ETHNICITY, PATRONAGE AND THE AFRICAN STATE - THE POLITICS OF UNCIVIL NATIONALISM

Recent research has revealed that modern African ethnicity is a social construction of the colonial period through the reactions of pre-colo nial societies to the social, economic, cultural and political forces of colonialism. Ethnicity is the product of a continuing historical pr ocess, always simultaneously old and new, grounded in the past and per petually in creation. Colonial states were grounded in the alliances w ith local 'Big Men', incorporating ethnically-defined administrative u nits linked to the local population by incorporation of pre-colonial p atron-client relations. This was reinforced by European assumptions of neatly bounded and culturally homogeneous 'tribes' and a bureaucratic preoccupation with demarcating, classifying and counting subject popu lations, as well as by the activities of missionaries and anthropologi sts. African ethnic invention emerged through internal struggles over moral economy and political legitimacy tied to the definition of ethni c communities-moral ethnicity; and external conflicts over differentia l access to the resources of modernity and economic accumulation-polit ical tribalism. Ethnicities were, in particular, the creations of elit es seeking the basis for a conservative modernization. The colonial le gacy of bureaucratic authoritarianism, pervasive patron-client relatio ns, and a complex ethnic dialectic of assimilation, fragmentation and competition has persisted in post-colonial societies. Patron-client ne tworks remain the fundamental state-society linkage in circumstances o f social crisis and uncertainty and have extended to the very centre o f the state. This accounts for the personalistic, materialistic and op portunistic character of African politics. Such networks also penetrat e institutions of civil society and liberal democracy, undermining pro grammes of socio-economic and political reform.