The roots of a chronic instability

By African Bulletin on June 30, 2011

It took several centuries to built the frame of the “Nation-state”, structure it,

and came with laws and constitution to finalize the social control distribution and the creation of strategies on how to allocate and distribute scarce resources: in sum, the citizens gave the states their votes, put people (Chiefs) in office, and the chiefs never forgot who put them in office. The relation between the citizens and the state is capital in the life of the nation-state, as long as democracy is alive. Unfortunately in some parts of the world, western European countries (France, Britain, Spain, Portugal) extended their power to Africa, Asia, and Latin America and colonized so many countries and broke  the natural sociological timer.  These nations didn’t export their constitutions, neither their strategies to create a nation-state, but applied techniques based on tribalism to dislocate the traditional and existing structures and built new social structures allowing them to exploit natural resources and raw materials, needed for their countries. The colonialism distorted cultural norms and institutions, and contributed to the disunity and dysfunction of indigenous populations. It was then the establishment of the “colonial-state” based on “tribal organization”, rather than the Nation-State where the new “mode of production” came with modernization and democracy. But in poor countries, the ideas of Marxism and socialism were adopted to build new states, and a new economy, but in disorganized population. When the colonialism ended, countries got back their national flags, but inherited economic dependence, with a heavy administration and bureaucracy structures. Most of these countries adopted socialism as a “mode of production” and a political System where the “Elites” have built states in weak civil societies and where the political authoritarianism is absolute, and where “strongmen have become dependent on state resources to shore up their social control, and state leaders have become dependent on strongmen, who employ those resources in a manner inimical to state rules and laws. To those who still dream to play the painful role of “Political institution building”, have to wake up, because of “globalisation” and “Open Markets” that are driving the entire world; and as adapted from Okechukwu Emeh, about “Africa And the Crisis of Instability”, and about African leaders on:”…how to use the opportunities offered by the end of the destabilizing cold war and apartheid to confront the harsh realities of independence, reinvent national entities , and satisfy the welfare demands of law, social justice, peaceful coexistence, economic reconstruction, human welfare, and African brotherhood” (Emeh, 2004).