Description
The aim of this paper is to add the dimension of ‘external influence’ to the ongoing debate of political settlements. Though the concept of political settlements has broadened our understanding of how power configurations and elite incentives shape the deployment of political and economic institutions and much thought has gone into defining and measuring the constitutive elements of such settings the debate so far focuses largely on endogenous factors to explain how such settlements arise and transform. The emergence of settlements and their further development is seen as a result of intra-state dynamics between powerful groups that work in an aggregation process towards the emergence of tacit agreements between different blocs. In this paper, we argue that the role of external actors has to be considered if one is to understand the configuration of political settlements in Africa. In countries of the global South and especially in Africa, there is a significantly lower degree of autonomy at the state level vis-à-vis external actors, who traditionally have a major influence on core areas of state action. External actors can thus exert influence on many key areas that contribute to the emergence of powerful groups, coalitions, or factions in the polity and the genesis of new interests among them. Building on extant theorizing about the role of the international system on domestic politics in Africa and beyond this paper is concerned with the question: Can external influence provide an impetus for the realignment of political coalitions and subsequent changes to institutional arrangements?
