The Sociological Implications of Africa’s Political Economy

This chapter explains how the interaction between political power and authority shapes the nature and evolution of macrosociological features of African states’ societies. It captures the nature of current political order, political development, economic systems, and social order and explains their evolution. The chapter argues that the nature and evolution of Africa’s political economies oriented Africa toward the macrosociological features of multinational states, exterocentric economic systems, a social order built on large families and clans, and largely authoritarian political systems. The argument rests on five fundamental observations (a) the historical ability to form self-sufficient societies in isolation; (b) the historical possibility of trade as a strategy of self-sufficiency only, and not integration; (c) a historical link between family, labor, wealth, political power, and order; (d) the history of external domination; and (e) the disproportionate structural power of domestic and international political economies on externally dominated societies.