After the latest coup d’État in Guinea, can another “Big Man” lead the country to development?
An army officer, after suspending the constitution, pledges to give power back to the people. This story has played out many times before, and it rarely ends well for the people.
For those who do not follow the news from West Africa too closely, a coup took place on September 5, 2021, in Conakry, which brought into power the head of the country’s special forces, Mamady Doumbouya. He deposed President Alpha Conde, who had won a controversial third term in 2020. This additional setback for democracy on the African continent was a consequence of the failure of the Conde regime to consolidate Guinea’s institutions by moving the exercise of political power away from personal and clientelist rule. This common failure is not just holding back Guinea’s development and democratic prospects, it is also holding back economic and social progress in many of the poorest countries around the world.
The return of military rule in Guinea provides a useful case study to explore the conditions under which institutions can evolve and result in inclusive development benefiting the whole population. This, in contrast to institutions benefiting only a handful of well-connected individuals led by the proverbial “Big Man.” Let us first turn to how Guinea’s recent trajectory explains the latest coup. We will then outline how institutions need to evolve to result in longer-term development. We further highlight how the equilibrium between the power of the state and that of society and its citizen is critical for setting out and remaining on this development path.
A showdown with France at independence followed by dictatorship and stagnation
Guinea is another sad example of the paradox of plenty. It is blessed with an advantageous geographical location in coastal West Africa, abundant mineral, agricultural, and water resources. Yet it still ranks 178th of 189 countries on the 2020 Human Development Index (HDI). In this country of 12 million, the average Guinean counts on 3 years of schooling and a life expectancy of 62 years. GDP per capita stands at USD 1819 while 36% of the population lived with less than a USD 1,90 per day. In fact, the country’s GDP per capita just recently surpassed its level of the 1960s when accounting for inflation. This poverty and stagnation are explained primarily by the failure of Guinea’s rulers and public institutions to put in place and then respect the most basic features of the rule of law. This is made worse by their failure to provide basic services to the population.
Guinea’s independence in 1958 was marked by an abrupt break with colonialism and with France. Sekou Touré, the first post-independence president, famously stated when facing off with the former colonial power that he “preferred liberty in poverty to wealth in bondage.” During the decade following this break, France retributed by waging a campaign of economic sabotage which negatively affected the country’s prospects. President Touré further installed a socialist dictatorship that mismanaged the country until his death in 1984. It was also a rather paranoid regime that became infamous for jailing and killing tens of thousands of opponents, notably following real or imagined coup attempts.
Following Touré’s death in 1984, the military seized power and installed Lansana Conte as president. The fall of communism and the wave of democratization of the 1990s influenced the regime and led to the adoption of a democratic and pro-market constitution in 1991. This primarily resulted in the formation of ethnically based political parties, while elections remained manipulated by and for the Conde regime. The president and his family oversaw a clientelist political system where the ability of large businesses to operate depended on their direct relationships with them. This was demonstrated by an international corruption scandal documented by the NGO Global Witness. It involved a large foreign mining company which promised one of Conte’s wives millions of dollars in exchange for her influence in obtaining mining rights to a massive iron ore deposit located in Simandou, in the southeast of the country.
A transition to democracy accelerates development
After the death of Conte in 2008, low-ranking army officers seized power in a coup under the leadership of Captain Dadis Camara. The erratic nature of this military junta and its direct responsibility in killing 158 people during an opposition protest, led to its implosion and a transition to democracy in 2010. The historic democratic opposition figure Alpha Conde won the first ever transparent presidential election that year. Guinea then experienced increased stability as it transitioned for the first time from authoritarian to democratic rule. The new regime conducted an army reform aiming to reaffirm civilian control, expanded electricity provision in the capital, and invested in some road infrastructure. Civil society and the media also played a constructive role in public life over this period.
In the context of a mining investment boom driving economic growth, and the relative stabilization of the country, the president was re-elected in 2015. However, his ineligibility for a third consecutive term in 2020 inspired a contested constitutional reform, and a referendum followed by his re-election that year triggered widespread street protests and violence. This was met by a security crackdown and the customary jailing of political opponents, as the regime slid into authoritarianism. Decision-making power also became even more concentrated in the person of the president while corruption was raging.
Authoritarianism and clientelism undermining the rule of law
The increasing centralization of power in the Presidency combined with the security crackdown destabilized the balance of power in Guinea. Interestingly, the coup author, a former member of the French Legion belonging to the same Malinke ethnic group as the President, was hand-picked by Conde in 2018 to lead the recently created special forces. A key motive for the coup might have been the attempt to limit his power by reducing the budget of the special forces and his access to the president. This, in spite of Doumbouya’s familiar populist claim of aiming to give political power to the people. Ironically, if personalized rule extended the duration of Conde’s regime, turning him gradually into yet another “Big Man,” it also led to his downfall.
If acrimonious political competition prevailed in the recent past in Guinea, power and politics remain structured around influential individuals instead of political programs. Their influence largely depend on their ability to leverage their respective ethnic group and provide rewards to key supporters. In this framework, public institutions function arbitrarily, often disregarding existing laws and procedures. Instead, the arbitrary orders of the political leadership and especially of the presidency prevail in both the public and private sectors. The president and a close circle of advisors further rely on the discretionary allocation of resources to key members of the country’s elite to sustain their influence and power. This includes the allocation of over 50 ministerial posts and of key positions in the civil service, and as we have seen, in the army. Unsurprisingly, the World Bank found that poor governance, the mismanagement of its abundant natural resources, weak rule of law, and ineffective public administration were holding back the country’s development in a recent country diagnostic.
Personalized political power, control on violence, and fragile states
The situation in Guinea directly aligns with the analysis of the 2009 book “Violence and Social Orders” by Nobel prize-winning economist Douglas North and co-authors. Overall, the book highlights the conditions under which emerging political institutions in developing states can successfully control violence. It also shows how the gradual development of impersonal rules-based relationships in public, private, and civil society organizations, combined with the political economy context, play a large role in either constraining or enabling development once violence is under control. In a fragile state like Guinea, political power is highly personalized as opposed to structured by rules and formal institutions. This means that a small group of influential individuals who have direct personal, family, or ethnic relationships with the president exercise power. This also brings a significant degree of volatility and arbitrariness to political power, which can then easily be used for personal gain and to reward supporters, at the expense of the public good.
Fragile states are typically the most unstable and susceptible to the resurgence of violence, especially when richly endowed in natural resources. Continued stability and development in these countries will thus depend on the ability of the political regime to transition from personal toward impersonal rules-based relationships. And this is exactly where the Conde regime failed. In its first two terms, it gradually consolidated the rule of law and state institutions around a democratic republican model, although in an imperfect manner. Instead of consolidating these institutions further, the president prevented political alternance and undermined his own reforms by attempting to remain in power for a third term while centralizing even more power in his person. He thus prevented the establishment of more rules-based relationships and institutions in Guinea by reasserting personal rule. This opened the door to an influential individual, who had access to violence and was unhappy with the evolution of the political equilibrium, to lead a coup that swiftly unravelled the last decade of reforms.
The conditions under which institutions can foster development
It remains too early to fully assess the fallout from the recent coup in Guinea, beyond the abolition of the constitution along with the disbanding of the government and national assembly. Nonetheless, there are few examples of military coups and regimes that successfully consolidated the rule of law and state institutions in a development-oriented manner. This stems from a key insight identified by economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in their 2019 book “The Narrow Corridor”, which builds on the work of Douglas North. They found that the emergence of development-oriented state institutions depends on the equilibrium between the power and effectiveness of the state and those who control it, relative to the power of society to restrain the power of the state and make it accountable to the population. Too much relative power concentrated in the hands of the state leads to dictatorship and despotism. On the other hand, too much relative power in society, for example in atomistic tribal or clan-based societies, will prevent the emergence of effective state institutions. In the context of Guinea, where the military is reasserting its power over the state while facing a fractured political opposition, a continued slide back into authoritarianism unfortunately seems a more likely outcome.
A final insight is that the path allowing states and societies to co-evolve institutions that are conducive to broad-based economic and social development is a narrow one, as per the title of the book of Acemoglu and Robinson. It is a process that gradually takes roots over decades while organizational sophistication and the relationships between the state, the private, and the civil society sectors evolve. For example, evolving institutions and organizations will constrain the decision-making power of their leaders through formal and informal rules, expand meritocratic access to employment opportunities, and extend basic rights to a larger share of the population. Such a transition rarely proceeds along a straight path, as countries are prone to phases of progress followed by regression. This also explains why it is so difficult for development to take root in fragile states like Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Somalia. In these cases, dysfunctional institutions, high levels of poverty and an inability to control violence interact and result in limited resilience in the face of shocks.
Going beyond the power of the “Big Man”
From the above, a key insight is that building rules-based relationships and institutions that can gradually transcend the power of the “Big Man” is a foundational factor toward long-term development. This is notably the approach implemented by the military regime of Jerry Rawlings in Ghana during the 1990s under the pressure of civil society. Ghana is today an emerging lower middle-income country recognized for its functioning democratic institutions and successful political alternation. The latest election was notably fought over the issue of universal secondary education, illustrating how basic rights and public services are expanding. It also provides a rare example of a successful transition from military to democratic rule. Could Guinea one day enter this narrow path? Let us hope so for the sake of its development-hungry citizens, but the power of yet another “Big Man” over the state will likely not bring them there.
