D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 1, January/february 2002, p. 8-11)

Neo-Patrimonial Rule
Transition to Democracy has not Succeeded

Gero Erdmann

There is widespread disillusionment over democratisation in Africa. It goes as far as Afro-pessimism, which, however, is based on unrealistically high expectations and yardsticks. However, the fact is that in Africa very few clearly successful democratic transitions exist. Many of these processes are in the twilight zone, in the grey world between democracy and dictatorship.

Interim balance
of democratisation

On the one hand, it can be seen that a democratic transition has in fact taken place in certain countries: the constitution has been democraticised, and founding elections have been held and resulted in a change of government. But it is also clear that an interaction immediately comes into play in which political freedoms are temporarily restricted and then observed again, so that we generally see more or less free elections once the first legislative period expires. An open return to authoritarianism rarely occurs: no amendment to the constitution, no military coup. The gradual changes are enacted by the democratically elected government. A change of regime the other way round, from democracy to dictatorship, is difficult to capture..

On the other hand, there are cases in which authoritarian regimes were compelled to amend the constitution and hold elections under democratic conditions, but the old government remained in power because the opposition was split up. At the same time, exercise of power is not free from human rights violations. Classifying that as democracy appears to be impossible. Certain democratic progress was in fact achieved by constitutional reforms, but far from asserted in political practice. Transition has not been completed – neither in one direction nor the other. In constitutional terms, a democracy is in place, but no-one wants to call it that.

In both examples the transition process has come to a standstill and jelled into a type of ‘hybrid’ regime. This is located between dictatorship and democracy and fluctuates between the two poles, with basic human rights sometimes being observed and sometimes not. For the African context, I describe this kind of rule (a sub-type of the hybrid regime) as a ‘neo-patrimonial multi-party system’.

The hybrid regime has in common with democracy the fact that its access to power and its legitimation is ensured by free elections. Meanwhile, the remaining civil and political human rights are not always observed and not in the same way. Human rights violations are frequent, even if not in grave or systematic ways. The decisive criteria for identifying dictatorships is that no free elections take place in them and human rights are violated in continual and systematic form.

I aim to show that there is a common and systematic reason for the few successful transitions and the existence of the many hybrid regimes in Africa, namely the predominance of neo-patrimonial systems.

In contrast to many more pessimistic observers, I postulate that in the past decade in Africa considerable political changes accompanied the democratisation movements. To be sure, these have not led to flourishing democracy. But in many African countries there is now better protection of fundamental human rights as well as political participation and civil rights. Opposition groups now have quite different opportunities than those that obtained up to the mid-1980s to make themselves heard and survive both politically and physically. This means that substantially better conditions are in place for all the political forces which wish to deepen democracy in the sense of political and social participation.

The changes can be seen, if only very roughly, in the situation of political and civil rights in many African countries, as summarised in the annual Freedom House Index. According to the index the number of regimes classified as ‘not-free’ has declined markedly, almost halving. By contrast, the number of ‘partly free’ regimes and in particular those classified as ‘free’ has clearly increased.

The ‘free’ countries are Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Mali, Mauritius, Namibia, Sao Tomé and Principe, and South Africa. However, only five or six of these eight lands can be seen as young transition countries. Botswana and Mauritius have been regarded as democratic since the 1970s, and South Africa, without doubt a transition country, is a special case within Africa. So of the more than 30 attempts to democratise the political system since the beginning of the 1990s only five can be seen as successful. The rest are obviously, as described, in an ongoing transitional situation – or they have lapsed back into dictatorship.

Peculiarities of
African transition

Only a few political scientists dealing with African studies who have tackled research on transition have pointed out its special institutional conditions in Africa. These conditions mean that transitions there take place on the basis of neo-patrimonial regimes. A peculiarity of this kind of transition is that in most cases it is triggered by mass political protests or at least is accompanied by them.

In principle, four varieties of authoritarian regimes in Africa can be differentiated for the period before 1989/90:

1. Military oligarchies;
2. Plebiscitary one-party systems;
3. Competitive one-party systems; and
4. Settler oligarchies.

Neo-patrimonialism

A precise definition of the term is not at hand. The simplest way to define neo-patrimonialism is to compare it with Max Weber’s term ‘patrimonialism’. He used it to describe a system of rule based on administrative and military personnel who were responsible only to the ruler. Neo-patrimonialism, which is a modern form of the traditional patrimonial form of rule, is a mixed system. Here, elements of patrimonial and rational-bureaucratic rule co-exist and are sometimes interwoven.

In a patrimonial system, all ruling relationships, both political and administrative, are personal relationships. There is no difference between the private and public spheres. By contrast, under a neo-patrimonial system the differentiation of private and public is recognised (at least formally), and therefore it can be referred to publicly. In practice, however, the private and public spheres often are not separated. That means two systems, the patrimonial system of personal relationships and the legal-rational one of the bureaucracy, exist side-by-side. De facto, however, that is not so because the patrimonial system penetrates the legal-rational one and deforms the logic of its functions.

Part of the patrimonial side of neo-patrimonialism is clientelism, which develops into extended networks of political clients. Political clientelism is about exchanging or arranging certain services and/or resources in return for political support, such as votes.

Unlike patrimonial-type clientelism, neo-patrimonialism focuses less on direct exchanges between patron and client and more on the ‘arrangement’ of services and resources. Most of the exchanges are not in the patron’s own private possession, that is, they are not directly reciprocal. He transfers public goods and/or resources. Clientelism can be based on family relationships, but also exists without such links. It can be connected with traditional social relationships, but should be understood as a modern phenomenon.

Clientelism as a safeguard
against insecurity

In the African context, it is significant that client relationships are comparatively unstable. Clientelism here is understood as a strategy to secure protection and achieve objectives in order to overcome ongoing insecurity in the social context which exists due to unpredictable state institutions and politics. For its part, this strategy contributes directly to reproduction of this insecurity if largely general and competing recourse is made to the clientele strategy. It can be successful only if uncertainty over the behaviour of the state institutions continues.

With respect to business and development under such rule, one can say only that public office is used to accumulate private wealth by means of informal privatisation. Political power is the basis of economic power. This means that income from rents is of central importance. The market is nullified or purposefully steered, sometimes by administrative instruments, sometimes by ‘private’, informal means. Political office serves not only to secure rent income. Control over the steering of this income is of central importance for retaining political power.

The result of the neo-patrimonialising of the state was finally the wrecking of its own structures. This was expressed from the beginning of the 1980s by various labels such as ‘weak’ or ‘soft’ state or ‘lame Leviathan’.

In the background was the ongoing crisis of the African economies from the end of the 1970s, and in their wake the structural adjustment policy of the World Bank and IMF. The worsening conflicts over the remaining state services and resources, which were argued out ever less by legal means but increasingly via clienteles and corrupt practices, did the rest to weaken public institutions. The available clientele and the services and goods which were supposed to be distributed via administrative channels became ever more meagre, and the output of state-maintained patronage ever smaller. Clientelism’s input to integration for the authoritarian regimes became ever more selective and weaker. The implications are obvious: the elite not only ignored laws and decrees; bureaucratic and public norms and rules were openly and informally violated as a matter of almost daily routine.

Pre-colonial
and colonial roots

The neo-patrimonialising of the state, however, was not first the result of the economic crisis in recent decades. Patrimonial systems characterised the pre-colonial world, and neo-patrimonial ruling practices the colonial era. The colonial state was not a modern rational state but a mixed structure of a rational and traditional one. British indirect rule defined the phenomenon and was also practised in a very similar form in other colonies.

The rational state existed only as a core in the central administrations of the colonies’ capitals. To deal with the native ‘subjects’ and secure its rule, the colonial administration used local authorities, meaning genuine or fictitious indigenous rulers. This realm of indirect rule remained the domain of patrimonial rule in which the local rulers confirmed by the colonial power could exercise their own power personally, arbitrarily, clientele-oriented and corruptly – within the limits set by the colonial state.

But the European administration also took an authoritarian, despotic and arbitrary line with the lowest level of the indigenous people. District officers and commandants de cercle had far-reaching powers and could scarcely be controlled by the central colonial administration.

The majority of the population in the colonies were mostly ‘spared’ direct contact with legal-rational administration until after the Second World War. Only later in the wake of decolonisation was the bureaucracy expanded and staffed by local people. This, however, took place to an insufficient degree and only for a comparatively short period. A culture of legal-rational administration was able at best to develop in only rudimentary form. With independence, the patrimonial, clientele logic of rule spread to the remaining core of rational administrative bureaucracy.

Thus neo-patrimonialism means a form of rule for which a constitutive insecurity is dominant. State action is unpredictable for all actors other than the top patron, such as the president. Everyone strives by different means to make the uncertain system calculable for his private purposes. That means the state institutions can only fulfil in a limited way their universal mission in the sense of serving public well-being. And that in turn means they lack legitimacy and practical recognition among the people.

Instead, particularistic politics predominate. Thus, besides formal politics and the legal-rational institutions there is a second field of informal politics that seriously interferes with and harms the way the formal institutions function. Informal politics has reached such a dimension that one must speak of institutionalised informality.

The neo-patrimonial legacy

The transitions in Africa of the last 10 years took place amid conditions of extreme institutional insecurity. A change of regime is always a situation of great uncertainty for all involved. The weak state does not suddenly become ‘stronger’ due to democratisation. On the contrary, the democratically legitimised state inherits the institutional legacy of the neo-patrimonial state. The actors continue to have two institutionalised reference points: formal and informal politics and their respective institutions. New, transition-related uncertainty is added to the institutionalised insecurity of the old regime. At the same time, uncertainty is not confined to the old and new formal institutions; it also affects the old clientele networks because the change in power initially makes the established networks ineffective in their previous functions.

The old rulers and their friends will not support democracy. But the new ‘friends of democracy’ now in power also violate democratic principles often enough. Frequently, they were once part of the old regime and were merely pushed out of its clientele structure. Everyone was politically socialised in the neo-patrimonial system.

Generally speaking, the new ‘friends of democracy’ are confronted with a fundamental ‘dilemma of candidature’, as Guillermo O’Donnell called it in 1992. The first task is to institutionalise democracy, and the second is to retain power. In principle, it is not easy to reconcile the two. In view of the prevailing neo-patrimonial political culture, it proves to be an especially heavy burden.

Clientelism and rule of laws
contradict each other

An interest in institutionalising democracy demands that the democrats pursue a policy of reform that will strengthen all formal institutions of rule and give them practical legitimacy. That means that all interests of the rule of law must be supported. Thus, not only a proper judicial system must be set up but also a proper administration, one which enables politics that is oriented on public well-being, is universalistic and obeys rational-bureaucratic principles. To achieve that, clientele relationships, the state machinery and politics must be isolated from each other.

But because of the insecurity of neo-patrimonial conditions, interest in retaining power, which is linked directly to re-election, suggests not doing without the informal politics of the clientele networks in power. Interest in retaining power demands a strategic patronage policy, which opposes the reform tasks outlined above.

So the political work of MPs and a new president faces a dilemma between reform (meaning institutionalising democracy) and retaining power. The two are mutually exclusive or can be reconciled only with great political adroitness.

All these problems apply not only to state institutions but also to civil society and socio-political organisations such as NGOs and political parties. Informal, neo-patrimonial politics is also alive and well in these institutions. The parties, above all, with their diverse functions for democratic rule, manifest even more fragile bureaucratic structures than the state bureaucracy. This applies in a similar way to associations and NGOs and contributes to the organisational and political weakness of civil society vis-à-vis the government and state.

Furthermore, the strong executive function of the African presidential system, which was not given up in the new democratic constitutions, enables the tradition of extra-formal politics to be continued. Weak institutionalising of state organs and a strong executive president come together systematically to ensure the continued existence of the informal politics of patronage.

Prospects

Even if at times it may not appear so, the neo-patrimonial logic is by no means inescapable. Ongoing privatisation since the 1990s and liberalisation of business means that rent incomes are getting smaller and thus the opportunities for political patronage are becoming fewer (or are at least changing). With the increasing number of people losing the protection of patronage, the number of those in opposition who are standing up for proper, non-corrupt governance and articulating that in political parties and civil society organisations is also growing (if not at a ratio of 1:1).

The shrinking patronage resources of the authoritarian regime have already strengthened the ranks of the democracy movement, including by groups of entrepreneurs, some of whom finance the opposition and thereby have contributed to their organisational capability. By this means the existing democratic potential of civil society can equally be strengthened, such as by young politicians who are committed to liberal, rule-of-law standards. In addition, these forces, or at least those in countries dependent on external financing, can expect (conditional) international support.

Meanwhile, contrarian tendencies should not be overlooked. Privatisation and liberalisation also involve the danger that state institutions and their legitimacy will be weakened further in the eyes of the people if they do not deliver expected social and economic benefits.

Two possibilities are still open to hybrid regimes: regression to dictatorship or development to (liberal) democracy. Under the present conditions of internal opposition and international pressure to make democratic adjustments (human rights conditionality, the international civil society), regression to dictatorship in the old form appears to be possible for only a limited time. However, further development to liberal democracy is less likely. Therefore the norm will be that the undemocratic systems of hybrid regimes will continue to exist for the time being, at least under conditions of great external dependency.