"The president is coming to visit!" Dramas and the hijack of democratization in the islamic Republic of Mauritania

Comparative Politics

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2005, Pages

  Jourde, Cédric ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 23344450669     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20072902     Document Type: Review

References (97)

1. Jason M. Brownlee, "Low Tide after the Third Wave: Exploring Politics under Authoritarianism," Comparative Politics, 34 (July 2002), 477-97.
2. Richard Joseph, "Autocracy, Violence and Ethnomilitary Rule in Nigeria," in Richard Joseph, ed., State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 359-373.
3. Thomas Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy, 13 (January 2002), 5-21.
4. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy, 13 (April 2002), 51-65.
5. Larry Diamond, "Thinking about Hybrid Regimes," Journal of Democracy, 13 (April 2002), 21-35.
6. Nicolas van de Walle, "Africa's Range of Regimes," Journal of Democracy, 13 (April 2002), 73.
7. Thomas Carothers, "Democracy without Illusion," Foreign Affairs, 76 (January-February 1997), 85-99.
8. Levitsky and Way, pp. 54-58.
9. Michael Schatzberg, "Highjacking Change: Zaire's 'Transition' in Comparative Perspective," in Marina Ottaway, ed., Democracy in Africa: The Hard Road Ahead (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), pp. 113-34;
10. Linda Kirschke, "Informal Repression, Zero-Sum Politics and Late Third Wave Transitions," Journal of Modern African Studies, 38 (2000), 383-405.
11. Andreas Schedler, "The Menu of Manipulation," Journal of Democracy, 13 (April 2002), 39-46.
12. Ibid., p. 41.
13. Lisa Wedeen, "Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science," American Political Science Review, 96 (December 2002), 713-28;
14. Michael Schatzbeig, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
15. Frederic C. Schaffer, Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998);
16. Mikael Karlstrom, "Imagining Democracy: Political Culture and Democratisation in Buganda," Africa, 66 (1996), 485-505.
17. Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
18. Leonardo Villalón, "Sufi Rituals as Rallies: Religious Ceremonies in the Politics of Senegalese State-Society Relations," Comparative Politics, 26 (July 1994), 415-38.
19. William F. S. Miles, "The Rally as Ritual: Dramaturgical Politics in Nigerian Hausaland," Comparative Politics, 21 (April 1989), 323-38.
20. For a Kenyan example, see the fascinating study of Angelique Haugerud, The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
21. Van de Walle, p. 68.
22. Levitsky and Way, pp. 57-58.
23. Wedeen, pp. 146-47.
24. John W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c. 936-1075 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 45.
25. Ibid., p. 51.
26. Clifford Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power," in Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark, eds., Culture and Its Creator: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 152-53.
27. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 97-136.
28. "Gouverneur Général de l'AOF, aux Chefs de Territoires, 22 mars 1950," Archives Nationales de Mauritanie, Série E3, no. 173.
29. For a similar point on British Nigeria, see Herbst, p. 87.
30. Timothy Mitchell, "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," American Political Science Review, 85 (1991), 81.
31. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa, pp. 80-81.
32. Mohamed Tozy, Monarchie et Islam politique au Maroc, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1999), pp. 55-56.
33. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 24.
34. Luc Sindjoun, "Cameroun: Le système politique face aux enjeux de la transition démocratique (1990-1993)," in L'Afrique Politique 1994 (Paris: Karthala, 1994), p. 148.
35. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959).
36. Kenneth Burke, "Dramatism," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: MacMillan, 1968), pp. 445-451;
37. Abner Cohen, The Politics of Elite Culture: Exploration in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 207;
38. Thomas Bierschenk, "Rituels politiques et construction de l'identité ethnique des Peuls au Bénin," Cahiers des Sciences Humaines, 31 (1995), 481;
39. Robert D. Benford and Scott A. Hunt, "Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power," Sociological Inquiry, 62 (1992), 38. Benford and Hunt add a fourth type: interpreting. However, the nature of interpreting is different from the first three types, which are part of the production of a drama.
40. Benford and Hunt, p. 39.
41. Louis A. Zurcher and David A. Snow, "Collective Behavior: Social Movement," in Morris Rosenberg and Ralph H. Turner, eds., Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 472-77.
42. James M. Mayo, Jr., "Propaganda with Design: Environmental Dramaturgy in the Political Rally," in Dennis Brissett and Charles Edgley, eds., Life as Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990), p. 356.
43. Benford and Hunt, p. 43.
44. Bidhan is the collective name that Arab-Berbers give to themselves. French colonizers called them the Moors (les Maures). Official statistics on ethnicity are not available, due to their explosive nature. One evaluation suggests that 70 percent of the population is Arabic-speaking (including 40 percent of black freed slaves known as Haratin) and 30 percent is black African (Haalpulaar, Sooninke, and Wolof).
45. See Thomas K. Park, Mamadou Baro, and Tidiane Ngaide, "Conflicts over Land and the Crisis of Nationalism in Mauritania," The Land Tenure Center Paper, 142 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, 1991);
46. John V. Magistro, "Crossing Over: Ethnicity and Transboundary Conflict in the Senegal River Valley," Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 33 (1993), 201-32;
47. Jean Schmitz, "Anthropologie des conflits fonciers et hydropolitiques du fleuve Sénégal (1975-1991)," Cahiers des Sciences Humaines, 29 (1993), 591-623.
48. J. Fleischman, Mauritania's Campaign of Terror: State-Sponsored Repression of Black Africans (New York: Human Rights Watch/Africa, 1994). Before 1989 political violence based on ethnicity erupted mainly in 1966, 1979, and 1987. In the first two cases, a state-sponsored policy of Arabization was at the heart of the problems.
49. See Catherine Taine-Cheikh, "Les langues comme enjeux identitaires," Politique Africaine, 55 (1994), 57-65.
50. The term caste, however, conveys an impression of social rigidity that does not fully correspond to the social reality.
51. There are some similarities between the role of French colonizers in rigidifying the hierarchical structure of caste relations in West Africa and the role of British colonizers in constructing a rigid caste system in India. See Nicholas B. Dirk, "Castes of Mind," Representations, 37 (Winter 1993), 56-78.
52. For the black African communities, see Ibrahima A. Sall, "Mauritanie, conquête et organisation administrative des territoires du sud (Gidimaxa, Fuuta Tooro et Waalo Barak), rôle des aristocraties politiques et religieuses" (Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris VII, 1998).
53. For the Bidhan community, see Mohamed Ould Sidiya, "Tribu et État en Mauritanie, de 1946 à 1978: Essai descriptif" (Ph.D. diss. Université Aix-Marseille I, 1999);
54. Philippe Marchesin, Tribus, ethnies et pouvoir en Mauritanie (Paris: Karthala, 1992).
55. However, some Haratin have moved upward in the sociopolitical hierarchy in recent years. See Meskerem Brhane, "Narratives of the Past, Politics of the Present: Identity, Subordination and the Haratines of Mauritania" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1997).
56. For a good historical perspective, see Olivier Leservoisier, La question foncière en Mauritanie: Terres et pouvoirs dans la région du Gorgol (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994).
57. Colonel Ma'aouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya came to power through a coup d'état in December 1984. This coup was the last in a long series that began in 1978, when the civilian one party regime of Mokhtar Ould Daddah was overthrown by the first military coup.
58. For an analysis of the caustic editorials written by the late Habib Ould Mahfoudh of Le Calame, see Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, "Retour sur le politique par le bas: De quelques modes populaires d'énonciations du politique en Mauritanie" (Ph.D. diss., Institut d'Études Politiques/Université Lumière Lyon 2, 1996).
59. The numerous black African elites I interviewed in Mauritania all held the same explanation.
60. See the special issue of Politique Africaine, 55 (1994)
61. especially Abdelweddoud Ould Cheikh, "Des voix dans le désert: Sur les élections de 'l'ère pluraliste'," Politique Africaine, 55 (1994), 31-39.
62. Interview, Nouakchott, November 29, 1999.
63. Richard Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 59-60.
64. Jean-François Bayart, L'État en Afrique: La politique du ventre (Paris: Fayard, 1989).
65. Haalpulaaren (singular, Haalpulaar) form the largest of the three black African communities.
66. For the list of names in the official delegation, see Horizons, June 25, 1995, p. 4.
67. Cited in Mauritanie-Nouvelles, June 25-July 2, 1995, p. 11.
68. I b i d.
69. For details on Mauritania's tacit support of Saddam Hussein before the war, see James Piscatori, ed., Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago: The Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991), pp. 210-211.
70. Mauritania's tacit support of Saddam Hussein also led to an abrupt termination of financial aid from the Gulf monarchies.
71. The two districts of the capital city where black Africans are concentrated were also strongholds of the opposition.
72. For the factional struggles among black African ruling elites in these dramas, see Cédric Jourde, "Dramas of Ethnic Elites Accommodation: The Authoritarian Restoration in Mauritania" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 2002).
73. Interview, Boghe, August 14, 1999.
74. Interview, Nouakchott, October 30 1999.
75. Le Calame, July 2-9, 1995, p. 8.
76. Info-Nouakchott, July 4-11, 1995, p. 11.
77. Interview, Boghe, August 7, 1999.
78. Interview, Nouakchott, January 13, 2000.
79. Interview, Nouakchott, September 11, 1999.
80. Interview, Nouakchott, February 8, 2000.
81. David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, and Robert Peters, "Victory Celebrations as Theater: A Dramaturgical Approach to Crowd Behavior," Symbolic Interaction, 4 (1981), p. 33.
82. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: The Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 26.
83. For similar factors at play in a Mexican presidential tour, see Larissa Adler Lomnitz, Claudio Lomnitz Adler, and Ilya Adler, "The Function of the Form: Power Play and Ritual in the 1988 Mexican Presidential Campaign," in Daniel H. Levine, ed., Constructing Culture and Politics in Latin America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1993), p. 368.
84. Achille Mbembe, "Provisional Note on the Postcolony" Africa, 62 (1992), 20.
85. Lisa Wedeen, "Acting 'As If': Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria," Comparative Study of Society and History, 40 (1998), 511.
86. Horizons, June 25, 1995, p. 1.
87. Excerpts from news radio broadcasting, in Arabic, Radio Mauritanie, June 25, 1995. The speech is transcribed in French in the governmental newspaper
88. Horizons, June 26, 1995, p. 3.
89. I b i d.
90. Schatzberg, p. 4.
91. Susan Gal, "Language and Political Economy," Annual Review of Anthropology, 18 (1989), 345-67.
92. Quoted in Nouakchott Info, July 4-11, 1995, p. 12 (emphasis added).
93. Quoted in Le Calame, July 2-9, 1995, p. 8 (emphasis added).
94. Cohen, p. 211.
95. Mohamed Ould Boilil (pseudonym), Al-Akhbar, July 9-15, 1995, p. 3.
96. Geertz, p. 162; also cited in Kertzer, p. 22.
97. Levitsky and Way, p. 59.