When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa

Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

by Robert H. Bates

In the later decades of the 20th century, Africa plunged into political chaos. States failed, governments became predators, and citizens took up arms. In When Things Fell Apart, Robert H. Bates advances an explanation of state failure in Africa. In so doing, he not only plumbs the depths of the continent's late-century tragedy, but also the logic of political order and the foundations of the state. This book covers a wide range of territory by drawing on materials from Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia, and Congo. Written to be accessible to the general reader, it is nonetheless a must-read for scholars and policy makers concerned with political conflict and state failure.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Politics, Political Science, History, Economics, Grad School

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Robert Hinrichs Bates (born 1942) is an American political scientist. He is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government in the Departments of Government and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. From 2000-2012, he served as Professeur associe, School of Economics, University of Toulouse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[David]

I picked up this book at random and read it to see what political scientists are up to. Nothing much, it seems.

[Dylan Groves]

exceedingly clear.

three takeaways:

1 - the core explanation of deteriorating public order in 1990's africa concerns the choice of political elites to protect wealth creation or predate, based on the perceived gains of each and elites' discount rate

2 - increased political competition may spark a decline in political order because political elites increase their discount rate when they perceive an increased likelihood of leaving office. this process is probably inevitable and worthwhile in the long run.

3 - neither ethnic diversity nor natural resource wealth are correlated with the onset of state failure. however, militant ethnic coalitions may form in response to the state's inability to provide protection and equal redistribution, and violent conflict over natural resources occurs in the context of state failure. they are outcomes, not causes, of declining political order.

[Orken Sundetov · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very shallow analysis of the causes of state failure in Africa.

[Jess Lavender Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick academic read. As a Lover of Poli Econ, this short review and analysis of the many failed African states sheds light on the continent and its resource/survival/political reform/military regimes/etc.

Bates traces political disorder to crises in public revenues by displaying all aspects of high(political elite), middle, and lower classes of society and their contributions to the failed state. When the wealthy must be prepared to defend their wealth or stay poor, the price of security is to have less (or be in a political position where you made the demands). Shitty shitty Progression of humans 1. Trying to thrive and 2. Using political reforms To benefit the individual’s guarantee to the throne (I mean party seat, of course) rather than the nation’s citizens (evident in economic policies that make the imports of good on the international stage more attractive, but leave the poorest of agricultural folks dry and struggling) note: this is not inclusive, he also ties in the resource curse, date on the type of political party system, and much more.

I hope I did that thesis justice. I am only starting to read about Africa, but from what I have learned this far, I concur with Bates’ justification for the many-a failed African states.

[Michael Catalano · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work tells a compelling story about State failure in late 1900s Africa. The author offers a model by which one can study political disorder in States based on three variables. These variables include level of public revenues, rewards from predation, and a specialist in violence or ruler temptation to Discount future gains for present benefits. The model offers much in potential explanations but suffers a fatal flaw in methodology that calls all findings into question. All this work seamlessly and masterfully intertwines qualitative and quantitative accounts, it selects case on the dependent variable. With no counterfactual case studies of African States that did not experience political disorder during the late 1900s there is simply no way to establish causal relationships that could instead be spurious or have no explanatory power, especially if found in States that did not fail. Despite this fatal flaw, I think the work does well as a thought experiment on factors that can explain State failure and a guideline to how to use qualitative and quantitative methods together.

[Tobi Lawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting perspective on an important topic. State failure in Africa remains a nagging problem and stands in the way of the continent's prosperity. I like Robert Bate's basic theory. Looking at the incentives for key political actors at the top.

Sometimes the analysis feels thin on substantive detail and this robs the book of serious analytical power. Also the evidence may be too over fitted. Overall, I still think this is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand why Africa remains very poor, volatile and unstable.

[Brennan Selcz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very clear and readable analysis of state failure in late-century Africa. I was an especially big fan of the fable Bates introduces in chapter two which serves as a framework for African state failure.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bates tries a bit too hard to be snappy and clever in this book, which overall weakened his analysis. Broad generalizations left me more focused on all the times when his point would be wrong than on when he’s correct.

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Collier's Greed and Grievance and Fearon and Laitin's work on conflict, Bates does his own academic weightlifting on the interplay between politics and violence, taking into account key topics like ethnicity, democracy, resource wealth and poverty and their connection to political violence. He claims to be looking at the relationship between political disorder, but that's not terribly different. While Collier focuses on world wide data, Bates focuses on a strictly African dataset. It seems like Bates wanted to disagree with Collier on this one, but wanted to keep him as a friend, too.
His findings are pretty interesting; essentially he focuses on the logic that political incentives underlie state failure. His political argument reminds me a lot of Bueno de Mesquita (Logic of Political Violence) and the idea of a winning coalition, in that it seems to be that Bates' main argument is that after independence, local African elites used their power to gain wealth, and used their incumbent advantage to spread the wealth among a small winning coalition that would help them keep power, usually family/ministers and army. Because the authoritarian "control" regimes (as Bates calls them) are focused on accumulating their own wealth, they let things like democracy slide, poverty increase, exploit resource wealth to their own benefit and do everything in their power to stay in power, including maintaining personal armies.
He also talks a lot about economics, and how African leaders would set their currency intentionally high, making imports cheap but exports did not derive the same value because the currency was overvalued. Then he would restrict imports and essentially get all the wealth in his own bank account, including all the imported goodies.
He finds no correlation between natural resource wealth and political instability, except for with oil, but argues nonetheless that resource wealth is a co-variable of political instability, and thus a cause, not a symptom . He does look at how political regimes immiserate their people through manipulation of the public revenue as shown above.
He sees democratization in Africa as a cause of state failure and disorder, not a solution to it. He sees ethnic conflict as not provoking state failure, but rather a consequence of it; when states begin to fail, their is increased pressure and struggle over regional allocation of resources(133). He also, in a strange way of concluding argued that in poverty lies security; having less means having less to be taken, which is a pessimistic view.
Overall, he does draw some interesting conclusions. I haven't quite flushed out my view on this yet, as I just finished it, and I really need to think more about- if democracy is the cause of state failure, and has in fact led to authoritarianism, where does that leave us in terms of governance in Africa, to which I have yet to see Bates' solutions and they are not proposed herein. While I definitely see the application of BdM and the winning coalition to Africa, how do you get African leaers to credibly commit to democratic governance outside of the Mo Ibrahim award. There has to be, as Bates himself cites, political incentives to good governance just as there are for poor governance, right?
Also, I read this in a day- so I need a bit to mull over it.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Game theoretic exploration of the sub title: "Rather than probing the motives of rebels or the nature of their organizations, I instead ask: Why would governments adopt policies that impoverish their citizens? Why would they “overextract” wealth from their domains? Why would they alter the distribution of income so grossly that it would become politically unsustainable? By addressing such questions, I explored the ways in which incumbent regimes prepared the field for the forces of political disorder."

Explains political order and disorder in the context of the roving/stationary bandit problem (greater political risk (e.g., elections) negatively affects the regime's behavior), and the relative rewards of predation versus legitimate tax revenue.

Disagrees with conventional wisdom in that he dismisses the importance of private income (but not public revenues) on political order (as the decreased cost of rebellion is canceled out by the decreased value of predation), and adeptly notes that importance of ethnic diversity is contingent on the variables mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Bates' book marginally added to my knowledge of political order, but presents a quick (216 page) game-theoretic explain of state failure: "In light of the evidence Africa offers, political order cannot be treated as a given. Rather, I argue, it results when rulers – whom I characterize as “specialists in violence” – choose to employ the means of coercion to protect the creation of wealth rather than to prey upon it and when private citizens choose to set weapons aside and to devote their time instead to the production of wealth and to the enjoyment of leisure. When these choices constitute an equilibrium, then, I say, political order forms a state."

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It can be argued that Bates' synthesis of his data and his proposed conclusions are too simplistic. In many ways I agree with this critique. However, I do think Bates provides helpful insight in looking at how political choices at the top have led to Africa's "failed" states, rather than focusing on the typical Marxist from below view of rebels. Bates offers helpful and thoughtful insight. A worthwhile read for anyone studying Africa.

[Derrill Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm using this in my public choice class. The first two chapters set up the main principals and the others provide some reasonably supportive evidence. That later narrative jumps around a good deal, so it's hard to know where reality diverges from his theory.

[Nelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too technical for my liking

[Liam · Rating 2 out of 5]

"[T]he possibility of political order rests on the value of three variables: the level of public revenues, the reward from predation, and the specialist's [in violence] rate of discount." (20)

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't find this especially helpful; though it is an interesting model of how dictators hold on to power by institutionalizing instability.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise (unlike James Scott's Seeing Like a State), logical, and clear.