These circumstances can generate an authoritarian reflex and the temptation to circle the wagons against all sources of potential opposition. 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. However, three countries, Botswana, Somaliland, and South Africa, have undertaken differing measures with varying levels of success. 17-19 1.6. Government and the Political System 2.1. Chieftaincy is further plagued with its own internal problems, including issues of relevance, succession, patriarchy, jurisdiction, corruption and intra-tribal conflict. Land privatization is, thus, unworkable in pastoral communities, as communal land ownership would be unworkable in a capitalist economy. You cant impose middle class values on a pre-industrial society.13. A second attribute is the participatory decision-making system. Indeed, it should be added that a high percentage of todays conflicts are recurrences of previous ones, often in slightly modified form with parties that may organize under more than one flag. Under conditions where nation-building is in a formative stage, the retribution-seeking judicial system and the winner-take-all multiparty election systems often lead to combustible conditions, which undermine the democratization process. Table 1 shows the proportion of the population that operates under traditional economic systems in selected African countries. There was a lot of consultation between the elders before any major decision was made. How these differences in leadership structures impinge on the broader institutions of resources allocation patterns, judicial systems, and decision-making and conflict resolution mechanisms is still understudied. 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. It is also highly unlikely that such broader aspects of traditional institutions can be eliminated without transforming the traditional modes of production that foster them. The development of inclusive institutions may involve struggles that enable political and societal actors to check the domination of entrenched rulers and to broaden rule-based participation in governance. Traditional leaders would also be able to use local governance as a platform for exerting some influence on national policymaking. Sometimes, another precedent flows from thesenamely, pressure from outside the country but with some support internally as well for creating a transitional government of national unity. Still another form of legitimacy in Africa sometimes derives from traditional political systems based on some form of kingship. The introduction of alien economic and political systems by the colonial state relegated Africas precolonial formal institutions to the sphere of informality, although they continued to operate in modified forms, in part due to the indirect rule system of colonialism and other forms of reliance by colonial states on African institutions of governance to govern their colonies. No doubt rural communities participate in elections, although they are hardly represented in national assemblies by people from their own socioeconomic space. 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. To learn more, visit
Another measure is recognition of customary law and traditional judicial systems by the state. Changes in economic and political systems trigger the need for new institutional systems to manage the new economic and political systems, while endurance of economic and political systems foster durability of existing institutional systems. In most African countries, constitutionally established authorities exercise the power of government alongside traditional authorities. 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. 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. On the one hand, traditional institutions are highly relevant and indispensable, although there are arguments to the contrary (see Mengisteab & Hagg [2017] for a summary of such arguments). As a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) study (2007) notes, traditional leaders often operate as custodians of customary law and communal assets, especially land. This theme, which is further developed below, is especially critical bearing in mind that Africa is the worlds most ethnically complex region, home to 20 of the worlds most diverse countries in terms of ethnic composition.8. In most African countries, constitutionally established authorities exercise the power of government alongside traditional authorities. not because of, the unique features of US democracy . Under the circumstances, it becomes critical that traditional leaders are directly involved in local governance so that they protect the interests of their communities. There are also various arguments in the literature against traditional institutions.2 One argument is that chieftaincy impedes the pace of development as it reduces the relevance of the state in the area of social services (Tom Mboya in Osaghae, 1989). Poor leadership can result in acts of commission or omission that alienate or disenfranchise geographically distinct communities. However, institutions are rarely static and they undergo changes induced by internal transformations of broader socioeconomic systems or by external influences or imposition, and in some cases by a combination of the two forces. In new countries such as most of those in Africa,7 where the rule of law is in competition with the rule of men, leaders play a strikingly critical role, for good or ill. Thus, another report by PRIO and the University of Uppsala (two Norwegian and Swedish centers) breaks conflict down into state-based (where at least one party is a government), non-state-based (neither party is an official state actor), and one-sided conflicts (an armed faction against unarmed civilians). 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. West Africa has a long and complex history. This point links the reader to the other Africa chapters that have been prepared for this project. This concept paper focuses on the traditional system of governance in Africa including their consensual decision-making models, as part of a broader effort to better define and advocate their role in achieving good governance. Misguided policies at the national level combined with cultural constraints facing these social groups may increase exclusion and create seeds of future trouble. Yet, the traditional judicial system in most cases operates outside of the states institutional framework. Keywords: Legal Pluralism, African Customary Law, Traditional Leadership, Chieftaincy, Formal Legal System Relationship With, Human Rights, Traditional Norms, Suggested Citation:
This fragmentation is also unlikely to go away anytime soon on its own. The implementation of these systems often . In some cases, community elders select future Sultanes at a young age and groom them for the position. In this respect, they complement official courts that are often unable to provide court services to all their rural communities. 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. Such chiefs also have rather limited powers. However, there are customs and various arrangements that restrain their power. 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). This section attempts to explain these seemingly contradictory implications of traditional institutions. A strict democracy would enforce the "popular vote" total over the entire United States. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. Why traditional institutional systems endure, how large the adherents to them is, and why populations, especially in rural areas, continue to rely on traditional institutions, even when an alternative system is provided by the state, and what the implications of institutional dichotomy is are questions that have not yet received adequate attention in the literature. Additionally, inequalities between parallel socioeconomic spaces, especially with respect to influence on policy, hinder a democratic system, which requires equitable representation and inclusive participation. While traditional institutions remain indispensable for the communities operating under traditional economic systems, they also represent institutional fragmentation, although the underlying factor for fragmentation is the prevailing dichotomy of economic systems. (No award was made in 50% of the years since the program was launched in 2007; former Liberian president Ellen John Sirleaf won the award in 2017. The government system is a republic; the chief of state and head of government is the president. However, the winner takes all system in the individual states is a democracy type of voting system, as the minority gets none of the electoral college votes. 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. It also develops a theoretical framework for the .
Ousted royals such as Haile Selassie (Ethiopia) and King Idriss (Libya) may be replaced by self-anointed secular rulers who behave as if they were kings until they, in turn, get overthrown. We know a good deal about what Africans want and demand from their governments from public opinion surveys by Afrobarometer. He served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989. 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. But established and recognized forms of inherited rule cannot be lightly dismissed as un-modern, especially when linked to the identity of an ethnic or tribal group, and could be construed as a building block of legitimacy. The institution of traditional leadership in Africa pre-existed both the colonial and apartheid systems and was the only known system of governance among indigenous people. In Africa, as in every region, it is the quality and characteristics of governance that shape the level of peace and stability and the prospects for economic development. Other governance systems in the post-independence era and their unique features, if any. Chiefs administer land and people, contribute to the creation of rules that regulate the lives of those under their jurisdiction, and are called on to solve disputes among their subjects. In traditional African communities, it was not possible to distinguish between religious and non-religious areas of life. Broadly speaking, indigenous systems of governance are those that were practiced by local populations in pre-colonial times. The link between conflict and governance is a two-way street. Another category of chiefs is those who theoretically are subject to selection by the community. The leader is accountable to various levels of elders, who serve as legislators and as judges (Legesse, 1973; Taa, 2017). The debate is defined by "traditionalists" and "modernists." . 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. Most of the regions states were defined geographically by European cartographers at the start of the colonial period. Additionally, the transaction costs for services provided by the traditional institutions are much lower than the services provided by the state. For example, the election day itself goes more or less peacefully, the vote tabulation process is opaque or obscure, and the entire process is shaped by a pre-election playing field skewed decisively in favor of the incumbents. Tribes had relatively little power outside their own group during the colonial period. Africas economic systems range from a modestly advanced capitalist system, symbolized by modern banking and stock markets, to traditional economic systems, represented by subsistent peasant and pastoral systems. Furthermore, for generations, Africans were taught the Western notion of the tribe as . A look at the economic systems of the adherents of the two institutional systems also gives a good indication of the relations between economic and institutional systems. One is the controversy over what constitutes traditional institutions and if the African institutions referred to as traditional in this inquiry are truly indigenous traditions, since colonialism as well as the postcolonial state have altered them notably, as Zack-Williams (2002) and Kilson (1966) observe. Countries such as Burkina Faso, Guinea, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, for example, attempted to strip chiefs of most of their authority or even abolish chieftaincy altogether. Yet, governments are expected to govern and make decisions after consulting relevant stakeholders. for in tradi-tional African communities, politics and religion were closely associated. 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. One layer represents the formal institutions (laws) of the state. Even the court system is designed to provide for consociational, provincial, and local organization, not as separate courts but as divisions of the key national courts; once again, a compromise between a fully federal or consociational arrangement and the realities of the South African situation that emphasize the preservation of national unity . The nature of governance is central because it determines whether the exercise of authority is viewed as legitimate. The quality and durability of such leader-defined adaptive resilience cannot be assured and can be reversed unless the associated norms become institutionalized. 28, (1984) pp. This is done through the enforcement agencies such as the police force. These include - murder, burglary, landcase, witchcraft, profaning the deities and homicide. While this seems obvious, it is less clear what vectors and drivers will have the most weight in shaping that outcome. In general, 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. The relationship between traditional leadership and inherited western-style governance institutions often generates tensions. This category of chiefs serves their communities in various and sometimes complex roles, which includes spiritual service. This outline leads us to examine more closely the sources of legitimacy in African governance systems. Yet political stability cannot be based on state power alone, except in the short run. 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. 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. General Overviews. Leaders may not be the only ones who support this definition of legitimacy. Rather, they often rely on voluntary compliance, although they also apply some soft power to discourage noncompliance by members with customary laws. The long-term, global pushback by the leading authoritarian powers against liberal governance norms has consequences in Africa and other regions as governments directly act to close the space for civil society to operate. In Botswana, for example, the consensual decision-making process in the kgotla (public meeting) regulates the power of the chiefs. The formal institutions of checks and balances and accountability of leaders to the population are rather weak in this system. As institutional scholars state, institutional incompatibility leads to societal conflicts by projecting different laws governing societal interactions (Eisenstadt, 1968; Helmke & Levitsky, 2004; March & Olsen, 1984; North, 1990; Olsen, 2007). 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. Some live in remote areas beyond the reach of some of the institutions of the state, such as courts. Despite apparent differences, the strategies of the three countries have some common features as well that may inform other counties about the measures institutional reconciliation may entail. This study notes that in 2007 Africa saw 12 conflicts in 10 countries. Government as a Structural Element of Society 2.2. Challenges confronting the institution of chieftaincy have continued from the colonial era into recent times. Galizzi, Paolo and Abotsi, Ernest K., Traditional Institutions and Governance in Modern African Democracies (May 9, 2011). Paramount chiefs: Another category of leadership structure is that of hereditary paramount chieftaincy with various traditional titles and various levels of accountability. The third section deals with the post-colonial period and discusses some problems associated with African administration. In this regard, the president is both the head of state and government, and there are three arms and tiers of rules by which the country is ruled. There were several reasons for such measures. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. During the colonial period, "tribe" was used to identify specific cultural and political groups in much the same way as "nation" is defined above. 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. These consisted of monarchy, aristocracy and polity. The political systems of most African nations are based on forms of government put in place by colonial authorities during the era of European rule. Council of elders: These systems essentially operate on consensual decision-making arrangements that vary from one place to another. Others choose the traditional institutions, for example, in settling disputes because of lower transactional costs. 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? In many tribes, the chief was the representative of the ancestors. Basing key political decisions on broad societal and inter-party consensus may help to de-escalate cutthroat competition that often leads to violent conflicts. Located on the campus of Stanford University and in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution is the nations preeminent research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security, and democratic governance. For these and other reasons, the state-society gap lies at the heart of the problems faced by many states. An analytical study and impact of colonialism on pre-colonial centralized and decentralized African Traditional and Political Systems. By Sulayman Sanneh Date: September 10th, 2021. fIntroduction Africa is a vast and . The colonial system constitutes the second section. Competing land rights laws, for instance, often lead to appropriations by the state of land customarily held by communities, triggering various land-related conflicts in much of Africa, especially in areas where population growth and environmental degradation have led to land scarcity. African political elites are more determined than ever to shape their own destiny, and they are doing so. 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). If a critical mass of the leaderse.g., South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Cote dIvoire, Algeria, Egyptare heading in a positive direction, they will pull some others along in their wake; of course, the reverse is also true. The first three parts deal with the principal objectives of the article. Another issue that needs some clarification is the neglect by the literature of the traditional institutions of the political systems without centralized authority structures. 7. . In the thankfully rare cases where national governance breaks down completelySouth Sudan, Somalia, CARits absence is an invitation to every ethnic or geographic community to fend for itselfa classic security dilemma. (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. If African political elite opinion converges with that of major external voices in favoring stabilization over liberal peacebuilding agendas, the implications for governance are fairly clear.17. 1.4. Safeguarding womens rights thus becomes hard without transforming the economic system under which they operate. These different economic systems have corresponding institutional systems with divergent property rights laws and resource allocation mechanisms, disparate decision-making systems, and distinct judicial systems and conflict resolution mechanisms. This layer of institutions is the subject of inquiry of this article. His dramatic tenure since April of 2018 appears to be shaking up the states creaky authoritarian services and creating the space for important adaptations such as ending a long-standing state of emergency, freeing political prisoners, reaching out to a wide range of foreign partners, and extending the olive branch to Eritrea with whom Ethiopia had fought a costly war. One layer represents the formal institutions (laws) of the state. Evidence from case studies, however, suggests that the size of adherents varies from country to country. Some of these conflicts are, in reality, low-tech, sporadic skirmishes and armed attacks.