Sources of Legitimacy in Post-Colonial French West Africa.

This paper seeks to explicitly inject sources of legitimacy as an independent variable into the debate concerning the creation of stable democratic states. The classic debate concerns the relative importance of socio-economic variables (no bourgeoisie, no democracy) and the importance of crafting proper political institutions. Government authority rests on legitimacy, the perception by the people of the government's right to rule. Colonial empires weakened or destroyed traditional sources of legitimacy for local political elites. Colonial government authority rested on, at best, performance legitimacy, demonstrations of economic development and provisions for social welfare. At worst, the colonial powers lacked any legitimacy whatsoever. French West Africa provides a case study of countries which had relatively similar transitions to independent modern states, having been forcibly transported from traditional sources of legitimacy into the second half of the 20th century without the development of indigenous replacement sources. Individual leaders of local political elites during the Post-Colonial period of French West Africa had to develop government legitimacy for states with weak government capacity, colonially established borders, and a colonial power determined to maintain influence. This paper provides a comparative typology of the sources of legitimacy developed by the variety of states in post-colonial French West Africa. The purpose is to link the issue to the classic state-society development literature in a fashion that demonstrates that legitimacy should not be considered the outcome of state development, but rather as an independent variable determining the success of state development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]