Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone

A study of Sierra Leone which shows how an African ruler manages corruption that destroys the state bureaucracy.

William Reno (Author)

9780521103473, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 December 2008

244 pages, 4 maps 18 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.36 kg

William Reno provides a powerful, scholarly yet shocking account of the inner workings of an African state. He focuses upon the ties between foreign firms and African rulers in Sierra Leone, where politicians and warlords use private networks that exploit relationships with international businesses to buttress their wealth and so extend their powers of patronage. This permits them to expand the reach of their governments in unorthodox ways, but in the process they undermine the bureaucracty of their own states. Dr Reno suggests that as the post-colonial state is eroded there is a return to the enclave economies and private armies that characterised the pre-colonial and colonial arrangements between European businessmen or administrators and some African political figures.

1. Informal markets and the shadow state: some theoretical issues
2. Colonial rule and the foundations of the shadow state
3. Elite hegemony and the threat of political and economic reform
4. Reining in the informal market: the early Stevens' years, 1968–1973
5. An exchange of services: state power and the diamond business
6. The shadow state and international commerce
7. Foreign firms, economic 'reform' and shadow state power
8. The changing character of African sovereignty.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], International relations [JPS], Central government [JPQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], African history [HBJH]