Sociostructural Causes of State Failure in Africa/South Sudan
5 min readBy David Mayen Ayarbior, Juba, South Sudan
May 9, 2016 (SSB) —- Under this column (“Notes of Statecraft”) in the esteemed newspaper The Nation Mirror as-well-as on the esteemed online blog Paanluelwel.com, I intend to sometimes post a few extracts from my 2013 book titled “House of War: Civil War and State Failure in Africa.” This is motivated by the fact that not so many people have come across the book and my belief that knowledge sharing is the engine of social progress. The extracts bellow are from Chapter Three (Literature Review) where I engaged various perspectives of other writers on causes of state failure in Africa (Page 38-41). We can thus look at some sociostructural causes of state failure as viewed by a couple of African writers:
Said Adjumobi (2001), an African historian, attributes state failure in Africa to the structure of modern African states in which the main binding sociopolitical force between citizens is the institutionalization of ethnic entitlements rather than citizenship. He observes that the term nation-state suggests a collectivity of nationalities all bound together in a state through the tie of citizenship. Hence, he defines the institution of citizenship as, “that political artifact through which a state constitutes and perpetually reproduces itself as a form of social organization” (p.152).
Because the modern state structure is a sociopolitical entity often made up of different religious, ethnic, or political identities, citizenship becomes the only means through which such diverse groups could identify with the state and forge a common identity within its borders. He further argues that citizenship is therefore “a form of social pact, constituted by the dual elements of reciprocity and exchange between the individual (citizen) and the state” (p.144-167). It sets the ground on which states become nations.
Adjumobi sees no structural incompatibility between citizenship and pluralism or multiculturalism. He argues that “the idea of nation-state is a plurality of nationalities bound together by a common state identity” (p.155). Social pluralism and “sub-national identity” become a platform of resistance, recruitment, and a threat to the state only when rights conferred on individuals by citizenship are denied by the state.
If a state is using citizenship to grant equal rights, ethnic politics often employed by politicians becomes ineffective since the ability of politicians to mobilize support on ethnic grounds “is only possible in the context of a fertile ground of citizenship exclusion of a group or people” (p.156). It is, therefore, failure of state authorities to devise a political system that grants equal economic and political rights to all members of different tribal groups, rights that are based on citizenship and meritocracy, which accounts for state failure in the region.
Hence, according to Adjumobi, a lasting solution to the region’s political-identity crises lies in breaking ties with a colonial principle of dualism which encouraged ethnic based political identities that reinforced sociopolitical institutional differences. Dual loyalty to both the state and tribe ensured that tribes could not form unitary resistance against colonial administration since citizenship rights were denied in the interest of favoring some tribal groups and undermining others. Weak loyalty to the state and strong loyalty to one’s tribe ensured that the colonial state could forge and maneuver through alliances whenever it was political expedient.
A tribe’s proximity to the nation-state authority resulted in economic and political benefits such as exclusive access to employment in civil service and organized forces, educational scholarships, better infrastructure and amenities to be enjoyed by its members, etcetera. This pattern of association with the state has persisted long after colonialism and continues to characterize the modern African state. Hence, while political sovereignty allowed modern states to officially transform, (Adjumobi 2001) agrees that it is not unjustified to argue that “the colonial political structure and state formation witnessed no radical or qualitative transformation in the post-colonial era in most African states, beyond the change in personnel” ( p.161).
Following on the contentions above, Jean-Paul Azam (2001) regards ethnic civil war as an element of political violence that caused state failure; but not ‘the’ cause of state failure. According to Azam, ethnic civil strife is a mere symptom of a much larger structural problem that treated the state and ethnic groups as two distinct entities with separate in-built authorities without trying to fuse both authorities in the state system.
“Both the state and the ethnic groups obey constitutional rules enforced by some authority. If the state is defined ala Weber, as having the monopoly over coercion, then the African states have to be regarded as being at a stage of formation, because the kin group and the ethnic group both exert substantial coercive power. Few African states can deliver adequately all the services that the ethnic group provides; an initial phase of federation of ethnic groups must be gone through before African states can provide a credible substitute for ethnic capital. The system of redistribution within and among groups is the key to creating the solidarity links between them, and its breakdown is liable to trigger political violence. Civil wars and other forms of political violence…. In peaceful African countries, a sophisticated system of inclusion of the educated people from the different ethnic groups in various organizations (e.g. students unions or single party) has evolved, whereby the state purchases loyalty from the groups through their educated urbanite ‘delegates’ (Azam 2001, p.430).”
It could be derived from the argument above that solution could only be found in the ability of state structures and tribes to coexist. In other words, internal political solutions are imperative if Africa is to attain a sustainable sociopolitical equilibrium. Hence, sustainable solutions are beyond mere coalitions that are often aimed at regime survival. Without a fundamental change in the political nature of African state system, ethnic conflicts are bound to recur whenever elitist ad hoc coalitions break. Hence, in suggesting a sustainable strategy for changing the nature of African states, Spears (2010) takes recourse to contemporary conflict resolution approaches that allow disputants to own their solution.
David Mayen Ayarbior has a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Political Science from Kampala International University (Uganda), Masters in International Security from JKSIS-University of Denver (USA), and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London. He is the author of “House of War (Civil War and State Failure in Africa) 2013” and currently the Press Secretary/ Spokesperson in the Office of South Sudan’s Vice President, H.E. James Wani Igga. You can reach him via his email address: mayen.ayarbior@gmail.com.
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