time to build a new political party with a broad ethnoregional base; see Africa Confidential, April 17, 1992.
83 These trends can be attributed to elite efforts at demobilization of formerly active participants and the co-optation or elimination of opposition power centers. They are well covered by Nelson Kasfir, The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics with a Case Study of Uganda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). On the characteristics of single-party elections in Africa, see the following: D. G. Lavroff, ed., Aux urnes rAfrique! Elections etpouvoirs en Afrique Noire (Paris: Pedone, 1978); Naomi Chazan, "African Voters at the Polls: A Re-Examination of the Role of Elections in Africa Politics," Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 17 (July 1979); and Fred M. Hayward, Elections in Independent Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987). On competitive single-party elections in Tanzania and Kenya, see Goran Hyden and Colin Leys, "Elections and Politics in Single-Party Systems: The Case of Kenya and Tanzania," British Journal of Political Science 2 (April 1972); and Jankees Van Donge and Athumani Liviga, "The 1985 Tanzanian Parliamentary Elections: A Conservative Election," African Affairs 88 (January 1989).
84 Ivory Coast moved progressively to competitive primaries within the single party after 1980. See Tessi Bakary, "Cote d'lvoire: Une decentralisation politique centralise," Geopolitique Africaine 2 (June 1986).
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institutionalized support in ruling parties and are, or consider themselves, politically secure.85 They tolerate a degree of pluralism, which allows for significant opposition to the government on the fringes of the single party, in the press, and in various civic associations, which are strong by African standards.
These regimes are vulnerable to collapse when economic crisis and donor-mandated economic policy reform programs cut the resources avail- able to the ruler for managing the political game. The rotation of the polit- ical personnel becomes more frenzied, with the ranks of outsiders swelling and security declining for insiders. This paves the way for discontent and recriminations. The political transition is sparked by an upsurge of popu- lar sentiment against the regime, which then causes stress in the elite coali- tion. The first casualty of political crisis tends to be the sustainability of the integrative formulas that cemented national unity and ensured political sta- bility. The pluralistic mechanisms that promoted elite accommodation and compromise now hasten the transition and at the same time channel it.
Although the rules of the political game favor the regime, the opposi- tion is confident enough to move directly to an election without first con- vening a national conference. They calculate that there are adequate oppor- tunities to win a multiparty election under existing institutional arrange- ments. They demand only minor adjustments to the rules of participation and competition to ensure that elections are free and fair.86
Incumbents respond according to whether they are first- or second-gen- eration leaders. Old-guard nationalists like Houphouet or Kaunda calcu- late on the basis of their past electoral record that they still enjoy personal political legitimacy and that their parties have the organizational strength to win a competitive election. As a result, they are willing to accept the opposition's call for elections.87 That regular elections are held distinguish- es these regimes from others in Africa. Rulers see them as a mechanism for retaining power, confident not only that they retain substantial support within the population but also that official control over the press and the electoral machinery, plus the availability of public funds to finance the rul-
85 Heniy Bienen and Nicolas van de Walle, "Of Time and Power in Africa," American Political Science Review 83 (March 1989).
86 The 1991 transition in Zambia was "a struggle over the rules of the political game and the resources by which it is played (in which). . . the ruling party employ(ed) all its strength to tilt the rules of political competition in its own favor." See Michael Bratton, "Zambia Starts Over," Journal of Democracy 3, no. 2 (1992), 82. Even so, the opposition successfully forced incumbent president Kaunda to forgo a referendum on multiparty politics and move directly to elections. They also felt confident enough to contest the October 1991 election under a less-than-perfect voter register and constitution.
87 In the case of Ivory Coast at least, this calculation proved to be sound. Thus, regarding Ivory Coast, Faure (fn. 44) argues that the victory of the ex-single party was due to the fact that "the gov- ernment, thanks to its effective and very loyal territorial administration, and to the PDCI apparatus, pre- sent all over the country down to the most isolated hamlet, controlled electoral operations throughout . . . and all official information sources" (p. 37).
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ing party, will ensure a comfortable electoral victory. The situation is more troubling for second-generation civilian leaders who
lack the historical legitimacy of their predecessors. Without a well-estab- lished personal political base, they are less willing to risk multiparty elections; instead, they prevaricate and delay. Mwinyi has stretched out the transition in Tanzania for more than half a decade. When, by 1992, Moi could no longer avoid elections, he tried to restrict debate about political reform, amended the electoral code to his own advantage, and pumped up the national money supply for a massive vote-buying campaign.88 The likelihood of ethnic tensions increases sharply in these regimes if the transition does not proceed smoothly. Leaders who lack confidence about their popular base may attempt to develop one through ethnic demagoguery once the old inte- grative formulas no longer appear capable of assuring political stability.
Despite these very real obstacles, the prospects for a democratic process are greater for transitions from competitive one-party regimes than from other forms of neopatrimonial regime. The reason lies in the structure of political institutions in which competitive one-party elections laid a foun- dation for both political participation and contestation. While incumbent and opposition forces in a transition distrust each other deeply and squab- ble over constitutional and electoral regulations until the eleventh hour, they also are in sufficient agreement on the rules of the political game to allow an election to take place, with each side betting it has a chance to win. Even if the losers of a transition election complain about malfeasance, they will often eventually and reluctantly accept its results and begin to organize to win the next one.89
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
In this essay, we have argued against the prevalent view that political tran- sitions are driven contingently and unpredictably by the initiatives and responses of key actors. We have also contended that a search for democ- ratic prerequisites that focuses on deep structures of economic and social
88 Joel Barkan, "Kenya: Lessons from a Rawed Election," Journal of'Democracy 4 (July 1993); Bard- Anders Andraesson, Gisela Geisler, and Arne Tostensen, A Hobbled Democracy: The Kenya General Elections, 1992 (Bergen, Norway: Chr. Michelson Institute, 1993).
89 On the Ivory Coast, for example, see the sanguine assessment of the recent progress being made toward a stable pluralist system in Yves A. Faur£, "L'Economie politique d'une democratisation: Elements d'analyse a propos de l'experience recente de la Cote d'lvoire," Politique Africaine 43 (October 1991), 46-47. And however flawed the December 1992 election in Kenya, the transition led to demo- cratic gains. True, the opposition did not win the election, but nowhere do we claim that this is a requirement for a democratic transition. Instead, the opposition has de facto accepted the results of the election by taking its seats in parliament; see Barkan fn. 88. Moreover, there is a new plural division of power in Kenya and a functioning opposition in parliament. These are positive factors for democratic consolidation that even paradigmatic African cases of democratic transition like Zambia do not yet enjoy. On the importance of opposition for democratic consolidation, see Stephanie Lawson, "Conceptual Issues in the Comparative Study of Regime Change and Democratization," Comparative Politics 25, no. 2 (1993).
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modernity overlooks important proximate political influences. Instead, we think that the institutional characteristics of the preexisting political regime impart structure to the dynamics, and to a lesser extent the out- comes, of political transitions. Regime type provides the context in which contingent factors play themselves out. If this claim is true for the weak- ly institutionalized neopatrimonial regimes in Africa, then it challenges political scientists to reveal the structures underlying regime transitions from more bureaucratized forms of authoritarianism in other world regions.
Our main point is that political transitions from neopatrimonial rule display distinctive features. These intervals of dramatic political change are likely to be driven from below rather than initiated by elites; they tend to be marked by factional struggles over patronage rather than by divisions of political ideology; and they are usually backed rather than resisted by emerging middle classes. Evidence for these arguments is found in the dynamics of current transitions in sub-Saharan Africa, in which the rela- tions between state and society are shaped by personal authority, the absence of stable property rights and opportunities for capitalist accumula- tion, and the weakness of civic associations and political organizations. These characteristics impinge decisively on the way that political transi- tions unfold. Even if transitions are characterized by considerable uncer- tainty and some serendipity, the outcome of political struggles hinges on the way that power had been exercised by personalistic rulers.
When subjecting Africa to comparative analysis, we have tried to avoid reducing a complex continent to a single, undifferentiated category. Instead, we draw attention to variants of political regime. In the second half of this essay we have compared African neopatrimonial regimes, based on regime dimensions with proved analytic utility, and related the comparison to the continent's recent history of political turmoil. On the basis of this schema, we argue that the dynamics of political transition and the likeli- hood of a peaceful transition to democracy are shaped by the amount of for- mal political participation and competition allowed by the ancien regime.
We contend that our approach has greatest utility for analyzing transi- tion dynamics, that is, the way political transitions unfold, rather than how they turn out. Within Africa we perceive several distinctive tendencies. Typically, transitions from personal dictatorships are driven by spontaneous street protests, focus on the fate of the ruler, and, in the absence of effec- tive political institutions to channel political participation and contestation, tend to dissolve into chaotic conflict. Military oligarchs aim at more order- ly dynamics. They seek to regulate and graduate the pace at which civilian political participation is reintroduced. To this end, they initiate and attempt to manage the process of political reform, albeit sometimes with-
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out any real intention of forfeiting power. By contrast, transitions from plebiscitary one-party regimes hinge on the issue of political competition and tend to come to a head when a national conference asserts rules that challenge the long-standing political monopolies enjoyed by incumbents. Finally, in transitions from competitive one-party regimes, the dynamics of political struggle center on whether elections, to which all parties ulti- mately agree, are free and fair.
Do any of these processes lead to democracy? Because political transi- tions in Africa are ongoing at the time of writing, we insist that it is too early to make definitive judgments. But there are beginning to emerge a few tentative trends that can serve as hypotheses for further research.
First, a consolidated democracy is much less likely to eventuate from the abrupt collapse of a personal dictatorship than from the gradual reform of a competitive one-party system. For these regime variants, levels of partic- ipation and competition are mutually reinforcing: participation and com- petition exist at at least moderate levels for the competitive one-party sys- tems, yet both are extremely low for the personal dictatorships. Thus the constellation of institutional attributes (or lack of attributes) is particularly clear for these regimes, and it is somewhat easier to predict transition tra- jectories. Democracy is possible only in the presence of a set of political institutions that allows protagonists to propose, negotiate, and win popu- lar acceptance for political accommodations; even then, it is never guaran- teed.
Second, the messy outcomes of transitions from military oligarchies and plebiscitary regimes currently defy prediction. Transitions from these regimes invariably end imperfectly, incompletely, or ambiguously. These transitions are racked by cross-pressures deriving from a mixed institution- al heritage, which promotes either limited competition without participa- tion (military oligarchies) or symbolic participation without competition (plebiscitary systems). In military regimes the efforts of soldiers to manage participation are likely to foster artificial political institutions that lack gen- uine popular legitimacy. In plebiscitary regimes incumbents and opposition disagree so fundamentally about whether the rules of the game should allow political competition that repression, stalemate, or open conflict are likely to result. Although our model allows us to note tendencies in transi- tion dynamics in these cases (that is, by a managed handover to civilians or a confrontational national conference), we cannot presently foresee out- comes.
Third, we note the particularly vexatious nature of transitions from dic- tatorial and plebiscitary regimes, both of which generate unregulated polit- ical conflict. This is because in both regime variants, political contestation is outlawed rather than channeled through political institutions. This sug-
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 487
gests the general proposition that political competition is essential for a transition to democracy. While personalistic rulers may sometimes pro- mote inclusive coalitions of support or rituals of mass participation, they cannot tolerate independent centers of political opinion and power. They would rather permit open political conflict and the decay of political insti- tutions than share or abdicate power. Thus, getting to democracy is easier from a regime where competition is tolerated and where the main chal- lenge is to broaden political participation; getting to democracy is much more difficult from a regime that has no tradition of political competition, however inclusive and participatory it may be.
Finally, if our logic is correct, the prospects for democracy are better in transitions from regime types other than neopatrimonial ones. This is so because greater progress has been made in other regimes in routinizing par- ticipation and (especially) competition in formal political institutions. We do not know enough about political transitions outside Africa to assess the effects of various bureaucratic authoritarian regime structures there. But our model suggests, perhaps counterintuitively, that within Africa the prospects for democracy are better in transitions from settler oligarchies than from all variants of neopatrimonial regime. Recall that settler regimes established traditions of pluralistic politics, competitive elections, and loyal opposition but that their fatal flaw was the restriction of political partici- pation to a racial elite. Transition in these regimes is less a struggle over the right of political actors to hold diverse political beliefs than over the exten- sion of the franchise to previously excluded sections of the population. In South Africa—in contrast to the neopatrimonial pattern outlined here, and following other bureaucratic authoritarian regimes in Latin America and Southern Europe—political transition is occurring by pact between the moderate leaders of corporate factions in the government and opposition. One might even assert that settler oligarchies stand a better chance than most other African regimes of consolidating democratic institutions. There is already evidence that former settler colonies tend to become somewhat more democratic regimes than do nonsettler colonies: for example, Zimbabwe and Namibia became multiparty competitive polyarchies after independence; and Zambia and Kenya adopted competitive, rather than plebiscitary, forms of one-party rule. These observations suggest that although political transition in South Africa may be protracted and punc- tuated by violence, it may well ultimately occur by negotiation. And the long-term prospects for democratic consolidation may be better there than in other parts of contemporary Africa.90
90 Analysts are divided regarding the prospects for democracy in South Africa. On the one hand, South Africa's lack of national homogeneity, of broad-based economic development, and of unam- biguous defeat of the old order predispose the country to continued conflict. The posttransition gov-
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One might object that an argument linking the institutional makeup of the ancien regime to the process of transition is trivial or circular. Are we simply suggesting that the more pluralistic the regime the likelier the tran- sition will produce a pluralist democracy, surely not a very interesting the- oretical claim? In fact, our argument links institutional characteristics only tangentially to the outcomes of transitions but directly to their internal dynamics, so this criticism is at best only partly on the mark. The criticism is nonetheless worth addressing in order to bring out the implications and limits of the thesis.
That history moves in incremental steps is not an earth-shattering proposition, although the current emphasis in the transitions literature on individual agency perhaps makes it a useful one. Indeed, we have tried to show that the prospects for democracy in African regimes depend on prior traditions of political pluralism. It is theoretically useful to investigate the reasons for this correlation. Bermeo has emphasized the importance of ; learning in the process of democratization in which changing attitudes and norms lead actors to accept new modes of political behavior.91 Our argu- ment suggests that organizations both within and outside the state, and the interaction between them, provide critical arenas for this learning. It will be difficult, that is, to institute new rules of accountability, tolerance, and participation if political parties or trade unions are missing or underdevel- oped and if judicial and legislative bodies have no tradition of indepen- dence from the executive.
This article also stresses the formal status of institutions. For example, if civil society is weakly and informally organized, the incumbent govern- ment will probably be able to ride out any pro-democracy protests. Opportunities may exist for the fall of the regime, but in the absence of formal organizations to engineer the transition, the regime may well sur- vive. Chazan and others have argued forcefully that, as African states repressed formal participatory structures, people shifted their efforts into ernment may also be tempted to use the formidable apparatus of repression inherited from the current government for its own ends. See Herman Giliomee and Jannie Gagiano, eds., The Elusive Search for Peace: South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland (London: Oxford University Press, 1990); and Herman Giliomee, "Democratization in South Africa" (Paper presented at the congress of the American Sociological Association, Miami, Fla., August 1993). On the other hand, some commentators see "an individually-based liberal democracy" as a viable option for permanently settling conflict in the coun- try. See Sammy Smooha and Theodor Hanf, "The Diverse Modes of Conflict-Regulation in Deeply Divided Societies," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 33 (January—April 1992), 41; and F. van Zyl Slabbert, The Quest for Democracy: South Africa in Transition (Johannesburg: Penguin Forum Series, 1992). Our claim is comparative: we do not say that consolidated democracy is easy, imminent, or preordained in South Africa but only that it is more likely than in those African neopatrimonial regimes where political competition has been outlawed. For a similar argument, see Samuel Huntingdon, "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984); and idem (fn. 4), 111-12.
91 Nancy Bermeo, "Democracy and the Lessons of Dictatorship," Comparative Politics 24, no. 3 (1992).
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NEOPATRIMONIAL REGIMES 489
informal organizations, which flourished.92 These structures—such as market women's associations, ethnic associations, and credit clubs—have directly improved peoples' welfare and by sapping the government's legit- imacy may even have laid the groundwork for political liberalization. But, in the final analysis, only formal institutions—such as trade unions, human rights organizations, and, especially, political parties—can force recalcitrant governments into amending constitutions and calling elec- tions, and appear to populations as plausible alternatives to the govern- ment in power.
Last, we emphasize that the relationship between regime type and tran- sition is not mechanistic. Especially in relation to political outcomes, the structure of the preceding regime provides only a template that predispos- es, but does not fully determine, particular results. The remainder of the explanation of political change must be derived from other factors. We consider that the effectiveness of contending state and societal organiza- tions at achieving preferred outcomes is largely a function of the political and economic resources at their disposal during the transition. Within every regime there is a wide band of potential differences in the levels of these resources. For example, the strength of state organizations depends on the ability of leaders to maintain a flow of discretionary spoils and to sustain prebendal networks of support. Within the opposition, the strength of unions and parties depends on achieving a significant funding and mem- bership base independent of the state and an organizational network that extends outside of the capital and into the countryside. It is these differ- ences in resources that explain the dissimilar outcomes in, say, Benin and Togo. The tremendous fiscal crisis of Benin forced Kerekou to compro- mise, whereas Eyadema's intransigence has been buttressed by his contin- ued access to international and domestic resources.93 Unfortunately, there is currently little systematic information on the resource attributes of state and opposition organizations in Africa, and this remains a priority for future research.
92 Naomi Chazan, "The New Politics of Participation in Tropical Africa," Comparative Politics 14 (January 1982); Jean Francois Bayart, Achille Mbembe, and C. Toulabor, La Politique par le Bas en Afrique (Paris: Karthala, 1991).
93 Marc Pilon, "La transition togolaise dans l'impasse," Politique Africaine 49 (March 1993), 136-40; John R. Heilbrunn, "Social Origins of National Conferences in Benin and Togo," m Journal of Modern African Studies 31, no. 2 (1993).
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LIT1100 Introduction to Literature University of Northwestern – St. Paul
The Literary Analysis Essay In-text documentation refers to Roberts, E. V. (1999). Writing about literature (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
What is a literary analysis essay? It is a carefully organized set of paragraphs that develop and enlarge a central idea about a literary text (22). Your essay needs to be at least 1000 words (approximately 4 typed pages) but should not be longer than 1500 words (approximately 6 pages). What is the purpose of this type of essay? The purpose is to convince your readers that your central idea is valid by demonstrating how selected details from the text relate to and support your central idea (22). Upon what should my central idea focus? The central idea should focus on a particular literary element in the text, e.g., character, setting, plot, point of view, theme, irony, symbolism, or allegory. For a lengthy essay, the central idea may include more than one literary element. What characteristics would make a central idea strong? The central idea should be an interesting, insightful assertion about a literary element and its significance in the text. It should be a specific idea, able to be proven with evidence from the text itself. In what form will this central idea appear in my essay? The central idea will appear as the thesis statement in your paper. The thesis, which should be included in your introduction, will be composed of three parts:
Title and author (unless previously stated in the introduction) Assertion: the interesting, insightful idea about a literary element in the text Forecast: a preview of the main topics you will use to develop your assertion
Sample Thesis Statements: Character: In Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, the protagonist Minnie Wright changes from passivity to destructive assertiveness. This change in character is indicated by her clothing, her dead canary, and her unfinished patchwork quilt. Setting: In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Edgar Allan Poe uses many details of setting to create a mood of horror and repulsion; his readers are both fascinated and repulsed by the mood of ghastliness and heartlessness that the author establishes through his vivid descriptions of underground rooms, space, and sound. Theme: In “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses the foreshadowing of a spring setting, the transformation in the protagonist’s feelings, and the ironic ending to suggest that an individual’s need for self-assertion or personal freedom is even more basic than his or her need for love.
LIT1100 Introduction to Literature University of Northwestern – St. Paul
Plot: In “The Demon Lover,” Elizabeth Bowen crafts a plot that manipulates the readers’ emotions of fear and suspense; her deliberate and clever use of foreshadowing, conflict, and flashbacks heightens the readers’ feelings of anxiety and dread, which she leaves ultimately unresolved even at the end of the story. *NOTE: The thesis statement should NOT be a description of the story or a statement of obvious fact.
Invalid Thesis Statements: In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays an interesting character who wears a veil for unclear reasons. (description of story) In “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses an ambiguous narrator. (statement of fact)
How can I come up with a strong central idea for my essay? Because the central idea is the glue that will hold your entire paper together, it deserves careful consideration. Coming up with a strong central idea is often the most difficult part of writing the literary analysis paper. Here are some generating strategies: 1. You may write about any of the short stories, plays, poems or the novel we have read
(however, with the novel, you will need to read ahead and finish it). Consider writing about a text that you had a strong reaction to and were interested in.
2. Initially, brainstorm ideas by writing down what you liked most about a text and/or what you found to be most problematic.
3. Narrow your focus on the text by choosing two or three literary elements in the text that you feel are significant. Choosing more than one literary element as you begin your work with the text will provide more opportunities for you to come up with a strong central idea. However, if you are certain of one literary element you want to work with, you may focus only on that one element. Read through the next page for ways to write about literary elements.
4. Read through the story several times, carefully annotating any reference to these literary elements. Using a different colored pen, pencil, or highlighter for each literary element, under- line or highlight words, phrases, or sentences; circle or box significant words or phrases; connect important items with lines; place related page and paragraph numbers in the margins; and write comments or questions in the margins or on a separate sheet of paper as you read. As you annotate, try to find connections and patterns that provide insight into the story.
5. Reflect on and write about the patterns and connections you discovered as you annotated. Narrow
your focus on the element that seems to generate the most interesting ideas. 6. Draft several versions of a thesis statement making sure you have a strong assertion
and a clear forecast of the topics you will discuss to support your idea.
LIT1100 Introduction to Literature University of Northwestern – St. Paul
Ideas for Literary Analysis Essays From Kemper, D., Sebranek, P., & Meyer, V. (2001). Writers INC (p. 231). Wilmington, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Theme:
1. Does the author seem to be saying something about ambition...courage...greed...jealousy...happiness?
2. Does the selection show you what it is like to experience racism, loneliness, and so on. 3. Does the author have a point to make about a specific historical event?
Characters:
4. How does the main character change from the beginning to the end? 5. What forces or circumstances make one of the characters act in a certain way? (consider
the conflict, setting, other characters, etc.) 6. What are the most revealing aspects of one of the characters? (Consider his or her
thoughts, words and actions.) 7. Do the characters' actions seem believable within the story? 8. Does the main character have a confidant, someone he or she relies on? (How
important or reliable is this person?) Plot:
9. What external or internal conflict affects the main character? 10. How is suspense built into the story? 11. How does the climax change in the story? 12. Are there any twists in the plot? (What do they add to the story?) 13. Does the plot follow a basic pattern of fiction?
Setting:
14. What effect does the setting have on the characters? 15. Does the setting expand your understanding of a specific time and place? 16. Is the setting new and thought provoking?
Style:
17. How does the writing -descriptive phrases, images, and so on- create an overall feeling or tone in the selection?
18. Is dialogue or description used effectively? (Give examples) 19. Is there an important symbol that adds meaning to the selection? (How is this symbol
represented in different parts of the story?) 20. Are there key figures of speech such as metaphors and similes? (What do these add to
the writing?)
- The Literary Analysis Essay
- What is a literary analysis essay?
- What is the purpose of this type of essay?
- Upon what should my central idea focus?
- What characteristics would make a central idea strong?
- In what form will this central idea appear in my essay?
- Sample Thesis Statements:
- Character:
- Setting:
- Theme:
- Plot:
- How can I come up with a strong central idea for my essay?
- Ideas for Literary Analysis Essays
- Theme:
- Characters:
- Plot:
- Setting:
- Style:
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