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Understanding African States in International Relations: On The Analytics of Sovereignty Versus Elite Governmentality

Amo-Agyemang C*

The African state, unlike its European counterpart is often naively described as lacking the attributes sovereignty, hence it is variously described as the hollow state, the managerial state, the enabling state, the surveillance state, the evaluative state, the skeleton state, the minimal state and a lame leviathan with limited agency in International Relations (IR). By extension, its experiences such as the adoption of neoliberalism and its associated conditionalites are said to be externally imposed with minimum input and policy autonomy from the continent’s governing elites. This line of thinking presents African states as passive, dependent objects, apolitical and completely bereft of any authentic interests in IR. The dominance of this perspective has resulted in a one-sided, limited account of African experiences and realities which run much deeper than what the prevailing epistemological posture would make us believe. This article forwards an alternative perspective. It does so by going beyond the ensuing conceptual and analytical confusions and limitations to unpack the international experiences and realities of African states from the stand point of its governing elites. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of neoliberal forms of governmentality, I argue that the latter are unabashedly autonomous constituency whose engagements are defined by commonalities of interests with their counterparts in the global arena. Hence the options they adopt are not merely crude impositions, but the result of negotiations and horse trading geared toward enhancing their agency and freedom.