L'État africain typique

The original african state : instrument or arena ? The author disrusses first the book edited by Fauré and Medard on Ivory Coast, then the one edited by Bernstein and Campbell Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa. Reviewing the various papers and case studies (Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea, Nigeria, Kenya), Morice demonstrates that we are in the post-dependency era. «Public» and «private» interests are mingled and the state is more than an instrument. The reproductive system is sometimes akin to a mafia kind of government. A clientelist system allows for civil servants, traders, middle men and «bourgeois» to belong to the intimate sphere of the state. Even, and maybe especially, so-called socialist states, are good examples of this system which in no way is dysfunctional. The papers by Kitching and Beckman demonstrate positively this analysis

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