When there are gaps in the research of international relations, political scientists must address them using substantive theoretical frameworks to build on the prevailing literature. This is what Jeffery Herbst aims to accomplish in his work, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. By turning a look at the state-building efforts made by post-colonial Africa, Herbst delineates the ways in which African states differentiates themselves in their integration and development in juxtaposition to European states. The author posits that, across the three distinct periods of state-development- pre-colonization, during colonization, and after or post-colonization- African leadership faced similar challenges and similar victories on their path to statehood. Herbst comes to these conclusions from a structuralist theoretical basis, contending that the geographical constraints and the objective historical determinant of colonialism steered African states to similar integration and development patterns.
Additionally, Herbst introduces new conceptualizations, or definitions, of a “state.” He primarily defines a state as an autonomous entity that has control of populations or a singular population instead of an entity that has control over borders. This is particularly interesting in African state-building due to the structure of pre-colonial African societies. In Chapter 2, he writes that pre-colonial populations depended on subsistence agriculture. Due to this, their movements were shaped by climate and ecological factors. Therefore, pre-colonial populations in Subsaharan Africa were not particularly tied to one land or region, nor were they subject to domination from territorial claims. This decoupled private or governmental ownership of land from social control. African leaders had to utilize the building of critical infrastructure (i.e. roads) and a base of loyalty to to earn political power. This is a stark difference to the relationship of land ownership and social contract in European states. Interestingly enough, by comparing Europe and Africa, Herbst makes a compelling case for developing African states using the original conceptualization of third-worldism. One can argue that Herbst alters laic conceptions of the third-world from aggregate poverty states to post-colonial states that actively stood apart from capitalist “first-world” countries and communist “second-world” countries. In this framework, African states belonged to an emergent “third-world,” a codified third way or structure, of anti-imperialist, non-alignment countries that sought to rebuild after epochs of intense violence, extraction, and exploitation.
Concepts (Pulled from Theories wiki. Full post can be found here):
- Protestantism: Max Weber outlines the predication of capitalism on the evolution of Protestant values. Weber proposes that it is Protestantism as an “elective affinity” that has allowed for the manifestation of religious values co-constituted with capitalist values.
- Calvinism: The author continues further and delineates Calvinism, a specific branch of Protestantism, as the life-giver of this work ethic due to its Predestinarian theological doctrine.
- Individualism: Through the individualist asceticism of this particular Christian ideology, the worker no longer needed to derive his religious value from family or home community. Interestingly enough, due to the doctrine of sola fide, the worker could also lay aside his worries of confirming his faith through religious work- in Protestantism, faith alone was sufficient for the elect.
- Predestination: This teaching states that everything in a person’s life has been foreordained by God. In an impassable determinism, a select group of people have been “elected” for salvation. For Protestants, the ability to work diligently and accumulate capital in a method advantageous to the channels of capitalism is verifiable proof of one’s elective privilege. Therefore, the Protestant capitalist is an example of God’s venerated elect on earth. In this way, religious value and economic virtue are inextricably linked for the European Protestant. This, for Weber, is the prime breeding ground for the definite “spirit” found in capitalism.
As stated earlier, Weber credits the nature of Calvinistic Protestantism with the co-constituted rise of capitalism in Northwestern Europe. He contends that this theology- and the subsequent lifestyle- has inherent elective affinity with capitalism and the nation-state. For clarification, this co-constitution implies a reinforcement and reification of capitalist values through the Protestant culture. Additionally, though it may look like an argument leaning towards a theological defense, Weber contends that the Protestant work ethic was produced alongside rationalism and an increasing desire in all socio-political fields for scientific investigation. Something within Protestantism was peculiarly adept at mitigating the decline of supernatural beliefs and the “disenchantment of the world.” It was a doctrine that could meld the material accumulation of economic capitalism to the metaphysical assertion of one’s providential and eternal fate. It could do so along the lines of physical, moral, social, and economic asceticism.
In Chapter Four of The Protestant Work Ethic, Weber summarizes the four principal forms of ascetic Protestantism: Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and sects of the Baptist movement. Weber is not particularly interested in the dogmatic foundations and “ethical theory” of these branches, but is rather concerned with the moral practices of each. It is these moral practices that undergirded the economic system in which they were wrangled. He defines the first form as “Calvinism [as it] assumes in the main area of influence in Western Europe.” This first form of ascetic Protestantism was integral to the spirit of capitalism for a key reason: historically speaking, the Christian religiously devout rejected economic pursuits in the construction of their faith. However, Calvinism notably supported these earthly endeavors, seeing them as rational imperatives. The worldview then imbued economic gain with a moral and spiritual virtue that had not previously defined the world of economics and labor. This moral imperative drove the hand of European capitalists. In addition to the Predestination theology and the embrace of economic pursuits within Calvinism, Weber also explores values of discipline, frugality, and hard work embedded in the faith.