West African States: Failure and Promise: A Study in Comparative Politics (African Studies)

268 Pages·1978·7.34 MB·English

by  John Dunn

WEST AFRICAN STATES: FAILURE AND PROMISE
AFRICAN STUDIES SERIES
Editorial board
John Dunn, Reader in Politics and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
J. M. Lonsdale, Lecturer in History and Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge
David M. G. Newbery, Lecturer in Politics and Fellow of Churchill
College, Cambridge
A. F. Robertson, Director of the African Studies Centre and Fellow of
Darwin College, Cambridge
The African Studies Series is a collection of monographs and general studies
that reflect the interdisciplinary interests of the African Studies Centre at
Cambridge. Volumes to date have combined historical, anthropological,
economic, political, and other perspectives. Each contribution has assumed
that such broad approaches can contribute much to our understanding of
Africa, and that this may in turn be of advantage to specific disciplines.
AFRICAN STUDIES SERIES
1 City Politics: A Study of Ltopoldville, 1962-63 J. S. La Fontaine
2 Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa Polly Hill
3 Land Policy in Buganda Henry W. West
4 The Nigerian Military: A Sociological Analysis of Authority and Revolt,
1960-67 Robin Luckham
5 The Ghanaian Factory Worker: Industrial Man in Africa Margaret Peil
6 Labour in the South African Gold Mines, 1911-1969 Francis Wilson
7 The Price of Liberty: Personality and Politics in Colonial Nigeria
Kenneth W. J. Post and George D. Jenkins
8 Subsistence to Commercial Farming in Present Day Buganda: An Economic
and Anthropological Survey Audrey I. Richards, Ford Sturrock and
Jean M. Fortt (eds)
9 Dependence and Opportunity: Political Change in Ahafo John Dunn and
A. F. Robertson
10 African Railwaymen: Solidarity and Opposition in an East African Labour
Force R. D. Grillo
11 Islam and Tribal Art in West Africa Rene A. Bravmann
12 Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos P. D. Cole
13 Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political
Order Ivor Wilks
14 Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel
Emmanuel N. Obiechina
15 Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant
Society Donal B. Cruise O'Brien
16 The Lions of Dagbon:Political Change in Northern Ghana Martin Staniland
17 Politics of Decolonisation: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue 1960 to
1965 Gary B. Wasserman
18 Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-century Africa B. G. Martin
19 Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate Joseph P. Smaldone
20 Liberia and Sierra Leone. An Essay In Comparative Politics
Christopher Clapham
21 Adam Kok's Griquas: A Study in the Development of Stratification in South
Africa R. Ross
22 Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: The Railwaymen of Sekondi-Takoradi
Richard Jeffries
WEST AFRICAN STATES:
FAILURE AND PROMISE
A study in comparative politics
Edited by
JOHN DUNN
Fellow of Kings College and
Reader in Politics in the University of Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON • NEW YORK • MELBOURNE
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Cambridge University Press 1978
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1978
Reprinted 1979
Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Main entry under title:
West African states.
(African studies series; 23)
Includes index.
1. Africa, West — Politics and government — Addresses,
essays, lectures. I. Dunn, John, 1940— II. Series.
DT476.5.W47 320.3'0966 77-80832
ISBN 978-0-521-21801-6 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-29283-2 paperback
Contents
page
List of contributors vi
Preface vii
Map of West Africa viii
1 Comparing West African states JOHN DUNN 1
2 Ghana RICHARD RATHBONE 22
3 Guinea R. W. JOHNSON 36
4 Ivory Coast BONNIE CAMPBELL 66
5 Liberia CHRISTOPHER CLAPHAM 117
6 Nigeria GAVIN WILLIAMS and TERISA TURNER 132
7 Senegal DONAL B. CRUISE O'BRIEN 173
8 Sierra Leone CHRISTOPHER ALLEN 189
9 Conclusion JOHN DUNN 211
Notes 217
Index 253
List of contributors
Christopher Allen, Department of Politics, University of Edinburgh
Dr Bonnie Campbell, Department of Political Science, University of
Quebec at Montreal
Dr Christopher Clapham, Department of Politics, University of
Lancaster
John Dunn, King's College, Cambridge
R. W. Johnson, Magdalen College, Oxford
Dr Donal Cruise O'Brien, Department of Economic and Political
Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London
Dr Richard Rathbone, Department of History, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London
Dr Terisa Turner, London School of Economics
Gavin Williams, St Peter's College, Oxford
Preface
All but one of the chapters in this volume originated in a series of public
lectures given in Cambridge under the auspices of the University's Centre
for African Studies. The contributors are beholden to the Centre's Com-
mittee of Management and especially to its Director, Dr A. F. Robertson,
both for this initial sponsorship and for the continuing assistance which
has made it possible to produce the present volume.
Anyone who finds the volume of any interest or value should also be
aware that its production has owed at least as much to the patience, the
diplomatic charm and the efficiency of the Centre's secretary, Louise
Speed, as it has to any of the authors concerned.
Cambridge, April 1977
West Africa
0 km 400
Comparing West African states
JOHN DUNN
Even at best comparative politics is a shaky trade, uneasy as to its
intellectual ambitions and fickle in its criteria of analytical achievement.
There are many reasons for this disarray, by no means all of them ills for
which there is any obvious remedy even in principle. One of the main
difficulties facing the student of comparative politics is the simple ques-
tion of which units it is appropriate to select for comparison. Persons may
be compared to summer's days and leaders of the British Tory Party to
medieval implements of torture. Comparison can be as much a discerning
of similarity as a savouring of contrast. It is certainly not difficult to find
differences between historical experiences. But if one hopes to learn
anything very clear or instructive from the activity of comparing, it is
essential to select as units for comparison items which resemble each
other in a great many ways. For the most part this problem of selection is
resolved in professional practice in political science by the adoption of
conventional institutional or ideological boundaries. Institutions which
share a common descriptive label are compared systematically: political
parties, public bureaucracies, educational systems, institutions of local
government, armies, trade unions, multinational corporations. At the
level of the state itself the units of comparison are often more overtly
ideological (communist states or capitalist democracies), though the
direct contrast between the favoured and the disfavoured naturally does
not preclude being equally ideologically explicit.1 Such comparisons may
serve well enough to evoke anxiety or to reassure. But they are better
calculated to define the differences between sets of polities than to
explain the characteristics of any particular polity. The implicit or explicit
ideological specification of the units of comparison also frequently means
that it is the ideologically focused aspects of these polities which are most
clearly defined, a feature which renders the comparison a trifle circular as
political analysis. Few, by contrast, are likely to dispute the intellectual
viability and the potential illumination of the comparative study of dis-
1