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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Authority versus power: democracy in Africa must include original African institutions |
| Author: | Skalník, Peter |
| Year: | 1996 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law |
| Issue: | 37-38 |
| Pages: | 109-121 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | political systems Nanumba polity |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1996.10756476 |
| Abstract: | Modern Africanist scholarship has created a number of misunderstandings concerning the nature of traditional leaders and institutions in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover the dichotomy centralized-acephalous government has obscured the fact that the originality of indigenous African institutions lay in a combination of features which the Western scholar would call state and stateless. Decisions of indigenous African leaders were subject to various rules and limitations imposed by the populations they were supposed to lead. The political was indiscernibly integrated with economics, kinship and religion. Power as domination did not exist. Rather it was a plurality of authority stemming from the traditions of different segments of society. The author illustrates these points with data from his research on Nanun, a 'naam' or 'chieftaincy' in present-day northeastern Ghana, where he has conducted fieldwork (1978-1986, 1994). He sketches the origins of Nanun and its functioning, the death of the Bimbilla Naa (chief of the capital) and the selection of a successor, the attempts by the German and British colonizers and by postindependence regimes to streamline the succession rules, and the conflicts which have arisen between the Nanumba and the Konkomba settlers, most notably in 1981 and 1994. He concludes that in a sense 'naam' and similar institutions are elements of direct democracy which complement representative democracy and which could become important correctives of the power of the modern imported State. Bibliogr. |
