Abstract
An evolutionary perspective, which is currently enjoying a revival in the social sciences, raises the possibility of a major transformation in the study of political development and modernization. It may be desirable to supplement (and in some instances replace) the concept of "political development" with the concept of "political evolution." Political development may be likened to the biological process of ontogeny. It involves the construction of a viable set of political qua cybernetic processes and structures at any level of social organization, from wolf packs to human families to empires. Political evolution is an aspect of phylogeny. It involves the invention, elaboration, and diffusion of novel political forms of all kinds, only some of which may be more effective, or inclusive, or democratic, etc. Nor are all evolutionary changes necessarily "better" (i.e., more adaptive). Political development is concerned with problems of social engineering, while political evolution is concerned with architectonics--with the emergence of functionally significant political innovations. Political development is always situation-specific, while political evolution is also historical and may include changes that diffuse and become "species-wide." Political evolution is thus a dimension of the larger process of biological evolution. The emergence of political systems, which long predates the evolution of humankind, constitutes a set of adaptive strategies with significant evolutionary consequences. Political development and political evolution may go hand in hand, but this is not always the case. A particular polity may develop or decay independently of the larger process of political evolution. Among the many theoretical implications of this conceptual reformulation, we briefly address the impact on functionalist theory, modernization theory, social mobilization theory, political economy (positive theory), world systems theory, dependency theory, and contemporary Marxist views.
Journal Information
Politics and the Life Sciences is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal with a global audience. PLS is owned and published by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences, the APLS, which is both an American Political Science Association (APSA) Related Group and an American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) Member Society. The PLS topic range is exceptionally broad: evolutionary and laboratory insights into political behavior, including political violence, from group conflict to war, terrorism, and torture; political analysis of life-sciences research, health policy, environmental policy, and biosecurity policy; and philosophical analysis of life-sciences problems, such as bioethical controversies. Typical contributors include political scientists and political behaviorists; biosecurity and international-security experts; life scientists, clinicians, health-policy scholars, and bioethicists; moral and evolutionary philosophers; environmental scientists and ecological economists; political-behavioral and environmental historians; science-policy scholars and historians of science; and legal scholars.
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Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org) is the publishing division of the University of Cambridge, one of the world’s leading research institutions and winner of 81 Nobel Prizes. Cambridge University Press is committed by its charter to disseminate knowledge as widely as possible across the globe. It publishes over 2,500 books a year for distribution in more than 200 countries. Cambridge Journals publishes over 250 peer-reviewed academic journals across a wide range of subject areas, in print and online. Many of these journals are the leading academic publications in their fields and together they form one of the most valuable and comprehensive bodies of research available today. For more information, visit //journals.cambridge.org.
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Politics and the Life Sciences © 1988 Cambridge University Press
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Abstract
Recent research has revealed that modern African ethnicity is a social construction of the colonial period through the reactions of pre-colonial societies to the social, economic, cultural and political forces of colonialism. Ethnicity is the product of a continuing historical process, always simultaneously old and new, grounded in the past and perpetually in creation. Colonial states were grounded in the alliances with local 'Big Men', incorporating ethnically-defined administrative units linked to the local population by incorporation of pre-colonial patron-client relations. This was reinforced by European assumptions of neatly bounded and culturally homogeneous 'tribes' and a bureaucratic preoccupation with demarcating, classifying and counting subject populations, as well as by the activities of missionaries and anthropologists. African ethnic invention emerged through internal struggles over moral economy and political legitimacy tied to the definition of ethnic communities--moral ethnicity; and external conflicts over differential access to the resources of modernity and economic accumulation--political tribalism. Ethnicities were, in particular, the creations of elites seeking the basis for a conservative modernization. The colonial legacy of bureaucratic authoritarianism, pervasive patron-client relations, and a complex ethnic dialectic of assimilation, fragmentation and competition has persisted in post-colonial societies. Patron-client networks remain the fundamental state-society linkage in circumstances of social crisis and uncertainty and have extended to the very centre of the state. This accounts for the personalistic, materialistic and opportunistic character of African politics. Such networks also penetrate institutions of civil society and liberal democracy, undermining programmes of socio-economic and political reform.
Journal Information
Tables of contents for recent issues of African Affairs are available at //afraf.oupjournals.org/contents-by-date.0.shtml. Authorized users may be able to access the full text articles at this site. African Affairs is published on behalf of the Royal African Society. It publishes articles on recent political, social and economic developments in sub-Saharan countries. Also included are historical studies that illuminate current events in the continent. Each issue of African Affairs contains a substantial section of book reviews, with occasional review articles. There is also an invaluable list of recently published books, and a listing of articles on Africa that have appeared in non-Africanist journals.
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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
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African Affairs © 1998
The Royal African Society
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