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- Convenors:
-
Gerhard Anders
(University of Edinburgh)
Erik Bähre (Universiteit Leiden)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Social Anthropology
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre 3
- Sessions:
- Friday 14 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Accountability, transparency and responsibility have transformed debates about legitimacy across Africa. This panel examines how social relationships and moralities have been shaped by these three concepts that have come to influence politics and the economy in Africa and beyond.
Long Abstract:
Ideas and practices of accountability, transparency and responsibility have transformed debates on legitimacy across the African continent. Since the 1990s transparency and accountability have become paradigmatic in the economic and financial fields. Similarly, there has also been a rise in discourses about the fight against corruption, organised crime and international war crimes. This panel examines how social relationships and moralities across the continent have responded to and shaped interventions that promote accountability, transparency and responsibility. They are both, disrupting established networks and practices as well as creating new connections. These three key concepts originate in the financial, economic and legal domains but have come to influence debates about legitimacy in politics and the economy more broadly.
This panel invites fine-grained empirical case studies that offer insights into questions of legitimacy by tracking the movement of ideas and practices across different sites and arenas on the African continent and beyond. Specifically, we are keen to explore debates about accountability and transparency in the economic and political spheres, national and transnational financial regimes, and the importance of accountability and criminal responsibility in the global discourse on legal order and anti-corruption. This approach recognizes the multifarious ways in which institutions in Africa such as government, the judiciary, private companies, banks, and non-governmental organisations are situated within a wider interconnected world where ideas, people, goods and money move rapidly across national borders and continents.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 14 June, 2019, -Gerhard Anders (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the political, legal and moral debates surrounding a number of recent grand corruption scandals in Malawi that have provoked an unprecedented law enforcement response with a hundred arrests and more than a dozen convictions in a series of criminal trials.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2013, Malawi has been rocked by a series of corruption scandals involving senior officials and politicians that entailed the theft of tens of millions of pounds. These scandals have triggered an unprecedented law enforcement effort that resulted in a hundred arrests and more than a dozen convictions. Several criminal trials and investigations are still ongoing. My paper examines the dynamics of the law enforcement efforts and situates them in the wider context of Malawi's socio-political topography focusing on debates about moral decadence and the state's legitimacy crisis.
The corruption scandals including Cashgate and Maizegate throw into sharp relief the challenges faced by prosecutors to hold accountable corrupt officials and politicians. These scandals have triggered intense moral debates in a society characterized by extreme inequality and deeply entrenched poverty. Particularly revealing are the attitudes of Malawi's educated elite that is in control of the state apparatus. My ethnographic evidence suggests that the prosecutions and convictions fuel moral debates among government officials and society at large. At a more practical socio-political level they reflect a broader struggle between forces that strive to strengthen the state's legitimacy and factions undermining it. One of the important questions is how the upcoming elections in May 2019 will influence these debates and struggles. The far-reaching influence of foreign donor agencies adds to the complexity.
David Anderson (University of Warwick)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explains the operation of the largest known fraud that has ever been committed against a state exchequer, Kenya's Goldenberg Scandal of 1991 to 1993, and considers why the perpetrators and beneficiaries, though named in a judicial investigation, have never been prosecuted.
Paper long abstract:
Between 1991 and 1993 a carefully designed export compensation fraud saw at least 10% of Kenya's annual Gross Domestic Product (850 million USD in 1991 alone) siphoned into the hands of a small group of investors, politicians, and a few key state officials of the National Bank and the Treasury. The fraud, which became known as the Goldenberg Scandal, was so severe that it brought Kenya's economy to its knees, ironically contributing to a worsening foreign exchange crisis. Repercussions continued over the next decade, as the fraudsters used their stolen wealth to fund other dubious deals and acquisitions. This remains the largest known fraud ever committed against a state exchequer. The scam was first revealed at the end of 1993 by a whistle-blower, bank official David Munyakie. But it was not until after Moi stood down from the Presidency that a judicial enquiry into Goldenberg was launched. Justice Bosire's investigations, begun in 2003 and reported in detail in the Kenyan press, brought to light the involvement of senior civil servants, Cabinet Ministers, and even the family of President Moi. More than 30 persons were named as being directly complicit in the scam, yet attempts to prosecute these individuals have been consistently thwarted by Kenya's judiciary. This paper explains how this fraud was perpetrated, and how its principals have escaped justice for over two decades, enjoying apparent impunity.
Tessa Diphoorn (Utrecht University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses various oversight mechanisms aimed at monitoring police (mis)conduct and enhancing police accountability in Kenya. This paper argues that amidst a range of oversight mechanisms, top-down initiatives within the police services are most likely to result in sustainable change.
Paper long abstract:
Since the new constitution of 2000 and the establishment of the National Police Service (NPS) Act of 2011, the Kenyan state police has undergone extensive police reform initiatives in order to transform the force into a democratic, accountable, and transparent one that serves its citizens unequivocally. In addition to a range of other arrangements, a key part of the reform project has been the setting up of formal oversight bodies to oversee police (mis)conduct: the Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) for internal sight and the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) for external civilian-led oversight.
In this paper, I will analyse and compare these two oversight bodies and argue that internal oversight mechanisms that occur 'from within' are the most effective in instilling sustainable change. Much of the research on police oversight pleas for a four-tiered approach to oversight that includes internal, governmental, social, and independent oversight (Campeau 2015; Prenzler 2009). Although this paper supports this claim, it additionally argues that internal drivers for change that are implemented top-down are pertinent in organisations, such as the police, that rest upon hierarchical chains of command. In doing so, I aim to challenge an often-held assumption, particularly within anthropology, that 'bottom-up' initiatives are the most effective and desirable in producing change, and rather, argue that top-down schemes tend to have a larger impact amidst such a hierarchal environment. I will draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Kenya between 2017-2018 on police reform at large to exemplify my argument.
Erik Bähre (Universiteit Leiden)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how in South Africa democratisation and political legitimacy led to the marketing of financial products to the predominantly African poor. It shows why legitimacy was more important to marketing than making profit.
Paper long abstract:
For the insurance industry, South Africa is somewhat of a testing ground for new financial products for the poor. For the past 20 years, insurance companies have developed insurance products and related services that were specifically designed for the predominantly African poor. Based on interviews with actuaries and others involved in the insurance industry, as well as an online survey among actuaries, I argue that profit was not nearly as relevant for these initiatives, and that these initiatives should also not be taken primarily as an expression of global neoliberalism. Instead, these attempts had to fortify the legitimacy of the financial sector that due to racial inequalities in South Africa and democratisation in 1994 was far from self-evident. By exploring the legitimacy of financialization this paper sets out to reconceptualise the dynamics of market and state that are so central to contemporary understandings of global finance.
Samuel Osifo (University of Benin) Emmanuel Arakpogun (Northumbria University)
Paper short abstract:
Ethical behaviour of Nigerian commercial banks salespersons are key to building connections and trust between banks and customers. This study empirically finds unethical sales behaviour in banks which could result in a breach of trust, contesting bank legitimacy thereby causing economic disruption.
Paper long abstract:
Accountability, transparency and responsibility are the key pillars that grant legitimacy to any financial institution. They are often contested when unethical behaviour is used to achieve sales objectives. The study explores the unethical behaviour of salespersons in Nigerian commercial banks through the lens of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria professional code of conduct.
The study employed quantitative analysis in arriving at conclusions. A total of 13,899,488 banks customers visited by salespersons constitute the population, while 357 purposively selected banks customers formed the sample size for questionnaire administration.
The study revealed that customers perceive that salespersons usually disclose needed information and do not influence their action with gifts. The customers also believe that unethical sales behaviour that exists in Nigerian banks include bank product price discrimination, breach of a promise made and that they often take advantage of the customer if they have the opportunity. The unethical sales behaviour may cause economic disruption and create connection problems between customers and their banks.
The issues identified in this paper are critical because for Nigeria to align itself with the World Bank goal of reducing world poverty by 2030, it cannot afford to allow people lose faith in the banking sector, which is one of the engine room for economic development, neither can it allow erring banks to keep defrauding the poor of their hard earn income through unethical banking behaviour. It is, therefore, recommended that the Central Bank of Nigeria take action toward curbing such unethical banking behavior
Alastair Fraser (SOAS)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how competing claims to legitimate political authority are contested at a local level in Zambia. It focuses on three Parliamentary constituencies (one in a densely-populated city, one in a rural setting, and one in a small-town).
Paper long abstract:
The research mapped the range of actors contesting responsibility and credit/blame for public administration functions, resources and public leadership in three parlianmentary constituencies. It involved process tracing local political controversies, media ethnographies and a survey.
The actors include MPs; local party branches; provincial representatives of central government; district-level civil servants; ward-level councillors; residents' and traders' representatives; traditional chiefs; NGO workers; participants in local radio talk-shows; and religious figures.
The paper analyses how these actors deploy mediatised performance to make claims to speak for the people, to seek credit for development projects, votes, and public professions of loyalty, and to navigate accusation of failure to deliver.
It understands variations in the language and theatre of politics in relation to patterns of sedimentation of the rules and norms of constituency politics. These result from, amongst other factors: successive waves of decentralisation reforms; post-socialist legacies of 'one party participatory democracy'; the re-introduction of participatory national development planning processes and constituency and ward development funds in the 2000s; and the ever-more competitive and partisan character of electoral politics across the country.
These processes have thrown up a dizzying array of local committees, planning processes and channels for the distribution of resources and the regulation of economic and social activities. While these embody varying rules about who makes decisions and how they might be held accountable, some actors seem able to leverage influence across different processes, thus claiming legitimate authority. What is harder to say is whether there are clear patterns across cases.