States and Statelessness in Late Twentieth-Century Africa

Abstract

In many parts of world today, central issues on political agenda are sustainability of welfare state, democratization, and reduction in tariff barriers and other forms of protection. These discussions presuppose that govern ments have capacity to implement policy change and institu tional reform, if right political coalitions can be engineered, if sympathetic technocrats can be insulated from popular pressures, or if leadership that shares in the Washington consensus can be identified. At issue is building support for a particular set of policies. By contrast, in Africa, as in Central Asia, problem is really one of state effectiveness. For example, while private trade often flourishes in parallel markets, contract enforcement through courts is unreliable, making investment in fixed assets prohibitively risky. Parallel political authorities?warlords, kingdoms, new religious groups?often make stronger claims on obedience than do nation states and compete with nation-states as centers of revenue collec tion and regulation. Pervasive personal insecurity, a result of spread of cheap and therefore democratic weaponry such as grenades, AK-47s, and land mines, undermines norms that sup port savings, maintenance, and investment. At issue in these cases is not policy per se but very existence of states. This problem received its most vivid portrayal in a controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly that projected an apocalyptic vi sion of Africa.1 Robert Kaplan argued that south of Sahara to speak of states and national borders was meaningless. Life was a