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- Convenors:
-
Portia Roelofs
(KCL)
Dan Paget (University of Oxford)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Politics and International Relations
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.12
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Normative politics - including moral values, political ideologies, and civic ideals - are a fundamental but neglected aspect of politics on the African continent. Empirical papers will explore how core concepts are contested in political competition, and how ideas are embedded in material practices.
Long Abstract:
Normative politics - including moral values, political ideologies, and civic ideals - are a fundamental but neglected aspect of politics on the African continent. While mainstream scholars of politics in Africa have always dealt in normatively loaded concepts such as 'democracy', 'good governance', 'transparency' and 'reform' their construal of these terms has often remained implicit and assumption laden. The panel aims to bring traditional questions of political theory and ideology into African political contexts, benefitting from the advantages of contemporary empirical methodologies and approaches, primarily derived from the field of political anthropology. What are the normative ties between state and society? What makes a good ruler? In some cases the answers to these questions will continue the grand ideas of the independence era, in others new ideational configurations represent a rupture with the conventional wisdom about the aims of development.
A focus on the normative and the ideational does not, however, downplay a materialist interpretation that views power, patronage, and political economy as central catalysts of social change. We should analyze these phenomena in the context of the normative frameworks in which they are embedded, viewing them not as short-circuits for normative expectations but rather as windows into them.
In shifting the starting point of debates about African politics, this panel seeks to both de-otherize African politics as well as open the possibility of African politics as the source of conceptual innovation at a time when Western democracies are losing faith in the common sense normative goals of political action.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Portia Roelofs (KCL)
Paper short abstract:
Returning to long-standing debates about the connection between the public-private divide and good governance this paper argues that Nigerian politics shows that politics can be socially-embedded in a way that defies categorisation as personalistic, moral or restricted to small-scale communities.
Paper long abstract:
On mainstream conceptions of liberal democracy, the public-private divide both helps define the job of government as the pursuit of public interest as well as specifying its opposite: corruption. However, in many examples -from India to Italy - this divide is observed to be blurred or non-existent.
Despite anthropologists recognising the variety of on-the-ground arrangements, the remains an assumption in political science that good governance and accountability will be achieved through tighter enforcement of this divide. For example in the lingering idea of 'neo-patrimonialism' and the increasing acceptance within political science of economic definitions of good governance as the provision of public as opposed to private goods. Moreover, instances of accountability outside of the highly circumscribed liberal notion of 'public-ness' end up being classed as somehow un-political. Empirical accounts of accountability that goes beyond the duties of public office strictly defined tend to be sucked in to categories associated with the private realm, such as 'personalistic', moral or communal politics.
By contrast this presentation draws on Nigerian examples and debates around the work of Peter Ekeh to show that more socially-embedded accounts of good governance are not necessarily limited to small-scale local politics, intra-ethnic communities nor rely on inter-personal relationships per se. Core concepts associated with good governance like transparency and accountability can be socially-embedded and yet remain essentially political concepts. This paper shares work in progress from a book project on what the West can learn from Nigeria about good governance and introduces an upcoming special issue.
Jeremy Seekings (University of Cape Town)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines explicit and implicit norms of responsibility (of state and non-state actors) and solidarity (between citizens or groups) within political parties in selected countries in Botswana, Zambia and Malawi, drawing on manifestos and other party documents together with interviews.
Paper long abstract:
Large areas of public policy - including public education, health care and social protection - entail implicit conceptions of the scope of both public responsibility (relative to non-state actors) and solidarity between citizens or social groups. Since independence there has been a massive expansion in public provision but research on the underlying norms seems to have been limited to philosophical analysis of concepts of 'ubuntu'. Research into politicians' attitudes towards different areas of public policy reveals striking variation, between policies and between politicians. For the most part, drought relief, education and (to a lesser extent) health care seem to be accepted as a largely public responsibility, with a strong sense of country-wide solidarity. Social protection, however, is much more controversial, with most politicians setting clear limits to both public responsibility and solidarity. This paper draws on research on political parties and policy-making in three Southern African countries - Botswana, Zambia and Malawi - to examine the explicit and implicit norms around responsibility and solidarity within political parties. The paper pays particular attention to differences between the norms and discourses of rights favoured by many international organisations and politicians' norms and discourses around responsibilities and solidarity. The paper analyses manifestos and other party documents, together with extensive interviews with politicians in the three countries.
Benjamin Chemouni (Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)) Assumpta Mugiraneza (IRIBA Center for Multimedia Heritage)
Paper short abstract:
The article analyses the songs of mobilisation of members and supporters of the Rwandan Patriotic Front's composed before the genocide. The paper systematically delineates the RPF's early ideology. It reveals the surprisingly long-lasting power of ideas despite fast-changing material circumstances.
Paper long abstract:
In the study of African Politics, the analysis of political ideologies as a normative engine of political action seems to have receded in favour of a treatment of ideology as the support of actors in their pursuit of material interests. Rwanda is not an exception. The ideology of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) has been predominantly analysed as a self-serving strategy geared towards the reinforcement of the party's power. Such treatment of ideology prevents a full understanding of the RPF. This paper argues that ideology should also be conceptualised as a matrix that can reshape material incentives and through which the RPF's interests have emerged. To do so, the paper analyses new source of material, the songs of mobilisation from RPF members and supporters composed before the Front took power during the genocide, to systematically delineate the RPF's early ideology. The analysis centres on four main themes - Rwandan national unity, the RPF's depiction of itself, its depiction of its enemy, and its relationship with the international community - and traces their influence on RPF interests in the post-genocide era. It reveals the surprisingly long-lasting power of ideas despite fast-changing material circumstances.
Eyob Balcha Gebremariam (University of Bristol)
Paper short abstract:
This paper questions how the Ethiopian ruling party handles the interactions between its Revolutionary Democracy ideology and the narratives of normative politics since its ascent to power in 1991.
Paper long abstract:
Critical examination of ideological orientations of ruling elites can be a valid starting point to explain and understand the interplay between assumptions of normative politics and realpolitik. This paper questions how the Ethiopian ruling party handles the interactions between its Revolutionary Democracy ideology and the narratives of normative politics since its ascent to power in 1991. The article also explores how changes in the ideological orientation of the ruling party have been shaping political processes and institution building in Ethiopian politics over a period of 27 years. The analysis adopts a double periodisation to identify and explain change and continuity within the Ethiopian state and to analyse three different phases that the revolutionary democracy ideology has passed through. In the first set of periodisation, the article identifies and examines four "critical junctures" that brought either new or transformed actors or ideas at the helm of the Ethiopian state. The second set of periodisation traces three different phases that the revolutionary democracy ideology passed through. The second periodisation also explains how and why the ruling party succeeded to transform and change its ideological orientation without losing power. In the conclusion section, the paper applies the two sets of periodisation as a prism to comment on the on-going political crisis in Ethiopia from late 2015 until the end of 2018.
Claudia Favarato (University of Bayreuth)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses foundations of the political within traditional powers of Guinea Bissau, tightly embedded in the local animist cosmology. The criança-irân (spirit-children) belief provide the means for the reading of the relational we-self and its consequences on the political configuration.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to unveil foundations of political power in Guinea Bissau, departing from the features of political orders in selected ethnical groups. The criança-irân infanticide, cultural practice underpinned in the local animist cosmology, provides the reading lenses to understand such scenario.
For rejecting uniformity and universality on the concept of humanness, the conception underneath the spirit-baby belief challenges the ontology of being, and the boundaries between nude and political life. In Bissau-Guinean animist tradition, the conceptual category of humanness is embedded in epistemology grounded in rational and metaphysical notions. The engendered idea of human life, as individual and as a plurality - the political - reflects these foundational tenets. We argue that the conceptual bedrocks for power, institutions and legitimacy discard individualistic premises, according preference to one's relational ties in the process self-individualization, hence prompting the formation of a we-self, for one recognize oneself through the others.
This self-recognition moves far and beyond Western-tailored immunological tenets of ego versus alter individualization, thus necessarily framing the conditions of living a humanly dignified, political life as an individual and as a we-self.
This paper is based on fieldwork and literature review, considering the contributions of African (political) philosophy as a conceptual frame. Keeping in mind which the foundations of state power in Guinea Bissau, throughout the paper we aim to unveil the boundaries of the political sphere in the traditional setting, and to shed some light on the definition of political life, considering especially peculiar categories of beings such as the spirit-children.
Calum Fisher (Scottish Parliament)
Paper short abstract:
Analyses the normative relationship between state and society in Malawi through the ideational frameworks that inform MPs' relationships to their constituents. These culminate in an emergent indigenous critique of democracy-as-indiscipline. The contours, extent, implications of this are considered
Paper long abstract:
This paper renders the normative relationship between state and society in Malawi in expressly human terms by means of an analysis of the ideational frameworks that inform Members' of Parliament's relationships to their constituents. In so doing it aims to shed light on a strikingly prevalent yet little-analysed indigenous critique of democracy that appears increasingly operative at multiple levels of Malawian politics and society.
Drawing upon over 100 interviews with current and former MPs, it is demonstrated how MPs typically conceive of their constituents, and the ("other-ing") attitudes towards them that overwhelmingly result. These attitudes in turn shape MPs' understandings of their proper role as an MP, but also give rise to a more or less explicit critique of electoral democracy and its appropriateness to Malawian conditions. Amongst Malawian MPs, "democracy" appears increasingly to be equated with freedom-as-licence and, above all, with a lack (and loss) of "discipline" across society. Democracy is simultaneously understood to be failing in multiple ways because of indiscipline, and at the same time to itself foster (further) indiscipline.
The paper draws connections between this "demo-pessimism" and, first, the normative legacy of Malawi's founding dictator (and arch-disciplinarian) Hastings Kamuzu Banda; as well as, second, evolving contemporary understandings of his regime - which have given rise to a Banda-nostalgia whose ideological and political salience is increasingly evident, including in some surprising quarters. It concludes with some reflections on the wider prevalence of demo-pessimism across Malawian society and beyond, as well as its possible implications.