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African Political Change and the Modernisation Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Martin Kilson
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Extract

This essay attempts to outline, and partially to expound, a conceptual framework for studying political change during the colonial and post-colonial periods.

It should be noted at the outset that the term ‘political change’ is purposely used instead of such terms as ‘political development’ or ‘political progress’, with reference to nationalism, organised groups, administrative evolution, and so on, in developing areas. This is more nearly akin to the rather value-free term ‘social change’ used by sociologists and anthropologists ever since the 1920's.1 Basic alterations in political systems do not occur through a simple addition of new institutions, norms, and procedures; rather, the process of political change involves its own set of inter-related norms, institutions, and procedures. It may be that the term ‘political change’ may better evoke this image in the mind of students of politics, just as the term ‘social change’ seems to do for sociologists and anthropologists.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 1963 , pp. 425 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

Page 425 note 1 See Ogburn, W., ‘Social Change’, in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1935).Google Scholar See also Hogbin, Ian, Social Change (London, 1958),Google Scholar and Ginsberg, Morris, ‘Social Change’, in The British Journal of Sociology (London), 09 1958, p. 205.Google Scholar

Page 425 note 2 Easton, David, ‘The Perception of Authority and Political Change’, in Friedrich, Carl J. (ed.), Authority—Nomos I (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 171.Google Scholar

Page 426 note 1 Cf. Epstein, T. S., Economic Development and Social Change in South India (Manchester, 1962), pp. 115ff., 276ff., 318–20.Google Scholar

Page 426 note 2 Easton, op. cit. pp. 170–1.

Page 426 note 3 Deutsch, Karl W., ‘Social Mobilization and Political Development’, in The American Political Science Review (Washington), 09 1961, pp. 493–4.Google Scholar See also Marx, Karl, ‘The British Rule in India’, in K. Marx and F. Engels on Colonialism (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 31–7, 76–82. As far as I am aware, Marx was the first modern social scientist to isolate colonialism's progressive role as an agent of socio-economic mobilisation in the backward areas of Asia and Africa.Google Scholar

Page 427 note 1 See Firth, Raymond, ‘Orientations in Economic Life’, in Evants-Pritchard, E. E. (ed.), The Institutions of Primitive Society (Oxford, 1954), pp. 12–24;Google ScholarPoole, Austin Lane, Obligations of Society in the XII and XIII Centuries (Oxford, 1946), pp. 1–34;Google ScholarHagen, E. E., On the Theory of Social Change (Homewood, Illinois, 1962), pp. 65–9;Google ScholarDobb, M., Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, 1946), pp. 7–32.Google Scholar

Page 427 note 2 Postan, M. M., ‘The Rise of a Money Economy’, in Carus-Wilson, E. M. (ed.), Essays in Economic History (London, 1954), p. 8.Google Scholar It should be noted that our use of ‘modernisation’ may appear symonymous with ‘Easternisation’ or ‘Sovietisation’, in so far as the cash nexus affects relationships between persons under Soviet communism. Cf. Moore, Barrington, Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 221–349. In Africa, of course, historical circumstances happened to determine that the West and not the East would be the agent of ‘modernisation’.Google Scholar

Page 427 note 3 Cf. Balandier, Georges, ‘La Situation coloniale: approche théorique’, in Cahiers internationaux de sociologie (Paris), XI, pp. 44–79.Google Scholar Cf. also Emerson, Rupert, Malaysia: a study in direct and indirect rule (New York, 1937), pp. 484–5.Google Scholar

Page 427 note 4 Cf. Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in Gerth, H. and Mills, C. Wright (eds.), From Max Weber–Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946).Google Scholar

Page 428 note 1 Cf. Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 5ff.;Google Scholar and Stahl, Kathleen, The Metropolitan Organization of British Colonial Trade (London, 1951), pp. 3–8, and Margery Perham's preface, pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

Page 428 note 2 See Granick, David, The Red Executive (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

Page 429 note 1 Cf. Schumpeter, J. A., ‘The Creative Response in Economic History’, in Clemence, R. V. (ed.), Essays of J. A. Schumpeter (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), pp. 216–35, and Hagen, op. cit. pp. 290–309.Google Scholar

Page 429 note 2 Cf. Schumpeter, J. A., capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London, 1947), pp. 121–30.Google ScholarCf. also Laski, Harold, The Rise of European Liberalism (London, 1947).Google Scholar

Page 429 note 3 Cf. Furnivall, op. cit.; Stahl, op. cit.; and Lugard, Lord, Report on the Amalgamation of Southern and Northern Nigeria, 1912–1919 (London, 1919), Cmd. 468. This proposition may be demonstrated by analysis of the pattern of colonial government expenditure (especially the proportion spent on infrastructure or social overheads) and the process and content of colonial legislation.Google Scholar

Page 429 note 4 Cf. Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1938);Google ScholarWeber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, 1930).Google Scholar

Page 430 note 1 For the thinking of colonial administrators on this question, see Lugard, Sir Frederick, The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa (London, 1929);Google ScholarJohnson, H. H., British Central Africa (New York, 1987);Google ScholarStigand, C. H., Administration in Tropical Africa (London, 1914);Google ScholarDelavignette, Robert, Freedom and Authority in French West Africa (London, 1950).Google Scholar

Page 431 note 1 Schumpeter, Joseph A., Imperialism and Social Classes (New York, 1951), p. 198.Google Scholar

Page 433 note 1 Cf. Emerson, Rupert, Representative Government in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, Mass., 1955).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 434 note 1 Cf. Western Region Development Plan, 1960–1965 (Ibadan, 1958), pp. 1–3;Google ScholarEastern Nigeria Development Plan, 1962–68 (Enugu, 1962), pp. 8–9, 53–5.Google Scholar The Eastern Region Plan of the N.C.N.C. government is conceived basically in the interest of a private-enterprise, capitalist economy, and proposes that industries originally developed by public capital will ultimately be turned over to private Nigerian entrepreneurs. Similarly, the Western Region Plan of the Action Group government observes that ‘the primary function of Government [is] the provision of those public services without which individual effort and initiative would be futile…. It is impossible in a democratic state for Government to command the resources to enable it to provide more than a small share of total investment required, and it is questionable whether any other form of Government is able to draw on the capacity for investment of the individual as effectively as one which seeks to create both the opportunity and the will to share in the material benefits of economic growth. Government's investment will therefore be concentrated on projects and services of economic importance which will make private investment more effective and more profitable.’ Cf. Report of Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria, 1962 (Lagos, 1962), vols. I–IV.Google Scholar For French-speaking Africa, cf. Houphouët-Boigny, F., ‘Discours de politique générale’, in Fraternité (Abidjan), 13 01 1961.Google Scholar

Page 435 note 1 For a detailed analysis of this process, see Kilson, Martin, Political Change in a West African State (forthcoming).Google Scholar

Page 435 note 2 Cf. Sylvia, Thrupp (ed.), Millennial Dreams in Action (The Hague, 1962).Google Scholar

Page 436 note 1 Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? (New Haven, Conn., 1961).Google Scholar

Page 437 note 1 Cf. Fanon, Frantz, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris, 1961), pp. 118 ff., 124.Google Scholar

Page 437 note 2 This is a valid assumption. For a literary treatment of it, see Achebe, Chinua, No Longer at Ease (London, 1960).Google Scholar See also Colson, Elizabeth, ‘Native Culture and Social Patterns in Contemporary Africa’, in Haines, C. Grove (ed.), Africa Today (Baltimore, 1955), pp. 69–84.Google Scholar

Page 438 note 1 Seymour, Charles, Electoral Reform in England and Wales (New Haven, Conn., 1915), p. 533.Google Scholar

Page 438 note 2 McGoveny, D. O., The American Suffrage Medley (Chicago, 1949), pp. 16–27.Google Scholar

Page 439 note 1 Cf. Marcuse, op. cit. pp. 26 ff., passim.

Page 439 note 2 Cf. Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 245–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 439 note 3 Cf. Kilson, Martin, ‘Authoritarian and Single-Party Tendencies in African Politics’, in World Politics (Princeton), 01 1963, pp. 262–94.Google Scholar

Page 440 note 1 Fainsod, Merle, ‘Some Reflections on the Nature of the Regulatory Process’, in Friedrich, Carl J. and Mason, Edward S. (eds.), Public Policy, 1940 (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), p. 298.Google Scholar