Staten i den tredie verden: autonomi og samfundsmæssig bestemmelse.

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The making of a rentier class: wealth accumulation and political control in Senegal

Political and economic dynamics set in motion by efforts to consolidate post‐colonial regimes have contributed to the continuing weakness of indigenous bourgeoisies throughout much of post‐colonial Africa. This article suggests that state power has been used to foster private rent‐seeking, rather than productive local private investment, in order to promote and sustain the political cohesion of ruling classes. The political consolidation of dominant rentier classes (forged through state patronage and clientelist mechanisms of control) creates obstacles to the emergence of local class strata interested in, or capable of, using state power to promote the expanded accumulation of capital (be it local or foreign). A study of Senegal illustrates this point

Decentralization as political strategy in West Africa

Administrative and political decentralization have emerged as high developmental priorities in Africa and elsewhere. Although the possible benefits of such reforms have been well theorized, the actual politics of decentralization are not well understood. Often there are large gaps between reform rhetoric and governments'real commitment to decentralization. And often legal changes have not produced decentralization's supposed political and administrative benefits. These dynamics have been especially clear in rural Africa, where a decade of decentralizing reforms has produced generally disappointing results. When do regimes pursue state-building strategies that involve real devolution of political and administrative prerogative? This article addresses this question and proposes an answer for rural West Africa. The author employs a political economy approach to propose a model of regional variation in the political capacities and interests of rural societies and rural notables and argues that these differences shape the institution-building strategies governments choose trying to entrench their power

State building in the African countryside: Structure and politics at the grassroots

This is a comparative analysis of institutions linking state and countryside in three West African regions: Senegal's groundnut basin, southern Cote d'Ivoire, and southern Ghana. It argues that conflicts within rural society, and between rural elites and governments, have been more important in shaping these linkages than much of state-centric political science has allowed. Different patterns of economic and social organisation have produced regionally-specific political dynamics that have, in turn, shaped institution-building and state formation. The analysis shows African states to be more deeply embedded in localised power relations than many previous studies have suggested. It may shed light on sources of unevenness and variation in attempts to decentralise and democratise state structures in the 1980s and 1990s.