Another measure is recognition of customary law and traditional judicial systems by the state. Highlight 5 features of government. Traditional Types of Government: Definitions, Strengths & Weaknesses The traditional and informal justice systems, it is argued offers greater access to justice. Under the circumstances, it becomes critical that traditional leaders are directly involved in local governance so that they protect the interests of their communities. Module Ten, Activity Two - Exploring Africa 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- Regional governance comes into play here, and certain precedents may get set and then ratified by regional or sub-regional organizations. A third pattern flows from the authoritarian reflex where big men operate arbitrary political machines, often behind a thin democratic veneer. The link was not copied. It is too soon to tell whether such institutions can evolve in modern Africa as a result of gradual tinkering with reformist agendas, as the legacy of wise leaders; or whether they will only happen as a result of fundamental tests of strength between social and political groups. With respect to their relevance, traditional institutions remain indispensable for several reasons. Finally, the chapter considers the future of the institution against the background of the many issues and challenges considered. The Role of Traditional Leaders in Post Independence Countries Botswana A third argument claims that chieftaincy heightens primordial loyalties, as chiefs constitute the foci of ethnic identities (Simwinga quoted in van Binsberger, 1987, p. 156). The selection, however, is often from the children of a chief. It should not be surprising that there is a weak social compact between state and society in many African states. Government and the Political System 2.1. On the eve of the departure of the colonial power, the Nigerian power elite in collusion with the departing colonial authority, drew up an elaborate constitution for a liberal bourgeois state - complete with provisions for parties in government and those in opposition. 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). In most African countries, constitutionally established authorities exercise the power of government alongside traditional authorities. 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. Poor gender relations: Traditional institutions share some common weaknesses. 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. African Politics: A Very Short Introduction | Oxford Academic To illustrate, when there are 2.2 billion Africans, 50% of whom live in cities, how will those cities (and surrounding countryside) be governed? West Africa has a long and complex history. (No award was made in 50% of the years since the program was launched in 2007; former Liberian president Ellen John Sirleaf won the award in 2017. . 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. 15 Facts on African Religions The Interfaith Observer 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). They dispense justice, resolve conflicts, and enforce contracts, even though such services are conducted in different ways in different authority 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). Their "rediscovery" in modern times has led to an important decolonization of local and community management in order to pursue genuine self-determination. The Aqils (elders) of Somalia and the chiefs in Kenya are good examples. Command economies, as opposed to free-market economies, do not allow market forces like supply and demand to determine production or prices. The role of chieftaincy within post-colonial African countries continues to incite lively debates, as the case of Ghana exemplifies. We know a good deal about what Africans want and demand from their governments from public opinion surveys by Afrobarometer. However, the traditional modes of production and the institutional systems associated with them also remain entrenched among large segments of the population. Settling a case in an official court, for example, may involve long-distance travel for villagers and it may require lawyers, translators, a long wait, and court fees, while a traditional court rarely involves such costs and inconveniences. Most of the regions states were defined geographically by European cartographers at the start of the colonial period. Each of these societies had a system of government. 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. Third, Africas conflict burden reflects different forms and sources of violence that sometimes become linked to each other: political movements may gain financing and coercive support from criminal networks and traffickers, while religious militants with connections to terrorist groups are often adept at making common cause with local grievance activists. Features Of Traditional Government Administration | Bartleby Against this broad picture, what is striking is the more recent downward trend in democratic governance in Africa and the relative position of African governance when viewed on a global basis. A third, less often recognized base of legitimacy can be called conventional African diplomatic legitimacy wherein a governmenthowever imperfectly establishedis no more imperfect than the standard established by its regional neighbors. The indigenous political system had some democratic features. Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: a Plea - Jstor This short article does not attempt to provide answers to all these questions, which require extensive empirical study. PDF African Governance Systems in the Pre and Post-Independence Periods 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). Posted: 12 May 2011. media system, was concerned with the more systematized dissemination of information between the traditional administrative organ and the people (subjects). The challenge facing Africas leadersperhaps above all othersis how to govern under conditions of ethnic diversity. This concept paper focuses on the traditional system of governance in Africa including their consensual decision-making models, as part of a broader effort to better define and advocate their role in achieving good governance. 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. Decision making is generally participatory and often consensus-based. Relevance of African traditional institutions of Governance PDF Traditional Leaders In Modern Africa: Can Democracy And The - ETH Z Allocation of resources, such as land, is also much more egalitarian under the traditional system than it is under the private ownership system in the formal state system. It may be useful to recall that historical kingships or dynasties were the common form of rule in Europe, India, China until modern times, and still is the predominant form of rule on the Arabian Peninsula. Table 1 shows the proportion of the population that operates under traditional economic systems in selected African countries. Political and economic inclusion is the companion requirement for effective and legitimate governance. In the postcolonial era, their roles changed again. This adds to the challenge of building national identities; this identity vacuum increases the risk that political elites and social groups will capture the state for narrower, self-interested purposes that weaken, rather than strengthen, social cohesion. The chapter further examines the dabbling of traditional leaders in the political process in spite of the proscription of the institution from mainstream politics and, in this context, analyzes the policy rationale for attempting to detach chieftaincy from partisan politics. Government as a Structural Element of Society 2.2. One common feature is recognition of customary property rights laws, especially that of land. This study notes that in 2007 Africa saw 12 conflicts in 10 countries. 1.4. Unfortunately, little attention by African governments has been given to this paradoxical aspect of traditional institutions. The traditional justice system, thus, does not have the power to grant any rights beyond the local level. The traditional Africa system of government is open and inclusive, where strangers, foreigners and even slaves could participate in the decision-making process. The colonial state, for example, invented chiefs where there were no centralized authority systems and imposed them on the decentralized traditional systems, as among the Ibo of Eastern Nigeria, the Tonga in Zambia, various communities in Kenya, and the communities in Somalia. The book contains eight separate papers produced by scholars working in the field of anthropology, each of which focuses in on a different society in Sub-Saharan Africa. African conflict trends point to a complex picture, made more so by the differing methodologies used by different research groups. For example, the election day itself goes more or less peacefully, the vote tabulation process is opaque or obscure, and the entire process is shaped by a pre-election playing field skewed decisively in favor of the incumbents. Additionally, the Guurti is charged with resolving conflicts in the country using traditional conflict resolution mechanisms. As a result, it becomes highly complex to analyze their roles and structures without specifying the time frame. The first three parts deal with the principal objectives of the article. 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. Perhaps one of the most serious shared weakness relates to gender relations. This article contends that postcolonial African traditional institutions lie in a continuum between the highly decentralized to the centralized systems and they all have resource allocation practices, conflict resolution and judicial systems, and decision-making practices, which are distinct from those of the state. Some African nations are prosperous while others struggle. Before then, traditional authorities essentially provided leadership for the various communities and kingdoms. Societal conflicts: Institutional dichotomy often entails incompatibility between the systems. 3. Still another form of legitimacy in Africa sometimes derives from traditional political systems based on some form of kingship. At times, devolution has had major fiscal and governance consequences, including serving as a vehicle for co-option and corruption. Discuss any similarities between the key features of the fourth Today, the five most common government systems include democracy, republic, monarchy, communism and . 1. Institutional systems emanate from the broader economic and political systems, although they also affect the performance of the economic and political systems. Furthermore, for generations, Africans were taught the Western notion of the tribe as . The system of government in the traditional Yoruba society was partially centralised and highly democratic. 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. 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. One snapshot by the influential Mo Ibrahim index of African Governance noted in 2015 that overall governance progress in Africa is stalling, and decided not to award a leadership award that year. Traditional institutions have continued to metamorphose under the postcolonial state, as Africas socioeconomic systems continue to evolve. Large countries such as the DRC, Ethiopia, and Mozambique are likely to experience pressures against centralized, authoritarian, or one-party governance (whether accompanied by real elections or not). 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.
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