African Politics in Comparative Perspective (review)

This is a well-developed assessment of important themes in the study of African politics. With one very bold step, Hyden systematically integrates important aspects of the literature on African politics and society into the historically and theoretically rich Eurocentric tradition of state and society, which dominated the field of comparative politics in earlier decades. The themes investigated are compared to the most significant questions raised in classic comparative theory, and Africanist thinkers are compared with nineteenth-century thinkers like Marx, Weber, and Durkeim and more recent analysts like Giddens. While there is a detailed policy discussion, "Quo Vadis Africa," in the final chapters, the analysis as a whole is developed on a very general, theoretical plane.

So how does this theoretical marriage of the literature on African politics and classic sociological theory fare? For the most part, Hyden finds that theories of European political and social development do not help us understand the character of African politics. He argues that Africa has followed a unique pattern of political and economic development. Unlike the situation in many other parts of the world, power is based in relationships of reciprocity and obligations to kinship groups. The exercise of power may result primarily in the maintenance of important social relations rather than in getting "people to do things they might not have otherwise done." Africa's political development is most powerfully rooted in the "economy of affection" and the constraints of the uncaptured peasantry, conditions no other part of the world currently confronts. Equally important is the political movement legacy of modern African nationalism. For Hyden, the colonial state is not the direct antecedent of contemporary politics; the political movements to replace it are. The antithetical relationship of modern African nationalist movements to previous Western authority defined a state, which functioned best with external enemies. Hyden's portrayal of Africa's failed development is similar in spirit to current discussions concerning the Middle East as a region of the world that has rejected modernity. Not having modernized, the African state is the first to have moved backward, in Weberian terms, from rational to traditional.

Not unlike other ambitious attempts to capture the "big picture" of Africa's development direction, Hyden's book concludes with recommendations for change. The state must transcend its movement legacy and support the growth of an internal bourgeoisie. Weighing in with Marxists like Bill Warren, Hyden asserts that colonial powers did not overexploit Africa; they underexploited it. What's more, today's powerful industrialized states must reform trade and aid rules so that postcolonial economies based on the commodity needs of previous colonial authorities can find a strong economic foundation for growth. Trade must become more open and donors must invest more intensively in informal institutions, which are far more important than the state to overall political and economic change in Africa. In respect to Africa's future, Hyden puts his faith in a rational policy perspective, apolitical at its core, which encourages effective and efficient policymaking and which he perceives "Nordic countries" to have embraced many decades ago.