The origin and character of Ethiopian central institutions can be understood by reference to at least four main factors: the religious history of the country; its geography; its internal wars; and the advent of Islam, which cut it off from the World outside for several centuries, and affected the course of its history.

Prior to the events which began on January 15th, 1966, Nigeria was a Federal country consisting of four Regions and the Federal Territory of Lagos (a small area including the capital and adjoining areas). Each Region had its own Constitution providing for a bicameral legislature; a Westminster-type ministerial system and cabinet with collective responsibility; a Regional High Court, from which restricted appeal lay to the Supreme Court of Nigeria; a Regional public service with power of appointment and dismissal vested in an independent Public Service Commission; and over all a Governor whose functions were those of a constitutional Head and carefully spelt out in the Constitution. In addition, the North's Constitution provided for the Sharia Court of Appeal, a court of status coordinate with that of the High Court and having exclusive and final appellate jurisdiction in civil cases based on Moslem family law.

On Thursday, February 24th, 1966, there was a military takeover of the Government of Ghana by the Ghana Army. Before the coup, Ghana was a sovereign unitary republic under a one-party régime. The President and the National Assembly made up the Parliament of the Republic. All Cabinet and other Ministers, except the President, were members of the National Assembly. Ministers were appointed by, responsible to and dismissible by the President. The President had veto powers over any Bills passed by the National Assembly and could in any case dissolve the Assembly in the event of a disagreement with the latter. The Chief Justice and other judges were appointed and dismissible by the President. From the above it is easy to see that the President constituted and dominated the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary of the country. What we propose to do here is to spotlight such constitutional and other changes in the law of Ghana as there have been since the coup d'état.

Uganda's Independence Constitution, which came into force on October 9th, 1962, was the culmination of long negotiation in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of Buganda, the western kingdoms and Busoga on the one hand, and the rest of the country on the other, and the result was a delicate compromise between a unitary and a federal state—the fruit of a political understanding between the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Buganda traditionalists. As in the following years rifts first appeared and then steadily widened in the alliance between the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Kabaka Yekka—between radical and traditionalist— the survival of the Constitution in its original form appeared more and more doubtful. In fact, however, the Constitution survived for over three years with only three amending Acts, the first and most important of these making provision for the substitution of a President for a Governor-General in October, 1963.

This paper is a sequel to one published in Anthropos (Beidelman, 1961f). It is mainly concerned with the interrelations between various tribal groups in so far as these provide insight into some of the inherent difficulties in the policy of Indirect Rule in an African political unit. By such an analysis I hope to support further a contention long made by many critics of past colonial policy, viz., that Indirect Rule was workable only through a serious discrepancy between promulgated public policy and actual political action, a discrepancy which in the long run contributed to many of the difficulties of present-day administration and the effecting of social change in contemporary Africa.