Thank you for this, I was hoping you'd write something about Gabon. The small soundbites on CNN of some guy in fatigues at a microphone (basically every coup) leaves me none the wiser of who/what/why.
I'm not sure this does the expert job of explaining the REALLY particularist context, but I am not a specialist on Gabon. (And given the nature of the Bongo regime(s), there are very few scholars who specialize on Gabonese political history.)
General Abacha could have also asked folks to hold his beer if he had not so conveniently died before he had a decade or three under his gun belt. Nigerians still speculate that he had “help” in leaving this world. So maybe the particularity there has something to do with the Nigerian elite’s willingness to eat their own, politically speaking. And other generals made their “transition” to civilian, or quasi-civilian, life before getting themselves elected (or selected, again a Nigerian English pun). So why no coup in Naija since Abacha? Maybe the generals picked up the political elite’s ruthless message: Join us or…well.
Yeah, absolutely. This is how it works in places where there aren't coups: just make sure we get our cut and don't interfere in our business, and it's fine. Though the rank-and-file sometimes decide that "wealth in persons" isn't working quite well enough in circulating that cut.
Another part of this is definitely the extent to which the postcolonial African state is an extractive mechanism primarily focused on rent collection, e.g., "gatekeeper state". That's the structure that military officers, bureaucrats and dynastic authoritarians alike are operating within, and it matters.
Thank you for this, I was hoping you'd write something about Gabon. The small soundbites on CNN of some guy in fatigues at a microphone (basically every coup) leaves me none the wiser of who/what/why.
I'm not sure this does the expert job of explaining the REALLY particularist context, but I am not a specialist on Gabon. (And given the nature of the Bongo regime(s), there are very few scholars who specialize on Gabonese political history.)
General Abacha could have also asked folks to hold his beer if he had not so conveniently died before he had a decade or three under his gun belt. Nigerians still speculate that he had “help” in leaving this world. So maybe the particularity there has something to do with the Nigerian elite’s willingness to eat their own, politically speaking. And other generals made their “transition” to civilian, or quasi-civilian, life before getting themselves elected (or selected, again a Nigerian English pun). So why no coup in Naija since Abacha? Maybe the generals picked up the political elite’s ruthless message: Join us or…well.
Yeah, absolutely. This is how it works in places where there aren't coups: just make sure we get our cut and don't interfere in our business, and it's fine. Though the rank-and-file sometimes decide that "wealth in persons" isn't working quite well enough in circulating that cut.
Another part of this is definitely the extent to which the postcolonial African state is an extractive mechanism primarily focused on rent collection, e.g., "gatekeeper state". That's the structure that military officers, bureaucrats and dynastic authoritarians alike are operating within, and it matters.