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Deepening Democracy and Cultural Context in the Republic of Mali, 1992-2002

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Deepening Democracy and Cultural Context in the Republic of Mali, 1992-2002 DEEPENING DEMOCRACY AND CULTURAL CONTEXT IN THE REPUBLIC OF MALI, 1992-2002 by JONATHAN MICHAEL SEARS A thesis submitted to the Department of Political Studies in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada September 2007 Copyright © Jonathan Michael Sears, 2007 Abstract This thesis challenges the view that the Republic of Mali is a model of democratization in Africa with the aim of opening the conceptual framework of democratic citizenship inherent in the democratization discourse to greater critical scrutiny. The ‘enthusiastic’ view is held and set forth by various segments of the unity-seeking ruling class (local and foreign, State and NGO) of bringing to Mali a Western-oriented, procedurally minimal democracy, and citizen identity commensurate with international financial institutions’ and donor countries’ vision of democratization as political and economic liberalization. Consequently, this hegemonic project co-opts selected indigenous and Islamic idioms of political and social identity, to reinvent democratization as ‘moral governance.’ Cosmopolitan upper and upper-middle class actors thus apologize for highly personalized politics at the national and local levels, and articulate these more broadly with idioms of recovering rectitude and social cohesion that preserve and reproduce hierarchical social norms. In Malian political culture and in the scholarship of Malian political change, the hegemonic project of citizen identity formation becomes more evident as a construction, as discourses, norms, and practices produced and reproduced by privileged actors. Moreover, the contested character of these constructions becomes evident only as we address the development and deployment of selectively synthesized indigenous, Islamic, and Western-democratic norms, practices, and institutions of citizenship in contemporary Mali. Without a more embedded sense of political membership and identity, the merely procedural democratic project remains vulnerable to challenges from multiple, alternative sites of moral, social, and political authority. 2 Acknowledgments More people than can be named here deserve thanks. My name may be on the title page, theirs I see on almost every other page. I have been accumulating debts related to this project, directly and indirectly, for at least fourteen years. For hospitality, patience, generosity, warning, healing, and laughter; for guidance, encouragement, teaching, commiseration, competition, love, trial, listening, and forgiveness Thanks to my adoptive Malian family from 1994 to the present,1 Thanks to my family, friends, colleagues, and mentors.2 Thanks to those who have so faithfully supported my life and this part in it.3 Dédicace With a special thanks to Heather (AKA Hawa Diop) for 2002, I dedicate this to her son and my friend Sékouba Traoré. Cette oeuvre, Sékouba, s’est achevé grâce à Dieu Tout-Puissant et grâce à toi, qui m’inspire par ton courage, amour, et joie de vivre. Mille et une fois merci. (Jon dit Moctar) 1 GOGO, MADANI, BADIAN, MOCTAR, AMADOU, MADINA, ANNA, KAO & THE KANOUNTE FAMILY, THE TAL FAMILY, PAUL, FATIME, TIJANI, TOM, CHEIK OUMAR, SOULIMAN C., IBOU, MOUSSA, TENE, TOGO, KORROU, MARIE B., BOU T., HOLLY, DRAME, DANIEL G., BERNIE, BANDIAGARA NUNS, TIMOTHÉ D., SÉKOU, MAH DRAMÉ, KABA, SAMBALY T., EDOUARD T., SAMBA D., SORY, OUMAR T., HAWA C., WEST SIDE CHURCH (BANDIAGARA), OUSMANE O., K. GUINDO, M. DIAWARA & POINT SUD FRIENDS AND MENTORS, L. COULIBALY, LAMINE K., TIDJANI S., A. SALL, MUKHTAR DIALLO, MOUSSA, ABDOULAYE B., HAKIM C., AND ZOU K. 2 THE SEARS FAMILY, BEAR P., PAUL L., MIKE F., DAVE P., JASON G., T. WALSH, DHOMAS, ST. THOMAS MENTORS, DAN C., JULIO G., ST KITTS FRIENDS & MENTORS, PAM L, REBECCA, ANNIE, TEILHARD & CARONE, DAVID P, BRUCE H., CHIRS G, KINSTON FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES, AND MENTORS, SARAH R., SHANTI, PAUL H., SIMON, DAVE T., GEORGE, YOUNGWON, JONATHAN G., NISSIM M., TAMARA S., GRANT, ABBIE, ELEANOR, WAYNE, WILL & SUE, CHRISTIAN, J. A W. GUNN, D. MACD., SUSANNE & MARCUS, KATHERINE, JEANETTE, STEVE K. & THE GENEVA HOUSE CREW, and BRUCE BERMAN. 3 MUM, DAD, and JACINTHE 3 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 3 Table of Contents 4 List of Tables, Figures and Illustrations 5 CHAPTER ONE 6 Review of mainstream democratization literature in Africa 8 Theoretical framework 28 Methodology / Research procedures 66 Some Axes of Normative Commitment 72 Outline Of Argument In The Next Five Chapters 74 CHAPTER 2: The historical, political, and economic context: pre-1960 77 Pre-colonial Mali 77 French colonialism 90 CHAPTER 3: The historical, political, and economic context: 1960-2002 115 Independent Mali 115 CHAPTER FOUR: Cultural advantages for democracy? 160 The transformation of political culture and citizen identity 166 A Critical look at cultural advantages for democratic deepening 190 Conclusion: democratic citizen identity and ‘good governance’ in Mali 210 CHAPTER FIVE: Self-knowledge and the return to virtue 212 Islamic idioms of citizen identity 239 Idioms of Politicizing Islam 245 Conclusion: Seeking Moral Recovery and Social Cohesion 258 CHAPTER SIX: Western perspectives on citizenship: the contours of hegemony 263 Teaching texts and civic sensibilities 270 Openings For Unofficial Reinterpretations of the Citizen Tradition 288 Islamic and Western hegemonic struggles 312 Concluding overview and contributions to the debates 316 Author Interviews By Location & Date 321 Bibliography 328 4 List of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations CHAPTER 2 Table: Chronology of West African Kingdoms 78 Map: West African Empires 79 Map: Ethnic groups’ areas 84 Table: Chronology of French Colonialism 90 Table: French administration in Soudan 93 Table: Gross domestic production, percentage by sector 95 Map: French Sudan 1920 95 Table: Colonial education in FWA (excluding Koranic schools) 100 Table: Koranic schools, Bamako district 100 Table: Colonial School Graduates FWA between 1950-1958 102 Table: Enrolments 1961-62 103 CHAPTER 3: Table: Independence Chronology 115 Table: Annual growth percentage 1928-1962 (-1967 plan) 118 Table: The Evolution Of External Debt 1980-1994 125 Table: Five largest enterprises by staff in 1996 130 Table: Bureaucrats (April 1994) 131 Table: Students’ Fathers’ occupations in secondary school (1976) 131 Map: the Republic of Mali, 1994 136 Table: Post-apertura timeline 137 Table: Timeline since 2002 142 Table: Population 143 Table: General Economic Indicators (2002) 143 Table: Income of Mali’s population 144 Table: Monthly revenue of sample population 144 Table: Earning a living 145 Table: Five Most Numerous Economic Operators (Bamako 1994) 145 Table: 2002/03 Schools’ personnel (teachers, principals, secretaries, monitors) 145 Table: Education level of sample population 146 Table: Ethnic groups in Mali 150 CHAPTER FIVE Table: Percentage of NGOs that are Islamic 1980-2000 224 5 CHAPTER 1: Theoretical Introduction General Introduction The Republic of Mali is considered by many Malian and non-Malian observers to be a model of democratization in Africa. This thesis approaches the issue by asking what is meant by a model democracy, by whom, and to whom, in order to challenge the procedurally minimal democracy inherent to the conceptualization and implementation of Continental democratization processes. Moreover, rather than a linear process suggested by the image of a democratic ‘wave’ there are particular linkages at local, national and international levels that qualify the ostensible universalization of Western-democratic norms, practices, institutions and identities. Democratization is a multiform historical process in which state-making and cultural change occur in the context of the transformation of political and economic norms and practices, and reactions to these transformations. Mali’s relatively peaceful transition from dictatorship to electoral politics in 1991-92, institutional consolidation in State and civil society arenas, changes in political elites’ behaviour and the transformation of political culture and citizen identity since then have occurred in tandem with managing a ‘low-intensity’ internal conflict through the 1990s and promoting modest economic growth (albeit unevenly shared). On its face, then, Mali’s success story seems to invite little exploration other than to chronicle its achievements, already done well by existing research, and to draw some general conclusions about the potential for political change in Africa. The enthusiastic recognition of Mali’s success, while focussing on its institutional and procedural aspects, also attends to certain ‘cultural advantages’ for democratic consolidation. By taking seriously the success story and ostensible ‘cultural advantages,’ this thesis explores the broad convergence of scholarly and non-scholarly opinion about Malian democratization as evidence of a succeeding hegemonic drive by relatively cosmopolitan 6 (domestic and foreign) upper and upper-middle class actors seeking consolidation and unification of their collective interests, to make their understanding the common sense view of Mali’s post- 1992 political development. The broadest context of this deconstruction of Mali’s success story is that of international financial institutions and donor countries imposing their neoliberal project on contemporary Mali, and promoting a vision of democratization commensurate with this project. Moreover, mainstream democratization literature offers scholarly support to that policy agenda with relatively simplistic conceptualizations
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