17. Political Elites in Sub-Saharan Africa

This chapter underlines the fact that elite perspectives have never been given a high priority in African studies. Analyses have long suffered from having to fit reductive schematic molds full of dogmatic assumptions, as is demonstrated here in the first section revisiting the developmentalist and neo-Marxist theories that became predominant at the beginning of the post-colonial era, but also the so-called third wave of African studies. It is argued that due to the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa, political power remains weakly institutionalized, moving away from highly abstract or normative discussions and looking at situations from the more concrete angle of elites should be given priority. Recurrent features such as the enduring predominance of informal political relations, the long tenures, and limited circulation of top-level political leaders, as well as the imperative of particularistic economic redistributions are emphasized.