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The Postcolonial State

The scope of coverage of the term postcolonial varies across disciplinary fields and authors,
being broader in literary studies, for example, than in political science. Some authors include
former settler colonies as referents alongside non-settler colonies. Other analysts, such as
Amina Mama, distinguish the term postcolonial, used to refer specifically to former colonies,
from the term post-imperial, preferring this term to refer to former imperial powers. In
temporal terms, postcolonial does not refer simply to the period after colonialism but assumes
continuity, in terms of the continued effects of processes initiated during colonialism, as well
as discontinuity, in terms of new processes unfolding subsequently. The term postcolonial is
used here to refer to the study of the attempted transformation, successful and otherwise, of
former colonies in the context of changing imperial conditions.

From Structural Functionalism to Marxist Structuralism

In the early days of independence, the individualistic approach of authors who singled out the
performance of those in positions of power earned them the label of "leadership theorists."
Leadership was essentially viewed as a means for achieving "order." Such writers shared
much in common with the "nation-building" school of American structural functionalism,
where "nation" was very often equated with "state." This literature was more concerned with
the possibilities of statehood and the development of political institutions in the new states
than with the constraints on institutional development, the latter being of greater interest to
Marxists. The chief merit of leadership approaches is the emphasis on the created aspects of
state formation and the efforts of individuals with a degree of control over their political life
and environment. Critics (see Stark) point out, however, that the analysis tends to foster
philosophical idealism and does not take enough account of the relationship between
ideology and social action.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the underdevelopment paradigm became very influential in
efforts to explain the economies and modes of rule that decolonizing nations were
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constructing. Underdevelopment theorists were concerned with the economic dependency of

postcolonial states in the context of international capitalism as well as the relative autonomy
of the postcolonial state from social classes. The theoretical model drew on the dichotomy
between base and superstructure that characterized Marxist structuralism, but the focus was
on trade rather than production. Several authors (see Ollawa) have pointed out that the
developmental experiences of decolonizing countries highlight the centrality of the
postcolonial state in structuring the necessary conditions for continued capital accumulation
and regulating the allocation of surplus among different social categories.

In an influential essay on Pakistan and Bangladesh, "The State in Post-Colonial Societies—

Pakistan and Bangladesh" (1972), Hamza Alavi posited that the postcolonial state was "over-
developed" due to its foreign creation. It was consequently particularly powerful compared to
the leading agrarian and industrial classes, the latter being "under-developed." The idea of the
relative autonomy of the state was proposed because of the independent material base of the
bureaucratic-military oligarchy and its relative autonomy from the other propertied classes.
Critics of Alavi's position point to the idea of the state being reduced to a handful of
bureaucrats and military officers in his analysis. Understanding the limitations placed on the
state's responses to pressures from hegemonic interests requires a closer examination of the
state, in relation to its constituent parts and in relation to the international environment, and a
more comprehensive view of classes.

Alavi's 1972 essay sparked off considerable debate amongst Marxist Africanists. This
included John Saul's emphasis on ideology, which he said was neglected in Alavi's analysis,
but was necessary for the state's function of holding together the capitalist system. Colin Leys
responded by reasserting the importance of class as the basis of analysis of the state, and
others responded in a similar vein. Many Marxists are of the view that patterns of belief can
bind the state together and, drawing on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), have
attempted to conceptualize anew the role of elites and their ideologies, in the complex
economic relationships of the postcolonial state.

Interweaving History, Politics, and Culture

Jean-Francois Bayart points out that the notion that the state was an external structure does
not recognize the ways in which Africans quickly re-appropriated the new state forms and the
accompanying colonial political culture. Similar perspectives (e.g., Mbembe) point to the re-
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appropriation taking place not only in the institutional sphere but also in the material and
cultural spheres. State power creates its own world of meanings through administrative and
bureaucratic practices. It also attempts to institutionalize this world and turn it into people's
everyday understanding as well as the consciousness of the period.

The historicity of the postcolonial state is at the center of Bayart's analysis. His focus is on
the genesis of the state, the strategies of the actors, the procedures of accumulation and the
world of political make-believe, all of which contribute to social inequality. Bayart's
evocative phrase, "the politics of the belly," refers to desires and practices associated with
interrelated themes: poverty and food scarcity; accumulation, corruption, and sexual excess.
These are all understood as changing patterns of historical action, that are located in a
network of tensions and interdependence, and that act upon one another. Bayart highlights the
ways in which authoritarian regimes have managed to retain control over security forces and
economic rents whilst maintaining the support of Western powers and international financial
institutions. African postcolonial states rested on indigenous social bases whilst
simultaneously being connected to the international system. Bayart's approach counters the
conception of African states and societies as lacking history, and of African politics as absent
or inexplicable. These prevailed in colonial historiography, in philosophy, and continue today
in mainstream Western sociology and political science.

From the 1980s onward, considerable scholarly attention across the social sciences has been
paid to the "crisis" of the African state. The literature has also examined the shifting
orientations of international financial institutions, from initially increasing the interventionist
powers of the state to reversing that position by the mid-1980s. In an ideological climate
defined by neoliberalism and marked by structural adjustment programs, scholars of diverse
ideological orientations are united in their fierce criticism of international financial
institutions, their appropriation of the concept of the "overdeveloped state" and the effects of
their policy impositions on diverse categories of people. The literature has characterized the
activities of international financial institutions as "rolling back the state" and bypassing the
autonomy of the state in several critical ways through policy prescriptions and financing
patterns.

Achille Mbembe's poststructural analysis of the "postcolony" draws attention not just to the
historical strength and purpose of the state but also to questions of power—its manifestations
and the different techniques of enhancing its value to either ensure abundance or scarcity.
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Before and after colonization, state power in Africa magnified its value by establishing
specific relations of subjection that were informed by the distribution of wealth and tribute,
and that shaped modes of constituting the postcolonial subject. Postcolonial states were
strongly influenced by the modalities of their integration into world trade, such as reliance on
one or more key resources for export, and whether they were financed through the peasantry,
aid, or debt. Their modalities of integration shaped the forms taken by postcolonial states; the
ways in which their ruling elites were inserted into international networks; and the structuring
of relations among state, market, and society. Mbembe highlights the significance of the links
that the postcolonial state in Africa forged among interrelated arenas. These were the
production of violence, the allocation of privileges and livelihoods, and systems of transfer,
such as the reciprocities and obligations comprising the communal social tie. The state's
systems of allocations and transfers were significant in underpinning social and political
cohesion and, thereby, the state's legitimacy.

Mbembe also draws attention to the present erosion of state legitimacy since the
concentration of the means of coercion by the postcolonial state is difficult to achieve given
the acute lack of material resources. Instead, autonomous power centers proliferate within
what used to be a system. This is a consequence of the growing indebtedness of local rulers
and trading elites, thus leading African polities to lose external power and exposing them to
the risk of internal dissolution. The violence and predation required by the new form of
integration into the international economy has led not only to the militarization of power and
trade, and to increased extortion, but also to serious destabilization of the trade-offs that had
previously governed the relationship between holding state power and pursuing private gain.
The idea of the state as a general mechanism of rule and as the best instrument for making
possible the exercise of citizenship is thus being seriously threatened.

Feminist Analyses of the Postcolonial State

In contrast to the above approaches, a key debate among feminist analysts of the postcolonial
state concerns the extent to which the state is able to act as a vehicle for social change aimed
at increasing gender equality. For example, in Morocco in the early 1990s, the modernizing
state drew women into the public arena through law and education. The other side of the
debate concerns the state as a mechanism for male social control and the convergence
between the state and patriarchal forces. Where politics becomes deeply communalized,
particularly when it is supported by state-sponsored religious fundamentalism, the traditional
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control over women that rested with particular male individuals—such as fathers, brothers,
husbands—soon shifts to all men. Sonia Alvarez argues that there is nothing essential about
the state's ability to act in either direction—social change or social control—but that its
trajectory is more likely to be determined by political regime and historical conjuncture.

The feminist analyst Shirin Rai conceptualizes the state as a network of power relations that
are located in economic, political, legal, and cultural forms interacting with and against each
other. This allows her to examine the state in the context of social relations shaped by
systems of power, which are themselves affected by struggles against these systems. Rai
points out that the state may take different forms in different historical, social, and economic
contexts, as in the case of postcolonial states emerging from struggles against imperialism
and colonial rule. The nationalist opposition to colonialism was itself located within the
modernizing framework favored by colonialists. The prioritization of goals, first by the
nationalist movement and then by the postcolonial state, erased issues that potentially
challenged the modernist developmental conceptions of the new nation-state, such as
women's interests and rights.

Rai highlights three features of postcolonial states that are significant for women's
strategizing for social change. The first concerns the transformative role of the state: most
nationalist elites saw themselves as agents for social and economic transformation, and state
institutions were also relatively autonomous from dominant social classes. This allows space
for institutional and political struggles. Second, the infrastructural capacity of the state is
uneven, resulting in the possibility of activists targeting sympathetic institutions and
individuals within the state. Third, the existing level of corruption is an important
determinant of whether negotiation within the state is possible or not. Rai points out that one
of the important implications of the poststructuralist conception of power as dispersed is the
recognition that power takes diverse forms and can be used in varied ways. Simply taking an
adversarial position against the state may be positively dangerous for women, given the
deeply masculinist character of society, including civil society.

The gendered character of state formation, state practices, and militarism are analyzed by
Amina Mama. In an earlier paper, Mama had argued that, in an international context highly
influenced by women's movements, the military regimes of Generals Ibrahim Babangida
(1985–1993) and Sani Abacha (1993–1998) were appropriating Nigerian women and their
struggles whilst seeking legitimacy for their continued rule. Later, she refined this position by
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pointing out that the situation was more complex than this. This complexity included the fact
that the politics of transition, and hence its gender politics, was more improvised than
planned and took several turns in different and contradictory directions. Moreover, Nigerian
women, in diverse and competing ways, were not passive pawns but actively engaged in the
political maneuvers involved.

Drawing on Michel Foucault's theorization of power as dispersed, Mama theorizes power as

dispersed across micropolitical, existential states of being as well as more macropolitical
formations such as the nation-state. This allows her to consider ways in which these different
levels of social reality come together to produce resonance and, potentially, dissonance.
Mama also draws on the feminist philosopher Judith Butler's development of Foucault's
theorization of power, arguing that being implicated or enabled by relations of power does
not rule out the possibility of subversion. Mama examines the gender discourses articulated
by the Heads of State and their wives in successive regimes, the programs and political
practices articulated by these discourses, and the different structural changes made in efforts
to institutionalize them. In the process, she highlights the interplay among power, knowledge,
and practice that facilitated the manufacture of consent to the military regimes dominating the
workings of the state.

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan delineates the changing, heterogeneous character of the postcolonial
state in India in her exploration of the state's contradictory positions toward female citizens.
In a feminist analysis of social realities textured by divisions of age, ethnicity, religion, and
class, Sunder Rajan examines women's lives, needs, and struggles around issues such as child
marriage, compulsory sterilization, female infanticide, and prostitution. She shows how the
state is critical to an understanding of women's individual and group identities at the same
time as women and their struggles affect the operations of the state.

Fazit

Three major conceptual fields are identifiable in the above literature. The first is that of
structuralism, spanning ideas from structural functionalism to Marxism and with concomitant
emphases on individualism and class. This field was in the ascendant in the 1960s and 1970s,
its influence waning since then. The second field, emerging in the late 1980s, highlights the
agency of actors in and around the state, located in interrelated historical, material, and
cultural contexts. Although highly innovative in its syntheses of literature in history, politics,
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and cultural studies, the ideological orientation of this work in relation to social action is less
clear. Finally, there is the field of feminist thought. This field shares common features with
that highlighting agency, such as poststructural approaches to the analysis of power and the
recognition of nonunitary, contradictory interests surrounding the postcolonial state. Unlike
either of the other two fields, feminist scholarship is distinguished by its analysis of gendered
state processes, the implications for women, and strategies for realizing gender justice.

See also Anticolonialism ; Colonialism ; Postcolonial Studies .

bibliography

Alavi, Hamza. "The State in Post-Colonial Societies—Pakistan and Bangladesh." New Left
Review 74 (1972): 59–80.

Alvarez, Sonia E. Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women's Movements in Transition

Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Baker, C. "Colonial Rule and the Internal Economy in Twentieth-Century Madras." Modern
Asian Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 575–602.

Bayart, Jean-Francois. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London and New York:
Longman, 1993.

Butler, Judith. "Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." In

Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by A.
McClintock, A. Mufti, and E. Shohat. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Kandiyoti, D., ed. Women, Islam and the State. London: Macmillan, 1991.

Leys, Colin. "The 'Overdeveloped' Post Colonial State: A Re-evaluation." Review of African
Political Economy 5 (1976): 39–48.

Mama, Amina. "Changes of State: Gender Politics and Transition in Nigeria." Inaugural
Lecture, September 15, 1999, New Series no. 213, University of Cape Town, Department of
Communication.

Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

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Ollawa, P. "The Political Economy of Development: A Theoretical Reconsideration of Some

Unresolved Issues." African Studies Review 26, no. 1 (1983): 125–155.

Rai, Shirin. "Women and the State in the Third World: Some Issues for Debate." In Women
and the State: International Perspectives, edited by S. Rai and G. Lievesley. London: Taylor
and Francis, 1996.

Saul, John. "The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania." In The Socialist Register, edited
by R. Miliband and J. Savage. London: Merlin Press, 1974.

Stark, F. "Theories of Contemporary State Formation in Africa: A Reassessment." Journal of

Modern African Studies 24, no. 2 (1986): 335–347.

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in
Postcolonial India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

Charmaine Pereira

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