Regimes in Tropical Africa: Changing Forms of Supremacy, 1945-1975

By Ruth Berins Collier

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520319141

Ruth Berins Collier

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Regimes in Tropical Africa

Regimes in Tropical Africa

Changing Forms of Supremacy, 1945-1975

RUTH BERINS COLLIER

University of California Press

Berkeley / Los Angeles / London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1982 by

The Regents of the University of California

Printed in the United States of America

123456789

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Collier, Ruth Berins.

Regimes in Tropical Africa.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Politics and government—1884-1960.

2. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Politics and government—1960

3. Nationalism—Africa, Sub-Saharan. I. Title.

DT352.7.C64 320.967 80-28445

ISBN 0-520—04313-8

For my parents

Esther Meyers Berins and Maurice H. Berins

Contents

Contents

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. The Transfer of Elections and Mass Suffrage to Africa

3. Pre-Independence Electoral Politics: Mass Participation and Party Dominance

4. Post-Independence Political Change: One-Party and Military Rule

5. Elections in Authoritarian Regimes

6. Conclusion: Patterns of Change in Tropical Africa

Appendix I Variables Used in the Analysis

Appendix II Correlations and Partial Correlations for All Cases, Former French Africa and Former British Africa*

Bibliography

Index

Tables and Figures

Tables

1. Major Dates in the Introduction of Electoral Politics in British Colonies 39

2. Rate of Introduction of Electoral Participation: Number of Elections 44

3. Rate of Expansion of Electoral Participation in Africa: Number of Years until Introduction of Universal Suffrage 45

4. Percent of Total Population Voting in Pre-Independence Territory-Wide Elections 50

5. Number of Years from First Election to Year in Which 20 Percent of Population Voted 52

6. Rate of Expansion of the Franchise in Democratic Europe 53

7. Rate of Growth of Electoral Participation in Democratic Europe 54

8. Primary School Enrollment per 10,000 Population at Introduction of Manhood Suffrage 56

9. Secondary School Enrollment per 10,000 Population at Introduction of Manhood Suffrage 57

10. Population in Urban Centers of 50,000 or More at Introduction of Manhood Suffrage 59

11. Radios per 10,000 Population at Introduction of Universal Suffrage 60

12. Differences between French and British Colonies 72

13. Social and Economie Correlates of Voting 74

14. Social and Economie Correlates of Party Dominance 75

15. Type of One-Party Regime Formation by Colonial Grouping 100

16. Type of One-Party Regime Formation by Survival of Regime (to 1975) 103

17. Initial Electoral Policy of Post-Independence Civilian Regimes 105

18. Reported Results of Plebiscitary Elections for

Assembly 120

19. Turnout and Turnover in One-Party Competitive

Elections 129

20. Pattern of Change from Military toward Civilian and Constitutional Regimes 142

Figures

1. Party Dominance and Electoral Participation in British Africa 80

2. Factors Shaping Post-Independence Regime Change 113

3. Modal Patterns of Political Change, 1945-1975 156 ’

Acknowledgments

I have incurred a number of debts in the course of writing this book. Donald Morrison, Mary Welfling, and Robert Jackman were most generous in their willingness to share data with me. I am grateful to those who read and commented on earlier versions of the manuscript: Aristide Zolberg, Philippe Schmitter, Sidney Verba, Richard Stryker, Sheldon Gellar, Raymond Hopkins, and Marc Ross. Special thanks are due to Robert Bates and Nelson Kasfir, whose detailed comments and encouragement were particularly helpful. Christopher Achen gave valued advice on methodological problems. Benjamin Most, Richard Miller, and Pamela Stefanowicz provided much appreciated research assistance.

I would also like to express appreciation to the International Development Institute and the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, the Center of International Studies at Princeton University, and the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for providing indispensable institutional support. Particular thanks are due to Carl G. Rosberg, Director of the Berkeley Institute, and to its staff of skilled typists. Material previously published in Parties, Coups, and Authoritarian Rule: Patterns of Political Change in Tropical Africa is reprinted from Comparative Political Studies 11, no. i (April 1978): 62—93, by permission of the publisher, Sage Publications, Inc.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank my husband David, a political scientist in his own right, who encouraged, put up with, pitched in, and did all the kinds of things for which spouses have been made famous in end-of-book acknowledgments. I deeply appreciate the loving support he has given me in his roles as husband and critic.

1. Introduction

The end of World War II ushered in a period of changing forms of political supremacy across tropical Africa. Colonial rule, based on foreign military-bureaucratic domination, began to give way to a new mode of political domination. This process of decolonization was characterized by the introduction into the African colonies of many of the democratic institutions of the European colonial powers. Elections were held, the right to vote was extended until it became universal, political parties appeared on the scene to contest these elections, and the powers of government increasingly resided in an elected parliament and prime minister rather than with the colonial rulers. The new order, of course, was like the old in many important respects, particularly in the control of the economy, which in most cases was to remain unchanged after formal political independence as well. Nevertheless, this attempt to transfer democratic institutions to Africa meant a change in the personae of the ruling elite and an experiment in a different mode of political supremacy.

The new mode, which was theoretically based on popular sovereignty and electoral support rather than on coercion, posed both opportunities and risks to the new indigenous elite, in that a newly enfranchised electorate represented a potential source of political support but also a political resource that could be mobilized by rival elite groups. Across the continent, some nationalist movements were able to move into the new institutional context and harness this new source of political supremacy more successfully than others, and these differences had important consequences for subsequent patterns of political change. In almost all cases, however, the new order was not sufficiently congruent with the needs or preferences of the emerging political elite, who after independence moved quite rapidly and deliberately to dismantle these democratic institutions. There followed a period of political jockeying and institutional experimentation as political elites sought to establish various types of authoritarian regimes which would allow them to consolidate power and prolong their rule.

A fundamental issue in this period of regime change in Africa thus involved the formation of a new ruling elite or political class and the new institutions and structures through which it tried to rule. Despite the existence of striking continuity, in most cases, between certain aspects of colonial and independent (neocolonial) patterns of rule, one should not lose sight of the problems that arose in the transfer of power to an indigenous political class—a kind of oversimplification that is likely to occur in formulations of this process that emphasize the seemingly facile substitutions of new (Black) faces in old (White) roles. There was no well-established political class waiting in the wings for the opportunity to take over the reins of power, nor did self-government and independence involve the replacement of colonial rulers position for position in similar role structures. Rather, political roles and structures were being changed and created anew, a new political game was being introduced, and in this context a new political class was created that sought some basis for rule. The process of regime change, from the introduction of democratic institutions to their abandonment and the establishment of authoritarian regimes, must thus be seen in terms of the emergence of a new dominant class and, in turn, the attempts of that class to consolidate its position. As Richard Sklar (1979) has argued, class formation based on the exercise of political power is one of the most important political and social processes occurring across Africa, and the authoritarian regime is a major mechanism of class consolidation.

This book is concerned with the ways in which the introduction of electoral politics during the period of decolonization facilitated or hampered the emergence of a cohesive political elite. It analyzes the experience of the African political elite with these electoral institutions, the steps political leaders took to adjust, transform, and dismantle them, and the new structures of authoritarian rule set up in their place.

The analysis seeks to delineate patterns within the rapid and seemingly chaotic sequences of change that have characterized African political regimes since independence and to address the question of why, and in which countries, certain patterns have been followed. Somewhat more specifically, the book explores differences among countries in the initial experience with electoral politics and the implications of those differences for the emergence of different types of regime and different patterns of regime change in the post-independence period. Furthermore, it attempts to understand the various types of regime that characterize independent Africa in terms of the tendency toward the types of supremacy or rule that they represent. The study is based on a comparative examination of the twenty-six Black African countries¹ that went through this process of decolonization after World War II and became independent in the late 1950s and early 1960s: the former colonies and trust territories of French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, British West Africa, British East Africa, Malawi and Zambia in British Central Africa, and Belgian Africa.²

This first chapter introduces three interrelated themes around which the study revolves: the analysis of national political regimes in tropical Africa, the consequences of the introduction of mass political participation, and the role of elections in the rise and functioning of authoritarian regimes. In order to provide a basis for understanding the emergence of the new political elite in Africa, Chapter z goes back to the period of decolonization to analyze the set of rules that defined a new political game, based on universal suffrage and competitive elections, which led to the creation of an indigenous political elite that would inherit the new state. Chapter 3 seeks to explain differences among colonies in the degree to which a relatively cohesive or divided political elite emerged through this new political game. Chapter 4 then argues that these differences had important implications for the ways in which the multi-party competitive institutions introduced during decolonization were dismantled as the dominant political elite or elite faction sought to consolidate and entrench its position. These differences likewise help to account for the distinct forms of authoritarian regimes that were set up, particularly the one-party regime and the military regime. Chapter 5 goes on to suggest the ways in which different post-independence regimes may serve to consolidate the position of the dominant elite: their potential for functioning as a legitimacy apparatus and the way in which they are designed to enlist at least the passive support of the masses and to manage the limited pluralism that characterizes authoritarian regimes. The concluding chapter synthesizes the analysis by identifying modal patterns of regime change in tropical Africa.

A final introductory point should be made about the time period covered in the analysis. The study focuses specifically on the experience with decolonization and the immediate post-independence period in Africa, and hence on a particular historical conjuncture: the period in which national elites came to assume power, created new political institutions, and initially attempted to consolidate their dominance. The post-independence period considered here is thus the approximately fifteen years before 1975. The decision to focus on this period was made not only out of an arbitrary preference for multiples of five, but, more importantly, because of the nature of the analytic model employed—one which does not consider variables that can be applied at any point in time but considers instead a specific historical moment. The independent variables in this analysis involve specific events in the period of decolonization. It seems likely that as these events recede into the past, their explanatory or causal importance will dissipate to some degree. This is not to say that the earlier events will become irrelevant. It is likely that their effects, the chain of events considered here as post-independence outcomes, will, along with additional factors, shape the pattern of subsequent developments. To analyze those subsequent developments, however, will require a broader analytic model. Therefore, the immediate post-independence period in which the discrete events of decolonization can be expected to have a direct effect must be limited, and thus the 1975 cutoff point has been chosen. This immediate post-independence period is not, of course, bounded by a sharp break or a single year that pertains to all countries. As of 1980, indeed, the patterns delineated in this study continue to hold up well. Political developments since 1975 are discussed in Chapter 6.

Regime

The analysis of national political regimes3 in African studies has gone through various phases. The kaleidoscopic pattern of events in the years immediately before and after independence led many scholars to focus on regimes. Dramatic changes took place as electoral institutions were introduced, one-party regimes were formed, and military governments came to power. Many analysts sought to assess and explain these events. There followed, however, a period of scholarly disillusionment with the study of regime, with the major exception of the on-going concern of some scholars with the causes of military intervention and with types of military rule.4 This

tendency to tum attention away from the study of regime was in part a reaction to the argument that many of the concepts with which regime had been analyzed were not appropriate.5 For instance, earlier analyses placed substantial emphasis on the role of different party systems as an important aspect of differences in regime, employing such familiar distinctions as those between mass, mobilizing, or revolutionary-centralizing parties on the one hand and patron, elite, or pragmatic-pluralist parties on the other. When it was discovered that these distinctions failed to provide accurate descriptions and exaggerated the contrasts among civilian regimes, there followed a period in which differences among regimes tended to be minimized to the point of being considered virtually irrelevant. This conclusion was reinforced by the suggestion that there was little difference between civilian and military regimes in terms, for example, of performance and internal cohesion (Zolberg, 1968a: 94; Dowse, 1969: 213; McKinlay and Cohan, 1975 and 1976; Decalo, 1976b; Jackman, 1976).

At about the same time that interest in these party/regime distinctions waned, new perspectives which captured the interest of many analysts tended to treat regime as epiphenomenal. Within the Marxist tradition, these concerns can be referred to as the politicaleconomy perspective; within the development tradition, these concerns can be called the constraints-on-development perspective. For the former, what is often stressed is that the important stuff of politics is the broad type of political and economic domination: late-developing countries following dependent capitalist strategies of economic growth will have similar types of economic and class domination. For the latter, it is argued that because of the similar cultural, multi-ethnic, historical, and economic context of African countries, few options are open to many countries on the continent: all types of regimes would be similarly constrained by these harsh realities.

While these arguments make important points, the neglect of regime is, I believe, a mistake. The dependency framework, which has been one of the most influential of these new perspectives, has called attention to some crucially important features of the political

economy of Africa and other late-developing areas. Yet an exclusive focus on the issues centrally raised by some forms of dependency analysis can lead to a neglect of national or domestic politics. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, one of the most important analysts of dependency issues, has for years stressed the importance of careful analysis of the domestic political context (1969: 162-63; 1973: 143), and he and other scholars have recently underlined the importance of treating domestic politics as a central issue in analyses of Latin American political economy (Cardoso, 1979; Corradi, 1978; O’Donnell, 1979). In the field of African politics a similar call for reorientation toward the importance of internal factors and the independent role of indigenous classes has been made by Sklar (1979) and Leys (1978). Once this role is recognized, the regime and the political mechanisms through which indigenous classes pursue their interests become important.

The study of politics must take place on two levels. These have usefully been distinguished by Cardoso (1979) as the state and the regime. What are these two levels? For Cardoso, the state refers to the pact of domination—the class relationships, the distribution of economic and political resources, and broad policy outlines and priorities that flow from the overall type of economic system. The other level, that of regime, refers to the mode of domination, to the political relationships and mechanisms that support a system of class domination and economic policy priorities.

Cardoso argues that there is no automatic relationship between state and regime. Rather, a given type of economic system and the pattern of class relations that accompanies it can coexist with and be maintained by any of a variety of types of regime. This is quite clear for the countries of Africa. Across the continent, regimes vary from country to country and over time within countries. With the regime changes that have been taking place since the end of the 1970s, particularly the re-introduction of multi-party politics in Nigeria and Ghana and the new form of one-party dominant regime introduced in Senegal, this variability appears to be increasing. Yet these variations and changes within countries do not seem to correspond to differences and changes in the interplay of the basic economic and social forces. Rather, the multiple varieties can each be explained in terms of, or as supporting or being consistent with, a similar pact of domination.

The fact that similar systems of economic and political domina-

tion on a general level may be consistent with or supported by different kinds of regime should not lead to the conclusion that regime is unimportant. Within the context of a Marxist analysis that recognizes the importance of the economic base, Gramsci has been perhaps the most important theorist to emphasize the autonomy of the superstructure or the realm of the political (Gramsci, 1971: 407; Boggs, 1971: 81, 95-97; Joli, 1978: 112-13; Mer- rington, 1978: 152). For Gramsci, the concrete meaning of politics … was its function as an agency for enlisting mass energies in the struggle for ideological hegemony (Boggs, 1971: 34), and it is from this point of view that it is useful to approach the question of regime. A study of regime is therefore important in answering the question of how a given type of social system is supported. What are the mechanisms of support and compliance? What is the nature of the legitimation of the state? In Sklar’s (1979) terms, what are the political structures set up by the emerging dominant class to further the process of class consolidation?

The importance of regime has also been reflected in the fact that regime has been a matter of great concern to political actors in Africa, who have often found it important to change the regime frequently. Although as a general rule a given type of regime is neither necessary for nor inevitably inconsistent with a given pattern of societal allocations, in specific circumstances regime changes do occur in order to change the basic policy orientation of the state (or to preserve it when it appears threatened). Regime change also occurs in response to issues of regional or ethnic distribution and in response to issues of legitimacy and support. Without addressing the question of regime, one cannot grasp political process.

In describing politics in Africa, then, it is not sufficient to describe Africa’s position in and the nature of its incorporation into the world capitalist system or the relations of production in the economic base. It is also important to evaluate the way in which and the degree of success or failure with which the political elite is attempting to consolidate its class position and establish potentially hegemonic structures that to some degree incorporate the mass of the population into the system as a support group or, more minimally, neutralize them as a potential opposition. It is precisely this type of analysis that Gramsci employed to understand the potential for class conflict and revolutionary action in different societies (see Boggs, 1971: 101-4). This is the question of regime.

Because this book is concerned with analyzing regimes and regime change, it is important to discuss the concept of regime and the issue of its relationship to other components of the political system, particularly the state. Cardoso’s distinction is very suggestive and provides a convenient point of entry to this discussion. Modifying and elaborating this distinction somewhat, I find it helpful to refer to the state, as a first approximation, as the public sector. As such, however, it is more than the aggregate of specific institutions—it is an analytic abstraction (Edelman, 1967: 1; O’Donnell, 1979: 286-87). It is the public mechanisms and institutions of collective goal attainment or of the authoritative allocation of values. Since the state pursues goals and allocates values for the collectivity, and since a given pattern of allocations favors certain interests at the expense of others, the state is, as Weber no less than Marx put it, a relation of men dominating men or organized domination. Since it makes binding decisions for the whole collectivity, it requires compliance. It makes decisions and extracts compliance through its various components: the public administration, legal order, coercive apparatus, and political institutions.

We can thus think of the state in two distinct analytic categories: the structures and mechanisms of decision-making and the structures and mechanisms of decision-compliance. This second category can be separated into coercive mechanisms and legitimating mechanisms. As many analysts have asserted, the preferred and more secure basis for compliance is acceptance of the decision by the people. Acceptance is based on the attribution of legitimacy to decisions and the decision-making process. To the extent that there is no legitimacy, compliance is dependent upon coercion.

This brings us to the definition of regime. Leaving aside the coercive arm of the state, we can think of the two analytic categories of the state as the decision-making structures and the legitimating structures.⁶ Following Lasswell and Kaplan (1950: i)off.), we may say that the regime is the authority structure or the structure of formal, legitimate power. In this sense, it may be thought of as the legitimating structure of the state.⁷ It should be stressed that this

conception of regime distinguishes it analytically from the decisionmaking structure. This corresponds to the distinction that Lasswell and Kaplan have referred to as the pattern of effective power versus the pattern of formal power. The word formal is used to refer to the fact that the