Beyond the Gatekeeper state? Studying Africa’s states and state systems in the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT

This volume takes Fred Cooper’s model of ‘gatekeeper states’ – shaped as much by their international links as by their domestic practices – and explores the implications for our thinking about international relations in Africa and the wider international system. Because of their particular origins in the colonial system, African states have tended to be particularly sensitive to resource flows from external sources. Cooper’s conceptualisation thus provides an important starting point from which to explore the dynamic changes occurring within and between African states, and the international system since the turn of the century. This introduction first sets out the gatekeeper model and how it has been used in thinking about African states. It then highlights the ways in which changing economic and political dynamics in Africa may challenge this model, and the implications for our thinking about states. These themes are further developed in the subsequent collection, which deploys a range of theoretical approaches and empirical case studies to interrogate, challenge, and expand Cooper’s approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• international relations
• gatekeeper states
• post-colonial

Introduction

For decades, African statehood has presented a puzzle to political scientists. Marked by fixity of boundaries, an orientation to external resource flows, and a failure to develop infrastructure, African states have developed distinctive (but not unique) internal politics and a concomitant state system. The scholar who has best captured the significance of this for political analysis is the historian Fred Cooper. Cooper’s identification of colonial and post-colonial states as ‘gatekeeper’ states has become an influential paradigm for thinking about these states and their relationships with external forces as well as domestic interests.¹ Cooper emphasised the extent to which colonial states had been designed to maximise and control resource flows in and out of ports and capital cities. The colonial revenue imperative² profoundly shaped the infrastructure and institutions of Africa’s states, and was rarely transformed after independence. The ‘gatekeeper’ model has proved particularly useful because it identifies the distinctive linkages between politics and economics in African states, and provides an analytical linkage that speaks to the disciplines of politics, international relations (IR) as well as economics. While the gatekeeper state clearly emerged because it was the best way of ensuring state income, the political implications are at least as significant in explaining its durability. The state form provided a robust political solution for the otherwise fragile new states – limiting competition and ensuring stability. It also helps explain the winner-takes-all or zero-sum politics that continue to dominate in many African states, with little to be gained from positioning oneself outside the political centre, whether institutionally or culturally.

The gatekeeper model helps us identify structural and historical features which led to similar outcomes across otherwise diverse states, while avoiding personalised or culturalist interpretations that are sometimes presumed by a focus on ‘extraversion’.³ By examining the intersection between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’, Cooper’s characterisation of the Gatekeeper state also enables an analysis of the ways in which African states’ particular insertion into the international political and economic system shaped the formation of the state itself. As a result, although the model is better known amongst comparative political scientists, it also proves attractive to IR scholars, or anyone who understands African statehood as deeply marked by external, as well as internal, forces.

Yet, the first decades of the twenty-first century have also seen dramatic shifts in politics and economics on the continent. Since the end of the Cold War states have experienced pressure to reform in terms of liberalisation and transparency, especially with a focus on government income (taxation) and expenditure. But the dramatic rise in new external revenue streams, such as investments and loans from rising powers such as China, India, and Brazil, alongside a renewed interest from Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf states, provide further opportunities for intertwined economic and political change. Coupled with the effects of cellphones and social media, old political strategies for maintaining control are losing traction. The #AfricaRising paradigm and the alleged growth of an African middle class further challenge the assumptions of the gatekeeper state model. At the same time, we are seeing the transformation of governance on the continent with shifts in power and monopolies of violence away from the state.

This collection takes up this challenge to consider the value of a historically grounded model to explore the changing dynamics of African statehood and post-colonial states’ insertion into the international system. The authors are primarily scholars of IR, with interests that cut across political theory, political economy, and political geography. They bring these intellectual concerns to their case studies of ports and shipping, currency flows, and resource extraction, providing immensely rich inter-disciplinary perspectives. Most of the contributors to this collection were originally participants in a workshop sponsored by the BISA (British International Studies Association) Africa and International Relations Working Group at the BISA@40 conference held in London in June 2015. Despite contributions being solicited from African and Africa-based scholars, none materialised for this publication, which is unfortunate.

The driving questions of enquiry include: Are African states developing new state forms in response to a changing mode of insertion into the international system? Or does the gatekeeper state model remain dominant despite these shifts? And if so, what are the implications for theoretical innovation and model-building within IR approaches to the African state? What are the implications for politics and policy within Africa and for outside actors? And, what lessons might comparativists and IR theorists learn from each other while deploying a similar conceptual apparatus?

This introduction first sets out the gatekeeper model and how it has been used in thinking about African states. It then highlights the ways in which changing economic and political dynamics in Africa may challenge this model, and the implications for our thinking about states; themes which are further developed in the subsequent collection.

The gatekeeper model: entangled political and economic pressures

In many ways, the classic IR account of African states remains that of Jackson and Rosberg – whose notion of de jure statehood highlights the importance of the international system in creating and maintaining particular forms of stateness in post-colonial Africa.⁴ But this account is problematic unless it is expanded to include an account of how and why states relied so heavily on external factors. As Cooper explains ‘Colonial states had been gatekeeper states … they stood astride the intersection of the colonial territory and the outside world’.⁵ The crux of this model is the colonial revenue imperative. The colonial state’s inbuilt structural logic was designed and driven by the need to generate resources. As the political scientist, Crawford Young has argued the vast majority of colonies were established explicitly to generate revenue for the metropole, and this was an over-determining factor for their political masters. Only in a few did strategic imperatives determine governance, and only in Somaliland were colonial officials exempt from the need to feed the fiscus.⁶ The main source of revenue was ‘duties on goods that entered and left its ports’.⁷ Christopher Clapham further developed the political implications of this relationship: ‘the colonial state … intensified a dependence of political authority on external resources which was already one of the common features of pre-colonial state systems in the continent’.⁸ Cooper’s conceptual labelling of a relationship that had been described by other scholars with an interest in colonial and pre-colonial states captures a particularly vivid aspect of how political control was maintained and reinforced through state institutions and infrastructure.

The focus on the revenue imperative is crucial because it pinpoints the struggle of African political leaders across centuries to impose direct taxation. Arguing that ‘there is no better measure of the state’s reach than its ability to collect taxes’,⁹ Herbst points out that precolonial states were dependent on taxing trade, and most colonial states also relied on customs duties for their revenue. Unsurprisingly then, as African states became independent in the 1960s, most were still ‘highly dependent on indirect taxation, especially taxes on foreign trade’.¹⁰

This is a result of the well-known challenge that colonial rulers faced in trying to implement hut taxes and poll taxes. Indirect taxation on imports and, especially, exports proved much easier (ie cheaper) to implement. The colonial concern to prevent the emergence of an autonomous middle class also contributed. Access to licenses to run trading networks tended to be restricted to ‘middle men’ groups – often Greek, Lebanese, Asian, or Jewish businessmen – rather than risk the emergence of a merchant or Indigenous middle-class group which might demand ‘no taxation without representation’. Access to such permits and licenses were highly competitive, but the tenuous immigration position of these groups guaranteed that they were unlikely to rock the boat.

In this way, the economic structures of colonialism shaped the emergent class structures, and political systems of independent states. But what is particularly significant for political scientists is that these intertwined systems were retained in the post-colonial period. As a result, they help explain many aspects of domestic politics, which would otherwise be reduced to culturalist or personalised explanations. In the following sections, I demonstrate how the notion of a gatekeeper state helps us explore patterns of political organisation, class formation, and state institutions, before exploring changes in these patterns since the turn of the millennium.

Political implications

The importance of gatekeeping meant that post-independence political systems rapidly became zero-sum/winner takes all systems. In many cases, this was because first past the post electoral systems were lacking non-electoral institutions that might have balanced the centralisation of political power. It is no accident that two of the African states which have faced the most long-running challenges to their existence – Sudan and Somalia – both became independent via elections, but lacking constitutions. Inevitably, power and accountability were denied to groups which were permanent demographic minorities. In these zero-sum political environments, either politicians prove able to distribute enough favours to a wide enough coalition of interests that they hold onto power or groups try to seize power through elections, coups, or insurgency.¹¹

To give just one example of each scenario: in the 1969 Somalia elections 62 parties with 1002 candidates contested 123 seats, spending millions of dollars. When the election results were announced, all but one of those elected on the opposition ticket crossed the floor to join the government. Within a gatekeeper state, the gains of being in government overwhelmed ideological or personal ties that might have justified remaining in opposition. But this system was also inherently unstable; later that year Siyaad Barre took power through a coup.¹² In contrast, gatekeepers could also use their political wiles to remain in power. Here, we remember Zolberg’s account of Houphuet Boigny’s masterful dominance of Cote d’Ivoire, where the announcement of ruling party slates was left to the last minute so as discourage all but the most reckless from running.¹³

Gatekeeper state institutions were deployed by political elites – mostly men – to prevent opposition parties from mobilising resources, or managed the distribution of resources such that oppositions were absorbed into the governing coalition. The post-colonial strategy of gatekeeping also entailed keeping local notables and potential opponents embedded in patronage networks, just as few of those who had opposed the colonial state had autonomy from it (early nationalists tended to be teachers, clergy, or civil servants). Rather than autonomous middle classes, instead we see the emergence of straddling – as business opportunities are hoovered up by political notables. As Cooper notes, ruling elites use their positions ‘to narrow the channels of access’.¹⁴ Strengthening vertical ties made political control easier, and limited the ability of marginalised groups, such as women, regions, ethnic or religious groups to campaign for inclusion.

This political control also had longer term and structurally defining implications. Control of the ‘gate’ meant the ability not just to control exports, but also licenses that allowed the import of certain goods, the ability to run markets, shops, who could go abroad for education, where missions could establish churches and much more. The colonial state carefully controlled the emergence of a middle class in most African states; instead, immigrant ‘middle men’ groups were encouraged to run typical bourgeois sectors of the economy. Not only were their permits controlled, but also the very presence of their families in the country. So groups of Asian, Lebanese, Greek, and Jewish traders evolved into a precariously balanced middle class – politically and economically dependent on the whims of the gatekeepers, yet essential to their political and economic projects. In direct contrast to the European bourgeoisie which emerged in the nineteenth century, this group was not autonomous, but reliant on the state. Similarly, the nationalist generation that sprung up out of clerks, pastors, teachers, and other groups, sometimes called a ‘petty-bourgeoisie’ was no such thing.¹⁵ With a few exceptions, they too were dependent on gatekeepers, or on their patrons seizing control of the gate, for their survival.

Gatekeeping thus encouraged the reproduction of clientelism and patrimonialism. Even those who sought to reform or govern differently encountered these institutional hurdles to change. The lack of encouragement for entrepreneurship other than as straddling, and few alternative career tracks to the public service, meant that politics became the only game in town, and as such, even more hotly contested. Unions too were bound up in the clientelist politics of the gatekeeper state, leading many to proclaim the decline of class-based politics after the economic collapse of the 1970s.

Now, however, as African growth rates make headlines, a ‘new middle class’ is said to be emerging. But it’s not clear that this is likely to have any effect on the gatekeeper state. First, because it’s not really clear that there is a new middle class, nor how big it is.¹⁶ Second because it’s being measured by consumption rather than production.¹⁷ And third, because even if we have some evidence that this putative middle class actually behaves differently,¹⁸ we don’t know if that will actually enable them to change these remarkably resilient state structures. As Clive Gabay wonders ‘will our fascination with the African middle classes become unstuck as evidence mounts that they are as politically divergent (and extraversionary) as middle classes in many other parts of the world?’¹⁹

States: functions, roles, and infrastructure?

The idea of the gatekeeper state also helps make sense of other puzzling dynamics of African states. As acknowledged, Jackson and Rosberg’s account continues to resonate, but overplays the role of external institutions and norms in shaping African states. By examining the relationship of African states with external forces, the gatekeeper state model provides a more nuanced account, and helps us understand why African states faced distinct challenges.

Gatekeeping was not simply a tendency or a way of doing politics – although it may have generated a very specific political culture. It was predicated on the state’s infrastructure, and the particular ways in which this infrastructure intersected with resources flows. Cooper illustrates this powerfully with a map showing railway networks in Europe and Africa.²⁰ Easily visible is the dense, interconnected European network merging to a mass of black ink. By contrast, the African continent reveals only spidery infrastructure running the length of often narrow African states to isolated ports. A particularly vivid case emerges when we look at Mozambique at the time of decolonisation. Although blessed with three railways, these did not interconnect. Instead, each line ran from the interior to the coast, resulting in a state in which, at independence there was little modern infrastructure linking north to south – a legacy of the colonial era charter companies.

All of this contributes to highlight the continuing importance of infrastructure for both economics and politics in African states. Jeffrey Herbst focused on the question of how a state ‘broadcasts power’ or ‘projects authority’.²¹ Although he was less concerned with the ‘revenue imperative’ he still emphasised the importance of capital cities/ports and – helping to explain the relative lack of secessionism in Africa.²² As states became independent, it became clear that ‘the post colonial gatekeeper state, lacking the external coercive capacity of its predecessor, was a vulnerable state, not a strong one’.²³

New patterns of resource extraction and infrastructural development currently occurring in many African states, thus brings forward the question of whether these patterns reinforce and deepen the extractive infrastructure? And, further encourages us to ask how this affects political patterns of behaviour and institutions?

Reforms and liberalisation: diminishing gatekeepers?

One of the most striking features of the gatekeeper state has been its ability to reproduce itself, despite attempts at reform. In the post-Cold War decades, attempts were made to transform the economic basis of African states through liberalisation. Although the term ‘gatekeeper’ was not always used, many aspects of the economic reform packages advocated by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) might also have constrained the gatekeeping tendencies of African states. This was most obvious in the early SAP reforms – where liberalisation and privatisation was not aimed simply at ‘reducing’ the state but also at changing its role – for example in the removal of the monopsony rights over the purchase of agricultural produce.²⁴ Similarly, the decision of donors to move away from bilateral aid towards increased NGO support, was at least in part designed to reduce gatekeeping. Although these reforms were often interpreted as an attempt to ‘weaken’ states, research suggests that states were often able to ‘liberalise’ without losing their gatekeeper role. Andy Storey’s study of SAPs in pre-genocide Rwanda shows how the political elites were able to use debt-rescheduling to retain and even strengthen their hold on the state.²⁵ This suggests that looking at state form, rather than focusing on the question of ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ states (or ‘failing’ states), is more analytically useful. Do increased FDI flows in recent years transform or reinforce patterns of state behaviour, how business is linked to the state, and political control of the centre? We also need to consider the growth in significance of resource flows from diasporic communities, which are sometimes seen as providing autonomous sources of income for communities to build institutions or start businesses. Increasingly, however, states such as Eritrea and Zimbabwe seek to capture or mediate such flows. While their finance ministers may be more concerned with controlling access to foreign exchange, and enhancing the state’s revenue base, the political implications loom large.

The transformation of regional infrastructure has the potential to transform post-colonial Africa more than any other intervention. As a result of their patterns of state formation and lack of ‘normal’ post-colonial relations, the Horn of Africa has long been distinguished by its regionally interconnected infrastructure, and likewise different patterns of state interaction. As Ruth Iyob notes, states in the Horn ‘faced each other’ and looked inward at least as much as outward.²⁶ But in other regions, the potential for states to trade and engage with each other is dramatically transformed as roads, railways, and ports are expanded. Is it possible that improved infrastructure also lead to more inward looking trade networks? And if so, what are the implications for states and state systems that have hitherto tended to look ‘outwards’ and to see their neighbours as competitors? Will regional infrastructure, trade agreements, and stronger regional associations also shape political institutions? Or will embedded political imperatives continue to limit the potential of regional integration?

The gatekeeper model has also been applied to states which might seem to be outliers from Cooper’s original model. Economist Ellen Hillbom suggests that although Botswana does not fit the stereotype of a ‘gatekeeper’ state, its political and economic success can nonetheless be explained through this analytical concept.²⁷ Hillbom’s argument is important because it recognises that a gatekeeper state can resemble ‘developmental’ states, and show patterns of growth, but retain the characteristic entwined political and economic features of a gatekeeper. As she notes, in developmental states ‘the bureaucrats dominate political leaders rather than the other way around’.²⁸ By contrast, the gatekeeper state depends on the politicians maintaining control over the bureaucrats. Her approach chimes with Kelsall’s approach to ‘developmental patrimonialism’, although his focus is on explaining variation in economic performance²⁹ In these cases, it might be argued that the ‘gatekeeper nature’ of the state helps explain the ability of politicians to bring in developmental policies requiring top-down political and economic control. In other cases, politicians deploy legitimation strategies in attempts to position themselves as ‘developmental states’ without casting off the gatekeeper nature of the state, albeit in cases like Eritrea and Rwanda, their control is as much political as economic (Dorman and Murison 2014; Poole 2014).

Broadening gatekeeper politics to take into account the ways in which hegemonic appeals to nationalism reinforce structural and institutional practices also helps explain the durability of states in the face of liberalising reforms designed explicitly to break this stranglehold. Post-liberation states, where the regime’s control is not purely institutional but reinforced by norms, practices, and political connections, provide a good example of this fusion. Zimbabwe’s state was relatively diversified at the time if independence, and although its economy was driven by the extraction of minerals and export of tobacco, years of sanctions had also created a robust internal market for locally produced goods. But the continuing impact of liberation war organising and nationalist sympathies meant that even groups which were not necessarily reliant on the state financially were nonetheless bound up with it, and tied to the state project.³⁰ In her piece, Julia Gallagher explores the way in which this shapes Zimbabweans’ interactions with the state, and how it shapes their understanding of the role of the state, and indeed the nature of state–society relations.

Where colonial states had simply denied the middle-class space to emerge as an autonomous power, post-colonial regimes used diverse ideational and material strategies to ensure that the middle class ‘straddled’ the border between state and civil society. Beresford’s account of South African politics similarly focuses on the role of the nationalist party as the ‘gatekeeper’ within the state. Beresford demonstrates the synergy between gatekeeper politics and the emergence of a politically dependent middle class: ‘access to the networks of public authority becomes a vital facilitator of private capital accumulation’.

Laura Mann’s study of the Sudanese state likewise tracks how post-colonial states have been transformed as new political interests challenge state institutions and build their own power bases. In her account, Islamists were able to evade the state’s gatekeeper controls, and seize control of the state, through their access to remittances.³¹ But once they gained access to the state, they too were foiled by firms able to use their diaspora connections to build power outside state control. External resource flows continue to be the most powerful driver, but the institutions are increasingly outwith the state’s controls.

International relations: implications of extraversion and gatekeeping

This discussion has so far primarily focused on comparative politics – where Cooper’s analytical concept has been most widely adopted. But, the gatekeeper state is grounded in the external dynamics of these states. Christopher Clapham has long focused on the implications of Bayart’s thinking about extraversion for thinking about how African states engaged with the international system. At a time when many observers saw the Cold War as entirely driven by superpower rivalries and that suggest that African states attempted to stay non-aligned but ‘fell into neocolonial traps’,³² Clapham radically inverted this view, and suggested that the tail was wagging the dog. Claiming instead that ‘Superpowers did not impose themselves on Africa nearly as much as they were sucked into it through the search by competing forces within the continent for external resources’³³ he forced us to reconsider both our methodology and our assumptions. The pressures of the Cold War meant that some – but by no means all – African states had remarkable influence over much more powerful states. In a particularly revealing moment, a Pentagon official, speaking to US Senate committee admitted ‘[military aid to Ethiopia] was really Kagnew rentmoney, and if the Emperor wanted it in solid gold Cadillacs, he could have had it that way’.³⁴ Kagnew, an American base in Asmara, with remarkable scope for listening in on the Soviet bloc and Middle East, helps us understand why Ethiopia was so determined to hold on to Eritrea – despite its weak legal position in international law and Eritrea’s sustained liberation war. But the significance of the analysis goes well beyond this specific case. Clapham’s point was also methodological – he wanted researchers to start by looking at the African side of the IR equation, not just the superpowers. A point that seems obvious now, but that at the time was a quiet paradigm shift. Unfortunately, in the more recent rush to explore the new relations of BRICS, this crucial point was often forgotten. It seems crucial, however, that if we are going to evaluate and understand the nature of the changes brought by the #africanmiracle and new patterns of trade, aid, and investment (not forgetting post 9/11 securitisation) we need to recall Clapham’s methodological and analytical points. But we also need to push past thinking about ‘agency’ and seriously interrogate the implications of these new revenue flows for our thinking about state forms and functions – are these changes generating new state forms, or are they reinforcing tendencies towards gatekeeperdom.³⁵

Newer states like Somaliland and South Sudan also raise questions about the ability of new states to escape the gatekeeper trap. Somaliland’s state formation pattern has a particularly intriguing trajectory. Its colonial experience was one of minimal taxation and governance interventions. The British were interested in controlling Somaliland’s coast, and particularly averse to further disturbing the Somali dervish movement, who had resisted their rule. As a result, Somaliland was probably the least gatekeeper-ish of all the colonial states in Africa. This was in marked contrast to the former Italian colonial state, which was a much more typically extractive state. In 1991, it re-emerged as a new state, albeit still unrecognised by much of the international community. The relationship between the Somali National Movement (SNM) which led Somaliland to independence (somewhat against their own intentions), and the local population, was not typified by predation, unlike many other liberation movements. Will Reno attributes this to Mengistu’s control of the movement while it was based in Ethiopia, and their dependence on local communities, which precluded opportunities for looting.³⁶ Likewise its post-1991, lack of international recognition evaded many aspects of extraversion and gatekeeping because international institutions and agencies stayed away. These features seem to have generated a state that while not without weaknesses, is marked by bargaining and brokering between economic elites and political leaders.³⁷ By contrast, South Sudan’s reliance on oil revenue and a substantial international aid presence, seems to have replicated and reinforced the gatekeeper tendencies inherent in Sudan. Politically speaking that its trajectory has been dominated not only by extraversion and gatekeeper strategies, but also by extreme variants of zero-sum politics.

Moving forward with theories, models, and empirics

Our fundamental issue then remains: To what extent do new patterns of resource flows require us to re-examine the relationship between resources and politics in African states? Might new patterns of inflow be reflected in new state forms, and this in new political institutions and practices? Or does the gatekeeper state model remain dominant despite these shifts? And if so, what are the implications for theoretical innovation and model-building within IR approaches to the African state?

In this collection, historical, contemporary, and theoretical lenses are brought to bear on these questions. The contributions show the utility and value of looking at structural changes and resource flows so as to assess and understand the political shifts which shape not only domestic politics but also regional and international power dynamics. But they also provide theoretically rich explorations of how we study ‘the state’ in African politics, and the relationship between IR and comparative politics.

While the authors all identify strengths in Cooper’s ideas, they also expand and critique the concept of the ‘gatekeeper state’. A key theme that emerges is the risk of homogenising the trajectories of diverse states on a large continent, while attempting to identify points of comparison in the aid of theory building. In their contributions, William Brown³⁸ and Carl Death³⁹ explore how notions of the gatekeeper state interplay with other theories of states and power. Brown interrogates the extent to which identifying states as ‘gatekeeper’ states over-emphasises their similarities. In bringing Justin Rosenberg’s ‘uneven and combined development’ approach to bear, he highlights the weakness of ‘one-size-fits-all’ theories of African states, as critiqued by the late Chris Allen⁴⁰ while suggesting ways in which we can move beyond such limitations to better conceptualise the uneven patterns of development. This theme is also picked up by Death, who further warns against seeing gatekeeperdom as somehow intrinsically African.

A further critique developed in several contributions is the risk of over-focusing on the state. Jana Hönke challenges us to think beyond the state, identifying the multiple non-state players inherent in ‘gatekeeping practices’.⁴¹ Hönke does this by exploring a recent shift in Africa’s engagement with the global economy: infrastructure and finance. Looking at recent changes in Tanzanian ports, she identifies how gatekeeping practices have changed as ports have been privatised and technology has changed. She notes the way in which ports and infrastructure development more generally are caught up in imaginaries of development, as gateways to development, thus shaping our ideas about African states and their insertion into the global economy.

Elizabeth Cobbett likewise explores changing economic regimes, but with a focus on financial flows, emphasising how little control colonial states had: the ‘gates of finance’ were firmly held in London.⁴² It was only after independence, and the creation of national banks that African states gained control of financial policy, only to encounter new challenges in a transforming global economy. Using Lagos as a case study, Cobbett traces how, in the twenty-first century, African states have increasingly turned to private capital flows to finance growth and development. Through this, she sees financial gatekeeping power being re-acquired by African ‘gateways’ providing an important corrective to our understanding of the role of capital in African development and state control.

Several contributions examine the oil-producing states – often seen as quintessential gatekeeping states – at a moment when oil and gas production is expanding into new states, but also as American shale development has affected demand for West African oil. Stefan Andreasson explores both the ‘traditional’ petro-states and the emerging producers, using the idea of ‘gatekeeping’ to extend our thinking about the ‘resource curse’ and ‘dutch disease’ emphasising the political nature of these state’s challenges.⁴³ Ultimately, he suggests that little is likely to change, as both the economic and political drivers serve to reinforce the gatekeeper state. In a richly theoretical engagement with Cooper, Carl Death joins Hönke in suggesting that we must look beyond the state, with a focus on gatekeeping practices rather than gatekeeping states to fully understand the changes occurring in resource rich states. Considering both the politics of conservation and the politics of oil production, he challenges us to consider the broader spatial dimensions of gatekeeper practices, which spill across boundaries, and deploy multiple forms of power to achieve political ends.

De Grassi provides a rather different, more historically focused, perspective on Angola’s state trajectory, intersecting with Hönke and Brown’s interests in territoriality and spatial politics.⁴⁴ His approach also has synergies with Julia Gallagher’s, drawing us back to focus on how the state itself emerged in constant engagement with the international system. He challenges claims that African states struggled to extract direct taxation, and suggests that forced labour should also be considered as a form of direct taxation. Forced labour was also harnessed for road-building, allowing colonial states to expand networks, despite the metropolitan disdain for expenditure on infrastructure. As a result, he suggests that we need to broaden our thinking about taxation regimes and the nature of the state that emerged. De Grassi also challenges us to consider the extent to which Angola’s post-colonial infrastructure and state – and the production of knowledge about them – were shaped by the politics of the Cold War.

Turning to a country which does not easily fit into Cooper’s typography, Julia Gallagher’s exploration of the Zimbabwean state at a period of flux calls us to reflect upon agency, and the importance of ideational and symbolic power in retaining and shaping gatekeeper practices.⁴⁵ In drawing out the ideational aspects of the international, and how these have contributed to changes in Zimbabwe’s politics, she encourages us to extend our understanding of gatekeeping beyond resource flows to how the idea of the international is imagined by citizens and deployed by elites. This provides an important return to looking at how the state’s internal processes are shaped by these outward looking practices, and in this case, how the Zimbabwean state has changed since independence to consolidate control over both resources and norms. It also reveals the extent to which citizens within these states are aware of the political class’s engagement with external resources – an aspect often missing from narrowly material approaches to such relationships. Agency in managing the gate is portrayed as firmly in the hands of domestic political elites, but ‘ordinary Zimbabweans’ are fully aware of these processes and increasingly perceive the role of politicians as managing resource flows.

Finally, Fred Cooper provides a reflective response to the challenges presented to his work, addressing the critiques advanced, and proposing his own challenges to the authors.⁴⁶

Bridging divides and forging new insights

Bringing together political scientists and IR scholars from a range of theoretical and empirical tendencies to explore a concept elaborated by a historian, proved a challenging but rewarding process. This collection captures both the dramatic changes currently underway in African states and patterns of statehood as well as their remarkable continuities, but also the remarkable richness of insights that scholars bring to bear on them. As Cooper notes, the success of these contributions is that they do not simply critique the concept but seek to think with and beyond it. In a time when often debates are pitched as zero-sum, these contributions provide a heartening example of respectful scholarly disagreement, how we can build on the thoughts of others, and provide scope for future studies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Rich Dorman

Sara Rich Dorman is a Senior Lecturer in African Politics at the University of Edinburgh and an ESRC-AHRC-FCO Knowledge Exchange Fellow (2018–2020). Her research focuses on post-liberation states and the politics of nationalism, citizenship, state-building, and urban politics in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa. She is a former Editor and Book Reviews Editor of African Affairs, and currently a Senior Editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies.

Notes

1. Cooper, Africa since 1940.

2. Young, The African Colonial State; Young, The Post-Colonial State.

3. Bayart, The State in Africa; Clapham, “Boundary and Territory”; and Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.

4. Jackson and Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood.”

5. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 5.

6. Young, The African Colonial State; Moore, Prichard, and Fjeldstad, Taxing Africa.

7. See Note 5 above.

8. Clapham, Africa and the International System, 32.

9. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 113.

10. Ibid., 117.

11. Allen, “Understanding African Politics.”

12. Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation; Samatar, “Destruction of State and Society in Somalia.”

13. Zolberg, Creating Political Order.

14. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 6.

15. Williams, “There is No Theory.”

16. Gabay, “New Year; New Questions”; Jerven, “Who’s Counting”; Southall, The New Black Middle Class; Kroeker, O’Kane, and Scharrer, Middle Classes in Africa; and Brooks, “Was Africa Rising?”

17. Dorman, “New Year; New Questions.”

18. Cheeseman, “Does the African Middle Class Defend Democracy?”

19. Gabay, “New Year; New Questions.”

20. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 101.

21. Herbst, States and Power in Africa.

22. Englebert and Hummel, “Let’s Stick Together.”

23. See Note 5 above.

24. Wlliams, “R.H.Bates Markets and States”; Williams, “Why Structural Adjustment Is Necessary.”

25. Storey, “Structural Adjustment, State Power.”

26. Iyob, “The Ethiopian–Eritrean Conflict.”

27. Hillbom, “Botswana: A Development-Oriented.”

28. Ibid., 70.

29. Kelsall, “Neo-Patrimonialism, Rent-Seeking and Development”; Kelsall, Business, Politics and the State in Africa.

30. Dorman, Understanding Zimbabwe.

31. Mann, “Wasta! The Long-Term Implications.”

32. Oyebade and Alao, “Africa After the Cold War.”

33. Clapham, Africa and the International System, 139.

34. Clapham.

35. Fisher, “When It Pays to Be a ‘Fragile State’”; Dorman and Murison, “Eritrea and Rwanda.”

36. Reno, “Working Paper Number 100.”

37. Moore, Prichard, and Fjeldstad, Taxing Africa: Coercion, Reform.

38. Brown, “Still One Size Fits All?”

39. Death “Gatekeeping Practices in Global.”

40. See Note 11 above.

41. Hönke, “Beyond the Gatekeeper State.”

42. Cobbett, “Gatekeepers of Financial Power.”

43. Andreasson, “Energy Producers in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

44. De Grassi, “Beyond Gatekeeper Spatial Metaphors.”

45. Gallagher, “Zimbabwe’s Consolidation as a Gatekeeper State.”

46. Cooper, “Response: Gatekeeping Practices.”