This Malian case study joins an expanding body of literature that challenges prevailing state-centred and institutional approaches to both political authority and legitimacy. In contrast with... Show moreThis Malian case study joins an expanding body of literature that challenges prevailing state-centred and institutional approaches to both political authority and legitimacy. In contrast with classical representations of the state as the hierarchically supreme institutional locus of political authority in society, a heterarchical political order gradually emerged in Mali. The state increasingly operated as one of the institutions amongst many non-state equals involved in the exercise of public authority and performance of key statehood functions. The first part of this thesis reveals that the Malian state increasingly relied on non-state actors to counter recurrent security threats. The core part of this case study demonstrates that prominent democratic institutions have not enhanced Malian state legitimacy as expected from their official mandates and in ways predicted by theory. Quite to the contrary, the democratic structure seems to have actually weakened the position of the state vis-à-vis non-state power poles in Mali’s heterarchical context. Show less
Oil communities rarely appear as case studies of local political arenas in Africa. More often, they serve to reify tropes and concepts based on rent-seeking and resource curses where a cash nexus... Show moreOil communities rarely appear as case studies of local political arenas in Africa. More often, they serve to reify tropes and concepts based on rent-seeking and resource curses where a cash nexus conditions the political behavior of local, regional, national, and international actors. Chapters 3 and 4 detail the history and recent history of political institutions and livelihoods in Gamba, Gabon, followed by applications of three approaches in Chapters 5 and 6 to determine what best explains politically-impacted change in this oil-bearing community. Chapter 7 applies the same method of historicization and theoretical application to Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, but in a condensed manner. The history of extractive economies in sub-Saharan Africa has obfuscated local contributions to political development, while the inverse is true of essentialist approaches. My research hopes to reconcile this, using a body of literature which has yet to be applied to extractive spaces and which allows communities to “speak for themselves” and acknowledges the understudied condition of local politics in Africa. Oil extraction in this paradigm is no longer both cause and consequence of anomie, but another form of “sedimentation.” Show less
