Some of these conflicts are, in reality, low-tech, sporadic skirmishes and armed attacks. Seeming preference for Democracy in Africa over other governance systems in Africa before and after independence 15-17 1.5. Features Of Traditional Government Administration. Legitimate authority, in turn, is based on accepted laws and norms rather than the arbitrary, unconstrained power of the rulers. African indigenous education was. Integration of traditional and modern governance systems in Africa. By the mid-1970s, the politics of Africa had turned authoritarian. Institutional systems emanate from the broader economic and political systems, although they also affect the performance of the economic and political systems. The Obas and Caliphs of Nigeria and the Zulu of South Africa are other examples. The end of colonialism, however, did not end institutional dichotomy, despite attempts by some postcolonial African states to abolish the traditional system, especially the chieftaincy-based authority systems. A second argument is that traditional institutions are hindrances to the development of democratic governance (Mamdani, 1996; Ntsebeza, 2005). If inclusion is the central ingredient, it will be necessary to explore in greater depth the resources leaders have available to pay for including various social groups and demographic cohorts. The Constitution states that the institution, status and roles of traditional leadership, according to customary law, are recognised. In this respect, they complement official courts that are often unable to provide court services to all their rural communities. Among the attributes of the traditional system with such potential is the systems transparent and participatory process of resolving conflicts, which takes place in open public meetings. After examining the history, challenges, and opportunities for the institution of traditional leadership within a modern democracy, the chapter considers the effect of the current constitutional guarantee for chieftaincy and evaluates its practical workability and structural efficiency under the current governance system. Legal norms are an integral part of the discussion about inclusivity since they affect every aspect of economic and personal life; this poses a critical question over whether individual rights or group rights take precedence in the normative hierarchy. It may be useful to recall that historical kingships or dynasties were the common form of rule in Europe, India, China until modern times, and still is the predominant form of rule on the Arabian Peninsula. Roughly 80% of rural populations in selected research sites in Ethiopia, for example, say that they rely on traditional institutions to settle disputes, while the figure is around 65% in research sites in Kenya (Mengisteab & Hagg, 2017). African Politics: A Very Short Introduction explores how politics is practised on the African continent, providing an overview of the different states and their systems. West Africa has a long and complex history. The arguments against traditional institutions are countered by arguments that consider traditional institutions to be indispensable and that they should be the foundations of African institutions of governance (Davidson, 1992). For example, is it more effective to negotiate a power-sharing pact among key parties and social groups (as in Kenya) or is there possible merit in a periodic national dialogue to address issues that risk triggering conflict? The usual plethora of bour- Its lack of influence on policy also leads to its marginalization in accessing resources and public services, resulting in poverty, poor knowledge, and a poor information base, which, in turn, limits its ability to exert influence on policy. Certain offences were regarded as serious offences. Executive, legislative, and judicial functions are generally attributed by most modern African constitutions to presidents and prime ministers, parliaments, and modern judiciaries. Act,12 the African system of governance was changed and transformed, and new structures were put in place of old ones.13 Under the Union of South Africa, the Gov- Freedom House calculated that 17 out of 50 countries it covered were free or partly free in 1988, compared to 31 out of 54 countries in these categories by 2015. One can identify five bases of regime legitimacy in the African context today. Such adjustments, however, may require contextualization of the institutions of democracy by adjusting these institutions to reflect African realities. The quality and durability of such leader-defined adaptive resilience cannot be assured and can be reversed unless the associated norms become institutionalized. These include - murder, burglary, landcase, witchcraft, profaning the deities and homicide. The modern African state system has been gradually Africanized, albeit on more or less the identical territorial basis it began with at the time of decolonization in the second half of the 20 th century. Societal conflicts: Institutional dichotomy often entails incompatibility between the systems. The same technology vectors can also empower criminal, trafficking, and terrorist networks, all of which pose threats to state sovereignty. By 2016, 35 AU members had joined it, but less than half actually subjected themselves to being assessed. Most African countries are characterized by parallel institutions, one representing the formal laws of the state and the other representing the traditional institutions that are adhered to more commonly in rural areas. The nature of governance is central because it determines whether the exercise of authority is viewed as legitimate. Cold War geopolitics reinforced in some ways the state-society gap as the global rivalry tended to favor African incumbents and frequently assured they would receive significant assistance from external powers seeking to build diplomatic ties with the new states. The essay concludes with a sobering reflection on the challenge of achieving resilient governance. Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University. The same source concluded that 7 out of the 12 worst scores for political rights and civil liberties are African.11 As noted, the reasons vary: patrimonialism gone wrong (the big man problem), extreme state fragility and endemic conflict risks, the perverse mobilization of ethnicity by weak or threatened leaders. . The third section deals with the post-colonial period and discusses some problems associated with African administration. The differences are in terms of how leaders come to assume their positions, how much power they command, and how accountable they are to their communities. Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Contentious Politics and Political Violence, Political Values, Beliefs, and Ideologies, Why African Traditional Institutions Endure, Authority Systems of Africas Traditional Institutions, Relevance and Paradox of Traditional Institutions, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1347, United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, Global Actors: Networks, Elites, and Institutions, Traditional Leaders and Development in Africa. The government is undertaking a review of local government, which includes a commitment to introduce direct election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs). 20-27, at p. 21; Carey N. Vicenti 'The re-emergence of tribal society and traditional justice systems' Judicature, Vol. What sets Hoover apart from all other policy organizations is its status as a center of scholarly excellence, its locus as a forum of scholarly discussion of public policy, and its ability to bring the conclusions of this scholarship to a public audience. In most African countries, constitutionally established authorities exercise the power of government alongside traditional authorities. Although much has been lost in the shadows and fogs of a time before people created written accounts, historians . While this attribute of the traditional system may not be practical at the national level, it can be viable at local levels and help promote democratic values. In this paper, I look first at the emergence of the African state system historically, including colonial legacies and the Cold Wars impact on governance dynamics. f Basic Features cont. Africas rural communities, which largely operate under subsistent economic systems, overwhelmingly adhere to the traditional institutional systems while urban communities essentially follow the formal institutional systems, although there are people who negotiate the two institutional systems in their daily lives. Many other countries have non-centralized elder-based traditional institutions. Yet, governments are expected to govern and make decisions after consulting relevant stakeholders. In addition, resolution needs to be acceptable to all parties. Interestingly, small and mid-size state leaders have won the award so far.) This we might call transformative resilience.21. With its eminent scholars and world-renowned library and archives, the Hoover Institution seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity, while securing and safeguarding peace for America and all mankind. Careful analysis suggests that African traditional institutions lie in a continuum between the highly decentralized to the centralized systems and they all have resource allocation practices, conflict resolution, judicial systems, and decision-making practices, which are distinct from those of the state. An alternative strategy of bringing about institutional harmony would be to transform the traditional economic systems into an exchange-based economy that would be compatible with the formal institutions of the state. Ten years later, in 2017, the number of conflicts was 18, taking place in 13 different countries. The challenge facing Africas leadersperhaps above all othersis how to govern under conditions of ethnic diversity. Using a second conflict lens, the number of non-state conflicts has increased dramatically in recent years, peaking in 2017 with 50 non-state conflicts, compared to 24 in 2011. Hoover Education Success Initiative | The Papers. Click here to get an answer to your question Discuss any similarities between the key features of the fourth republican democracy and the traditional afri This process becomes difficult when citizens are divided into parallel socioeconomic spaces with different judicial systems, property rights laws, and resource allocation mechanisms, which often may conflict with each other. Even so, customary law still exerts a strong . media system, was concerned with the more systematized dissemination of information between the traditional administrative organ and the people (subjects). African Governance: Challenges and Their Implications. It is too soon to tell whether such institutions can evolve in modern Africa as a result of gradual tinkering with reformist agendas, as the legacy of wise leaders; or whether they will only happen as a result of fundamental tests of strength between social and political groups. They must know the traditional songs and must also be able to improvise songs about current events and chance incidents. Others contend that African countries need to follow a mixed institutional system incorporating the traditional and formal systems (Sklar, 2003). The nature of governance is central because it determines whether the exercise of authority is viewed as legitimate. The Pre-Colonial Period: From the Ashes of Pharaohs to the Berlin Conference At the end of the prehistoric period (10 000 BC), some African nomadic bands began to Despite such changes, these institutions are referred to as traditional not because they continue to exist in an unadulterated form as they did in Africas precolonial past but because they are largely born of the precolonial political systems and are adhered to principally, although not exclusively, by the population in the traditional (subsistent) sectors of the economy. One snapshot by the influential Mo Ibrahim index of African Governance noted in 2015 that overall governance progress in Africa is stalling, and decided not to award a leadership award that year. At the same time, traditional institutions represent institutional fragmentation, which has detrimental effects on Africas governance and economic transformation. In any case, as . Contents 1. Against this broad picture, what is striking is the more recent downward trend in democratic governance in Africa and the relative position of African governance when viewed on a global basis. Tribes had relatively little power outside their own group during the colonial period. The roles assigned to them by the colonial state came to an end, and the new state imposed its own modifications of their roles. They dispense justice, resolve conflicts, and enforce contracts, even though such services are conducted in different ways in different authority systems. The link was not copied. However, they are not merely customs and norms; rather they are systems of governance, which were formal in precolonial times and continue to exist in a semiformal manner in some countries and in an informal manner in others.1. In many tribes, the chief was the representative of the ancestors. 134-141. Its marginalization, in turn, impedes the transformation of the traditional sector, thus extending the fragmentation of institutions. The political history of Africa begins with the emergence of hominids, archaic humans andat least 200,000 years agoanatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), in East Africa, and continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. 20 A brief account of that history will help to highlight key continuities spanning the colonial, apartheid and the post-apartheid eras in relation to the place of customary law and the role of traditional leaders. Consequently, national and regional governance factors interact continuously. In the past decade, traditional security systems utilized in commercial or government facilities have consisted of a few basic elements: a well-trained personnel, a CCTV system, and some kind of access control system. Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Politics. Safeguarding womens rights thus becomes hard without transforming the economic system under which they operate. 1. This adds to the challenge of building national identities; this identity vacuum increases the risk that political elites and social groups will capture the state for narrower, self-interested purposes that weaken, rather than strengthen, social cohesion. In Sierra Leone, for example, approximately 85% of the population falls under the jurisdiction of customary law, defined under the constitution as the rules of law which, by custom, are applicable to particular communities in Sierra Leone. The Ibo village assembly in eastern Nigeria, the Eritrean village Baito (assembly), the council of elders (kiama) of the Kikuyu in Kenya, and the kaya elders of the Mijikenda in the coast of Kenya are among well-known examples where decisions are largely made in a consensual manner of one kind or another (Andemariam, 2017; Mengisteab, 2003). Given its institutional disconnect with the state, the traditional sector and the communities that operate under it invariably face marginalization in influencing policy as well as in access to economic resources throughout the continent. Most of the regions states were defined geographically by European cartographers at the start of the colonial period. In many cases European or Islamic legal traditions have replaced or significantly modified traditional African ones. The chapter further examines the dabbling of traditional leaders in the political process in spite of the proscription of the institution from mainstream politics and, in this context, analyzes the policy rationale for attempting to detach chieftaincy from partisan politics. Such a consensus-building mechanism can help resolve many of the conflicts related to diversity management and nation-building. The term covers the expressed commands of Large countries such as the DRC, Ethiopia, and Mozambique are likely to experience pressures against centralized, authoritarian, or one-party governance (whether accompanied by real elections or not). Allocation of resources, such as land, is also much more egalitarian under the traditional system than it is under the private ownership system in the formal state system. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (Alkire, Chatterjee, Conconi, Seth, & Vaz, 2014) estimates that the share of rural poverty to total poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is about 73.8%. These partners, for their part, sometimes disengaged from close political ties and often brought new governance conditions into their assistance programs. The rise of non-Western centers of power and the return of global polarization among major powers reduce the presence and weight of western influence. This is in part because the role of traditional leaders has changed over time. Both types of government can be effective or infective depending on . example of a traditional African political system. 2. The third section looks at the critical role of political and economic inclusion in shaping peace and stability and points to some of the primary challenges leaders face in deciding how to manage inclusion: whom to include and how to pay for it. By Sulayman Sanneh Date: September 10th, 2021. fIntroduction Africa is a vast and . One-sided violence against unarmed civilians has also spiked up since 2011.4, These numbers require three major points of clarification. There is a basic distinction between those systems with a centralized authority exercised through the machinery of government and those without any such authority in which . Large segments of the rural populations, the overwhelming majority in most African countries, continue to adhere principally to traditional institutions. Paramount chieftaincy is a traditional system of local government and an integral element of governance in some African countries such as Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia and Ivory Coast. There is no more critical variable than governance, for it is governance that determines whether there are durable links between the state and the society it purports to govern. The article has three principal objectives and is organized into four parts. Three layers of institutions characterize most African countries. Challenges confronting the institution of chieftaincy have continued from the colonial era into recent times. Traditional institutions already adjudicate undisclosed but large proportions of rural disputes. Before delving into the inquiry, clarification of some issues would be helpful in avoiding confusion. The selection, however, is often from the children of a chief. (2005), customary systems operating outside of the state regime are often the dominant form of regulation and dispute resolution, covering up to 90% of the population in parts of Africa. These include macro variables such as educational access (especially for women), climate change impact and mitigation, development and income growth rates, demographic trends, internet access, urbanization rates, and conflict events. Botswanas strategy has largely revolved around integrating parallel judicial systems. The place and role of African Youth in Pre-independence African Governance Systems 19-20 1.7. Ethiopias monarchy ended in 1974 while the other three remain, with only the king of Swaziland enjoying absolute power. Rather, they often rely on voluntary compliance, although they also apply some soft power to discourage noncompliance by members with customary laws. Many others choose the customary laws and conflict resolution mechanisms because they correspond better to their way of life. Your gift helps advance ideas that promote a free society. The imperative for inclusion raises many questions: should the priority be to achieve inclusion of diverse elites, of ethnic and confessional constituencies, of a sample of grass roots opinion leaders? The parallel institutional systems often complement each other in the continents contemporary governance. Should inclusion be an ongoing process or a single event? Government as a Structural Element of Society 2.2. It is also challenging to map them out without specifying their time frame. A partial explanation as to why the traditional systems endure was given in the section Why African Traditional Institutions Endure. The argument in that section was that they endure primarily because they are compatible with traditional economic systems, under which large segments of the African population still operate. It also develops a theoretical framework for the . In these relatively new nations, the critical task for leadership is to build a social contract that is sufficiently inclusive to permit the management of diversity. The features associated with this new form of governmental administration deal with smaller government responsibility for providing goods and services. In a few easy steps create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests. Invented chiefs and state-paid elders: These were chiefs imposed by the colonial state on decentralized communities without centralized authority systems. Learn more about joining the community of supporters and scholars working together to advance Hoovers mission and values. The colonial state modified their precolonial roles. Similarities between Democratic and Authoritarian Government. This brief essay began by identifying the state-society gap as the central challenge for African governance. Why the traditional systems endure, how the institutional dichotomy impacts the process of building democratic governance, and how the problems of institutional incoherence might be mitigated are issues that have not yet received adequate attention in African studies. Tribe Versus Ethnic Group. The relationship between traditional leadership and inherited western-style governance institutions often generates tensions. A key factor in the size of adherents of rural institutions, however, seems to depend on the ratio of the population in the traditional economic systems to the total population. African traditional institutions continue to exist in most African countries, albeit at different levels of adherence by the populations of the continent. 28, (1984) pp. The purpose is to stress that such efforts and the attendant will As Mamdani has argued, understanding the role of traditional leadership and customary law in contemporary African societies requires us to understand its history. Even old-fashioned tyrants learn that inclusion or co-option are expensive. Governments that rely on foreign counterparts and foreign investment in natural resources for a major portion of their budgetsrather than on domestic taxationare likely to have weaker connections to citizens and domestic social groups. The pre-colonial system in Yoruba can be described to be democratic because of the inclusion of the principle of checks and balances that had been introduced in the system of administration. A command economy, also known as a planned economy, is one in which the central government plans, organizes, and controls all economic activities to maximize social welfare. On the other hand, their endurance creates institutional fragmentation that has adverse impacts on Africas governance and socioeconomic transformation. Similarly, the process of conflict resolution is undertaken in an open assembly and is intended to reconcile parties in conflict rather than to merely punish offenders. 3. African countries are characterized by fragmentation of various aspects of their political economy, including their institutions of governance. When conflicts evolve along ethnic lines, they are readily labelled ethnic conflict as if caused by ancient hatreds; in reality, it is more often caused by bad governance and by political entrepreneurs. by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. The council system of the Berbers in Northern Africa also falls within this category (UNECA, 2007). Most of the states that had attempted to abolish chieftaincy have retracted the abolitionist decrees and reinstated chiefs. In Module Seven A: African History, you explored the histories of a wide diversity of pre-colonial African societies. One layer represents the formal institutions (laws) of the state. Subsequent to the colonial experience, traditional institutions may be considered to be informal institutions in the sense that they are often not sanctioned by the state. They also serve as guardians and symbols of cultural values and practices. Unfortunately, little attention by African governments has been given to this paradoxical aspect of traditional institutions. With the exceptions of a few works, such as Legesse (1973), the institutions of the decentralized political systems, which are often elder-based with group leadership, have received little attention, even though these systems are widespread and have the institutions of judicial systems and mechanisms of conflict resolution and allocation of resources, like the institutions of the centralized systems. There is little doubt that colonial occupation and the ensuing restructuring of African political entities and socioeconomic systems altered African traditional institutions of governance.
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