features of traditional african system of government

In many tribes, the chief was the representative of the ancestors. The government is undertaking a review of local government, which includes a commitment to introduce direct election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs). In addition, they have traditional institutions of governance of various national entities, including those surrounding the Asantehene of the Ashanti in Ghana and the Kabaka of the Buganda in Uganda. Unlike the laws of the state, traditional institutions rarely have the coercive powers to enforce their customary laws. African countries are characterized by fragmentation of various aspects of their political economy, including their institutions of governance. In the postcolonial era, their roles changed again. The structures of leadership of African traditional institutions are diverse and they have yet to be mapped out comprehensively. Unfortunately, little attention by African governments has been given to this paradoxical aspect of traditional institutions. The arguments against traditional institutions are countered by arguments that consider traditional institutions to be indispensable and that they should be the foundations of African institutions of governance (Davidson, 1992). This process becomes difficult when citizens are divided into parallel socioeconomic spaces with different judicial systems, property rights laws, and resource allocation mechanisms, which often may conflict with each other. No doubt rural communities participate in elections, although they are hardly represented in national assemblies by people from their own socioeconomic space. Cold War geopolitics reinforced in some ways the state-society gap as the global rivalry tended to favor African incumbents and frequently assured they would receive significant assistance from external powers seeking to build diplomatic ties with the new states. On the one hand, traditional institutions are highly relevant and indispensable, although there are arguments to the contrary (see Mengisteab & Hagg [2017] for a summary of such arguments). However, at the lower level of the hierarchy of the centralized system, the difference between the centralized and decentralized systems tends to narrow notably. Indigenous education is a process of passing the inherited knowledge, skills, cultural traditions norms and values of the tribe, among the tribal member from one generation to another Mushi (2009). Note that Maine and . This chapter examines traditional leadership within the context of the emerging constitutional democracy in Ghana. On the one hand, they recognize the need for strong, responsive state institutions; weak, fragile states do not lead to good governance. In West Africa, a griot is a praise singer or poet who possesses a repository of oral tradition passed down from generation to generation. Towards a Definition of Government 1.3. The settlement of conflicts and disputes in such consensus-based systems involves narrowing of differences through negotiations rather than through adversarial procedures that produce winners and losers. A more recent argument is that traditional institutions are incompatible with economic, social, and civil rights (Chirayath, Sage, & Woolcock, 2005). Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural, include belief in a supreme creator, belief in spirits, veneration of the dead, use of magic and traditional African . Such a transformation would render traditional institutions dispensable. Before then, traditional authorities essentially provided leadership for the various communities and kingdoms. Pre-colonial Administration of the Yorubas. Comparing Ethiopia and Kenya, for example, shows that adherents to the traditional institutional system is greater in Ethiopia than in Kenya, where the ratio of the population operating in the traditional economic system is smaller and the penetration of the capitalist economic system in rural areas is deeper. Despite undergoing changes, present-day African traditional institutions, namely the customary laws, the judicial systems and conflict resolution mechanisms, and the property rights and resource allocation practices, largely originate from formal institutions of governance that existed under precolonial African political systems. (2005), customary systems operating outside of the state regime are often the dominant form of regulation and dispute resolution, covering up to 90% of the population in parts of Africa. The African state system has gradually developed a stronger indigenous quality only in the last twenty-five years or so. For example, is it more effective to negotiate a power-sharing pact among key parties and social groups (as in Kenya) or is there possible merit in a periodic national dialogue to address issues that risk triggering conflict? "Law" in traditional Africa includes enforceable traditions, customs, and laws. Its marginalization, in turn, impedes the transformation of the traditional sector, thus extending the fragmentation of institutions. Chiefs with limited power: Another category of chiefs is those that are hereditary, like the paramount chiefs, but have limited powers. 14 L.A. Ayinla 'African Philosophy of Law: A Critique' 151, available at Changes in economic and political systems trigger the need for new institutional systems to manage the new economic and political systems, while endurance of economic and political systems foster durability of existing institutional systems. A second conflict pattern can develop along the lines of ethnic cleavages which can be readily politicized and then militarized into outright ethnic violence. There are several types of government that are traditionally instituted around the world. The challenge facing Africas leadersperhaps above all othersis how to govern under conditions of ethnic diversity. Even so, customary law still exerts a strong . The purpose is to stress that such efforts and the attendant will Societal conflicts: Institutional dichotomy often entails incompatibility between the systems. African indigenous education was. Music is a form of communication and it plays a functional role in African society . The US system has survived four years of a norm-busting president by the skin of its teeth - which areas need most urgent attention? The African Charter embodies some of the human . "Law" in traditional Igbo and other African societies assumes a wide dimension and should be understood, interpreted, and applied as such, even if such a definition conflicts with the Western idea. The analysis presented here suggests that traditional institutions are relevant in a number of areas while they are indispensable for the governance of Africas traditional economic sector, which lies on the fringes of formal state institutions. Legitimate authority, in turn, is based on accepted laws and norms rather than the arbitrary, unconstrained power of the rulers. The abolishment of chieftaincy does not eradicate the systems broader underlying features, such as customary law, decision-making systems, and conflict resolution practices. One is that the leaders of the postcolonial state saw traditional institutions and their leadership as archaic vestiges of the past that no longer had a place in Africas modern system of governance. 3. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (Alkire, Chatterjee, Conconi, Seth, & Vaz, 2014) estimates that the share of rural poverty to total poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is about 73.8%. African conflict trends point to a complex picture, made more so by the differing methodologies used by different research groups. There is no more critical variable than governance, for it is governance that determines whether there are durable links between the state and the society it purports to govern. Ideally, African nations will benefit when civil society respects the states role (as well as the other way around); rather than one-sided advocacy, both sides should strive to create a space for debate in order to legitimize tolerance of multiple views in society. There is also the question of inclusion of specific demographic cohorts: women, youth, and migrants from rural to urban areas (including migrant women) all face issues of exclusion that can have an impact on conflict and governance. Additionally, the transaction costs for services provided by the traditional institutions are much lower than the services provided by the state. Second, the levels of direct battle deaths from these events is relatively low when compared with far higher levels in the wars of the Middle East. When a seemingly brittle regime reaches the end of its life, it becomes clear that the state-society gap is really a regime-society gap; the state withers and its institutions become hollow shells that serve mainly to extract rents. As a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) study (2007) notes, traditional leaders often operate as custodians of customary law and communal assets, especially land. In some cases, community elders select future Sultanes at a young age and groom them for the position. Prominent among these Sudanic states was the Soninke Kingdom of Ancient Ghana. the system even after independence. The same factors that hinder nation-building hinder democratization. This kind of offences that attract capital punishment is usually . It may be good to note, as a preliminary, that African political systems of the past dis played considerable variety. Institutions represent an enduring collection of formal laws and informal rules, customs, codes of conduct, and organized practices that shape human behavior and interaction. The modern African state system has been gradually Africanized, albeit on more or less the identical territorial basis it began with at the time of decolonization in the second half of the 20th century. Despite such changes, these institutions are referred to as traditional not because they continue to exist in an unadulterated form as they did in Africas precolonial past but because they are largely born of the precolonial political systems and are adhered to principally, although not exclusively, by the population in the traditional (subsistent) sectors of the economy. That is, each society had a set of rules, laws, and traditions, sometimes called customs, that established how the people would live together peacefully as part of larger group. This page was processed by aws-apollo-l2 in. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Another measure is recognition of customary law and traditional judicial systems by the state. For example, the electoral college forces a republic type of voting system. One layer represents the formal institutions (laws) of the state. Despite such changes, these institutions are referred to as traditional not because they continue to exist in an unadulterated form as they did in Africas precolonial past but because they are largely born of the precolonial political systems and are adhered to principally, although not exclusively, by the population in the traditional (subsistent) sectors of the economy. The Obas and Caliphs of Nigeria and the Zulu of South Africa are other examples. A key factor in the size of adherents of rural institutions, however, seems to depend on the ratio of the population in the traditional economic systems to the total population. . Less than 20% of Africa's states achieved statehood following rebellion or armed insurgency; in the others, independence flowed from . While traditional institutions remain indispensable for the communities operating under traditional economic systems, they also represent institutional fragmentation, although the underlying factor for fragmentation is the prevailing dichotomy of economic systems. MyHoover delivers a personalized experience atHoover.org. Basing key political decisions on broad societal and inter-party consensus may help to de-escalate cutthroat competition that often leads to violent conflicts. Leaders may not be the only ones who support this definition of legitimacy. As a result, customary law, which often is not recognized by the state or is recognized only when it does not contradict the constitution, does not protect communities from possible transgressions by the state. Legitimate authority, in turn, is based on accepted laws and norms rather than the arbitrary, unconstrained power of the rulers. This brief overview of conflict in Africa signals the severity of the security challenges to African governance, especially in those sub-regions that feature persistent and recurrent outbreaks of violence. In Sierra Leone, for example, approximately 85% of the population falls under the jurisdiction of customary law, defined under the constitution as the rules of law which, by custom, are applicable to particular communities in Sierra Leone. In this respect, they complement official courts that are often unable to provide court services to all their rural communities. Ousted royals such as Haile Selassie (Ethiopia) and King Idriss (Libya) may be replaced by self-anointed secular rulers who behave as if they were kings until they, in turn, get overthrown. To learn more, visit Poor statesociety relations and weak state legitimacy: Another critical outcome of institutional fragmentation and institutional detachment of the state from the overwhelming majority of the population is weak legitimacy of the state (Englebert, 2000). The campaign by some (but not all) African states to pull out of the International Criminal Court is but one illustration of the trend. What policies and laws will determine relations between farmers and urban dwellers, between farmers and herders, between diverse identity groups living in close proximity or encroaching on each others farm land, and between public officials, criminal networks and ordinary citizens? In addition, resolution needs to be acceptable to all parties. All life was religious . Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University. To sum up, traditional institutions provide vital governance services to communities that operate under traditional socioeconomic spaces. President Muhammadu Buhari is currently the federal head of state and government. They must know the traditional songs and must also be able to improvise songs about current events and chance incidents. Furthermore, for generations, Africans were taught the Western notion of the tribe as . Despite the adoption of constitutional term limits in many African countries during the 1990s, such restrictions have been reversed or defied in at least 15 countries since 2000, according to a recent report.6, The conflict-governance link takes various forms, and it points to the centrality of the variable of leadership. Regardless, fragmentation of institutional systems poses a number of serious challenges to Africas governance and economic development. African Political Systems is an academic anthology edited by the anthropologists Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard which was published by Oxford University Press on the behalf of the International African Institute in 1940. In sum, the digitization of African politics raises real challenges for political leaders and has the potential to increase their determination to digitize their own tools of political control. Unfortunately, transforming the traditional sector is not an easy undertaking and cannot be achieved in a reasonably short time. African states, along with Asian, Middle Eastern, and even European governments, have all been affected. Among them were those in Ethiopia, Morocco, Swaziland, and Lesotho. Note: The term rural population is used as a proxy for the population operating under traditional economic systems. Roughly 80% of rural populations in selected research sites in Ethiopia, for example, say that they rely on traditional institutions to settle disputes, while the figure is around 65% in research sites in Kenya (Mengisteab & Hagg, 2017). The question then becomes, how to be inclusive?19 A number of African states have decentralized their political decision-making systems and moved to share or delegate authority from the center to provincial or local levels. The council of elders, religious leaders, and administrative staff of the chiefs exercise checks on the power of the leaders and keep them accountable (Beattie, 1967; Busia, 1968; Coplan & Quinlan, 1997; Jones, 1983; Osaghae, 1989). Our data indicate that traditional leaders, chiefs and elders clearly still play an important role in the lives African traditional administrative system with bureaucratization in the emerged new states of Africa. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). He served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989. Why traditional institutional systems endure, how large the adherents to them is, and why populations, especially in rural areas, continue to rely on traditional institutions, even when an alternative system is provided by the state, and what the implications of institutional dichotomy is are questions that have not yet received adequate attention in the literature. A Long Journey: The Bantu Migrations. Poor leadership can result in acts of commission or omission that alienate or disenfranchise geographically distinct communities. One common feature is recognition of customary property rights laws, especially that of land. There are also various arguments in the literature against traditional institutions.2 One argument is that chieftaincy impedes the pace of development as it reduces the relevance of the state in the area of social services (Tom Mboya in Osaghae, 1989). In this view, nations fail because of extractive economic and political institutions that do not provide incentives for growth and stability. The colonial state modified their precolonial roles. Learn more about joining the community of supporters and scholars working together to advance Hoovers mission and values. An alternative strategy of bringing about institutional harmony would be to transform the traditional economic systems into an exchange-based economy that would be compatible with the formal institutions of the state. Judicial marginalization: Another challenge posed by institutional fragmentation relates to marginalization of the traditional system within the formal legal system. Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Politics. Building an inclusive political system also raises the question of what levels of the society to include and how to assure that local communities as well as groups operating at the national level can get their voices heard. The most promising pattern is adaptive resilience in which leaders facing such pressures create safety valves or outlets for managing social unrest. Another layer represents the societal norms and customs that differ along various cultural traits. The Sultanes of Somalia are examples of this category and the community has specific criteria as to who is qualified to be a chief (Ahmed, 2017). Government as a Structural Element of Society 2.2. Highlight 5 features of government. His dramatic tenure since April of 2018 appears to be shaking up the states creaky authoritarian services and creating the space for important adaptations such as ending a long-standing state of emergency, freeing political prisoners, reaching out to a wide range of foreign partners, and extending the olive branch to Eritrea with whom Ethiopia had fought a costly war. Womens access to property rights is also limited, as they are often denied the right of access to inheritance as well as equal division of property in cases of divorce. This category of chiefs serves their communities in various and sometimes complex roles, which includes spiritual service. Even old-fashioned tyrants learn that inclusion or co-option are expensive. An analytical study and impact of colonialism on pre-colonial centralized and decentralized African Traditional and Political Systems. The third section deals with the post-colonial period and discusses some problems associated with African administration. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. The development of inclusive institutions may involve struggles that enable political and societal actors to check the domination of entrenched rulers and to broaden rule-based participation in governance. The first objective of the article is to shed light on the socioeconomic foundations for the resilience of Africas traditional institutions. However, almost invariably the same functions, whether or not formally defined and characterized in the same terms or exercised in the same manner, are also performed by traditional institutions and their leaders. By the mid-1970s, the military held power in one-third of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Traditional institutions already adjudicate undisclosed but large proportions of rural disputes. The kings and chiefs of Angola and Asante, for example, allowed European merchants to send their representatives to their courts. Galizzi, Paolo and Abotsi, Ernest K., Traditional Institutions and Governance in Modern African Democracies (May 9, 2011). If more leaders practice inclusive politics or find themselves chastened by the power of civil society to do so, this could point the way to better political outcomes in the region. Any insurrection by a segment of the population has the potential to bring about not only the downfall of governments but also the collapse of the entire apparatus of the state because the popular foundation of the African state is weak. Most African countries have yet to develop carefully considered strategies of how to reconcile their fragmented institutional systems. However, the system of traditional government varied from place to place. With the introduction of the Black Administration Act the African system of governance and administration was changed and the white government took control of the African population. Transforming the traditional economic system is also likely to require embracing and utilizing the traditional institutional systems as vehicles for the provision of public services. The jury is still out on the merits of this practice. It is unlikely, however, that such harmony can be brought about by measures that aim to abolish the traditional system, as was attempted by some countries in the aftermath of decolonization. An election bound to be held in the year 2019 will unveil the new . This we might call transformative resilience.21. Regional governance comes into play here, and certain precedents may get set and then ratified by regional or sub-regional organizations. The traditional and informal justice systems, it is argued offers greater access to justice. With respect to their relevance, traditional institutions remain indispensable for several reasons. Paramount chiefs: Another category of leadership structure is that of hereditary paramount chieftaincy with various traditional titles and various levels of accountability. Due to the influence of previous South African and Nigerian leaders, the African Union established the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to review and report on a range of governance criteria. Act,12 the African system of governance was changed and transformed, and new structures were put in place of old ones.13 Under the Union of South Africa, the Gov- 28, (1984) pp. Not surprisingly, incumbent leaders facing these challenges look to short-term military remedies and extend a welcome to military partnerswith France, the United States, and the United Nations the leading candidates. In these relatively new nations, the critical task for leadership is to build a social contract that is sufficiently inclusive to permit the management of diversity. This proposal will be subject to a referendum on the constitutional changes required.16.2e 2.4 Traditional leadership Traditional leaders are accorded Most of the states that had attempted to abolish chieftaincy have retracted the abolitionist decrees and reinstated chiefs. Enlightened leaders face a more complex version of the same challenge: how to find and mobilize the resources for broad-based inclusiveness? Introduction. Given its institutional disconnect with the state, the traditional sector and the communities that operate under it invariably face marginalization in influencing policy as well as in access to economic resources throughout the continent.