{"id":17927,"date":"2023-04-29T19:51:51","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T19:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/questions\/patrimonialism-gatekeeper-states-and-the-end-of-the-postcolonial-state-in-africa\/"},"modified":"2023-04-29T19:51:51","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T19:51:51","slug":"patrimonialism-gatekeeper-states-and-the-end-of-the-postcolonial-state-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"questions","link":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/questions\/patrimonialism-gatekeeper-states-and-the-end-of-the-postcolonial-state-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrimonialism, Gatekeeper States, and the End of the Postcolonial State in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, First thank you for your assistance on this, I really appreciate it! This is a discussion response based on the readings I will attach. <\/span><\/p>\n


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Questions:<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the questions look long, but I am providing you with more background information.<\/span><\/p>\n

(1)  The end of the post-colonial state in the 1990s, as Crawford Young described it, \u201cseemed to be an opening” for a “wave of democracy pushing aside dictatorships and military governments across the world,\u201d to quote Frederick Cooper (p. 181).  What has been the relationship between “democratization” and the African state since the 1980s and 1990s?   Specifically, what does Young have to say about the gradual decline of the “post-colonial state” and the process of democratization?  What does Cooper have to say about the status of the “gatekeeper state” and the establishment of “democratic” practices?  If we look at this issue from a different lens, has democratization brought less corruption and more stability to political processes in African states?  Why or why not?  What kinds of social-political relationships seemed to become more important with the rise of democratic “norms” since the 1990s?  Please be specific in your response and provide at an example of at least one African country, and be sure to cite both authors to support your conclusions. 
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(2) As reviewed in the topic summary in the “Discussion Preps and Maps” section, the 1990s witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the “neoliberal” political-economic ideology.  We discussed neoliberalism in Week 9, especially in our reading of Shah, and to a lesser extent in our reading of Wallerstein in Week 8.  In that analysis, we looked at neoliberalism’s relationship with Africa from the “world-systems” point of view, focusing on the macroeconomic effects of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs).  <\/span><\/p>\n

According to Crawford Young and Frederick Cooper, during the 1970s and 1980s, African governments (often one-party states or dictatorships), accumulated many assets from foreign corporation and small traders of foreign origin.  Why did these governments do this?  What was their ideological justification, and how did this justification relate to the idea that states needed to be the driver of development?  What changed when “neoliberalism” became the dominant economic ideology in the 1990s?  In other words, to satisfy international lenders and creditors, what did African governments now have to do with the companies and other holdings they had taken over in previous decades?  What was this process called?  What does Young have to say about the new international approach to “development” and the predicament it created for African governments?  What does Cooper have to say about the downsizing of state institutions that often accompanied these changes?  In other words, what happened on the ground in Africa as a consequence of the neoliberal shift, and did it actually exacerbate some the economic issues it claimed to try to address? <\/span><\/p>\n

(3)  The decline of the “postcolonial state”, as Young would characterize it, and disputes over the “gate”, as Cooper calls it, led increasingly to the “de-centering” of the state beginning in the 1990s.  Originally, the African state (and the politicians that ran it) controlled the lion’s share of patrimonial networks, but as the state weakened, these networks have shifted to “traditional” elites, rival political parties not in power, and non-state actors including private armies and criminal syndicates.  The rise of private armies and rogue elements could also be characterized as a move from the “patrimonial” to the “predatory”.  As this process accelerated, some African countries went from “postcolonial gatekeeper states” to “weak states”.  Others finally became “failed states”, a topic we will cover in Week 15.  Crawford Young, commenting on the rise of private militias and cross-border military incursions, notes that, “this kind of violent entrepreneurship, and the warlord politics it produced, bred militias whose primary motivation was control of valuable resources; civil populations as potential supporters were of little interest” (p. 45).  (This seems to echo some of what we learned about the Niger Delta vigilante groups in Week 10.)  <\/span>In other words, new conflicts arose in situations where combatants made little effort to gain popular support or frame their actions in terms of helping to “develop” their countries or peoples<\/span>.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Please explain how, according to Frederick Cooper, the “winner-take-all” (zero sum) approach to political rivalry in “democratic” Africa has actually contributed to the rise of violent movements contesting political and economic power.  Please also explain what Young means when he states: “The webs of conflict, violent social patterns and governmental dysfunctionalities in many parts of Africa make the state a far less dominating, agenda-setting actor than in the first post-independence decades.”  In answering these questions, please refer to specific African countries discussed in the readings that have suffered these consequences, citing both authors.  <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, First thank you for your assistance on this, I really appreciate it! This is a discussion response based on the readings I will attach.  Questions: Finally, the questions look long, but I am providing you with more background information. (1)  The end of the post-colonial state in the 1990s, as Crawford Young described it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"disciplines":[524],"paper_types":[],"tagged":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/17927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/questions"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/17927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=17927"},{"taxonomy":"paper_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper_types?post=17927"},{"taxonomy":"tagged","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tagged?post=17927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}