(Assignment 3) Rethinking Patrimonialism and Neopatrimonialism in Africa Authors: Anne Pitcher, Mary H. Moran Michael Johnston - Diana Evangeline

The article critiques much of the scholarship on Africa for the use of neopatrimonialism as a blanket term to describe African politics as it distorts the original ideation of the term by Weber – the symbolic construction of voluntary domination, compliance and reciprocity.

1.     “We suggest that many applications of neopatrimonialism wrongly assume a direct causal connection between types of authority and types of regime, or even treat the two as synonymous.” (p. 126)

2.     “For Weber, patrimonialism was not a synonym for corruption, “bad governance,” violence, tribalism, or a weak state. It was instead a specific form of authority and source of legitimacy.” (p. 126)

3.     “Weber noted that patrimonial legitimacy derives its force from the voluntary compliance of subjects with domination by their rulers, which is very different from the domination deployed against slaves, and even from the threat of joblessness used against free workers in industrial capitalist countries. Rather than forming an autocratic relationship, the parties to a patrimonial arrangement, according to Weber, are highly aware of their mutual dependence and have institutionalized means of holding each other accountable” (p. 139)

4.     “Neither patrimonialism nor neopatrimonialism is an inevitable stage in some linear progression; to imply that they are effectively relegates many societies to “backwardness,” or at the least to a “developmentally delayed” status.” (pp. 127-128)

5.     “And, it appears, scholars of Africa were guided by unexamined evolutionist and exceptionalist assumptions that African societies were differently located along a universal trajectory from those of the West… Rather than questioning the supposed exclusion or neutralization of personal ties in rational-legal bureaucracies, these analysts have seen such relationships as either impossible to institutionalize (Budd 2004) or as “polluting” the public sector with inappropriate connections (Jackson & Rosberg 1982), resulting in corrupt “hybrid” forms of social and political relations.” (p. 138)

6.     “Botswana’s elites have not abandoned patrimonialism or overcome it; rather, they have built a democratic state on a foundation of traditional and highly personalized reciprocities and loyalties.” (p. 145)

7.     “The argument is not that patrimonialism “caused” that success, or that one African case necessarily illustrates the development of others. Instead, the contrasts between Botswana and other cases are the key, showing that there is nothing in patrimonialism that leads directly to any one regime type, and there is nothing inherent in patrimonialism to prevent the creation of a democracy by leaders determined to do so.” (p. 149)

Primary Reference:

Pitcher, Anne, Mary H. Moran, and Michael Johnston. "Rethinking patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism in Africa." African Studies Review 52, no. 01 (2009): 125-156.