Hobbled Leviathans: Constraints on State Formation in Africa
| Date | 01 December 1986 |
| Author | Richard Sandbrook |
| Published date | 01 December 1986 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070208604100401 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
RICHARD
SANDBROOK
Hobbled
Leviathans:
constraints
on
state
formation
in
Africa
'The
fact
is,'
a
former
head
of
the
World
Bank recently
asserted,
'that
the
marked
decline
of
key
institutions
is
an
important
dimension
of
the
crisis
facing
many
sub-Saharan
African
coun-
tries.
It
is
not
simply
that
desirable institutional
development
may
not
yet have
taken
place,
but
rather
that
a
number
of
previously
able
and functioning
institutions are
now
losing
their
effectiveness.'
Robert McNamara
went
on
to
observe
that
'entire
central
ministries
...
are
no
longer
in
adequate
control
of
their
budgets
and
personnel,'
that
'public
agencies
...
have
lost
their
capacity
to
carry
out
their
proper
tasks,'
that
'state
universities,
scientific
facilities,
and
statistical
offices
...
have
seriously
de-
clined
in
the
quality
of
their
work,'
that
'parastatal
organizations
and
marketing
boards
...
impede
rather
than
promote
produc-
tivity,'
and
that
'critically
important
agricultural
research
insti-
tutions
...
are
becoming
increasingly
ineffective."
What
accounts
for
this
debilitating
decline
in
state
capacity?
McNamara
attributes
it
to
the
self-aggrandizing
and
opportun-
istic
bent
of
African
political
leaders;
they
have
'used
the state
to
reward
themselves
and
their
supporters
with
jobs,
contracts,
public
monopolies,
and
illicit
income.'
The
solution
is
therefore
institutional
reform
on
the
part of
governments.
Public
servants
Director
of
the Development
Studies
Programme and
Professor
of
Political
Science,
University
of
Toronto;
author
(with
Judith
Barker)
of
The
Politics
of
Africa's
Economic
Stagnation
(1985).
Thanks
are
due
Professor
Cranford
Pratt
for
his
many
useful
criticisms
of
this
paper.
1
Robert
S.
McNamara,
The
Challenges
for
Sub-Saharan
Africa,
The
Sir
John
Crawford
Memorial
Lecture,
Washington,
Dc,
i
November
1985,
9.
International
Journal
XLU
autumn
1986
708
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
must
return
to
their fundamental
responsibility-
'to
serve
and
assist
the
public.'2
Although
McNamara
merely
records the
conventional
wis-
dom
of
Western-dominated development
agencies,3
this
as-
sessment
is
misleading
in
one
important
respect.
He
correctly
identifies
the
institutional
weaknesses
of
most
African
states
and
cogently
maintains
that
these
impede
economic
recovery.
But
his
explanation
of
state
decline
is
simplistic
and
therefore
mis-
leading.
McNamara's
view,
to
which
many
subscribe,
is
that
the
problem
is
essentially
a
moral
one: Africa's
public
officials
have
betrayed
their
people.
The
solution
is
a
return
to
honest
political
leadership and
a
competent,
non-political,
disinterested,
and
ethical public
service.
Now
moral
disapproval
is
warranted
in
many
cases.
Such
notorious
leaders
as
Idi
Amin,
Francisco
Ma-
cias
Nguema,
'Emperor'Jean-Bedel
Bokassa,
and
Mobutu
Sese-
Seko
indeed
betrayed
their
people,
and
all
but
the
last
have
been overthrown.
Elsewhere,
one
witnesses
a
lamentable
though
variable
incidence
of
corruption,
mismanagement,
political
viol-
ence,
and
authoritarianism.
Yet
these
ills
must
be seen
in
per-
spective.
Sub-Saharan
Africa
is
in
the
earliest
stage
of
state-
building and
nation-building,
its
'states'
barely
a
century
old
in
their
present
form.
The
political
problems
are
a
natural,
almost
inevitable, consequence
of
the
material
and
social
conditions
that
constrain
state
formation
at
this
stage.
Western
states,
the
usual model
of
institutional
effectiveness,
are
the
outcome
of
a
long
process
which
in
Europe
began
in
the
sixteenth century.
State
formation
involved
the
gradual
ac-
cumulation
and
centralization
of
power
that
enabled
a
govern-
ment
to
exercise
effective
control
within
a
territory
and
implement
complex
policies.
This
process
was
violent
as
well
as
long.
On
the
one
hand,
the
centralizing
state-builders
periodically
in-
2
Ibid,
9,
0o.
3
See,
for
example,
the
two
influential
reports
by
the
World Bank
in
the
i98os:
Accelerated
Development
in
Sub-Saharan
Africa: An Agenda
for
Action
(Washington,
August
1981),
1.7;
and
Toward
Sustained
Development
in
Sub-Saharan
Africa:
A
Joint
Program
of
Action
(Washington,
September
1984), 24-5.
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