Clientelism, Corruption & Catastrophe

In: Review of African political economy, Band 27, Heft 85, S. 427-441

Abstract

In the previous issue of this journal (ROAPE 84), the author argued that international anticorruption efforts created conflicts between aid donors & African debtor governments because they attacked the ability of local interests to control & appropriate state resources. The control of corruption is an essential element in the legitimization of liberal democracy & in the promotion of global markets. However, it also threatens the local accumulation of wealth & property (dependent as it is on access to the state) in postcolonial Africa. This article explores another dimension of this problem, namely the way in which clientelist forms of political mobilization have promoted corruption & intensified crisis. Clientelism has been a key mechanism through which political interests have built the electoral support necessary to ensure access to the state's resources. In turn, it has shaped a politics of factional competition over power & resources, a politics obsessed with the division of the political spoils. The article argues that this process is not unique to Africa. What is different, however, is that factional conflict & its attendant corruption have had such devastating consequences. This reflects the particular forms that clientelism has taken on the continent. There is a need, it concludes, to find ways to shift African politics towards issues of social justice & government performance & away from a concern with a division of the state's resources. 16 References. Adapted from the source document.