| Social exclusion and Africa south of the Sahara: A review of the literature |
| Chapter 5: EXCLUSION FROM ORGANIZATION AND REPRESENTATION |
  
The organization and expression of group interests within society and the representation and realization of interests through state institutional arenas are subjects of a vast and complex literature. Notions of exclusion persistently recur in this literature, though "exclusion" is not a key word and conceptualizations of exclusion vary with the analytical paradigm, the focal problematic and the changing nature of African political economy.
In the 1960s, a major focus of attention was the analysis of electoral politics within the constitutional arrangements, usually modelled on European institutions, which were established at Independence. An important theme in this literature was the effect of ethnic identity on political action, and a key problematic was the extent and nature of political integration, which was said, in the language of the time, to involve a transition in which "backward" tribal identities became less politically salient and "modern" national identities became more salient (see, for example, Cohen and Middleton, 1970). Exclusion of particular ethnic groups was identified as a danger to the successful realization of the ongoing processes of incorporation, and the concept of the plural society proposed by Furnivall to understand colonial situations, was re-fashioned in an effort to grasp the dynamics of exclusion and inclusion in a multi-ethnic context (see Kuper and Smith, 1969).
By the 1980s, with recurring military coups, increasingly personalistic and authoritarian rule, the withdrawal of wide sections of the population from engagement with state institutions, and the outbreak of a number of insurrections and civil wars, the focus had shifted to the causes of political crisis in Africa and its relationship to economic stagnation. The thrust of the literature was to understand the nature of the post-colonial State. A range of analytical perspectives are being applied to this task including: applications of the Weberian notion of the patrimonial State (see, for example, Callaghy 1986 and 1988; and Ghai 1993); adaptations and modifications of this notion, such as "neopatrimonialism" (Médard 1982) and "prebendalism" (Joseph 1987); Marxist analyses of contradictions of accumulation (see, for example, Dutkiewicz and Shenton 1986); applications of Gramscian notions of hegemony (Bayart 1993); Foucauldian analysis tracing political departicipation to the discursive practices of the State, notably the deployment of development policy discourse (Ferguson 1990); and international perspectives which associate decolonization with the creation of totally new bases of statehood (Jackson and Rosberg 1986).
Given the variety of perspectives, it is difficult to summarize the patterns and processes of political exclusion which this literature suggests. However, a number of generalizations can be made. Firstly, African States have a different rationality to that described in Weber's ideal type of the "legal-rational State", in which authority is impersonal, deriving from the rules of a constitution; bureaucracy is based on a system of rules which define the offices, powers and functions of bureaucrats; and equality before the law is upheld by an independent judiciary. Secondly, although there is much disagreement about what the precise rationality of African States is, and how it varies across the continent, two major frames of understanding processes of exclusion and inclusion are provided by analyses of clientalism and corporatism. Thirdly, a central feature of the pattern of representation is that, in the words of Dunn (1986:164), "The one social category in Africa which is by common consent rather successful in representing itself is the membership of the higher echelons of the state apparatus; career politicians, senior civil servants (particularly when involved in the regulation of international trade or the award of major public contracts), senior army officers, and the managers of state sector enterprises". Fourthly, in a clientalist system, exclusion from representation is seen in terms of lack of access to the economic advantages that pertain to government offices and a major axis of organization involves the formation of clientalistic networks and factions. Fifthly, the interests of peasants and proletarians have been poorly represented. The former group have been poorly organized and subject to a pattern of agrarian policies which fostered demobilization (see Bates 1981). They have tended to pursue localized covert forms of protest to state policies which exploited them and to seek individual ways of escape from predatory rule (see Isaacman 1990). The industrial proletariat, much smaller in numbers and concentrated in urban centres, have been, in the past, much more effective in securing representation of their interests. But, as Dunn (1986:167) puts it, "such representative efficacy as the proletariat has achieved has come predominanly from its location on the public sector pay roll and from its capacity to motivate African governments to distort rural-urban terms of trade by the threat of civil and political disruption in the immediate vicinity of the seats of government". Structural adjustment programmes have directly dismantled the bases of any relative privilege the industrial proletariat ever had (see Jamal and Weeks 1993). Sixthly, fair representation of ethnic groups is an important dimension of African politics. The degree of ethnic inclusiveness of African States varies between countries but there has been a tendency to seek to assimilate representatives from major groups. Seventhly, women have generally been excluded from political participation, though ethnic and class differences also affect their degree of representation.
Since the late 1980s there have been significant movements to democratize African societies. The outcome of these processes, which have been driven by a combination of international pressure and internal social movements is as yet unclear, as regimes in power are refusing to submit to the logic of "minimum winning coalitions". Democratization has become a central problematic of study, and continuing theorization of the crisis of the African State has been supplemented by a concern to understand civil society (see Bayart 1986; Bratton, 1989; Lemarchand,1992; Fatton 1992). This literature has sought to shift the focus of that body of research which saw the State simply in terms of state institutions away from state institutions to popular organizations. As it develops it should permit deeper understanding on constraints on association and group solidarity.
The rest of this sub-section focuses clientalism and corporatism as frames for the analysis of patterns and processes of political exclusion and sets out some exemplary positions regarding the organization and representation of women and ethnic groups.
 5.1 Corporatism, clientalism, and exclusion
The study of corporatism emerged in the 1980s as one approach to understand African politics (see Shaw 1982; Nyang'oro 1986; Shaw and Nyang'oro 1988; Shaw and Nyang'oro 1991). It is a minor current within the overall literature, but it may become more relevant in the future and it offers an interesting perspective on political inclusion and exclusion.
Corporatism may be defined as "systems of interest representation based on non-competing groups that are officially sanctioned, subsidized and supervised by the state" (Collier, quoted in Shaw 1982:255). Shaw (1982:255) argues that "the corporatist imperative" is expressed in Africa in the formation of one-party systems, which would include a youth group, a women's movement, a trade union, and so on. Drawing on the insights of Latin American literature, he suggests that corporatism can be more or less inclusive, and that in early phases of import substitution strategies, inclusionary corporatism prevails as multi class coalitions between elites and urban working classes are established, whilst exclusionary corporatism develops as import substitution industries begin to stagnate. With this transition an era of bureaucratic authoritarianism replaces earlier populist politics and a previously politically activated popular sector is excluded.
Shaw (1982) applies his framework to suggest that in a few African countries, notably Cote d'Ivoire, Kenyaand Nigeria, the exclusionary variant of corporatism was being adopted, whilst Tanzania, with a lower level of industrialization, exemplified inclusionary corporatism based on populist politics. Nyang'oro (1986) disputes this analysis arguing that in Africa the absence of a complex division of labour, "the non-serious articulation of class interest at the national level by peasants due to poor organization, and the non-existence of a fully proletarianized class in both urban and rural areas" renders concepts such as class representation "largely irrelevant in practical terms" (p.50). For him, regimes based on primary product exports and peasant production were "bound to be authoritarian and particularistic in nature" (p.47).
Although Shaw and Nyang'oro have continued to explore "corporatism in Africa", the main point of this literature is perhaps to demonstrate the inapplicability of this frame of reference, in the form it has 'been developed in Latin America, to Africa. A more promising mode of analysis is the study of clientalism. This is unfortunately (and unlike the corporatist framework) sometimes divorced from analysis of the economic basis of society by some analysts. But the e phenomenon of clientalism has been identified by a wide variety of analysts as central to the dynamics of politics in Africa.
A patron-client relationship may be defined as an exchange relationship between unequals "involving a largely instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher economic status (patron) uses his own influence and resources to provide protection or benefits or both, for a person of lower status (client) who, for his part, reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services to the patron" (Scott 1972:92). In clientalist systems these dyadic links extend into chains and networks, and factions may form as patrons compete for clients in the struggle to control key resources and offices.
Clientalist systems are paradoxical with regard to their inclusionary/exclusionary nature. They integrate all the participants in the network of exchange relations. But this form of inclusion of lower status groups is founded upon, and reproduces, their exclusion. As Clapham (1982) makes clear, clientalism is a specific form of behaviour which becomes rational given certain conditions, and these include: (i) the control of key resources, such as land and employment, by one particular group in society; (ii) the inhibition of organization and cooperative mobilization by the client group to gain access to the resources controlled by the patron group; and (iii) the absence of universalist criteria for allocating and exchanging resources and, in their place, private and personalistic criteria. The vulnerability and insecurity of client groups consequent upon these exclusions create the desire on the part of clients to seek patrons. But in addition "patrons must be able to deliver or create the expectation that they can deliver, the means to alleviate the goals of their perspective clients" and "patrons should sufficiently desire or require services provided by clients to make it worthwhile to allocate some of their resources to clients in exchange for services" (Clapham 1982:8).
Political and administrative roles within the state institutional apparatus have become key stakes in clientalist systems. This is because, as most analysts contend, it is these positions, and access to them, which have offered the major avenue of upward mobility and the acquisition of wealth in Africa. State offices not only provide a salary, but also prebends (such as under the table commissions for import licenses or construction contracts), income through extortion (in which "holders of power use their monopoly legitimate force to demand goods,cash and labour"), and the opportunity to make private investments in agriculture, transport, property or (rarely) industry (see Bayart 1993:70-83).
Joseph (1986), emphasizing the links between clientalism and prebendalism, argues that "To obtain and keep clients, one must gain a prebendal office; and to be sure that in the distribution of prebendal offices an individual and his kin have a reasonable chance of procuring one, clients must be gathered together to make their collective claims as well as to prove that the aspirant patron ( or potential holder of prebendal office) is a person of consequence whose cooptation would be rewarding to the political entrepreneur" (p.56-7). Joseph's analysis is geared towards Nigeria, but the phenomenon of "prebendal politics", in which state power is treated as "congeries of offices which can be competed for, appropriated and then administered for the benefit of individual occupants and their support groups"(p.63), can be seen in a number of African countries. In such a system, the effectiveness of representation of individuals and groups depends on their degree of access to, and exclusion from, the economic advantages of state offices.
Whilst many analysts agree on the prevalence of clientalist systems (with or without prebendalism), the extent of the networks, and the exclusionary integration which they bring, is a matter of dispute. This partly reflects analytical perspective and partly the diversity amongst African countries and changes over time.
An extreme position is put by Jackson and Rosberg (1986) who argue that "most Tropical African countries are multi-ethnic empires" in which a personal system of rule has developed, based on patronage relationships which stretch down from the top political leaders only as far as necessary for them to remain in power (p.17). Most of the population may be excluded from these networks, and even where they are more inclusive, "the territorial extent of such patronage empires is not usually the whole of the country, and many politically marginal groups may be left out (p.18).
Jackson and Rosberg's argument is based on their particular understanding of statehood in Africa as juridical (based on recognition in international law) rather than empirical (based on capacity to govern a defined territory and population). A more modulated and sophisticated view of the African State is provided by Lemarchand, whose work offers one of the main contributions to the analysis of clientalist systems in Africa (see Lemarchand 1972, 1982, 1988). In the last of these three papers Lemarchand analyses the changing structure of patronage and argues that patronage systems have become less extensive and that "in many rural areas patrons have ceased to patronize" (Lemarchand 1988:155).
These trends, which describe the situation before the recent and incomplete moves towards redemocratization, are associated with the decline of electoral politics (in which "the vote emerged as a critical political resource in the hands of the masses, a resource which could be traded for material rewards of all kinds, ranging from schools and piped water to scholarships and jobs" p.152); the reduction in the pool of patronage resources arising because of the fall in international commodity prices; and the opening of new opportunities for corruption and embezzlement through relationships with a variety of external agencies, such as "multinational corporations, international lending agencies, emergency relief organizations, metropolitan-based 'sociétés de développement' ... through which external resources are funneled into African circuits" (p.155). As clientalist networks have become cliques focalized on key sectors in the civil service, army and police, as access to patronage resources increasingly depends on relationships with external agencies, and as patronage incentives have been eliminated in the countryside, rural areas "in such countries as Zaire, Uganda and Chad" have been subject to "a kind of free-for-all system in which local officials, military men and security spooks are given a blank check to use their prerogatives (and weapons) as they deem fit". In these circumstances "How to avoid, circumvent or mitigate the predaciousness of the state is the central dilemma confronting the rural masses" (p.155).
Bayart (1993), who presents the most theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich analysis of the State in Africa, puts forward a view of the extensiveness of networks which is at the opposite extreme to Jackson and Rosberg's. For him the image of African societies as disarticulated is both illusory and vacuous. They are on the contrary integrated through fluid and multi form networks which link the "highest of the high" with the "lowest of the low". Using the metaphor of a rhizome rather than a root system, he argues that the post-colonial State "is an infinitely variable multiplicity of networks whose underground branches join together the scattered points of society" (p.220).
Bayart argues that in the general conditions of extreme poverty, scarcity, insecurity and political uncertainty which prevail in Africa, everyone is engaged in life-and-death struggles both to survive and to accumulate wealth and power. The main strategy which both rich and poor adopt in these struggles is to "wire" themselves into networks, based on family, alliance and friendship, and to organize in factions. Factional struggle, rather than class struggle or ethnic conflict, is the central form of political action in Africa, and its object is not simply security, wealth, and power, but more precisely "the distribution of the possibilities of realizing a primitive accumulation, in the strict sense of the concept, by the confiscation of the means of production and trade" (p.234). Applying a phrase used in Cameroun, he describes this form of political action as "the politics of the belly". This resembles a rush for spoils, but as Bayart emphasizes, it is also structured by various ethical norms, regarding, for example, the association between wealth and reputation, or the notions of lower status groups that higher status individuals are trustees whose position depends on their performance and the sharing of their prosperity if they make good (on this theme Owusu, 1990, presents a fascinating interpretation of coups in Africa). Also this form of politics 'lis firmly located in the continuity of conflicts in the past" in that "Today, as yesterday, what is being fought for is the exclusive right to the riches claimed by the holders of 'absolute seniority'" (p.241).
Networks are constructed and thus very fluid and variable. But their pattern, including their extensiveness, rests on three particular structural features of African political economies: the structure of inequality; the specific form of the quest for hegemony; and the legitimate problematic of politics (i.e. the field of the politically thinkable). The key aspect of the structure of inequality is that there is a very close relationship between holding positions of power in the state apparatus and the acquisition of wealth, but that, as yet, there is no existing dominant class which is the 'tenant' of the post-colonial State. Moreover subordinate groups still have open to them "multiple individual practices of social escape" (p.258) which mean that "South of the Sahara the key problem for the dominators is to find the dominated and then force them to settle down in a domestic social space where they can be further dominated and exploited" (p.253). The trajectory of politics in Africa involves an under-determined quest for hegemony in a situation in which predacity is easier than exploitation (p.259). This quest does not take the form of a social revolution because there has not been in the last few decades "any collective agent capable or desirous of taking the lead in a social movement aspiring to a revolutionary alternative to the current grinding of the postcolonial State (p.209). Rather, the quest for hegemony involves the "reciprocal assimilation of elites", in which alliances are formed between leaders from different regions and communities; between holders of traditional legitimacy, colonial chiefs, and educated elites; and between the rich and the cooped leaders of popular movements. It is the dynamic of the reciprocal assimilation of elites which is the basis for the extensiveness of the "incorporation of subordinate social groups in the mesh of networks" (p.218). Family bonds and ethnicity "appear to be cosubstantial with networks", but to Bayart, they are "above all instrumental arguments at the service of actors" (p.217), and part of a wider repertoire of politically legitimate discursive genres.
The views of Jackson and Rosberg, Lemarchand and Bayart indicate some of the variety of positions in the literature regarding the extensiveness of clientalist networks. The actual situation on the ground varies between countries and over time. However, Bayart's mode of analysis, which emphasizes the deep inequalities which are both the foundation of the formation of networks and a product of them, the paradoxical combination of inclusionary and exclusionary practices associated with networks, and the ambiguous discourses which they generate, offers the most insight and also the possibility of understanding processes associated with the renewal of the discourse of democracy. Interestingly, Bayart argues that economic stagnation and recession have, by increasing insecurity, strengthened the possibility of regulating society through clientalistic exchanges and that the dismantling of public sectors associated with structural adjustment programmes have not condemned regimes in power by drying up patronage resources, but rather restored the position of presidents as "the principal distributor of sinecures" (p.225).
5.2. Ethnic identity
A major theme within the literature on organization and representation in Africa is the influence of ethnic identity on political action (for some recent country studies, see Kandeh 1992; Krymkowski and Hall 1990; and Murphree 1988). This focus reflects the fact that the colonial boundaries of African States, which have been preserved since Independence, enclose societies of great ethnic complexity. The potential for ethnic mistrust and conflict is heightened by the fact that colonial development, in terms of both agrarian commercialization and the expansion of educational opportunity, were geographically concentrated in particular areas and that patterns of uneven development have persisted after Independence.
It is well recognized now that ethnic identities have a specific history; that present-day identities formed during the colonial period and nationalist drive to Independence, partly with reference to the political institutional structures which were being established (see Vail 1989; Jackson and Maddox 1993); and that as ethnic identities are based on both objective and subjective factors, they are fluid within limits and their political salience is situational (Young 1976). This makes it difficult to "measure" political ethnicity. But a recent quantitative study which attempts to make cross-regional global comparisons indicates that Africa South of the Sahara is the region which has the largest number of-politicized communal groups (defined as communal groups which "experience economic or political discrimination", according to defined criteria, or groups which "have taken political action in support o their collective interests"), and that these groups comprise more than 40% of the population of the region (Gurr 1993).
Ethnic particularism has sometimes led to civil war (see World Directory of Minorities for a survey). But the dominant media image of Africa as a continent riven by violent ethnic strife is grossly exaggerated and founded on a few well-publicized cases. The global view of ethnopolitical conflicts introduced in the last paragraph, for example, notes that other characteristics of politicized ethnic groups in Africa, besides their large numbers, are that: they experience less economic discrimination than groups in most other regions; they experience less severe political discrimination than groups in other Third World countries; and that grievances about political rights are less substantial than any other Third World region (Scarritt 1993).
Various analysts have noted the specificity of the configuration of ethnicity in Africa, in terms of patterns of ethnic organization and representation. Firstly, Doornbos (1991) notes that in contrast to the Andean region and Central America, ethnic differentiation is not usually coterminous with class differentiation, and in contrast to India and other South Asian countries, ethnicity is not usually an assertion of distinctive cultural traits (language, religion, etc.). Rather "the social fabric of most African countries is made up from a fairly complex and to some extent fluid ensemble of different peoples, nations and nationalities, ethnic strata and in some case caste-like divisions" (p.58-9). Secondly, Young (1976) states that the characteristic type of cultural diversity in African States is a pattern in which there is "a single type of cultural cleavage, normally ethnic but with at least three, and often many, identity groups in the political arena" (p.97), with no single dominant group. Exceptions include bipolar cultural divisions and countries with distinct dominant groups (such as Burundi and Rwanda) and countries with more than one axis of cultural differentiation, including religion and language (such as Cameroun, Nigeria, Sudan). Thirdly, Lemarchand (1993), discussing the singularity of the case of Burundi, in which Hutu and Tutsi are organized in an ethnic hierarchy of rank and privilege, argues that almost everywhere in Africa there are horizontal patterns of ethnic stratification - "the juxtaposition of discrete ethnic entities (misleadingly designated 'tribes' in journalistic parlance) within the same territory" (p.159). Finally Gurr's study of politicized communal groups focuses more directly on the pattern of ethnic mobilization itself and distinguishes between "national peoples" and "minority peoples". The former are "regionally concentrated groups that have lost their autonomy to expansionist states but still preserve some of their cultural and linguistic distinctiveness and want to protect or re-establish some degree of politically separate existence" (Gurr 1993:15) and they include "ethnonationalists" and "indigenous peoples". "Minority peoples" include "ethnoclasses" ("ethnically or culturally distinct peoples, usually descended from slaves or immigrants, with special economic roles, usually of low status"); "militant sects" ("communal groups whose political status and activities are centered on the defense of their religious beliefs"); and "communal contenders" ("culturally distinct peoples, tribes, or clans in heterogeneous societies who hold or seek a share in state power") (p.18). Gurr's study finds that the most common type of politicized communal group in Africa is the "communal contender" and that the most common form of conflict is "competition over political power and economic distribution in the context of unstable multiethnic coalitions - often existing within a single governing party or among officers in a military regime" (Scarritt 1993:252). Violent ethnic conflict has usually involved ethnonationalists groups, ethnoclasses and militant sects, with examples being long-term conflicts in Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia, Sudan, apartheid South Africa, and the civil wars in Angola, Liberia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zaire.
Given the ethnic heterogeneity of most African States, the colonial legacy of uneven development in agrarian commercialization, transport investment and educational opportunity, and the grinding poverty, what is perhaps is that ethnic conflict has not been more widespread. One reason for this is that State policy has acted to manage potential conflicts arising from actual or perceived exclusion from ethnic representation through various means (see Rothchild and Olorunsola 1982). A particularly common method for achieving this has been to build multi-ethnic coalitions through including spokespersons for all major ethnic interests in key decision~making institutions, to govern, as Rothchild and Foley(1988:236) put it, through a "rule of inclusiveness". This approach corresponds to the notion of representation as "ethnic typicality" rather than democratic accountability which, as indicated in section 2.1, was identified by Mazrui (1967) as a critical element of African nationalism.
Rothchild and Foley review practices of coalition formation in Mauritius, Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, guinea, Tanzania and Angola, and suggest that informal practices, such as the use of a rough proportional guideline when selecting cabinets, or ethnic balancing in top civil service appointments, predominate. Also, "formal legal provisions intended to produce representatives coalitions have displayed limited success at best" (p.241). Distinguishing "hegemonial exchange regimes", in which clientalistic exchange relations prevail, from "bureaucratic centralist regimes", which seek to structure and sanction group participation, they argue that the coalition formation and cooperative behaviour has been more successful in the former, and that it is in the latter, in which reciprocity with ethnic intermediaries is played down, that have been more prone to subnational rebellion. This approach to government depends on the negotiability of ethnic claims. But in general they are (see Rothchild 1982), and thus "the politics of inclusive ethnic coalitions" offer an important means of "increasing the political effectiveness of soft states in the short term" (p.248). In a longer term perspective, these practices are likely to be less successful. They can be costly in terms of economic growth (see Woods 1989). They incorporate elites and ignore proletarians and peasants, who may by withdrawing from commercial production or formal marketing circuits, undermine the economic basis of the State. They encourage a focus on rights rather than obligations (Ekeh,1989). They also may encourage the mobilization of ethnic coalitions in what has been described by Daniel Bach, writing on Nigeria, as a "boomerang effect".
Patterns of ethnic mobilization and representation are best seen within the framework of clientalist politics. The inclusive practices which Rothchild and Foley describe ensure that all major ethnic interests are "wired" into networks and have access to state offices and the wielders of state power. As Bayart notes, ethnicity can always be used as an instrumental argument in bargaining within these networks. But in some cases, factions may be ethnically exclusive. This is more likely to occur when the good being exchanged in the networks are collective, rather than individual, goods (Clapham 1982:10-11). For collective goods like a school, road, clinic, a whole community can benefit. It is for this reason that a comment of Peel (198 ) is germane. He write: "Ethnicity is precisely the outcome of the alignment between two forms of competition: between individuals of diverse ethnic origins for jobs, contracts and opportunities in urban and national context and between regions and communities of origin for favourable access to development goods distributed by the state" (p.260-1).
Ethnic exclusivity may also be increased by economic decline. Zolberg, Suhke, and Agnayo (1989) set out a scenario by which this has been occurring in some countries. They suggest that "in the face of shrinking resources and an absence of institutional restraints, desperate rulers degenerate into outright tyrants" and "major segments of the population... [withdraw] ... into local-ized and ethnically specific entities that afford the hope of security and economic self-sufficiency." The result of this in the extreme case is that 'la tenuously amalgamated national society can disintegrate into its component elements" and "the state is reduced to little more than an arena in which groups compete for survival". "Under these conditions collective life is reduced to two fundamental activities, food production and war. Because small weapons are widely available, and warriors are obviously in a position to secure their subsistence without engaging in their production themselves, war-making steadily gains the upper hand. the outcome is a proliferation of warrior bands, verging on a war of all against all".
This scenario describes part of the recent history of Chad and Uganda, and posits the worst case future in terms of "ethnic organization and representation". One of its outcomes, as Zolberg, Suhrke, and Agnayo note, is to generate new patterns of exclusion, in the form of internally displaced people and internationally recognised refugees.
5.3 Women
Just as in the analysis of the relationship between ethnic identity and political exclusion, the analysis of gender dimensions of political exclusion is best rooted in an understanding of political processes in African states. Formally women citizens hold equal political rights to men, gaining the right to vote, to stand for election, and to hold office in many countries at Independence (Howard 1986:187-195). But the way African States operate, whether as envisioned in corporatist or clientalist mode of analysis, implies that women's political participation is likely to be more limited than men's.
Shaw and Nyang'oro (1991), on the basis of their survey of corporatist practices throughout Africa, state bluntly that: "All corporatist regimes have been male-dominated and oriented: women of all classes and races have been excluded and subordinated" (p.59). With regard to clientalism "few studies enable us to measure or understand how and to what extent clientalist politics discriminates against or assists women or favours some women more than others" (Roberts and Williams 1991:83). However, one may state with some confidence that in general women occupy sub-ordinate positions within patron-client networks.
This assertion rests on the inferior status of women which is embodied in many countries in law. As Connors (1988) puts it:
In the African context, women' inferiority is seen as 'traditional, a philosophy which is reflected in her legal status, which has relegated her, and continues to relegate her, to the position of legal minority - childhood - for her entire life, always under the tutelage and protection of a man' (p.12).
The legal position of women varies from country to country. But what is important is the continuing operation of customary law in tandem with statutory law. Connors again puts it well:
Most of the legal problems confronting the African woman can be attributed to customary law, or rather the interaction between customary and received law. customary law sub- ordinates a woman within the extended, traditional family, placing her under the permanent guardianship of a male relative and severely restricting her ownership or inheritance of property. It prevents her acting as aguardian of her children or, without the assistance of a male guardian, entering into contracts, and she cannot sue or be sued (p.12).
The norms of customary law, as Moore (1986) shows with regard to the Chagga in Tanzania, are not static and are enforced both inside and outside courts, and they can play a central role in people's everyday lives, particularly, in settling disputes. Customary legal rules, Moore demonstrates, "precast certain persons in difficult roles giving others an opportunity to take advantage of them" (p.306). It is on the foundation of customary rules that women's subordination rests. Their subordination is particularly related to their vulnerability when unmarried, their exclusion from access to land, except through their husbands, (discussed earlier section 2.3), and the insecurity which arises as many women are denied financial provision from the property of their husband on death or divorce. Exclusion and insecurity are precisely the conditions which Clapham identifies as necessary for persons to enter unequal exchange relations with others in the role of subordinate clients.
The literature on women's political participation has tended not to be framed with in the context of overall discussions of the political process in Africa. It is, however, generally agreed that women's organizations have often been coopted and have had limited influence on governments, and that women and women's issues have been under-represented in government. As Parpart (1988:225) pithily puts it, "decolonization was essentially a transfer of power from one group of men to another". Important axes of disagreement and debate in the literature on women's political participation (or rather the lack of it) are:
i) Have women withdrawn or have they been excluded from participation in politics?;
ii) What is the relationship between class, ethnicity and gender in the pattern of political participation of women?;
iii) How may political participation best be analyzed?; and
iv) What is the trajectory of change regarding women's political participation, both over the long term (from pre-colonial times to the present) and in the recent past, in response to economic stagnation and the politics of scarcity.
In general these issues are addressed, either explicitly or implicitly, by most authors, but a few positions within the literature may be briefly extracted and summarized.
A central theme in analyses of women's political participation is that, women have reacted to their underrepresentation and neglect in state policies by withdrawing from state-centered political activities (see Staudt 1987; Chazan 1988:135-6; Parpart 1988; Parpart and Staudt 1989: 6). Allen (1991) has challenged this view, arguing that "women do not withdraw from politics, they are excluded from it by the dominant classes in African states, where and for as long as they can achieve such exclusion" (p.214). Allen analyses the process of exclusion, focussing on the specific cases of Zambia and Kenya, in order to avoid overgeneralization, and placing the discussion of women's activities within the context of political activity in general.
In both Zambia and Kenya, a similar process is observed. Women were very active in radical nationalist organizations and involved in militant protest. But over time women's organizations became instruments for dominant male politicians to control and channel women's political activities, and women's leadership changed from "self-made non-elite women" to women related by marriage or birth to the political elite. Allen (1991: 210-1) explains the process as follows:
Thus the anticolonial struggle became also a social struggle for control of the nationalist movement, between a conservative elite and radical subordinate strata ... The sudden granting of the vote to a largely rural electorate completed the eradication of radical nationalism: Party leaders and activists, even radicals, became preoccupied with mobilizing for elections rather than mobilizing for confrontation ... Clientalism...became the major method used to link the party leadership to the local "patrons", and the patrons to their followings... [F]actionalism, ethnic politics, and corruption ... affected in turn the organizations now incorporated within patronage networks, notably trade unions and cooperatives, but also the women's wings of parties and the women's voluntary organizations ... Women's organizations, like unions, ceased to represent their members interests and instead became vehicles for personal gain on the part of their leaders and selected followers.
Finally, with structural reforms, designed "to retain clientalism and its benefits while controlling its destabilizing effects", increasing centralization of power and authoritarianism, "the ,existing women's organizations either cease to function other than ritually, or become part of the exercise of authority, a means to control, divide, and prevent women's participation" (p.211-2). Thus, Allen concludes that since the 1940s:
Women, especially, but also all subordinate strata, have been gradually excluded from significant political participation in most African states. This exclusion arises not from the operation of gender alone or even primarily but from the interaction of gender with the systematic features of the development of African political systems" (p.212). To which should probably be added, the specific barriers facing women's political participation which come from other spheres, including relatively low levels of education, limited economic opportunities, the time-demands of the sexual division of labour (see Parpart 1988).
A second axis of disagreement concerns alternative ways of conceptualizing political participation. A minimal conception, which has some logic within the frame of clientalism and prebendal politics, is representation in state offices. Hirschmann (1991) argues that it is necessary to recognize the heterogeneity of state institutions and to survey womens participation both at central and local levels, including for example participation in development projects at village level and contacts with government field agents giving extension advice. Using the case of Malawi as an example, he suggests that this approach can indicate less female exclusion from politics than the conventional wisdom suggests. However, the type of participation revealed is "fringe participation, marginal influences, coincidental alliances and minor decision-making... at the interstices of state power" (p.1692).
An increasing concern is to modulate generalizations about women's marginality by relating gender inequality with class and ethnicity. Hirschmann, for example, comments that a conclusion by Strobel on Women's Associations in Mombasa, Kenya, that portrays them "essentially as organizations of women rather than for women" may perhaps be wrong as they are, rather "organizations of and for women of a particular class" (p.1688-9). the relationship between ethnic identity and gender inequality is an important one, which is explored with great insight for the specific case of the Creoles in Sierra Leone by Cohen (1981).
With regard to the trajectory of women's participation, the dominant view of long-term analyses which examine precolonial, colonial and post-colonial patterns is that exclusion is increasing (see, for example, Parpart 1988). A notable exception is Presley, based on a study of the involvement of women in the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. Speculations on the shifts occurring in the current economic crisis are varied. Parpart (1988) is upbeat, arguing that:
Increasingly women from different classes, regions and ethnic groups have been speaking out and organizing against sexual injustices in African societies. This groundswell has been spawned by a number of factors: growing awareness of sexual inequality in Africa, revolutionary rhetoric, education, the rise of western feminism and the U.N. decade of women. Revolutionary rhetoric has given women's rights new legitimacy, as has the U.N. Decade for Women....
This renewed activism is all the more important because the current decline in African states has reduced the power of those who benefit from the state - namely men. The balance of power in shattered economies may be shifting to those people who can provide the necessary reproductive and productive labor for survival (p.225).
Robertson (1984) is more sanguine, noting that horizontal (low status) female networks have been crucial to women's survival, but that "socioeconomic forces" are weakening the strength of these networks. The implications of the democratic opening are as yet uncertain.
5.4 Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons
There is a specific literature on this subject which is not reviewed here. But the scale of the problem is worth underlining. In 1992, officially recognized refugees numbered 5.3 million per-sons (Ferris 1993). It is estimated that a third of the world's refugees and displaced people are in Africa. As noted above, a major process creating refugees and internally displaced persons has been factional struggle, the disintegration of states, and civil disorder. Destabilization in southern Africa, which was part of the strategy of protecting and strengthening apartheid south Africa, also resulted in about onequarter of Africa's refugees in the late 1980's (see Zolberg, Suhrhe, Agnayo 1989).
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