REGIONAL INTEGRATION IN AFRICA: DECONSTRUCTING THE STATE, CONSTRUCTING A PARADIGM SHIFT

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REGIONAL INTEGRATION IN AFRICA DECONSTRUCTING
THE STATE, CONSTRUCTING A PARADIGM SHIFT
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• The main contention in this paper is that in
  terms of policy making and execution state actors
  must accommodate other integrative forces at work
  at different levels, whether at the form of
  micro-regions, cross border operations, regional
  public goods, and non-state actors in general.
  That is, a multi-pronged approach, including the
  reconstituted state, would better reflect reality
  and be more useful.

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Predominant characteristics of the post-colonial
state in Africa

• It has been omnipresent, omnipotent, and
  omniscient.
• The common qualities usually attributed to the
  state are that it must have territory, people,
  government, and authority for the legitimate use
  of coercive force. Arguably, this is not always
  been applicable to states in Africa

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• Post-colonial African political elites attempted
  to build on the inherited colonial state and in
  the process transform it into a replica of the
  Western model. The results have been disastrous
  as the latter had distinctly different origins
  and reference framework.
• Political independence was not accompanied by a
  reconstruction of the colonial state, a European
  construct, to make it more relevant to the
  environment and better respond to the needs of
  the indigenous peoples. The post-colonial state
  remained not as an alternative but as a successor
  to the colonial state.

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• What were some of the preeminent manifestations
  of the colonial state that were inherited by the
  post-colonial state?
• First, the colonial state was authoritarian and
  repressive.
• Second, it played a major role in the economy,
  with an all-dominant public sector.
• Third, the colonial bureaucracy, as a major
  component of the state, was highly centralized.
• Fourth, the Western state system coexisted with
  indigenous governance systems and models.

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• Fifth, vast amounts of resources were directed at
  eliminating all contending political authorities
  or divesting them of any meaningful functions.
  This included not only opposition political
  parties but non-state actors of all hues,
  traditional institutions and socio-economic
  bodies.
• Sixth, the spread of the African state resulted
  in its presence being felt in all areas of
  socio-economic life. Not only within what was
  traditionally the public sector but also in most
  parts of the private sector.

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• In terms of performance the state in Africa has
  fallen far short of the basics
• It has not proven to be developmentalist in
  this area it is more a part of the problem than a
  solution to the problem. Neither have the
  economies impacted positively on the vast
  proportion of the populations rather, poverty
  has deepened.
• Capacity for policy implementation has been
  considerably limited and substituted by
  non-governmental and faith-based organizations,
  and an informal sector growing at exponential
  rates.

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• The sovereignty of the post-colonial African
  state is compromised by the fact that it is so
  deeply dependent on the ex-colonial powers and
  the international community to solve its
  developmental and other problems including those
  directly associated with regime survival.
• The inability of the African state to prevent,
  manage and resolve most conflicts, especially
  resource-based conflicts, has been a burden to
  the international community.

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• Similarly, the post-colonial state has
  demonstrated limited competences to effectively
  resolve post-elections and border conflicts.

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The state and regional integration

• Regional integration has always been regarded as
  a panacea for resolving Africas multiple
  predicaments, particularly through economic and
  political unification. As such, states have
  enjoyed almost absolute monopoly of action.

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• They were
• The sole parties to the creation of a
  multiplicity of specialized, single-purpose,
  multi-purpose, and general-purpose bodies for
  implementing a diversity of integration policies
  and programmes at continental, regional,
  sub-regional and bilateral levels.
• At the regional level the landscape has been
  littered with inter-governmental organizations
  (IGOs), usually of a technical character they
  also were created by states which have
  policy-making, management and oversight
  responsibilities on their operations.

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• States were the sole actors in the formulation
  and implementation of such seminal documents
  embodying collective self-reliance and regional
  integration as the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA,
  1980) and the Abuja Treaty Establishing the
  African Economic Community (AEC, 1991).
• Abundant are the resolutions, declarations,
  protocols, plans of action, statements, and
  charters adopted by member states of equally
  abundant organizations, all purporting to further
  regional integration in the continent.

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• In terms of the actual performance of these
  regional integration entities the results have
  been mixed. But the overwhelming verdict from
  among a wide and varied range of students of
  African integration is that the realization of
  the fundamental end-goals is as distant as they
  ever were.
• Persistent problems include
• The perennial pressing business of the
  rationalization of the institutional arrangements
  for continental integration persists, first, in
  terms of the overlapping memberships of the
  regional communities and, second, in the sheer
  numbers of IGOs in each sub-region what is
  termed elsewhere as the African Spaghetti Bowl.

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• Ratification of protocols has been another area
  of concern. Of the 34 protocols and conventions
  that had been ratified and entered into force as
  at May 2005 there was an average of three-and-a
  half years between signing and ratification. Nine
  protocols took five years or more to come into
  force and a similar number have not been ratified
  by the required number of states to come into
  effect.
• Some of the economic communities have too
  wide-ranging objectives and programming
  requirements covering economic, political, legal,
  social, cultural and other sectors.

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• There has been a massive increase in loads
  assigned to the regional secretariats just as in
  the instance of the national states themselves.
  These emanate from four sources, namely, the
  original economic integration agenda, new
  political/human security engagements (conflict
  prevention and management), the expanded mandates
  of existing treaties, and continental demands
  especially as regards the AEC Treaty and the AU.
• There has been a tendency for member states to
  assign responsibility for emergent areas of
  cooperation to the regional organizations.

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• The expansion in the scope of the integration
  agenda is not commensurate with the financial and
  other wherewithal at the disposal of regional
  secretariats. There remain inadequate
  capabilities and limited resources both for
  strengthening internal capacities and for
  programme implementation.
• The problem of inadequate capacities and
  capabilities for formulation, implementation,
  coordination and monitoring of integration
  policies and programmes is also prevalent at the
  national state level, i.e., the institutional
  architecture at this level is woefully fragile.
  Yet, it is precisely at this level that ultimate
  responsibility for implementing protocols etc.
  and integration programmes rests.

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• An integral aspect of this condition is the
  problem of building regional integration
  objectives and programmes into national
  development frameworks. Or, at a minimum, the
  coordination of policies and programmes so as to
  ensure consistency between governmental actions
  at national levels and commitments at regional
  levels.

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Contours of a Paradigm Shift

• The evidence adduced in the paper reveals some
  of the shortcomings of state-managed regional
  integration in Africa. To a great extent, the
  inherent drawbacks are to be found in the
  character of the post-colonial state for in this
  approach it is assumed that an effective regional
  integration can only be built on an effective and
  capable state system.

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• Through the decades the limelight has been
  heavily focused on states and the formal actions
  adopted by them in furtherance of integration
  goals and objectives at sub-regional, regional
  and continental levels. Inter-governmentalism and
  institutionalism held sway - on the part of
  academics and researchers, non-academic
  commentators, and policy analysts alike.

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• The last two decades or so have seen attempts by
  a dedicated group of academic researchers to
  shift the focus away from the state to other
  actors and from the centre to other levels of
  activity. According to this New Regionalism
  Approach (NRA) the focus should not be only on
  state actors and formal regionalism but also on
  non-state actors and what is broadly referred to
  as informal regionalism or regionalism from
  below.

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• Other grounds for the NRA include the following
• First, it was important that the previously
  dominant model which almost exclusively
  concentrates on formal institutional frameworks
  should be challenged if for no reason than that
  states had proven themselves not fit for purpose,
  as glaringly shown earlier.
• Second, older approaches do not reflect what is
  happening on-the-ground but accept without
  questioning the often optimistic and unrealistic
  accounts of what state actors say they are going
  to do to build regions.

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• Third, these other approaches do not have any
  relationship with the realities of regionalism
  besides demonstrating the chasm between ideal and
  reality.
• Fourth, most mainstream studies are of Western
  origins (dealing with the European Union) which
  serve as reference models and ideal types it is
  against these experiences that regionalism in
  Africa is often assessed. On the contrary, the
  NRA is grounded on the need to unpack the state
  ridding it of Western conceptions.

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• Fifth, the track record of formal regionalism and
  intergovernmental regional organizations has not
  been impressive, resulting in a lack of real
  genuine interest in them by both national policy
  makers and regional/continental policy
  implementors. In contrast, informal processes are
  dynamic and produce visible results.
• The conclusion that follows is that the
  conventional top-down preoccupations of the
  institutionalists/intergovernmentalists need to
  be domesticated through a bottom-up emphasis.

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• In line with reality on-the-ground linkages
  between the two must be established, both for
  more meaningful theory-building and for policy
  design. Not only is the state in Africa here to
  stay (as elsewhere) but it will continue to play
  a leading and dominant role in defining,
  supervising and directing regional integration.
  As shown in the massive body of literature,
  non-state and mixed-state actors are also here to
  stay. So it is a question of straddling the two
  and building bridges.

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• The challenge is to recognize the existence and
  contributions of other actors than states, to
  accommodate them, and to maximize their
  contributions. As formal and informal dimensions
  of integration are commonly intertwined, a fuller
  picture of regional integration can emerge only
  when the two sets of processes are accepted as
  overlapping. Needless to argue that the
  separation between state and non-state actors is
  artificial, worse still where the place of
  non-state actors is completely ignored, as
  happens in conventional approaches to regional
  integration.

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• The paper ends with an outline discussion on
  regional public goods as a case illustrating many
  of the arguments made in this paper and to which
  precious little attention has been paid in the
  literature.

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• An increasingly related subject is that of the
  cross-order economy and the ghost trade, that
  is, unrecorded unofficial trade which is so
  prominent across African borders. In order to
  incorporate the benefits therefrom regional
  economic communities such as ECOWAS and SADC have
  designed programmed activities and set up
  appropriate structures within their secretariats
  to deal with the subject. Within the context of
  regional integration in Africa the erstwhile
  Cross-Border Initiative, the Growth Triangle
  Project, and the West African Borders and
  Integration Initiative are experiences worthy of
  closer study.