Nations without States: Globalisation, States, and Identity Conflicts in Postcolonies

Mohammad J. Kuna
Department of Sociology
Usmanu Danfodiyo University
Sokoto-Nigeria

Nations without States: Globalization, States, and Identity Conflicts in Postcolonies

Abstract
Although there is a significant body of literature on the relationship between globalisation
and identity conflicts, discourse has often been locked in the binary and theoretically sterile
debates of the merits or demerits of the global process. Some of this discourse no doubt
illuminates the major transformations in states and political communities in recent times; most
however overlook processes of the interpenetration of the global and the local, and the way
this dialectic radically reconfigures states/political communities. Deepening and expanding
the vertical integration of postcolonies into an ever-growing world market, globalisation exerts
pressure on the postcolonial state as a sovereign, territorially bounded political entity not only
from above (supra-national organizations), but also from below (sub/infra-national
movements). How this dialectic unfolds/manifests itself in various historically specific
contexts will be a major determinant of the nature and form of the future state in postcolonies.
States are however, also fighting back, as demonstrated in their expanding role in broad social
and economic management requiring the imposition of severe anti-people neo-liberal reforms.
Underlying the whole intensely contradictory process are attempts at the reconfiguration and
reinvention of postcolonial states and political communities. The broad features of this
reconfiguration appear underpinned by a struggle between inherited state projects/discourses
reinforced by neo-liberal ideologies of globalism on the one hand, and an increasing (dis)array
of forces challenging these projects and discourses on the other. This paper argues that
identity conflicts in postcolonies are consequences of the dialectic of global flows and local
closures, of attempts to reconfigure state power, and of the reinvention of political
communities in the face of deepening radical uncertainties arising from uneven
internationalisation.

Nations without States: Globalisation, States, and Identity Conflicts in Postcolonies

Throughout the country...ethnic minorities are in ferment. They are striving to
shake off age-long usurpations, to cast off the yoke of distant suzerains and to take
their own destinies in their own hands. This fermentis what has been subsumed
under the national questionTo pretend that it does not exist is to be deluded. The
nationalists faced not an altogether different task, though they had to respond to
two major pressures in their attempts to create a community. They had not only to
invent a community that would seem to be, and in certain significant respects was
ideologically opposed to colonial rule, the nationalists also had to make sure that
such an opposition to colonial rule while striking a chord with their own peoples,
does not thereby question the colonial order or its basis. Thus nationalists had to
put across to two antagonistic audiences - the colonizer and the colonized - the
notion of political community in which, on the one hand either a historical past is
recreated, or invented anew, and on the other one which would very much be
acceptable to the colonizer. In this dual conception of the community nationalists
sought not just to replace colonial rule, but also to legitimate their rule if not to the
approval of both antagonistic forces, then at least to the approval of the colonizer.
After all, the general adage is seek ye the political kingdom first.
__________The Guardian Editorial, Lagos, February 9, 1993

Introduction
Throughout Africa and in the postcolonial world, the ferments to which the opening
quotation refers (contestable assertions therein notwithstanding), are fast becoming central in
challenging the state and in reconfiguring postcolonial political communities. From low
intensity conflicts to systematic exterminations of the Other, communal, religious, and ethic
violence over membership are increasingly assuming dominance in the framing/determination
of political demands/claims. One only needs reflect on the intensity and scale of destruction of
human lives in Bosnia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi as well as Nigeria in
contemporary history. The prominence of these conflicts is reflected in renewed scholarly
concerns with questions of membership: citizenship (Anderson: 1983; Tilly: 1995; van
Steenbergen: 1994; and Werbner: 2002), nation-/state-hood (Simon: 1997; Smith: 1991;
Thompson: 2001; Tolz: 1998; Biswas: 2002), ethnicity (Brubaker and Laitin: 1998; Bigo:
1998; Friedman: 1998; Riggs: 1998; Lake and Rothchild: 1998; Olzak and Tsutsui: 1998;
Eller: 1999 and Kapferer: 2001; ), identity (Wendt: 1994; Smith: 1991; Geschiere and Birgit:
1998; Jenkins: 2000 and Merrett: 2001), and religion (Schiller and Bambang: 2002; Testas:
2002).

For many, the statist colonial legacies and discourses that sought to unify pluralistic
postcolonial states through the obliteration of difference (Laasko and Olukoshi: 1989; Kuna:
1999) are being increasingly interrogated by the contradictions arsing from the contemporary
interface of the global and the local.

It is these contradictions that are un-mixing

heterogeneous and forcibly mixed societies by colonial encounters (Brubaker: 1995), leading
to the ferments alluded to in the opening quotation. It is against this background that this
paper argues that identity conflicts in postcolonies are consequences of the dialectic of 'global
flows' and 'local closures' and of attempts to reconfigure inherited statist projects and political
communities in the face of deepening radical uncertainties arising from uneven
internationalisation.
Surveying the literature on the impact of globalisation on states and political
communities reveals two broad views. On the one hand are arguments that hold that financial,
cultural, technological, and information networks have led to a more closely integrated global
society that has rendered/ is rendering the very idea of the nation-state and associated
discourses, dominant since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, pass. Driven by neo-liberal
economic and political programmes states, the argument goes, are moving towards greater
integration in a de-territorialized global context wherein age-old barriers of geography,
identity and culture are/ will be superseded. On the other, opposing arguments hold that on the
contrary, one of the most significant things about globalisation is its reinforcement/creation of
various forms of particularisms. Rather than loosening age old boundaries of territory, culture
and identity, globalisation in fact rigidifies them. By creating anew or reinforcing ethnoreligious, cultural and political boundaries, globalisation loosens, as it were, the ties that
bound nation-states, contesting the very bases of membership, and thus generating intense and
deadly conflicts (Lake and Rothchild: 1998), an idea captured most clearly by the notion of
nations without states (Guibernau: 1998).

This paper examines the impact of these processes on states and political communities in
post colonial societies in seven main sections. Section two lays out the argument of the paper.
Section three discusses the concept of globalisation and its historical trajectories. Section four
examines the impact of globalisation on contemporary states, noting that while there has been
obvious erosion in the autonomy and sovereignty of the postcolonial state that may have
radically altered its stateness, evidence suggests that rather than decline, this perhaps
constitutes a complex process of reconfiguration. Section five takes up more closely one of
the issues most indicative of state (im) potence: the rise of sub/infra-state forms of
mobilization within national boundaries and how these affect state capabilities. Section six
examines, in the context of the foregoing, the strengths and limits of the Nigerian state, and
focuses on the impact of globalisation on the state within the context of the unfolding process
of the ethnocisation of conflicts. Section seven concludes by suggesting trends and options
open to the state in the current global era.
The Argument
An identity is a distinguishing label that objectively exists, is subjectively felt, and
enables its bearers experience individually and collectively a sense of solidarity. As a label, it
can be assumed by, or imposed on bearers. It is also a prism by which objects, people, and
collectivities are sorted, organized, mapped and ordered into meaningful understandable units.
Identities are socially constructed, dynamic, and multifaceted (Jenkins: 1997, 2000).
Subjectively, identification with a category is simultaneously a definition of self, so that
groups come to identify themselves in ethnic, religious, occupational, national or other terms.
Objectively, individuals do not identify in general, but do so in relation to others definitions of
themselves, and to the boundaries implied in such definitions. The question then is what is the
historical origin of these categorizations and under which conditions do they assume
dominance in framing of political claims.

As defining categories, identities often form the basis of social action.

They are

mobilizing frames that could be used, depending on the specific historical circumstance, as
vehicles for framing/determining claims. One of the most important approaches to identity
conflicts draws attention to the notion of radical uncertainty (Appadurai: 1998). Focusing
essentially on notions of doubt, uncertainty and indeterminacy as integral characteristics of
postmodernity, it argues that given the growing multiplicity, contingency, and apparent
fungibility of identities available to persons in the contemporary world, there is a growing
sense of radical social uncertainty about people, situations, events, norms, and even
cosmologies (Bauman: 1997; 906). These uncertainties arise from, and are reinforced by
forces generated by globalization and the resistance to it across the postcolonial world.
(Breiceo-Len and Zubillaga: 2002). Moreover, weakened states, the decline of left-wing
and ascendance of neoliberal economic/political ideologies as mobilizing frames (Brubaker
and Laitin: 1989), growing economic refugees and internally displaced persons, increasing
systemic forms of pauperization and criminalization have brought to bear intense pressure on
erstwhile homogenising discourses and projects across the postcolonial world. State-building
efforts were themselves part of the general framework for the creation of categories, only now
becoming more politically active mobilizers in the current historical conjuncture.
Radical uncertainty is largely anchored in these state policies which, through
documentation, classification, and bounding (censuses, partitions, constitutions, and the
demarcation of boundaries) create dormant mobilizing categories. Commenting specifically
on India, Cohn (1987) shows how counting became a crucial mechanism of control not only
in economic, but also in political, cultural and religious spheres of life. Thus as in other
British colonies, administrative techniques of documentation and classification, counting
constructed the bases for the othering of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus that became powerful
frames for political mobilization (Chakravarty: 1995b; Sundar 2000). Similarly, Margo and

Fienberg (2000) report that until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, provisions of the US
1789 constitution institutionalised race as an official classification for the purposes of
congregational allocations of funds. Finally, the colonial state in Nigeria created, through
boundaries physical and social processes of othering between and within geographical
areas that constitute(d) the major frames for political action (Kuna: 2005).

But radical

uncertainty is underpinned by the nature and structure of the state in the new global era.
The state has more than ever before become an arena of intense contestations that focus
on its very origins wherein competing groups within and outside its boundaries attempt to
redefine its power. These attempts create competing and criss-crossing pockets of influence
often within, but also across national territories that tend to weaken it in certain important
respects even as they reinforce it in others. It is in the weakening of the states legitimacy,
mobilisational capacities, collapsing social infrastructure, heightening levels of economic and
social exclusion, and in the absence of broad national platforms for framing competing
claims/demands, that sub/infra-national identities as powerful mechanisms/ideological
referents for political action could be located. This apparent de-centring of power seems to
have generated gestalts or fields in which, though the state is still a dominant player (cf Odi,
Zaki Biam, or indeed the imposition of economic reforms), it nevertheless seems to have lost a
considerable portion of its power to contenders that command a greater degree of legitimacy
than it could. In extreme cases, sub/infra national contenders act like states within a state, and
though formally still constituent units of the larger body, they have managed to appropriate,
and in some cases even supplanted the state in the provision of critical services, particularly
security (cf The Oodua Peoples Congress in the South-West and to a lesser extent, the Bakasi
Boys in the South-East). Where infra-national organizations takeover roles such as the security
of state officials (cf the takeover of the Presidents personal security by the OPC on a state visit
to Ogun State) or traffic control, we can begin to fathom the depth of the states crisis in

postcolonies. It is within this broad theoretical context that I wish to examine the rising spate
of identity conflicts in postcolonial societies with specific reference to Nigeria.
Globalisation: Conceptions, Trajectories, Debates
Globalisation, like many other social science concepts, is ''contested.'' There is virtually
no agreement as to its meaning much less a consensus about its theoretical value. From both
the left and right ideological spectrums, it has drawn a great deal of criticism for its
methodological inconsistencies, empirical vagueness, theoretical imprecision and ahistoricity
(Geschiere and Meyer: 1998; Kelly: 1998; Lowy: 1998; Kennedy: 1998; Held and McGrew:
2000; Therborn: 2000). According to Appadurai (1998:907-908), globalization
both as a socio-economic formation and as a term of folk ideology in journalism and in the
corporate world marks a set of transitions in the global political economy since the 1970s,
in which multinational forms of capitalist organization began to be replaced by
transnational, flexible, and irregular forms of organization, as labour, finance, technology,
and technological capital began to be assembled in ways that treated national boundaries as
mere constraints or fictions [These transnational corporations] have increasingly begun to
produce recombinant arrangements of labour, capital, and technical expertise which produce
new forms of law, management, and distribution[That has led to a] decline in the
sovereignty of national states in respect of the workings of global capital. These changes with accompanying changes in law, accounting, patenting, and other administrative
technologies - have created "new markets for loyalty" and called models of territorial
sovereignty into question.
Seen thus, it implies a range of processes, institutions, actors, and discourses that include
the mobility and flexibility of capital, labour, and symbolic representations; increasing
challenges to the nation-state and the disaggregation of sovereignty arising from subnational,
transnational and supranational forces (Biswas: 2002); spatialization of the social (referring to
the flattening of social processes [where] the complexity of qualities, issues of depth and
shallowness, and the dialectics of contradictions tend to get lost Therborn: 2000; 154);
emergence of ever-widening, multi-pronged, and intermeshed global production and
consumption networks; rise of new surveillance structures required to handle growing
complexities legally and extra-legally(Gessner: 2000); and the deterritorialization of culture

(referring to the growing inability of states to control sociality within national boundaries,
Therborn: 2000).
These processes, institution, agents and activities to which globalization refers are
embedded within broader discourses. Therborn (2000: 151-2), identifies at least five such
discourses: competition economics, whose major focus is the analysis of the processes and
patterns of global competition and its effects on capital, labour, and states (McNally: 1998;
Bairoch: 2000; Castells: 2000a; Dickens: 2000; Garrett: 2000); uneven internationalisation,
whose main focus is the analyses of the processes of the vertical integration of backward social
formations through trade, international finance, technology, and culture (Hoogvelt: 2000;
Castells: 2000b; Fieldhouse: 2000); state (im)potence, that asks whether, and in what ways
globalisation strengthens or weakens state power within and outside national boundaries
(Guibernau: 1999; Giovanni and Beverly: 1999; Bull: 2000; Mann: 1993, 2000; Strange:
2000); cultural analyses, whose focus is on global cultural flows, communications and
symbolic representations (Eller: 1999; Guibernau: 1999; Pensky: 2000; Sassen: 2000;
Kapferer: 2001; Merrett: 2001); and finally, planetary ecology that focuses on the analyses of
humankind and global society as part of a single planetary ecosystem (Therborn: 2000).
Looking at these broad discourses, there is some justification in the criticisms against the
validity and precision of the concept. To begin with, all these processes and concerns have
historically been integral to the development of capitalism.

There is thus an historical

dimension to globalisation (Kelly: 1998; Bairoch: 2000; Wood: 1998; Mszros: 1998; Hirst
and Thompson: 2000a), and that with reference specifically to international trade and the
global accumulation process, the concept might be misleading in so far as it seeks to capture
processes that have been happening for 500 years (Wallerstein: 2000; 249) as if they were
new. Some have even pushed its historical trajectory further back to the series of waves that
began with the diffusion of world religions and the establishment of transcontinental

civilizations since the fourth 4th century C.E. (Therborn: 2000). As such, the observations
about the impact of the current expansion of global capitalism: compression of time and space;
mobility of capital, labour, and the speed of symbolic representations across national
boundaries; contradictory process of the homogenization and fragmentation of societies;
simultaneous strengthening and weakening of nation-states and so on are different largely in
scale and intensity alone. Rather than altogether new phenomena therefore, these have been
integral to the continuous if uneven, development of inter-nationalisation (Hirst and
Thompson quoted in Kennedy: 1998). It is the ahistoricisation in most of the conceptions of
globalization that re-presents an otherwise old and ongoing process, with a renewed vigour to
be sure, as new.
Some scholars go further to suggest that even this re-presentation is only partially
correct. Panitch (1998) argues that a significant number of the catalogue of effects attributed
to globalisation is conjectural. The most significant of these conjectures include the notion
of the ascendancy of capitalism, the triumph of neo-liberalism, the broadening of
international class formation, and more specifically, transnational integration among capitalist
classes. The notion of the ascendancy of capitalism has been challenged on the grounds that
the evidence simply does not support that view for among other things, the rapidly increasing
levels of poverty and social exclusion [are spreading] to all parts of the globe, and the decline
in the parasitic activities of global finance markets all indicate patterns of collapse than of
ascendancy (Kennedy: 1998; 3-4). Nevertheless, it is this ascendancy thesis and its correlate,
the triumph of liberalism that forms the basis of the notions of a global culture and global
village. This is the thesis behind the McDonaldization and Coca-Colazation of the world, a
thesis aptly captured in McMichaels (1996: 4) observation that coca cola is no longer the cry
of imperialist domination, but the nectar of universal prosperity.

10

However, it is difficult to accede to the thesis of coca cola being the nectar of universal
prosperity especially with the increasing vertical integration of postcolonial societies into the
world system. Is there such a thing as a global culture, and have these processes created a
homogeneous global landscape? As Geschiere and Meyer (1998) correctly observed, the
notion of a homogeneous global culture is only a partial picture of the current transformation
process. There certainly is a sense in which goods and cultural representations are uniformly
perceived; it is precisely this uniformity however, that often generates strong identifications
with local cultures in a way that reinforces and rigidifies, rather than dissolves them. There is
thus no unidirectional movement; what obtains is a dialectic of flux and fix wherein global
cultural flows are confronted with local cultural closures and where the homogenizing
influences of global flows are contradicted in the re-affirmation of cultural identities and
authenticities. Thus,
it has become increasingly clear that this uniformization generates an emphasis on cultural
difference. Often it is the process of globalisation itself that appears to lead to a hardening
of cultural contrasts or even to engender new oppositions [and] as the global and local are
two faces of the same movement, paradoxically, the culturally homogenizing tendencies of
globalisation imply continued or even reinforced cultural heterogeneityThere is much
empirical evidence that peoples awareness of being involved in open-ended global flows
seems to trigger a search for fixed orientation points and action frames, as well as
determined efforts to affirm old and construct new boundaries (Geschiere and Meyer: 1998;
602).
There is neither irony nor paradox in this process, for capitalist development has
historically been characterised by this contradiction. Globalisation is not just a process of the
levelling of cultural, social, economic and other differences. It is an inherently fragmenting
process clearly demonstrated in the concentration of wealth on the one hand and the deepening
of un-even development on the other; in the growth of investment and capital flows versus its
divestment and capital flight; in the heightening of deadly intra-state conflicts; and in attempts
to, through these, reconfigure political communities (Eller: 2002). And it is these last two
issues, the question of the impact of globalisation on states and of the conflicts arising

11

therefrom that are of interest to this paper. It is my opinion that we can hardly begin to
properly problematize identity conflicts in postcolonies without first coming to terms with how
the state manages the dialectic of the global and the local. The analysis of how well or
poorly states have done this and their implications is the task of the next two sections.
Globalization and the State
One of the most hotly debated issues in the globalisation literature is gauging its impact
on the nation-state. Arguments vary widely, but two broad positions can be identified: those
that argue that state power has been eroded by global processes, and those that hold that its
power has been reinforced. Proponents of the erosion thesis contend that globalisation has
unleashed certain forces external and internal that have radically affected the ability of the
nation-state to exercise its traditional roles. Both have challenged the notion of the nationstate as a body (a) having a monopoly over the use and deployment of force; (b) in which
absolute sovereignty is vested; (c) having a presence over set boundaries and (d) controlling
sociality within these boundaries.

These external forces are complimented by internal

challenges, the most prominent of which are various forms of sub-nationalisms that often, but
not always take ethnic, religious, and other infra-state frames. Both forces challenge the
states legitimacy and authority thereby undermining its ability to impose its presence within,
and sometimes even outside its internationally recognized borders.
Opponents of the erosion thesis argue that globalisation has in fact reinforced state-power
and that its disengagement from sites traditionally associated with it should neither be
confused with weakness, nor conflated with its attempt to redefine a more contemporary role.
This disengagement is in itself a central requirement of the new global era, for it gives the state
a greater supervisory role and power to dictate new rules of accumulation, to more radically
and unilaterally intervene in hedging off capitalist crises, and to reorganize or reposition class

12

forces in the attempt to reorder the rules of accumulation. Let us examine the arguments more
closely.
State Impotence

The idea of weak or impotent states organizations that have the juridical properties of
states but lack their empirical attributes is not a new one (Jackson and Roseberg: 1982).
What is rather new is that the nature and capabilities of such states now have to be analysed
within the context of globalisation. Many commentators have drawn attention to how the
mobility of capital and labour, the role of transnational corporations, the rise of a global
culture; the expansion of new information technologies, the emergence of new organizational
and surveillance structures and on the whole, the extraordinary penetration of economic
market relations into almost all aspects of human life criss-cross territorial boundaries, making
it impossible for the state to control certain important processes taking place within its borders
(Camilleri and Falk: 1992; 4). Moreover, the proliferation of and growth in the power of
supra-national organizations (United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank,
World Trade Organization etc), the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and former Communist
nations in Eastern Europe, the impact of instantaneous events and symbolic representations on
local and national publics, and the renewed vigour of transnational corporations are posed as
evidence of the erosion of the power of the nation state (Guibernau: 1999; Camilleri and Falk:
1992).
The nation-state is said to be in deep crisis that has at lest two crucial implications. The
first is a crisis of rationality reflected in the states inability to fulfil its traditional functions,
and second, a crisis of legitimacy reflected in its inability to achieve massive loyalty (Held:
1995:136).

Both underscore the growing assertiveness of infra-/sub-state forms of

mobilization and their role in challenging the state by invoking the very principles upon which
it is based. As Held (1995: 136) observed,

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the number of groups which claim the principle of democratic legitimacy when demanding
the right to control their political destiny is increasing. At the same time, the relevance and
content of this principle is being altered by the intensification of globalisation processes.
New patterns of local and regional government and development have emerged, and that
while national sovereignty, even in regions with overlapping and divided authority
structures, has not been wholly subverted, political domains clearly exist with criss-crossing
loyalties, conflicting interpretations of rights and duties, and interconnected structures which
displace notions of sovereignty as an illimitable, indivisible and exclusive form of public
power.
Some of these challenges arise from and are anchored in the impact of neo-classical
economic/political programmes that insist on down-sizing and limiting this states role to one
of the chief superintendent of capitalist development (Panitch: 1998). Historically, such
doctrines pronounced the state a fetter to the development of capitalism, a position that has
been progressively championed by the Breton Woods Institutions. Indeed, the various neoliberal economic reforms imposed on postcolonies by these institutions are re-affirmations of
this perceived new role. At least in postcolonial societies, rolling back the state means the
imposition of structural adjustment programmes. Such programmes as we will see in the case
of Nigeria deepen processes of marginalization, challenging some of the major discourses and
projects that hitherto legitimated the state.
The deepening marginalization of postcolonies reflected in rising poverty levels, and a
loosening of some of the inherited structures and discourses on which political communities
were built generates forces whose political claims, discourses and actions no longer find
anchor in broad national ideologies, but in micro-/infra-state forms of mobilization. These
forces make possible new imagined communities seeking to secede from the postcolony,
obtain regional autonomy, or restructure existing power arrangements perceived to be
defective. These newly imagined communities, constitute, or are perceived to constitute an
extreme case of 'nations' within broader 'states.'

Guibernau (1999: 2-6) holds that nations

without states are cultural communities that either once enjoyed or are now imagining a
separate political and/or cultural identity that is now being created, invoked, revitalized and

14

adapted. (Guibernau 1999:2-6) The invocation of historical memories or construction of new

ones to assert sub-state identities is of course not a new phenomenon in the history of state
formation (Anderson: 1983). What makes this different from earlier historical patterns is the
twin-pressures converging on state power, namely those from below (sub-/infra-state) and
those from above (supra-state). The loosening of the power of the state over constituent units
and the increasing assertion of the autonomy of these units reflects a process of the 'erosion of
civic culture,' i.e. the erosion from the state of hitherto broader national ties that held it
together.
In consequence, a good deal of the state legitimacy is lost, further weakening its ability
to re-order old or establish more inclusive parameters for political action. The state is thus
unable, in the current historical conjuncture, to create more inclusive national political
frameworks whose membership could transcend the exclusiveness of sub-national
particularisms.

The twin processes of the erosion and reinforcement of inclusive and

exclusive frameworks of political action now open a vast filed in which the capabilities of the
state come under challenge.

In a multi-ethnic society, the erosion of the legitimacy of

inclusive frameworks of political action serve to reinforce exclusive frames, and where the
state is pursuing neo-liberal policies that further entrench social and economic exclusion, infra
state movements then use more exclusionary forms of political action.
State Potence

There is however the other argument which holds that the power of the state has been
reinforced by globalisation.

Lindberg and Campbell (1990: 635-6) in their study of

organizational transformation in some major industrial concerns in the US (steel, automobile,

nuclear energy and telecommunications), demonstrate that the capacity to establish property
rights gives the state enormous powers to shape the institutional basis of the economy, order
social relations and, therefore, determine political struggles among classes. Property rights

15

define, determine and enforce the rules and conditions of the ownership and control of the
means of production, establishing relations between people, since one persons ownership and
control usually corresponds to anothers absence of ownership and control and in that way,
they define the institutional basis of power relations not only in the immediate process of
production, but also throughout society. State actions
Create pressures for change that lead actors to look for new forms of economic organization.
The state also assists, leads, or constrains the process of selecting new forms of economic
organization that emerge in response to these pressures, and it may or may not ratify these
new formsProperty rights not only create pressures for change that cause actors to look
for new organizational forms, but they also constrain and influence how actors select
different forms. The state creates pressure for change and constrains this selection process
not only as an actor but also as an institutional structure - a set of administrative, legislative,
and judicial organizations with responsibility for policy-making and implementation.
In addition to these, states still retain enormous powers in ordering peoples day-to-day
lives through taxation, censuses, travel/identification documents, and a whole range of other
administrative structures.

More specifically, a state is indispensable for capitalist

development, for it is the only ensemble capable of standing above society as it were, and of
supervising /imposing institutional and juridical structures necessary for accumulation. In this
sense, the imposition of various forms of liberal economic reforms in postcolonial societies
would have been impossible without a strong state.

Furthermore, state power has been

reinforced if only because states are the major architects of globalisation in so far as it is the
changes they made in the rules governing capital movements, investment, currency exchange,
and trade that permitted a new stage of global accumulation to come about. States 'set the
rules of the game in partnership with markets [they] tax, prohibit, punish, and to require
participationthe state's power to tax enables it to finance the provision of public goods; its
power to prohibit and punish enables it to protect personal safety and property rights; and its
power to require participation enables it to minimize free riding (Panitch: 1998:25). In this
sense, the states supervisory role over capital and labour have in fact been reinforced, for as it

16

charts new rules of accumulation it at the same time manages the fragmentation of labour.
While ensuring minimum conditions of accumulation, states do not withdraw from the
economy but restructure their relationship to it, reordering their apparatuses and the role each
plays in representing and regulating social actors and markets. Thus, the de-centring of power
itself and the means of force from state to non-state sectors, rather than an indication of
weakness, is actually part of the this reconfiguration of the state in the current dispensation. It
indicates a movement towards the privatisation of everything including violence, except in
instances where the corporate existence of the state itself is directly in question (Panitch:
1998:14).
In general therefore, it is more analytically fruitful to speak of the reconfiguration of state
power in the global era than of a sterile debate over its potency. This reconfiguration may
have forced the state to cede or devolve control of certain functions to other contenders. Thus
the decline in the functional capabilities of the state in everyday life has led to a flourishing of
sub-/infra state organizations that have sought to occupy some of the spaces it vacated.
However, globalisation has also expanded old and created newer sources of power that while
making the state less visible, at the same time makes it more intrusive in the (re) organisation
of economic and social life. The state in turn responds to these processes, acting on and
reacting to the various forces subnational, transnational, and supranational that impinge
and seek to influence or even usurp some of its functions. The central issue then becomes not
of state collapse but the way in which the state as currently constituted responds to and refracts
old and emergent tensions.
Globalisation and Infra-State Mobilization in Postcolonies
One of the most prominent challenges states and political communities face in the
postcolony is the tension between the global and the local. The decline in interstate and the
heightening of intrastate conflicts involving peoples and communities that came to be framed

17

in cultural, religious, or ethnic terms is one consequence of the impact of the contradictions of
the interface of global flows confront local closures (Eller: 1999). Although the dynamics
of this interface are empirical questions that must be examined in specific historical contexts,
scholars have drawn attention to a number of general trends. First, the emergence of a new
world order made more dominant by the collapse of soviet socialism and apartheid in South
Africa has generated two major pressures on states and political communities: pressure for
neo-liberal economic reforms and for the expansion of political spaces through
democratisation.

Indeed for many postcolonies, the imposition of neo-liberal economic

reforms began much earlier in the 1970s. Thus, neo-liberal economic reforms structural
adjustment and the New Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) in
Nigeria are part of the neo-liberal programme for economic and political reforms.
Second, the new world order also generated its own disorder, for the post-cold war era
has had a dramatic impact on the state.

More specifically, the collapse of left-right

ideological frameworks that constituted justificatory principles for wars and conflicts (interand intra state) since the 18th century radically affected the dynamics of violence and the state
capabilities in dealing with them. Moreover, diasporic communities are significant in helping
ethnic groups within national boundaries with various kinds of resources, and have no doubt in
a number of cases strengthened or helped popularise the demands of kin communities within
national boundaries (Brubaker and Laitin; 1998: 424).

Finally, the intensification and

intermeshing of global production centres; expansion of international financial networks

electronic trading; increasing speed of communication technology and the world wide
transmission of symbolic representations have also had tremendous impact on states and
political communities.
Both states and political communities had to adjust to these new forces in a way that has
radically altered political landscapes. For one thing, state power had to be reconfigured to

18

meet the new demands of contemporary global capitalist expansion.

State power was

reinforced by globalization in certain respects, particularly in its role as the superintendent of

the accumulation process. The imposition of neo-liberal adjustment programmes required a
strong state, although this role has to some extent eroded the states legitimacy. The erosion of
the states legitimacy considerably weakened its capabilities, and as it began to withdraw from
the provision of basic and critical social services (including security), other contenders began
to supplant it. These forces led to the weakening of national organizational and institutional
frameworks while at the same time reinforcing sub-/infra-state forms of social mobilization.
Thus central to the phenomenon of identity conflicts is the weakening of national and the
strengthening of sub-/infra- state frameworks of mobilisation for political action. Similarly,
the heated debates over fears of domination are directly linked to the insecurities emanating
from the deconstruction of a national and the (re) construction of a sub-national identity as
determined by the way both the state and political communities reacted to globalization. New
communities are being imagined within political and social spaces that contrast in the main,
with earlier national frames that are no longer imaginable, or at the very best, whose
discourses and practices have waned.
Radical Uncertainty and Identity Conflicts in Nigeria
For many observers, the state in Africa generally (with the possible exception of South
Africa), and its version in Nigeria specifically, there is a perceptible decline in the
functionality of the state in terms of capacity to deliver goods and services. The decline in the
states functional capability is no doubt a major de-legitimating factor.

This functional

disability has created a vacuum that was ostensibly to be filled by the organized private sector;
in most postcolonies however, the spaces vacated by the state were occupied by sub-state
forces, something that has intensified exclusionary forms of political action.

The

intensification and reinforcement of ethnic and primordial forms of identity could easily be

19

established across Nigeria. Throughout our cities, and in certain villages, a range of social
services hitherto provided by the state are now the preserve of ethnic or religious
organizations: hospitals, schools, transportation systems, and so on. More and more people
identify with their own communal organizations than with the state. The state functional
disability generates insecurities that has encouraged the ethnocisation of social relations.
These insecurities are manifest in the increasing and continuing economic pauperization
and marginalization of individuals and groups. On the individual level, it manifests itself in
individuals inability to secure basic necessities.

The increasing pauperization of the

population sharply contrasts with the increased wealth of a few individuals. Both classes are
unable to depend on the state for security, as manifest in increased residential fortifications, as
well as in the acquisition of personal arms by individuals. Very few would today doubt that
most houses in our cities closely resemble prisons.

The level of insecurity and fear is

widespread, for it is limited not just to cities, but in the countryside. In certain parts of the
country the Northeast, Anambra and Edo criminal gangs and armed bandits, some of whom
have connections to the state terrorize citizens at will. The failure of the state to secure life and
property reinforces group ties and identities as groups and individuals make alternate
provisions for their own security. People increasingly rely on narrower ethnic and primordial
identities in the absence of a larger, national frame. Primordial groups came to be compasses
for, and anchors of individual actions, and this heightens group categorization and social
difference. Violent intra and inter group conflicts then become normal mechanisms for the
resolution of social and political conflicts.
Conclusion
In general therefore, it does appear that the recurrence of identity conflict in
postcolonial societies has to be examined in the light of the complex interface between the
global and the local. Although identities are labels or categorizations that often serve as

20

powerful referents for political action, whether or not and by which process a specific label
becomes a mobilizing framework depends on historically specific conditions.

In the

postcolonies, a complex set of factors particularly since the late 1980s has generated
conditions of radical uncertainty and insecurity that not only challenged the basis of statist
postcolonial projects, but the have also provided avenues for framing conflicts through
sub-/infra-national prisms. Thus these forces constitute avenues through which newer forms
of political communities are being imagined, and in some cases created. The state in general,
rather than being weakened, is being reconfigured, and this reconfiguration may show the
direction the future nation state is tending towards.

21

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