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POLITICS AS RITUAL: RULES AS RESOURCES
IN THE POLITICS OF THE LIBERIAN
HINTERLAND
DAVID BROWN
IT IS CHARACTERISTIC
of all but the most extreme forms of totalitarian control that
the dominanceof the state must be establishednot only throughcoercionbut also
through legitimization. For whilst it is possible, as Max Weber noted,' to
envisage such a communityof interests between a ruler and his staff, and such a
concentration of power in their hands, that the achievement of popular
legitimacyneed not even be contemplated,there would neverthelessstill require
to be a relationshipof authoritywithinthe rulingclass. Such authority,if it is to
be maintained in a stable form, requires structure and predictability in the
practices of government, and thus some sort of bureaucraticadministrationwill
inevitably emerge. But in the case of a totalitarianregime, this creates a
dilemma, for not only does the delegation of power towards the periphery
inevitablydiminishthat at the centre, but the presence of a bureaucraticideology
itself conflicts with the very authoritarianismin the service of which it was
initially generated. Even in authoritariansituations, therefore--or perhaps,
particularly in authoritariansituations--there tend to develop irreconcilable
conflictsbetween the interestsof the rulingstratumand the expectationsbred by
the system of bureaucraticcontrol. Where the regime and the administration
are ethnicallydistinct, these conflictsare likely to be accentuated,and where the
administrationshares with the mass an ethnic identity the preservationof which
is itself necessary to the maintenanceof the system as a whole, so also will the
tendency to politicalinstabilitybe reinforced.
These considerationsare particularlypertinentin the case of Liberia, a society
in which, at least until the time of the 1980 Coup, the majorpoliticalconnections
exhibited a high degree of transparency,yet in which a numericallysmall but
enormouslyprivilegedcore had succeeded, with the aid of an administrativestaff
from which it was ethnically separated, in maintainingits hold over an almost
The authoris presently workingin the Departmentof Sociology, University of Sokoto, Nigeria.
Field research was carried out in Liberia from December 1974 to June 1976, and in
August-September, 1981, under the auspices of the Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Manchester, in the first instance, and the Department of Sociology, University of
Sokoto, in the second. The financialsupport of the Social Science Research Council of the UK,
and the University of Sokoto CentralResearchFund is gratefullyacknowledged.
The argument outlined in this paper was presented in more detailed form in the author's
unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 'Domination and Personal Legitimacy in a District of Eastern Liberia'
(University of Manchester, 1979).
1. M. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization(trans. T. Parsons and A. M.
Henderson, Free Press, Glencoe, 1947), p. 327.
479
480 AFFAIRS
AFRICAN
Some HistoricalConsiderations
The entity which is today 'Liberia' has existed for little more than 60
years. Prior to this time, Liberian sovereignty was largely restricted to the
narrowstrip of territorywhich had been annexed for the settlementof American
immigrantsof slave origin in the nineteenthcentury, and which had developed a
position of some importancein internationalaffairs primarilyas a result of its
strategiclocationon the WindwardCoast. The interior, unmappedand for the
most part unexplored, comprisedcongeries of small, linguisticallydifferentiated
and politically uncentralizedsocieties, the economies of which rested, almost
uniformly, upon subsistencecultivationof uplandrice, and limited trade in live-
stock and forest products.
The occupationof the hinterlandwas mostly affected in the period 1900-20,
and was occasioned by the need to secure Liberian sovereignty against the
designs of the western colonial powers. The subsequent history of the
Republic was crucially influenced by the unique position of the Americo-
Liberianimmigrantsin Liberianpoliticallife. A detailedreview of the relations
which developed between the immigrantsand the indigenous population is
beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that a numberof factors com-
bined to ensure that the immigrantcommunity,despite its numericalinferiority
(it is probable that the proportionof settlers to indigenes at no time exceeded
1 per cent), was never assimilated,but ratherretainedits own distinctiveculture
throughoutthe developmentof the state. In the middle years of the twentieth
century this culture served to define the boundariesof the emergent comprador
class, which mediated the growing relationship between foreign capital and
indigenous labourto its own considerableadvantage. There resulted a society
which, though nominallyfree from colonialdomination,was markedlycolonialin
its socialpresumptions,and in the dynamicof its politicallife.
Initially, the stabilizationof these relations was achieved by coercive means,
but, given the overwhelmingnumericalsuperiorityof the subjecttribes3and the
2. See, for example, M. Fraenkel, Tribeand Class in Monrovia (OUP, 1964), J. G. Liebenow,
Liberia:the evolutionof privilege (Cornell, 1969), ChristopherClapham,Liberia and Sierra Leone
(Cambridge,1976), and M. Lowenkopf, Politicsin Liberia(Stanford, 1976).
3. The word 'tribe' had a widespread usage in pre-coup Liberia, and did not necessarily carry
derogatoryimplications. It is this usage which I refer to when I use the word 'tribe' or one of its
derivativesin this paper.
POLITICS AS RITUAL 481
5. See here M. Staniland,'Single Party Regimes and Political Change:the PDCI and Ivory Coast
Politics', in C. Leys (ed.), Politicsand Changein DevelopingCountries(Cambridge,1969).
6. For a more detailed discussion of the place of such 'rules' in the process of government in
Liberia, see Clapham,Liberiaand Sierra Leone.
484 AFRICAN
AFFAIRS
and hence both susceptible to pressure emanating from the local-level, and
protective of its interests. Like all ideologies, this was a partialinterpretationof
realitymasqueradingas a total one, but, like all ideologiesalso, it was a view more
easily supported by positive evidence than refuted by contradictions. And the
fact that these 'rules' provided, at best, very uncertainprescriptionsfor action
paradoxicallyaccentuated their incorporativepower, for so long as there was
some degree of congruence between myth and reality, it could always be held
that the benefits of accepting the system and maximizinggains within it by
adherence to the apparentlyestablished structure of rules would outweigh the
risks of outright opposition. Notably, however, such incorporation was
achieved at minimalcost to the regime and involved minimalconstraintupon its
future actions.
Because so much of the energies of the administrativecadres were expended
in the pursuit of individualinterests, in contexts which reinforced their com-
petitive relationshipwith their peers, there was also a very high degree of self-
regulation in regional affairs. Indeed, the amount of political intrigue at the
local level was often remarkable,as was the willingness of apparentlydisen-
franchizedhinterlandersto involve the centralauthoritiesin their own concerns.
This was, then, a highly managed system, brittle to the extent to which it
depended upon stabilityat the centre, but nevertheless stronglyintegrated and
with an importantideologicalas well as coercivecomponentin its structure.
It is in the context of this patrimonialimage of governmentin Liberiathat the
phenomenonof the presidentialinterventionmust be understood.
ThePresidentialIntervention
The direct involvementof the Presidentin the affairsof the hinterlandregions
has tended to be seen as an innovation of William Tubman, though in fact
Tubman merely consolidatedand developed an establishedadministrativepro-
cedure (which was in turn modifiedand extended by his successor). In orderto
appreciatethe terms of this personalinvolvement,it must be recognizedthat, in
Liberia, the conventionalboundaries between the three arms of government,
executive, judiciary, and legislature, were practically-speaking,all but non-
existent. At least since the incumbencyof Tubman (though possibly for many
years before that), the legislature and judiciary were subordinated to the
executive, particularlyto the presidency, and the extent of this subordination
went far beyond the provisionsof the Constitution(itself a very unreliableguide
to the practice of government in Liberia). So great, indeed, was the sub-
servience of these two to the interests of the political centre that, to all intents
and purposes, they figured (at least with regard to matters of political signifi-
cance) merely as subsidiaryarms of the True Whig Party. One evident conse-
quence of this subordinationwas to grant to the President almost unfettered
judicialpowers.
POLITICSAS RITUAL 485
the conflict between his need for (1) the support of the old elite, who were
unwillingto yield more of their own powers and (2) more flexibilityin dealing
with new contenders for influence if the potential opposition were to be
suppressed. Ideally, educated tribal people and trade union leaders who
were admittedinto the system would abide by its rules, and the conservative
old guard would reduce their hostility to assimiles who had accepted their
rules, as well as their values and behaviour.lo
Politicsas Ritual?
Sociological understandingof the phenomenon of ritual, as Mary Douglas
observes,1 has been inhibitedby a widespreadtendency to define its compassin
terms which apply more accurately to the topic of religion than to ritual per
se. For the most part, the characterizationof 'ritual' is not really held to be
problematicat all; its definition, as it were, emerges by default, as the active
component of an analytically prior system of religious beliefs. This pre-
occupation with the phenomenon of religion to the detriment of ritual (qua
ritual)can clearlybe relatedto the historicalcircumstancesof the developmentof
the discipline of social anthropology,and, specifically,to its traditionalconcern
with the metaphysics of societal change. So pervasive indeed has been this
theoreticaltendency that even those whose work in all other respects represents
a rejectionof the terms of the establisheddebate, still tend to fall back upon con-
ventionaldichotomiesat the definitionallevel. Witness, for example, Horton's
definition of ritual as the 'approachto mystical powers'," a view which surely
carries with it an implicit acceptance of the scientific/instrumentalversus
ritual/mysticalcontrast, of which Horton has himself been a leading critic; or
Goody's definitionof ritualas a 'categoryof standardizedbehaviourin which the
10. Ibid, pp. 165-6.
11. M. Douglas, Purityand Danger (Harmondsworth,1970), p. 81.
12. R. Horton, 'Ritual Man in Africa', Africa 34 (1964), p. 101.
POLITICSAS RITUAL 489
of a static social order in the face of forces acting for its dissolution. For this
would be to ignore the fact that the needs of the regime were not defined only in
relation to the established structure, but also by the necessity of maintaining
controlover the processes of politicalchange.
Compatiblewith Douglas'sconcernwith these systematizingfunctions is A. P.
Cohen's view of ritual, also in instrumentalterms, as 'formalized behaviour
which has the effect of imposing some sort of normative order on social
relations'.17 This interpretationclearly has something in common with that
of Radcliffe-Brown, though lacking the latter's structural-functionalistpre-
sumptions. Its merits in the present context derive from the fact that,
minimalistas it is, it is a view which neverthelessserves to emphasizethe political
rationaleof ritual performances,in attributingnormativevalue to what are, at
heart, partisanimperatives.
In other terms also, there are affinitiesbetween conventionalritualevents and
the interventionswhich are the subject of this paper. Garfinkel'sanalysislsof
the conditionsfor successful status degradationsis of obvious relevance, insofar
as these interventions usually proceeded through the medium of a personal
denunciation,and, in a more generalframe of reference, Gluckman'sthesis con-
cerning the sociologicalrationale of rites de passage'9is also applicable in the
present context, where role segregationis often a majortheme. And finally,one
might refer to Turner'sdiscussionof the contrastingcircumstancesin which jural
and ritual mechanisms of public redress may be brought into play.20 Jural
machinery,Turner contends, tends to be invokedwhere both partiesto a dispute
appeal to a commonnorm or, if normsconflict, where these normsare arranged
in a clearly accepted hierarchy. Ritual mechanisms,on the other hand, tend to
be invoked where fundamental norms are challenged or where conflicts are
expressed at a relatively deep social level.21 In its original context, the
exposition of this hypothesis is confined within the structural-functionalistpre-
sumptionsof Turner'searlywork, and is concernedwith a sociologicalanalysisof
the circumstancesof witchcraftand related accusationsin a rural district of N.
Rhodesia (Zambia). But shorn of its functionalistbias, the hypothesis may be
applied to the Liberiantrials. For, by implication,Turner's thesis applies not
only to contrastingconventional'judicial'and 'ritual'situations, but also to the
relative weighting of mechanisms of conflict resolution within one social
situation. In the latter instance the thesis also has taxonomic implications.
Thus, in the present context, it might be suggested that jural mechanismswill
tend to predominate in situations where the validity of particular norms is
acceptedby the collectivityas a whole, while ritualmechanismswill predominate
17. A. P. Cohen, TheManagementof Myths (Manchester, 1975), p. 15.
18. H. Garfinkel, 'Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies', American Journal of
Sociology51 (1956).
19. H. M. Gluckman, Essayson the Ritualof Social Relations(Manchester, 1962).
20. V. W. Turner, Schismand Continuityin an African Society(Manchester, 1957).
21. Ibid, pp. 122 ff
POLITICS AS RITUAL 491
Case 3: TheKwiahbloCouncil
A criticalelement in the legitimationof the regime of WilliamTolbert which
succeeded that of W. V. S. Tubman on his death in 1971, lay in the decision to
democratize the selection procedure for membership of the House of
Representatives. This was combined with an informalstipulationthat, unless
the centralgovernmentdeemed otherwise, nomineesshould normallybe citizens
of the constituencies they were to represent. The first occasion on which the
new procedure was to be used was in the national congressionalelections of
1975. The actualmechanicsof the electoralprocess need not concern us here,
though it shouldbe said that the change was less radicalthanit initiallyappeared,
for the governmentstill retainedtight controlover the finalchoice of candidates,
and the post of Congressman,in any case, carriedlittle actualpower.
Though presented, in the usual fashion,as yet furtherproof of the President's
far-sightedness and benevolence, it would seem that this innovationhad been
largely forced upon the governmentby the need to make some public accommo-
dation to the demandsof the increasinglyvocal indigenouselites. It would seem
also that the central governmenthoped, by making this limited concession, to
preempt any demands for further and more fundamentalreform. There was,
for example, no evidence that the apparent democratization of selection
procedurewas to be accompaniedby any concessionto the hinterlandof the right
to formulate policy, and certainly, the introduction, through the electoral
process, of local resources into the arenas of central competition, in the
furtherance of interests not defined by the regime, was still absolutely
proscribed.
In the districtin which I worked, however, this undoubtedlyoccurred. The
contest for the place on the party ticket soon resolved into a straight fight
between the local District Commissioner,an elitist candidatewith strongcentral
connections,and a clerk who, though employed by governmentand by no means
a radical in his political philosophy, came over as a populist and anti-
establishmentcandidatewith a strong 'tribal'appeal. The latter received the
nominationand was allowed (to the surprise of many) to take his place in the
House. It happened, however, that three months after this election, the
President was due to be confirmedin office for another term, an event which
traditionallysignalled the redeployment of administrativestaff on a national
scale. Under normal circumstances,this would have given the newly-elected
494 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
The KwiahbloCouncil:Analysis
Here again, it is as a ritual performance that this trial can be seen as
representative of a wider class of political events. The trial itself was a
logical outcome of pressures created by the Congressionalelection of the pre-
ceding months. The democratizationof the selection procedure, while in
accordancewith the establishedideology of governmentand a logical extension
of existing techniques of incorporation,generated majorconflicts between the
demands of ideology and the interests of the regime. Thus, the (partial)
dissociationof the selection procedure from the constraintsof patronageat the
centre conflictedwith the requirementthat local-level politics should not involve
the mobilization of tribal resources independently of the interests of the
regime. The demands of patronageat the local level conflictedboth with the
demandsof patronageat the centre and with the requirementthat claimsarising
from the election should be made only within the established structure of
authorityrelationssupportiveof the state. The latterin turn conflictedwith the
precedents created by previous concessions to the local level of an influence in
government affairs (cf. the cocoa-fraud affair). And all these threatened to
expose the central contradictionin the Liberianpolitical system-between the
interestsof a rulingclass largelyidentifiableas ethnically'Americo-Liberian'and
a subjugatedclasscomprisingthe hinterland'tribal'population.
The tensions created by these conflictingdemandswere brought to a head in
the Superintendent'sCourtCase in Kwiahblo. In this, it soon becameclear that
the initial defendantwould be supportedby the central government. This was
not inevitablein the context of centralgovernment/locallevel relations,although
it was stronglyfavoured by the circumstancesin which the complaintshad been
brought before the court. There followed a trial which served both as a
ceremonyof statusdegradationand as a reintegrativeritualin which the divisions
expressed in the election were symbolicallyexpunged. This ritualperformance
also served to demarcateboundariesin the relationsbetween the governmentand
the people--to separateout and validatethe roles and statuseswhich the govern-
ment found it expedient to support, and to sanctifythese by instillingin them the
legitimacy of the public consensus. These boundaries were very carefully
defined so as to involve the least disruptionof those aspects of the ideology of
governmentwhich were not directlyaffectedby the events in question.
Crucial to the efficacy of the ceremony of status degradationwas the lack of
clarity in the boundariesof the denunciationand in the locus of 'blame'. The
potential target for the denunciationincluded not only the 'accused'(for so they
had become), but also the public gatheredto witness the case, and beyond this
the whole population of the district besides. For much of the proceedings,
there was no clear conception among the assembly as to the identities of the
parties to the dispute, nor as to where the boundaries of involvement were
drawn--the implicationbeing rather that it was the whole communitythat was
potentially on trial. The manner in which the boundariesof guilt were con-
496 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
Conclusion
In this article, I have argued that the phenomenon of the political trial in
Liberiamust be seen as a product of conflicts deriving from the existence of a
strong bureaucraticideology within the confines of a totalitarianstate. These
trials, it was suggested, functionedprimarilyas ritualperformances,the effect of
which was to sustainthe ascendencyof the interests of the regime in a situation
of constantpoliticalflux. The ethnic distinctivenessof the core in the pre-coup
period was clearlyan importantcomponentof the situationin question, for it was
this which gave rise to the dominanceof incorporation/conservation as means of
political control.
It remains only to consider to what extent the incidence and patterning of
these interventionsmight have been affected by the circumstancessurrounding
the 1980coup.
With regardto the period immediatelyprior to the coup, the limited evidence
presentlyavailablesuggeststhat as the legitimacyof Americo-Liberianrule came
under increasing challenge, the incidence of Presidential councils also
POLITICSAS RITUAL 497