The Royal African Society
Politics as Ritual: Rules as Resources in the Politics of the Liberian Hinterland Author(s): David Brown Reviewed work(s): Source: African Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 325 (Oct., 1982), pp. 479-497 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/722090 . Accessed: 07/08/2012 17:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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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.
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uniformly subjugated and disenfranchisedperiphery for half a century and more. It is of obvious relevance to ask how this stability was achieved, and indeed, this has been the dominant theme of virtually all political studies of Liberiapublishedto date.2 In this paper, I am concerned with only one aspect of the stabilizationof the regime in the pre-coup period:the phenomenonof the presidentialintervention in hinterlandaffairs. 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 livestock 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 AmericoLiberianimmigrantsin 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 combined 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.
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impoverishment of the state, it soon became apparent that the continued ascendancyof the settler elite could not be guaranteedby coercion alone, and thus coercion gradually gave way to incorporation as a means of political control. The primaryfocus of incorporationwas the hinterlandadministration. The significantimprovementin the tone of relationsbetween the elite and the tribal people which resulted from this policy has been widely attributedto the personalinitiative and moralconcerns of WilliamV. S. Tubman, Liberia's 18th President and architect of the supposed unification of its tribal and settler populations. It is arguable,however, that Tubman's aims were motivatedless by humanity than by the need to secure more effectively Americo-Liberian dominationover the hinterland, for the changes which he effected lay not so much in the amalgamationof tribaland settler interests, as in the extension of the techniques of subordination. Incorporation,not representation,was alwaysthe major theme--incorporation into an existing polity, and on terms which conceded to those subjectedto it a right not to a say in the policies of government, but to a place in the hierarchiesof administrativecontrol. There were obvious dangers in this policy of controlled incorporation,of which Tubman as much as his more conservative opponents in the AmericoLiberianestablishmentwas very well aware. These dangersderived in the first instance from the ethnic distinctiveness of the settler elite, though they were accentuated by the fact that the demarcationof the rural part-peasant/partproletariansector in contrastive'tribal'terms was itself an importantadjunctof the politicaleconomy of the Liberianstate. For such an identity carriedwith it implications of communal solidarity and mutual support, sentiments which played a crucial role in underwritingthe welfare component of the industrial wage, and, hence, in ensuring the competitivenessof the Liberianeconomy in internationalterms.4 Given, therefore, a polity stabilized by incorporation and an economy dependent to a high degree upon the conservationof potentiallydivisive ethnic boundaries, the clear danger developed of the emergence of the partially incorporatedgovernmentalelites as the spearheadof a 'tribal-nationalist'force whose aim, in the first instance, was to free the hinterlandof Americo-Liberian domination. Thus, the practice of hinterland government resolved into two related aspects of political control. In the first instance, it aimed to exercise tight control over the rural populationat one and the same time to sustain the positive value of tribalsociety as a social welfare system, and also to containthe ability of tribalidentity to become generalizedinto a counter-cultureopposed, in a manifestly political frame of reference, to Americo-Liberiandomination.It aimed in the second instance to control the incorporatedelements to ensure their effective estrangement from the tribal mass, whilst at the same time 4. For a more detailed discussion of the ways in which the conservationof tribal society may serve the needs of capitalism, see H. Wolpe, 'The theory of internalcolonialism:the South Africancase' in I. Oxaaland others (eds.), Beyondthe Sociologyof Development(London, 1975).
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retaininga superficialconcernfor their representativefunction, in the interest of the 'open' image of the interior administration. The former of these was achieved throughvariousmeans:a patronizingattitudetowardstribalindividuals who 'knew their place' and were willing to accept for themselves a legitimateif subordinateposition in the hierarchiesof administrativeauthority;close control over tribal organizations(the secret societies, for example) the loyalty of which could not be guaranteed;an active policy of divide and rule, exploiting to the full the highly fragmentednatureof tribalsociety so as to foster competitionfor resourceson an ethnic basis;the supportof elitist institutionsand the promotion of local-level competitionbetween these and the institutionsassociatedwith the 'tribe';and so on. The second aspect of control-the isolation and subordination of the indigenous elites---was secured primarilyby the extension of the techniques of assimilation,which had previously been applied only in the internal relations within the Americo-Liberiancommunity, to the local administrativecadres. These techniques were both materialand ideologicalin nature. Salarieswithin the interioradministrationwere generallyvery high when consideredagainstthe impoverished standardsof the mass, and assumed an even greater importance given the almost monopolisticposition of governmentas an employer of whitecollar personnel. Conflicts of interest, though nominallyforbidden under the Constitution,were freely tolerated, except where otherwise expedient, with the result that the more senior positions tended to take on the quality of personal benefices, a tendency only partly mitigatedby the policy of rotating hinterland staffs within, and between, the regions, to prevent their consolidatingtoo firma power base in any one areaundertheir control. But of equal importanceto these materialconsiderationswere the ideological devices used to sustainthe integrityof the administration. This was very clearly a patrimonialsystem, highly dependent on initiatives from the centre and upon the presumption that central actors--particularly the President-retained a personalinvolvementin the affairsof even the most subordinateofficials. Even where authoritywas delegated to the lower levels, the terms of this delegation served only to emphasizeand strengthenthe influenceof the core. The political structure was also very markedly replicative in character, and regional and districtlevel administrationswere closely modelledon the style of governmentat the centre-both in terms of their value orientations,such as sharinga common subordinationto the values of the Americo-Liberiancommunity,a subordination reinforcedby the role of elitist institutions(the Freemasonry,United Brothersof Friendship,etc.) in controllingthe patternsof occupationalassimilation,and also in the mannerin which the techniquesof manipulationand controlemployed by the central government were reflected in political practices at the lower levels. How far there was any real and stable delegationof power, as opposed to temporaryinfluence, to these lower levels is unclear,though certainlythis was very much less thanhas often been assumed.
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The tendency to decentralizationin the administrationwas also held in check by the complementarypositions of the administrationand the True Whig Party (defacto if not dejure the only politicalparty). Despite appearances,there was not a diarchic structure of party and administration(as was the case in, say, neighbouring Ivory Coast),5 and the power accorded to either wing was very much conditioned by the power accorded to the other, the balance being primarilythe result of the personalqualitiesof the politicalagents in each region, and not a productof their formalroles. The strong sense of social honour which markedthe administrationwas sustained in a numberof ways. In Liberia, very little mystiqueattachedto specific areas of competence within the ranksof governmentemployment;the mystique of governmentattached, rather, to the system as a whole, and individualposts derived their validity primarilyfrom their relevanceto a career in 'government' and not from their functionalcharacteristics. Boundariesbetween competences were minimaland movements of personnel routine, a situation which was only fostered by the fact that policy goals were almost always formulatedoutside the hinterland regions, and merely conveyed to them through the agency of the administrativecadres. A corollaryof this was that even those in relativelylow status positions were encouraged to conceive of their ambitionswithin, rather than in oppositionto, the establishedsystem, and to view their careerin terms of a slow and unpredictable,though seemingly guided and controlled, progression throughthe ranksof governmentservice. Around the extension of government employment into the hinterlandthere developed a belief that the posts which comprised the administrationdid not consist merely of a disparateset of unconnectedpositions, but formed, rather, a hierarchicalsystem which was organized accordingto a complex and esoteric structure of 'rules'.6 In order to petition for sustained incorporationinto the administration,therefore, it became necessary to attempt to understandthese 'rules' and to 'play' the system on its own terms. The preoccupationof the lower-level officials thus became the constant scrutiny and analysis of the past practices of government so as to gain evidence of what the rules might be. Aroundeach appointmentand each careerthere developed a set of myths: these were fed both by the immediate experience of government at the locallevel, and by the fragmentedpieces of gossip and scandal which filtered down from the arenasof nationalpolitics. The patrimonialimage which 'government' assumedwas thus premisedon an acceptanceof past experiences of government as indicative of an active and deliberate policy, and hence a prescriptionfor future action:a belief that, whatever its excesses in other fields, with regardto employmentit was (potentiallyat least) a benevolent and paternalisticinstitution, 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.
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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 competitive relationshipwith their peers, there was also a very high degree of selfregulation in regional affairs. Indeed, the amount of political intrigue at the local level was often remarkable,as was the willingness of apparentlydisenfranchizedhinterlandersto 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 establishedadministrativeprocedure (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 nonexistent. 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 subservience 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 significance) merely as subsidiaryarms of the True Whig Party. One evident consequence of this subordinationwas to grant to the President almost unfettered judicialpowers.
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The actual form of the Presidential intervention varied according to the situation. At one extreme were the councils presided over by the President himself, in which justice was summarilymeted out, with only superficialregard for the dictates of the law. At the other were 'conventional'courtroomtrials, formally controlled by the judiciary,in which the President'spersonal interest was not publicly acknowledged(though it could often be inferred). In between these two extremeswas a varietyof types of interventionin which the President's involvement was evident to a greater or lesser degree. For reasons which will become apparent, I shall treat all these instances as variantsof a single generic type. The classic manifestation of the genre was the Presidential council in a hinterland headquarters town. The typical council was convened by the President in the course of a regionaltour to hear complaintsfrom local citizens, usually againstmedium-levelor senior officialsof regionalgovernment. On the ostensible basis of such complaintsthe President would act in characteristicand apparentlyimpromptufashion, sometimesin favourof a complainant,sometimes against him, always seeking to present himself as the true custodian of justice, whatever the excesses of his subordinate officials. On other occasions, the President'sinvolvementmight be delegatedto officialson whose loyaltyhe could rely--a County Superintendent, for example, or other personal appointee. What all these types of interventionhad in commonwas, firstly, an appearanceof formaladherenceto the principlesof law, and, secondly, a considerableelement of manipulationfrom the centre, whatevertheir outwardproceduralform. Yet equally essential to the impact of such interventions, and to their function in legitimizingthe status of the Presidentand of the politicalsystem as a whole, was the fact that, despite an obvious air of contrivance,they did not merely serve to confirmthe 'secular'hierarchiesof administrativeauthority,and did not merely reflect the despotic exercise of Presidentialpower. Whilstthere was often little doubt that their manipulationserved established interests, the manner of this manipulationwas not always clear prior to or after the event, nor was it always employed againstthe interests of the 'commonman'. There was, therefore, a certaindegree of openness in these procedures,with the result that it was rarely, if ever, possible to state with absolute convictionthat the ends were unjustified by the means, and that justice had not, in the event, been done. Two exampleswill suffice to illustratethe generaltheme. Case 1: The Henry Fahnbulleh Affair7
The most celebrated instance of the 'politicaltrial' in recent years concerned Henry Fahnbulleh,a tribal-borncareer diplomatwho had served as Ambassador to Sierra Leone, and who was, at the time of his trial, Ambassadorto the East African Common Market. In January1968, on a short visit to Monrovia for 7. See T. Wreh, TheLove of Liberty(London, 1975).
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President Tubman's 73rd birthdaycelebrations, he was unexpectedly arrested and accused of plotting againstthe State. The originalchargeof sedition which had been brought by the Attorney-General was subsequently overruled by President Tubman in favour of more serious charges alleging both sedition and treason. The evidence presented to supportthese charges, it is fair to say, was far from convincing(Fahnbullehwas alleged to have conspiredwith a numberof hinterlandofficials, CommunistChinese agents, and other foreign nationals,and highly improbablesums of money were said to have been raised by the conspirators), but he was still found guilty on all counts-notably, in a jury trial-and sentenced to the maximumterm of 20 years' imprisonmentwith hard labour,all his personalpropertybeing confiscatedby the State. Fahnbullehwas released from jail in 1972, shortly after Tubman'sdeath, and was immediately appointed Assistant Minister of State for Presidential Affairs. Following a disagreementwith President Tolbert, however, he was dismissedfrom office, and remainedout of governmentuntil his appointment,in 1976, as Superintendentof his native GrandCape Mount County. Case 2: The GrandGedehCocoaLandsAffairs Among WilliamTolbert's first actions on his accessionto the Presidencywas the replacementof eight of the nine Superintendentshe had inherited from his predecessor (the ninth was JamesAndersonJr., an Americo-Liberianand son of Tubman's influentialPresident Pro Tempore of the Senate, who was hanged in 1979 for alleged involvement in ritual murders with 'tribal' undertones). Amongthe eight dismissedwas the GrandGedeh Superintendent,John Rancey, a former Press Secretary to President Tubman. Rancey's dismissal followed allegations lodged by one of the County's Senators to the effect that he had falsified 'the list' of patronageappointmentsfor the County, and had verbally abused a local Congressman. Rancey was replaced by Albert White, an Americo-Liberianformer General and Army Chief of Staff, who had been rusticated to the County by Tubman in 1965, for allegedly plotting a coup. White was a close friend of President Tolbert, as well as his relative throughmarriage. Three months after White's appointment,Tolbert held a council in Zwedru, the County seat, at which, amongother things, he announcedthe outcome of an investigationby the Attorney-Generalinto a case concerningalleged fraudulent claimsfor compensationover some cocoa landsappropriatedby the State. Four senior County officialswhose names had been linked with the claimsin question were dismissedfor 'loss of confidence'and the land-owner(a police-patrolman), who had been held in jail for several weeks, was ordered to be released. Another police-patrolman,who had brought a private prosecution despite his 8. See PresidentialPapersof IW.R. Tolbert,1971-2 (Republic of Liberia, n.d.).
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superiors'indifferenceto the case, was promotedto the rankof Captainas an act of gratitudeby the President. Withintwo years, it might be added, at least two of the four dismissedofficials were back on the governmentpayroll, one as a Congressman(he had previously been a Deputy Inspector of Police), the other (formerly Adviser to the Superintendent)as a County CourtJudge. We see in these two cases evidence of the principles earlier discussed-a strong element of centraldirection, for example, (itself a product of the marked degree of flexibility that existed both in administrativeprocedure and in the boundariesof Liberianlaw), yet also a certain amount of openness in the legal process, so that the trials did not merely serve either to confirm established hierarchiesof authority,nor, still less, to place that authorityin a realm beyond dispute. The fact that the two cases span both the Tubman and Tolbert eras is arguablyalso of some significance,insofar as it suggests that the forces which encouragedthis politicalstyle were located as much at the social-structurallevel as at the level of personalprediliction. Commentingon the Fahnbullehaffair, Lowenkopf has raised the important question of why, if there was no evidence of serious oppositionto Tubmanat the time of the trial (as was apparentlythe case), the latter should neverthelesshave been prepared to risk considerable adverse publicity in bringing the case to court. To some extent, indeed, Tubman seems actively to have encouraged such adverse publicity. For example, documents read out during the trial (which were almost certainlyforged) contained highly inflammatoryallegations as to the oppressive nature of True Whig rule, and Fahnbulleh,as might have been expected, exploited to the full the politicalcontent of the charges, when he was called to give his evidence. The jury's apparentassuranceas to his guilt was certainlynot shared by the University of Liberia students who thronged to the hearings--in such numbers and with such evident sympathy for the defendantthat the Universityauthoritieswere compelled (or required)to issue a ban on their absencefrom campusduringthe period of the trial. Lowenkopf offers two suggestionsas to why the chargeswere broughtnevertheless. In the first instance, he argues, Fahnbulleh'ssacrificewas to serve as a warningto the educated youth to keep in line, on the groundsthat if they did so, and did not (like Henry Fahnbulleh)become over-ambitious,then the benefits of governmentpatronagewould be made fully availableto them. And secondly, the trial was to serve as a warning to the Americo-Liberiancommunity to maintain their own unity in the face of political change--but to accept the necessity for change nevertheless, otherwise 'they would face more Fahnbullehs'9in the yearsto come. Lowenkopfconcludes: Tubman may have hoped to use the Fahnbullehcase to force a resolution of 9. Lowenkopf, Politicsin Liberia,p. 165.
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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 This is a suggestive argument, and one which warrantsfurther elaboration. In order to do this, I would argue that it is necessaryto view the phenomenonof the political intervention as being as much a ritual as a juridicialevent--more concernedwith statementsabout the social order than with more limited notions of law-breaking and legal redress. This is, perhaps, a quality of legal proceedingsand judgementsin general,but in the events in question, this quality was exaggeratedand given dramaticexpression. To say that the juridicial content of such interventions is conspicuously low is not, I presume (in the light of the examples above), to indulge in any great controversy. The claim that they are primarily 'ritual' is, however, a more contentious one, and requires some substantiation. Before proceeding further, therefore, I briefly digress to consider the essential qualities of ritual as they might apply to such secularandmanifestlypoliticalevents. 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 preoccupation 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 conventionaldichotomiesat 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.
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relationshipbetween the means and ends is not 'intrinsic'i.e. is either irrational or non-rational',13 an approachwhich (as Goody himself accepts) is extremely difficultto operationalizeon the groundsof its evident interpretativesubjectivity. Radcliffe-Brown,it is true, stands to some extent outside this mainstreamof anthropologicalthought, by virtue largely of his refusal to accept the conventional Durkheimiansacred/profaneproblematic,and of his concern with the sociological instrumentality of ritual in an inclusive sense, not confined to religious contexts alone. Ultimately, however, as Douglas has argued,14the structural-functionalisttradition in which Radcliffe-Brown's work was embedded prevented him from exploiting fully the implications of this radicalism,and led him back to an orthodox interpretationfounded upon the presumptionof an irreducibleand uncontentiousnormativeorder, in support of which ritual played a purely confirmatoryrole. Nevertheless, retrograde as Radcliffe-Brown'stheoreticalapproachultimatelyproved, it did at least have the merit of focussing upon the sociological instrumentalityof the act, and of regardingthat instrumentalityas an uncompromisingly'rational'phenomenon. It will be evident here that neither of the broadconcernsreferred to above-the one dealingwith the metaphysicsof the underlyingbelief, the other with the mannerin which ritual reflects and reinforces an establishedvalue consensus-are very relevantin the present context. For not only were the Liberianinterventions manifestly secular events, but they were also located in a society in which a presumptionof normativeharmonywould be very misleadingindeed. In other terms, however, the applicationof the term 'ritual' to these interventions can be more readily justified. Most obviously, Mary Douglas's eloquent considerationl of that aspect of ritual concerned with what might be called 'social systematics'-with separation,segregation, and classification,with the placingof socialboundariesand their validation-has an obvious relevanceto the understanding of the place of these interventions in the Liberian government's armoury of disciplinarytechniques. One is reminded here of Clapham'sreference to the role of treason trials in 'policing the boundaries'in relationsbetween the populace and the ruling elite,16a policing role required, I would argue, by the dependence of the Liberian political process upon incorporation and conservationas techniques of stabilization. Douglas's emphasis upon the boundary-formingfunctionsof ritualperformancesin additionserves to emphasize the dynamic nature of the political forces involved; certainly, in Liberia it would be mistaken to regard the 'policing of boundaries' as necessitatedonly by the need to reminda recalcitrantpopulationof the rectitude 13. J. R. Goody, 'Religion and Ritual: the definitionalproblem', BritishJournal of Sociology 12
(1961), p. 159. 14. Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 81. See also A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Primitive Society (London, 1952). 15. Ibid, passim. 16. Clapham, Liberia and Sierra Leone, p. 70.
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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-functionalistpresumptions. 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 concerning 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-functionalistpresumptionsof 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
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in situationswhere conflictsexist between norms(or 'rules') or where established norms may conflict with the interests of a dominantsocial group. The characterizationof an event as either ritual or non-ritualwill therefore be decided not on the basis of the metaphysics of the underlying beliefs, but by the issue of whether conflict is resolved or suppressed in the circumstancesof the act; in the latter case (pace Douglas and Cohen) ritual will function so as to attributevalue to those interests which, through political expediency or otherwise, must necessarilyprevail. With these considerations in mind we can now proceed to consider the rationaleof the 'politicaltrial'. Ideologyand Intervention:the rationaleof thepoliticaltrial My contentionis, therefore, that the phenomenonof the politicalintervention in Liberiahas importantritualqualities, and can be analysedin these terms-as a dramaticperformance,with characteristicswhich derive from, and accentuate, its role in locating social boundaries, attributing value to them, and in suppressingand resolvingconflictwithin the normativeorder. In pursuing this analogy, it should be emphasized that the interventions in question cannot merely be seen as reflecting the total coercive power of the Liberianstate. For were they only a product of this power, there would have been little reason for the regime to have allowed them to take such an elaborate form. Given that there is always a tendency for rituals-particularly rituals of rebellion (and there is clearly an element of the latter in such events)-to exaggerate divisions which they are intended to suppress, their performance harboursobvious dangers for the stability of establishedinterests. These are not, then, just examples of ritualized affirmationsof common and accepted norms. By the same token, neither do they merely illustrate the 'formalism' which Liebenow regards as a basic principle of Americo-Liberiangovernment affairs,22for they did have substanceas well as form in the sense that their outcome was not alwaysapparentfrom the outset to those who participatedin them. An adequate explanation for the occurrence and form of these quasi-ritual events must ratherlocate them within a wider class of performancesof a more orthodoxritualtype, and to see in them a manifestationof strainswhich occurred at all levels of the Americo-Liberian-dominatedpolitical structure. Recourse tended, I suggest, to be made to such ritualtechniques for reasonswhich relate ultimatelyto two conflictingaspects of the (pre-coup) Liberianstate-the combinationof a pervasiveideology which penetratedeven to the local level, and the often contradictorydemandsof a system of centralizedand authoritarianpolitical control. A majorelement in the legitimizationand stabilizationof the Liberian state under settler rule was provided by an idiosyncratic ideology of govern22.
Liebenow, Liberia, p. 81.
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ment. This ideology was expressed as a set of 'rules' concerning,for example, the cult of the presidency, the importance of patronage and administrative incorporation,and the legitimateproceduresfor the furtheranceof claimsto the resourcesof the state. These rules gave the appearance,at least, of a normative order, and as such created expectationsfor those drawn under their sway, but this orderwas not necessarilya consistentone, nor did it alwayscoincidewith the interestsof the regime. The resultingconflictsin values and interestscould not have been allowed to work themselves out informally through the political process, for this would in turn have contradictedanother,andprior, aspect of the dominationof the state---theprimacyof the interestsof the regime. Neither could they have been handledby routinebureaucraticmeans, for this would have conceded to the bureaucracycontrol over the interests and goals of the regime. It became necessary, therefore, to separate out from these conflictingprinciplesonly those aspects which were compatiblewith the aims of the regime at the time in question, and to grant these a legitimacybased not upon utilitariandemands (for this would have denied the efficacy of the ideology of government), but upon their apparenttranscendence. It was necessaryalso to separateout forbiddenstatusesand actions, and to imbue these with notionsakin to those of ritualdanger--not because these were inherentlyof this nature, but for precisely the opposite reason. Such political rituals did not, in the main, lend themselvesto a religiousvalidation(though there was an element of this, in the way the power of the Presidentwas idealizedand dissociatedfrom the realm of everyday affairs). In general, however, the sanctificationwas one based more upon the supposed needs of the society as a whole, the inner harmonyof which was transcendentally,though not theologically, defined. This in turn requiredthe validationof the consensus, not merelyof judicialprinciple. It follows that the social order and statuses reaffirmedin successive ritual events might change---indeed,were they not to do so, there would have been no need for such performancesat all. Ironically,therefore, the ritualswere themselves productiveof further'rules'and precedents, andhence of furtherconflicts between the demandsof expediencyand ideology. The natureof the actualconflictsinvolvedvariedfrom context to context. In the Fahnbullehcase, for example (as Lowenkopf suggests), the interests of the progressiveelements in the regime were expressed througha structureof rules of political incorporation--andthus the basic conflict appeared as a contrast between these rules and the interests of the more conservativeelements of the settler elite. The ritual focus in the trial of Fahnbulleh thus involved the degradationof the status of the defendantin circumstanceswhich, indirectlyand implicitly, allowed the dominant ('progressive') interest group to 'police the boundaries'in its relations not only with the rising indigenous elites, but also with entrenched interests within the Americo-Liberationcore. The Grand Gedeh incident, on the other hand, involved the suppressionof the rules of the incorporativesystem in favour of the interests of the newly-inducted Tolbert
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regime-interests which were in turn expressed by reference to a furtherset of rules concerningthe demandsof politicalpatronagein a situationof change. On other occasions, a constellationof principlesmight be opposed in a single ritual event. A final example, drawn from my own fieldworkin Grand Gedeh Countyin 1975/76, illustratesthis point.
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 accommodation 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 antiestablishmentcandidatewith 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
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Congressmanthe opportunity of repaying his campaign debts through the exercise of patronageover the appointmentsin his district. In the district in question, however, the fact that the losing candidatewas also the incumbent DC, as well as a man closely identifiedwith the regime, presented a majorcomplication. For if the patronagefunctionwere to have been conceded to the new Congressmanin a way which indicateda weakeningof the position of his former opponent, this might have been interpreted as an endorsement of the Congressman'sapparentlyanti-establishmentstance. Here, then, was a situation in which a number of conflictingdemands were brought to bear in a single political context. The result was a political trial in the court of President Tolbert. Shortly before the reinauguration,a case was brought before the President by three associates of the new Congressman, alleging a numberof instancesof administrativemalpracticeby the DC. Right from the startit was evident that the substanceof the chargeswas of less consequence than the context in which they were brought, and that the aim of the complainantswas to obtainthe removalof the DC so as to allow the Congressman to exercise the prerogativesof his office unimpeded. The mannerin which the complaints were brought was clearly influenced by the two incidents in the County which followed Tolbert's successionto the Presidencysome three years before. The hearingof the case was delegated by the Presidentto the County Superintendent, and a tribunal of inquiry was convened in the District Headquarters,Kwiahblo. Initially,the consensuswas that the DC's fate in the courtroom had been sealed by his poor showing at the polls, but it became apparentduring the course of the week-long hearingsthat the central government, havingmade one concessionto the 'tribes'in the form of the democratization of the Congressionalelection, was in no mood to makeanother,and the complainantsrapidlybegan to appearas the defendantsin the case. This change of status was given very dramaticexpressionshortlybefore a weekend recess when four other associatesof the Congressmanwere suddenlysummonedto appearin court alongsidethe three complainants,and all seven were implicatedin a charge of treason againstthe State. Following the resumption, however, and after a conciliatoryrallyingspeech, the Superintendenthanded down to the 'accused' what were, in the circumstances,very light sentences indeed. This was a considerablerelief not only to the individualsconcernedbut also to the populationat large, for the atmospherewhich had been generatedduringthe trial-of a vague and sinister, and potentiallyvery generalizedsense of blame-had placed a considerablestrainon everyone involved. As he rose to leave, the Superintendent received somethingnot far short of a standingovation, and there was no doubt that his own status in the district, and by extension, that of the central government, had been significantlyenhancedby his conduct of the trial. There was considerableirony in this, however, for none of the seven men found guilty had ever been formallycharged,and the evidence on which they had been convicted was circumstantial,to say the least.
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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 preceding 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 government 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-
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stantly distorted,confused, and subsequentlyredefinedby the centralactor, the Superintendent, clearly affected everyone in the court, and exaggerated the extent to which they all felt themselves to be implicated in the proceedings. Equally, it served also to strengthenthe sense of commonalitygeneratedin the final stages of the status degradation(which also functionedas the reintegrative phase of the wider ritual event). This followed from the circumstancesof the status passage. The fact that the assembly had collectively experienced the movementto the limen in such an immediatesense reinforcedthe legitimacyof the establishedorderwhen they were relocatedwithinits bounds. Notably, whilst a large number of individuals (government officials and others) had been threatened with charges of treason during the proceedings, none of the more secure membersof the elite were formallyarraignedbefore the court. The group who were convicted had in common not only their shared loyaltyto the Congressman,but also the fact of their markedlyambivalentsocial status-all were sometimegovernmentworkers, on the fringes of the local elite, but also well-known as practitionersof the secretive 'tribal'arts. Here again, therefore, the boundary-formingqualities of the ritual related to the wider historicalcontext of political control, and to its twin themes of conservation(of the tribes) and incorporation(of the elite). Finally, it is worthyof note that in the administrativereshuffle which followed the President'sreinaugurationthe followingmonth, the interestsof the new (but seemingly, now discredited) Congressmanwere very far from overruled. If anything,the patterningof local appointmentsrepresenteda strengtheningof his position and a weakening of that of the DC (who was subsequently transferred). Ultimately, therefore, the demandsof the bureaucraticideology were very largelyupheld. 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 as means of this which gave rise to the dominanceof incorporation/conservation control. political 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
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increased. This is consistent with the argument outlined above. It would seem also that, as oppositionto the regime gainedin strength, so did the capacity of these rituals to suppress, rather than express, divisions between the settler core and the tribes progressivelydecline. That this was the case can be related not only to the necessity, for ritual to be effective, of a stable political community,23but also to the mannerin which this efficacyis dependent upon an ability to invest interests with normativepower-to obscure, by mythic means, the realities of self-interest and to sanctionthese with the appearanceof transcendent and compelling need. Once the political status quo ceases to be the basis upon which interestsare assessed, then clearlythe abilityof ritualto imbue the statusquo with normativepower is inevitablydecreased. With the overthrowof Americo-Liberianrule, new resourceshave been introduced into the arenas of Liberianpolitics, and new rules formulatedto govern their allocation. At the same time, there would appearto have been a surprising degree of continuitybetween the methodsof the settler governmentand those of its successor. There has, for example, been little diminutionof the extent of the centralizationof political power, with the result that incorporationremains the majorrationaleof administrativeemployment,and the cult of the Presidency continues unabated. And whilst the ethnic distinction between 'AmericoLiberians'and 'tribals'no longer coincides with the dominantpolitical division, there are increasingindicationsthat ethnicitystill plays--or at least, is believed to play--an importantpart in the allocationof resources at all politicallevels, with previously inconsequentialethnic units now emergingas majorsocial groupings. Neither has there necessarily been any diminution of the extent to which the interests of the regime and the bureaucracycan be distinguished,for here the settler/tribaldistinctionhas given way to another,potentiallyas radical, cleavage between military and civilians. One suspects, therefore, that the presidentialinterventionmay still have a role to play in the legitimizationof the Liberianstate. 23. See Douglas, Purityand Danger, p. 19.
