Decolonizing Neopatrimonialism

This chapter decolonizes the term neopatrimonialism. It has been common for most university readings on Africa, for example Bayart (1993) and Chabal & Daloz [1999 (2010)], to discuss neopatrimonialism principally in connection with African countries, which somehow renders the concept synonymous with Africa and portrays neopatrimonialism as an African thing. A closer look at the literature reveals that when Max Weber originally used the term patrimonialism in his 1919 speech to university students at Munich, he was not even talking about Africa, but rather discussing England until 1868, the United States (US) until 1824, and Germany until 1919. Furthermore, the term “patrimonial state” had been used by Karl Ludvig von Haller before Weber developed its variant “neopatrimonialism”. This chapter will not argue that neopatrimonialism does not occur in Africa. There is a lot of it there, in fact. However, Africa is not the only place where neopatrimonialism occurs on a regular basis, and university teaching needs to reflect that. This chapter delves into the theorizing on neopatrimonialism, and subsequently discusses practical examples in Ghana, France, the US and the UK.