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Hemmed In: Responses to Africa's Economic Decline
Thomas M. Callaghy and John Ravenhill, editors
New York
1993
10: The Politics of Nonreform in Cameroon
NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE
Introduction: The Illusion of a Difference
As late as 1985, many Western observers were lauding Cameroon as a country that had avoided the economic policy mistakes of its African neighbors and might avoid the need for the bitter medicines of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 1 Its agricultural policies were hailed as sensible, its finances sound and its leadership self assured, pragmatic, and competent. President Paul Biya's pledge to bring about the progressive democratization of the regime seemed to win him considerable domestic legitimacy and good will in the West. Today, this rosy assessment has been replaced by considerable pessimism. A severe balance of payments crisis emerged in 1986, causing a serious recession out of which the economy has not yet emerged. Cocoa and coffee farmers have not been fully paid for their efforts in recent years by the state marketing agency because state coffers are empty, while the banking system is in tatters and the parastatal sector is crippled with debts of over a hundred billion CFA francs. 2 Capital flight has increased dramatically despite repeated promises to clamp down.
As elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, the international donors were brought in to help the government address the burgeoning crisis. After a stabilization package was signed with the IMF in September 1988, the country was able to get significant financial assistance from all the major donors in order to undertake the major economic reforms now judged to be essential to put the economy back on track again. In March 1989, the government rescheduled its public debt with the Paris Club for the first time, initiating its version of "the ritual dances of debt," to use Callaghy's appropriate expression. 3 Nonetheless, the slow economic slide has continued unabated. Promises of macroeconomic reform have remained mostly unfulfilled: parastatal reform, deregulation, and trade liberalization have proceeded slowly and fitfully if at all, while cuts in public expenditures have been insufficient to absorb the budget deficit. By early 1992, after six years of negative economic growth, nominal GDP stood at 75% of its level in 1985 and external public debt had risen to roughly half of GDP. On the political front, Biya's regime was increasingly contested by a pro-democracy movement, ethnic tensions were clearly on the rise, and Yaoundé was periodically being shaken by rumors of an impending coup.
What had happened? In retrospect, the earlier view of Cameroon was excessively optimistic, and the perception that it was different from other regimes in the area ill-founded. Cameroon's seemingly impressive growth rate until 1986 was inflated by the discovery of oil in 1978; it disguised a large and increasingly parasitic state sector, little or no productivity growth in the agricultural sector, and daunting infrastructural problems. Much of the oil windfall was invested in poorly conceived public sector schemes that lost money and imposed unsustainable recurrent expenditure demands on the state.
This chapter will provide a political explanation of Cameroon's economic crisis and its inability to bring about economic reforms today. It is sometimes argued that African state elites may not oppose reform but fear that imposing hardships on the population during the reform process will bring about unrest and political instability. I do not disagree with this view: urban unrest has been associated with reform programs in a number of countries and has resulted in regime changes in several. However, I do not believe that this fear poses the major obstacle to reform. Indeed, in Cameroon, the regime has been willing to hurt urban groups in the wallet. This chapter will argue that structural adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is stagnating because it is opposed by the very state elites who are supposed to carry it out. This is the key to understanding the recent events in Cameroon. Using Bayart's Gramscian notion of a "hegemonic alliance," I will argue that Ahmadu Ahidjo, President of Cameroon from independence to 1982, cemented a complex intra elite accommodation process with access to state resources and rent seeking activities to ensure the regime's stability. Reform and economic austerity can be imposed on the general population; it is the state elite that will not tolerate the end of a system of prerogatives and privilege that is the glue that keeps it together.
Ahidjo combined the indigenous business and political elites that had emerged by the end of the colonial era with more traditional elites to create a ruling alliance. The expansion of the state, particularly into the economic arena, was promoted to manipulate and sustain the alliance, while Ahidjo's personal power and political skills allowed him to control the flow of resources. Fortuitous exogenous factors, in particular the discovery of oil in 1978, gave the regime a second breath that other similar regimes in SSA did not get, and gave the outside world the impression that somehow Cameroon was different.
However, his resignation in 1982 and Paul Biya's consolidation of his own power raised the costs of intra elite accommodation. In a process with parallels to the Senghor/Diouf and Kenyatta/Moi transitions in Senegal and Kenya respectively, new groups emerged in Biya's wake and jockeyed for added privileges while groups favored by Ahidjo were pushed aside or coopted. Biya's own ability to dominate the political game proved to be more limited than Ahidjo's, and when this political conjuncture was combined with a severe exogenous economic shock, the system fell apart. The regime has attempted to cut off some fat, to excise some of its patrimonial tendencies while maintaining its core logic. However, it has been unable to effectuate fundamental changes in governance, because this would mean the end of the hegemonic alliance on which the regime is based.
The Biya regime became even less likely to carry out substantial economic reform once a pro-democracy opposition movement emerged in 1990. At the time of writing (early 1993), domestic and international pressures had led the regime to concede some reforms of political liberalization, but Biya remained firmly in command and was proving quite capable of manipulating the internal divisions and rivalries within the opposition to his advantage. Nonetheless, whatever momentum might have existed for economic reform was now eroded by the presence of the opposition. On the one hand, it made the government more sensitive to the popular discontent created by austerity policies and the worsening economy, since the regime could no longer prevent the emergence of organizational structures to channel this discontent. On the other hand, Biya's authority was being further diminished by defections from the single party, and the costs of maintaining his political coalition and the stability of his regime were being raised.
I begin with the background of the current crisis and the early signs of impending trouble, notably the rapid expansion of a parasitic state. I then briefly review the political dynamics of economic adjustment as theorized by a number of scholars. A third section argues that to understand the current developments it is necessary to analyze the sociological foundations of the Cameroonian state itself, particularly the loose alliance of elites that has benefited from past policies. A fourth section describes the onset of economic crisis and a fifth one evaluates the early implementation record of this reform program, in the context of the state's ambiguous interests in reform. I show that the state has been inconsistent and halfhearted, and that abuses have continued even within its own administration. In a sixth section, I assess the implications of the emergence of the pro-democracy movement in 1990 for economic reform. Finally, I argue that the present situation of stagnation, decreasing state efficiency and crisis is not necessarily unsustainable, even if it may well be self-perpetuating. Several lessons are then drawn from this case study for the process of economic reform in Sub-Saharan Africa.
A Cameroonian Economic Miracle?
Cameroon, with its land mass of 475,440 square kilometers and 10.9 million people, has one of the more diversified economies in SSA. With an estimated per capita GNP of $970 in 1987, 4 it is the world's fifth largest exporter of cocoa, as well as a major exporter of coffee, cotton, bananas, palm oil, rubber, and timber. Since 1979 it has exported oil, totaling some 7.7 million tons in 1985. Currently known reserves are to dry up sometime before the end of the century at the current exploitation rate. Other mineral reserves include bauxite, iron ore, and natural gas, and there is considerable hydropower potential as well.
With an annual growth rate of some 8% from 1970 to 1985, the Cameroonian economy was long considered one of the success stories in SSA. Its liberal investment code under Ahidjo's proclaimed economic philosophy of "planned liberalism" appealed to the Western donors and business milieux, as did the regime's lack of ideological posturing, and its apparent political stability. 5 Douala's importance as a business and commercial center was in constant progression, and the city was said to harbor one of the few strong business classes of the continent.
While not without foundation, this view of the country's economy was excessively optimistic and failed to take note of several disturbing trends by the end of Ahidjo's tenure. Much of the country's success was based on its rich resource base, yet the agricultural sector was stagnating: the growth registered was due mostly to increased acreage under cultivation, brought about by expensive government and donor programs, and it disguised the absence of sustained productivity growth. The bulk of government and donor investment had been devoted to capital intensive state farms and plantations, most of which lost money and required repeated infusions of capital. 6 Membership in the Franc Zone had the advantage of promoting economic stability and allowing an open trade regime, but it had established a tendency toward overvaluation of the currency and encouraged the development of imported consumer tastes. 7 The country's wealth obscured growing disparities and pockets of extreme poverty, particularly in the northern hinterlands. Moreover, the high levels of illiteracy, morbidity, and malnutrition were those of a much poorer country, and bespoke inadequate attention to these problems. 8
Finally, the most disturbing trend was the rapid growth of a costly and ineffectual public sector. The point here is not to embark on a normative debate regarding the appropriate size of the public sector in African economies. Most of the institutions created in this period had valuable initial development functions and would have fostered more rapid development had they functioned correctly. They never came close to doing so, however, and soon became little more than vehicles for patronage and corruption. The agricultural sector is typical: more than 20 parastatal institutions were created during the 1970s, for example, at enormous cost to the state, yet cotton was the only crop that enjoyed significant productivity growth during this period. 9 One observer's severe critique of the effectiveness of a set of state-run cooperative structures could apply to most of the public institutions in the agricultural sector: despite a staff of more than a hundred employees and a budget of 122 million CFA, he argued, "the SOCOOPED are useless, perhaps even negative in their impact. They accomplish nothing for their members, they do not meet any of their needs. We recommend they be disbanded." 10 Ironically, traditional food crops, which were completely neglected by the authorities, fared significantly better than the rest of the sector. 11
Overall, central government employment grew from some 20,000 employees in the early sixties to some 180,000 in 1988; in recent years, it was growing by 9% a year. Employment growth in parastatals and public enterprises, mostly after 1971, was even faster. By 1984, some 150 billion CFA a year were needed to cover parastatal sector deficits, even though most of them had been designed to be self-sufficient and possessed their own revenues. 12 Though much of the oil revenues after 1978 were initially kept in secret bank accounts abroad, their primary function soon became to cover parastatal deficits.
In the long run parastatal deficits proved unsustainable. It is not clear whether or not Ahidjo could have tempered spending demands had he remained in power, or whether he benefited from lucky timing. Certainly, the system began to fall apart after Biya's accession to the presidency in 1982 and particularly after his break with Ahidjo two years later-punctuated by the failed coup attempt of April 1984. The sharp deterioration in the country's terms of trade after 1985 did the rest.
The Politics of Adjustment
The fundamental political consequence of structural adjustment or of wholesale economic restructuring is that it redistributes resources within the economy. 13 It produces winners and losers, both in relative and in absolute terms, and the losers can be expected to oppose the reforms out of self-interest. Economists distinguish expenditure-switching reform policies from expenditure-reduction policies: the former result in absolute winners and losers, because resources are simply shifted across economic sectors, with no reduction in overall economic activity; the latter produce only losers since absorption is reduced equally across the economy. The way switching and reduction policies are combined in a stabilization package will determine whether or not the benefits and losses of the reform are absolute or relative.
It is easy enough to broadly identify the groups that have most benefited from Cameroon's political economy in the last decade and who is likely to suffer from reform, even if one takes into account the lamentable state of the country's economic statistics: public and parastatal employees are one group that has benefited. Exporters on the other hand have lost purchasing power because the CFA franc has had a tendency toward overvaluation, particularly in recent years (this is in real effective purchasing power terms, of course, since in nominal terms the exchange rate is fixed). The most obvious victims of overvaluation are export cash crop producers, whose real income has decreased since independence, despite belated increases between 1982 and 1986. The reverse is true as well: groups that are net consumers of imported goods have been net winners, everything being equal. They include urban dwellers, who consume the lion's share of nontraditional cereals, Western luxury goods, and electronic goods.
Relative and absolute losers will obviously oppose reform. Their ability to prevent it is much harder to predict, however. First, expenditure-switching reforms will presumably create new constituencies and state leaders may be able to garner political support for reform by skillful manipulation of the policy process. 14 Opposition to economy-wide austerity may be muted by the competing interests that exist even within single households. Urban civil servants who have invested in small cocoa or coffee plantations in their village of origin are an obvious example. Secondly, economic agents often choose their economic activities according to the policy mix and at least some can change their activities to gain from a new one. More generally, perceptions regarding the likelihood of success and of the long-term gains for the economy and for a given individual may condition the degree of tolerance for short-term duress. Groups who suffer from reform may grudgingly accept reform, or at least not mobilize against it, if they believe things will soon improve. Such perceptions are complex and bound to be affected by a number of intervening factors. They may not be predictable. Finally, the degree of the regime's legitimacy may well be instrumental in determining support for reform or at least the lack of opposition from groups that suffer; this too will depend on a number of factors that make prediction forbidding.
It has nonetheless been argued that the state's ability to undertake structural adjustment will be determined by its ability to impose hardships on the groups most favored by the current distribution of resources. Put differently, several authors have argued that the state elite's dilemma in periods of economic reform is to switch its base of support, to identify and assemble a new social coalition on behalf of the post reform policy mix. 15 These scholars suggest that successful reform is likely only to the extent that the state can assemble a viable coalition on behalf of an alternative policy mix. Other scholars have been more pessimistic about the state's ability to impose hardship on the population, or to switch its social base of support. Robert Bates has argued that there are important asymmetries in the political power of different groups. 16 Others assert that African states often lack the political legitimacy or toughness to impose hardships on their citizens. That the African state is unable or unwilling to impose austerity on the population has become a common explanation for the current failure of reform programs in a wide variety of African nations. 17 Yet, since the first oil shock in 1973, stabilization plans have brought about draconian compressions of national income in a number of African countries without noticeable increases in regime changes or political instability.
Elsewhere, I have argued that the obstacles to economic reform in SSA lie less in the opposition of those social groups that will be net losers-though it may be substantial and have an important impact on decisionmakers-than it does in the commitment of the state to reform and its limited capability to implement it. 18 Reform is undermined by the negative synergy that exists between implementation capability and the commitment to undertake a given reform. Here I would like to go further and argue that economic reform along the lines advocated by the IMF and World Bank is often unlikely to succeed because it would undermine the very sociological foundations of the state.
The Sociological Foundations of the Cameroonian State
In his seminal book on Cameroonian politics, Jean-François Bayart contends that post-independence politics has been marked by the successful efforts of the dominant social groups to establish their hegemony over society by taking over the political and economic institutions bequeathed by the colonial state. 19 This "hegemonic search" involved not only traditional rural elites, but also the emerging political class and the individuals who had profited most from the colonial economy. Ahmadu Ahidjo was instrumental in shaping a "post colonial historical alliance" out of these groups which have dominated the state apparatus ever since and used it to appropriate a disproportionate share of the nation's resources. He manipulated these elites to consolidate and then maintain his own power. This dynamic process is of course not unique to Cameroon 20 although it has acquired its own historical specificity. In most African countries, independence resulted in a power vacuum, just as the disparate social groups that had been privileged by the colonial political economy began to come of age and assert themselves.
Can this state elite be identified? In a fascinating analysis conducted in 1983 but still highly relevant, Ngayap answers the question "who governs Cameroon" by identifying roughly a thousand people. 21 Starting from the president himself, he identifies the people who hold the top positions in the government, administration, legislature, party, judiciary, army, and business world. This definition of the governing elite corresponds well with the members of Bayart's hegemonic alliance, although the latter also incorporates the leading traditional chiefs, who are born into positions of power. One may quibble with the exact delineations of this elite, but Ngayap's work does provide striking evidence regarding the personalized nature of power in African nations like Cameroon. In the poorly institutionalized, patrimonial political systems of SSA, small circumscribed elites can bolster their power through the personal networks that pervade the official structures of the state. It also may help explain how power can be so concentrated in the hands of one executive leader. 22
As Gramsci theorized would happen when a class has secured social hegemony, the values of the ruling alliance and of its modus vivendi have seeped through Cameroonian society, shoring up its power. 23 In particular the acquisitive nature of state agents is something that is culturally accepted, even as it is resented and criticized. Common wisdom in Yaoundé has it that "la chevre broute là ou elle est attachée," that in other words it can only be second nature for state officials to take advantage of their position. 24 The legitimacy of this system has been buttressed in part by the important social mobility that characterized Cameroon for a long time, and has given people the impression they too might benefit from state favors. Given the right studies and diplomas, positions of power and wealth could be attained at a young age, even by rural people. 25
It is control of the state and its resources that has sustained this alliance, however. Its members have fought for the influence, wealth, and power that association with state institutions procures. Sklar's point is that in SSA political power preceded economic power; this has some truth, but in a country like Cameroon, the two have long been mutually reinforcing. 26 High-level positions in the government or administration grant their holders patronage possibilities and a mechanism for enrichment, through the selling of influence and rents. On the other hand, local and foreign businesspeople have accrued large fortunes by buying import licenses and monopolies over lucrative markets. The overlap of private wealth and state power is extensive, often realized within the same family if not the same individual.
As a consequence, the alleged presence of an autonomous business class in Douala is at least part mirage. Soppo Priso provides a fairly unusual example of a business empire being developed without the explicit complicity of the post-colonial state. 27 A Douala businessman, he made his fortune trading with the colonial state before independence and stayed at arm's length from politics after his failure to become prime minister in the early 1960s. Soppo Priso nonetheless continued to exert political influence through his contacts and family ties, which his rank as one of the richest men in the country abetted.
The career of Pierre Tchanque seems much more representative of the business elite that has emerged, particularly in recent years. 28 Of modest origins, this technocrat from the Bamiléké region of Western Province rose to the pinnacles of the state administration before starting his own business. After having been Secretary General in the Ministry of Finance from 1966-1969, Assistant Director General of the state investment company, the Société Nationale des Investissements (SNI) from 1969 to 1970, and Secretary General of the Union Douanière des Etats de l'Afrique Centrale (UDEAC) from 1971 to 1977, he left the public sector. In 1979, he launched a major brewery, NOBRA, with the help of capital from the SNI and important tax and tariff breaks. To reflect his new status, Tchanque was named to the Central Committee of the nation's single party, the Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais (RPDC). 29
The private-public divide is often more illusory than real in a country like Cameroon. Private business strategies can be limited to exploiting rent situations granted by the state, but even legitimate businesses cannot be successful very long without accomodating the state. The unavailability of credit, building permits, or import licenses, as well as petty police exactions, harassment by the tax agents or by the water and electric company are all likely to result without the protection of well-placed friends: reaching an accommodation with the state is usually a precondition for staying in business, let alone thriving. That is why the current predilection for privatization in the donor community is likely to disappoint its proponents: privatization alone is unlikely to change the opportunities for rent seeking and state predation. 30
The elite's drive for hegemony implied and directed state expansion. It would be wrong to argue that rent seeking and patronage were the only reasons the state promoted expansion after independence. Extensive public ownership conformed to prevailing development doctrines, was warmly supported by the donors, and responded to real development needs. Still, the scope state ownership was to achieve was helped by the fact that it afforded leaders like Ahidjo positions of prestige and power to distribute. Similarly with state intervention in the economy: tariffs, licenses, permits, and taxes had all sorts of purposes and justification-including the collection of revenue to finance state activities-but in many cases they were maintained because they created profitable rents to be rationed out.
Just as important, Ahidjo's attempts to dominate and manage his governing alliance shaped the nature of economic strategy. He sponsored the proliferation of ministries and parastatal institutions to increase the positions of power at his disposal. Economic development was inhibited when it appeared to favor certain groups unduly. Thus, in order to temper the development of Bamiléké and more generally southern economic power, Ahidjo always refused to pave the road between Yaoundé and Douala, the two biggest cities in the country, or the one between Yaoundé and Bafoussam in the heart of the Bamiléké region of the Western Highlands. 31
Similarly, the need to regulate the governing elite and to prevent any individual or group from developing undue power resulted in rapid turnover of high-level political and administrative personnel. Tenure in any position was kept short to prevent the holder from developing an autonomous power base, and to allow others to benefit from the position's advantages. Thus, both Ahidjo and now Biya have shuffled or changed ministerial cabinets at least once a year, keeping only a few close associates in key positions longer. 32
Social mobility has declined in recent years. Income inequalities and social differentiation have increased as state elites have consolidated their positions and now are more intent on protecting their privileges. It is not only that the average bureaucrat's annual income is more than 50 times that of the average farmer's, as Hugon had already noted in 1967 33 or that egregious "urban bias" has been routinely identified in the developing world. It is also that the consolidation of the hegemonic alliance has resulted in increasingly little "trickle down" of this wealth throughout the economy. While the civil service as a whole is privileged, its internal inequalities have sharply increased. The administration spends roughly 30 billion CFA a year on housing construction and allowances for state employees, for example, yet these probably benefit 5% of all civil servants. Urban income data indicate a highly skewed distribution, 34 while the 1984 agricultural Census painted a picture of sharp rural differentiation, with some 28,000 farms (2.4% of all farms) enjoying gross incomes of one million CFA or more a year, while 60% of all farms make less than 100,000 CFA. 35 Access to education, modern medicine, and other social services have increasingly been rationed to rich urban populations. 36
Clientelism has not disappeared, far from it. Sectional ties cut across and mediate class cleavages in the patron-client networks that permeate the state structures, much like those that Joseph has so well explored for Nigeria. 37 The most menial job in the administration attracts the minister's attention and mobilizes village and ethnic loyalties. But clientelism does not have the political role that it has in countries with vibrant machine politics. Individuals in the state elite do not cultivate an autonomous power base by promoting a given region or ethnic group, or even a functional category like trade unionists or teachers. It may be important for the Ewondo people (or any other group) that there is an Ewondo minister in Biya's cabinet-and certainly informal interviewing suggests it does-but it does not appear that the Ewondo minister feels obliged to do anything substantial for that ethnic group. That as Minister of Education he may promote the building of a school in his home village responds to a slightly different dynamic, not only because it involves relatively trivial resources but also, more important, it is the personal favor of the "local boy who made good," than it is the cultivation of a political base with ulterior motives.
The amount of income redistribution effectuated by state elites is insignificant. An interesting illustration is provided by the apportionment of arabica coffee revenues in the Bamiléké region of the Western Highlands. 38 Much is made of Bamiléké solidarity: rumors abound of a Bamiléké Mafia within the state bureaucracy, or of shady parallel financial networks that have helped Bamiléké businessmen. 39 In part, this reflects envy toward an ethnic group that has been more achievement oriented than others and has propelled more of its own up the social ladder. The Bamiléké's resulting prominence within the state apparatus, as well as its early support of the UPC Rebellion, 40 has spurred accusations from other ethnic groups of a Bamiléké ambition to dominate the country.
Almost all of the country's high-value arabica coffee is grown by Bamiléké farmers. Since the late fifties, the farmers have been organized in the production cooperatives run by rural elites, often traditional chiefs. The six largest cooperatives formed the Cooperatives Agricoles de l'Ouest (UCCAO) in 1958 to help them commercialize their crops. About 100,000 small farms are obliged to market their coffee crop (some 20,000 tons) through the cooperative. UCCAO has always been allowed to export its arabica coffee directly, while other cooperatives and parastatals have had to pass through the ONCPB, the national marketing organization.
This unique decentralization of economic decision-making has given Bamiléké elites in the Western Province a unique opportunity to engage in "trickle down" to the benefit of their region. First, one might expect that the UCCAO's peasants receive a larger share of the world coffee price than other farmers receive for their crop. However, from 1971 to 1987 arabica producers received an average of 45% of the FOB price while robusta producers received 43% and cocoa producers received 45%. 41 Given the various difficulties with the data, this indicates no more than that a similar proportion of the crop's international value accrues to the producers of each of the three crops. 42 Strictly speaking, these numbers do not reflect the level at which producers are taxed, since they do not take into account the costs of marketing. As table 10.1 shows, however, the state has taxed all three crops at roughly the same level. The difference is that whereas the other two crops are providing ONCPB with handsome revenues, even after reasonable marketing costs are taken into account, the UCCAO cooperative kept the bulk of export revenues for itself, having to pay only a rather modest levy to ONCPB. 43
Remarkably little of this considerable revenue has benefited the cooperatives' members, who are increasingly turning to food crop cultivation and losing their interest in arabica coffee. Arguments about UCCAO's technical assistance role in helping modernize local farming systems are belied by the fact that both yields and output are lower today than at independence, despite UCCAO's plethoric staff. Revenues have financed the growth of the UCCAO cooperatives, which now employ several thousand people. It has also encouraged much fraud, some prestige expenditures such as the financing of football clubs in Western Province, and the local activities of the country's single party. 44 The shabby appearance of towns in the Western Province and the absence of industrial investments there provides subjective evidence that the bulk of UCCAO capital has made its way to the bigger cities south, and has not been recycled in the Western Province. 45
We have described the UCCAO at length because it is a paradigmatic example of intra-elite accommodation processes in Cameroon. Ahidjo early on bought Bamiléké elite support by granting them complete discretion over vast coffee revenues. The success of this strategy was crucial during the UPC Rebellion and it has been maintained ever since to preserve the region's support. UCCAO revenues have nurtured the emergence of a provincial bourgeoisie, often linked to conservative traditional elites, that has tied its fortunes to the regime. UCCAO did not foster an autonomous Bamiléké political project, not only because Ahidjo would never have allowed it, but also because Bamiléké elites internalized the regime's values of material appropriation. While no doubt salient, ethnicity based solidarities have become secondary to strategies of individual enrichment.
The Onset of Economic Crisis
The regime we have just described was not necessarily unstable, even if it was unlikely to promote capitalist accumulation and economic growth. Two factors were to precipitate economic crisis: Biya's accession to the presidency and subsequent falling out with Ahidjo, and the deterioration of Cameroon's terms of trade with the outside world. Much has already been written about the struggle between the two men and its effects on Cameroon's political system after 1983. 46 Suffice it to say that the difficulties Biya encountered consolidating his own power raised the costs of maintaining the loose ruling alliance. Biya could not afford to exert as tight a control over state resources as Ahidjo, given that his hold on power was more precarious. He needed to please the state apparatus, notably those parts of the army which supported him during the 1984 coup attempt, and he wanted to mollify the north (Ahidjo's base of support) as well as meet the heightened expectations of his fellow southerners. A direct consequence was the acceleration of budgetary and state employment growth. He acceded to the donors' long-standing insistence that producer prices for the main cash crops be increased to improve farmer incentives. Increases were particularly generous for cotton producers in the north. By 1985, Cameroon farmers had the highest producer prices in all of Francophone Africa for coffee and cocoa, and cotton prices were a full 50% higher than in the other country of the Franc Zone. 47 Moreover, the new regime's barons to which Biya was beholden were much bolder in staking out claims on the state's resources than Ahidjo's supporters had been. Corruption and rent seeking had always been fundamental characteristics of the regime; 48 after 1984, they began to escape central control and became dysfunctional. In addition, the overvaluation of the CFA franc fueled rent seeking. Fraudulent trade with Nigeria reached dizzying heights after the naira's 1986 devaluation, for example. It is all but impossible to prevent, given the long history of occult trade between the two nations and the active complicity of state agents on both sides of the border.
The need to placate these diverse constituencies proved disastrous when the international environment turned against Biya. A sharp downfall in commodity prices and the rapid depreciation of the dollar after 1985 resulted in a 45% deterioration in the country's terms of trade. 49 The state soon ran deficits for all of the major export crops and could not even cover variable costs on its palm oil and rubber plantations. Most important, the world price of oil plunged and the state's oil revenues decreased from $350 million in fiscal year 1985 to an estimated $207 million in 1988.
The first consequence of the economic crisis was the collapse of the commercial banking sector. A number of bad loans-many of which had been contracted by northerners close to Ahidjo, now out of favor-were defaulted upon, causing a liquidity crisis. By 1987, most of the commercial banks in the country were insolvent, with effects that reverberated throughout the economy. The easy credit and state subsidies that had kept the economy going now suddenly dried up. The marketing process for the major cash crops was seriously disrupted, with not enough liquidity to provide seasonal credit. In addition, the ONCPB had illegally invested much of its accumulated reserves in the commercial banking system (65 billion CFA by some estimates), as well as in a number of private and semi-public corporations now verging on bankruptcy. Farmers were as a consequence not paid more than a third to a half of the official price for their crop, usually with considerable delays. Between 1986 and 1989, GDP decreased by an estimated 11% in real terms. 50
The IMF and the World Bank had been negotiating with the government on and off since mid-1986, without reaching agreement. At this time, Biya staked the national prestige by refusing the tough austerity programs of those two institutions. Throughout 1986 and 1987, he insisted that Cameroon would undertake an adjustment on its own, and seek only nonconditional capital from bilateral donors and the private banks. 51 The 1987 fiscal year budget was to be cut by several hundred billion CFA, the first of several hiring freezes was announced, along with new taxes on luxury goods, and in late 1987, Biya announced the creation of a new "anti-crisis" ministry, the Ministry for the Stabilization of Public Finances. 52
In fact, deeds failed to follow Biya's tough rhetoric and the crisis continued to worsen, with expenditure overruns of 429 billion in 1986-87 (above the projected budget of 800 billion CFA), some 11.5% of GNP. Recourse to the international institutions became inevitable. Agreement was reached with the IMF on a stabilization plan in September 1988 and with the World Bank on a Structural Adjustment Loan in May 1989. The donors' adjustment strategies have contained the conventional prescriptions of important cuts in public expenditures, increased state revenues, and the compression of consumption, coupled with the promotion of selective investments to foster long-term growth. They have called for the privatization, rehabilitation, or elimination of almost all of the nation's parastatals, as well as thoroughgoing liberalization.
The Process of Reform Implementation
Given its sociological makeup, how can the regime come to grips with the economic crisis and the severe compression on its resources that it has brought about? Given that its power and legitimacy is based on the control and manipulation of state resources, can it survive liberalization? A kind of strategy can be gleaned from the desultory and half hearted implementation of adjustment policies since 1987. Some progress has been made cutting government expenditures; there is little choice anyway since state coffers are empty. The donors have been courted more assiduously than in the past to increase public external finance and to get the imprimatur needed to attract private capital back into the country, albeit with little success to date. Some donor-inspired reforms have been launched, usually laboriously although real progress has been achieved in some areas. At the same time, Biya's regime has not wanted-or known it would not be able-to turn systematically against its own barons in the administration and business world, or to change the "rules of the game" regarding the use of positions for personal enrichment. In addition, the state is too unwieldy and inefficient to execute economic policy consistently, and Biya is not confident that he can get his commands implemented by an increasingly undisciplined state bureaucracy. These inconsistent motivations largely explain the erratic and "stop-go" implementation of the specific reforms, which we now focus briefly on.
Cutting Expenditures
Government expenditures have been reduced from a high of 1,229 billion CFA in 1986-87 to 673 billion CFA in 1988-89, and a projected 572 billion for 1991-92. This achievement should be put into context. First, a concurrent fall in public revenues during the same period has meant that the budget deficit-some 207 billion CFA in 1990-91, or 7% of GDP-has remained much too high. Second, the spending cuts have been quite haphazard. Personnel expenditures have been little affected by the cuts, as the number of civil servants actually increased between 1987 and 1991. 53 The cuts have come from the rest of the budget: the investment budget has been cut by two thirds, while nonpersonnel related recurrent expenditures have been reduced to negligible amounts. To take one example, only 5% of the Ministry of Agriculture's total budget of 39 billion CFA was set aside in the 1988-89 budget for nonpersonnel related expenditures. 54 One consequence has been a near total breakdown of efficiency in the ministries, which are becoming increasingly short of working photocopy machines, typewriters, and even light bulbs. Maintenance, never adequately budgeted for, has now all but disappeared. The absurdity of this approach from a developmental point of view is well compensated by the political logic of placating the administration. This was the path of least resistance for the regime. If and when personnel expenditure cuts become necessary, the burden will fall disproportionately on the lower end of the hierarchy for the same reasons. Payroll arrears for new employees had already been allowed to slip to more than 20 billion CFA by early 1989.
The decision to impose new luxury taxes, to freeze new hiring in the administration, and to clamp down on fictitious employees won the government breathing space with the IMF and World Bank, but these changes were discreetly breached as political needs arose. Until the 1990 season the government noisily refused IMF advice to lower official producer prices for cotton, coffee, and cocoa, thus providing evidence of an admirable solidarity with the rural world. Meanwhile, it was increasingly unable to provide the marketing agencies with enough cash to pay peasants more than between 25% and 75% of the full producer price. In September 1989, under pressure from the donors, official producer prices for coffee and cocoa were cut by some 30%. Even the lower prices caused problems for the bankrupt state. State debts to cocoa and coffee farmers accumulated between 1988 and 1991 amidst much confusion, peaking at some 80 billion CFA before French and EEC grants provided the government with the necessary cash to begin honoring the IOUs farmers had accumulated. 55
The decision to save money by selling off government vehicles provides an interesting micro case study of the reform process. The use and abuse of government vehicles have long been a highly charged symbol of state prerogatives in Cameroon. In July 1987, Biya proclaimed that the state had an excessive number of vehicles and that their misuses had reached an unacceptable level. He ordered that all state vehicles be impounded by the police and then either auctioned off publicly or reassigned according to clearly defined professional needs. The measure was initially popular, even though the likely savings would be minor, as it seemed to indicate a new get-tough policy on Biya's part. This enthusiasm made way for cynicism when his announcement set off an unseemly free-for-all that was to last several weeks. 56 Auctions were not publicized and local state elites were allowed to purchase personal cars at bargain prices. Car reassignments were either arbitrary, or the results of intense jockeying and haggling between local state agents, in a process that favored the politically powerful. Governors and prefects tended to be favored by the reassignments over developmental ministries like agriculture or health. The government never reported the savings made from the reform, but they came at the cost of reduced state efficiency and a further eroding of Biya's reputation.
Toughening up the Regime
Biya also toughened up his regime in more substantial ways. Perhaps fearful that his authority was eroding, in early 1989 he brought out of semi-retirement Jean Fochive to head the secret police, the Centre National de la Documentation et de la Recherche (CENER), and Andze Tchoungui to be Secretary of State for Internal Security. 57 Both men had been eminent members of Ahidjo's security apparatus and were closely associated in the public mind with the violent repression of the UPC rebellion in the late sixties and early seventies, as well as that regime's excesses. Indeed, they had dropped from view during the regime's period of democratization in 1983-1985. Their reappearance suggested that Biya wanted to intimidate would-be critics and opponents. A campaign against corruption and fraud was declared and crackdowns were prominently advertised in the state media. 58 The aim was to satisfy the donors, show the general population the regime's impartiality, and moderate the elite's acquisitive fervor. By strengthening his security apparatus, Biya hoped to shore up his own diluted authority and defend himself against potential coups.
Biya employed other methods to increase his own room to maneuver in the initial period of reform. Thus, he called for surprise presidential and legislative elections in April 1988, which were to see the defeat of several old barons of the regime and the election of Biya proteges. The elections were designed to provide Biya with a mandate. Given the degree of presidential meddling in both the constitution of the single party's electoral lists, and probably in the results themselves, it seems certain that Biya was promoting allies and undermining opposition to consolidate his position in preparation for the hard days ahead. 59
Cutting Down on Corruption
Despite his exhortations against corruption, Biya continued Ahidjo's tactic of using the distribution of rents to regulate and dominate the different factions that constitute the country's elite. He sought less to eliminate rent seeking during this period of economic crisis than to better control and centralize it. The state's ability to moralize its own elite and cut down on corruption was limited in practice, moreover, as its capabilities for implementation were too limited to ensure the execution of policies, particularly when the state's commitment on their behalf is lukewarm. This negative synergy between lack of commitment and implementation capacity is exemplified by the stillborn Stabilization Fund (Caisse de Péréquation) for rice. 60
Under considerable pressure from the donors, the government set up a stabilization fund that would tax rice imports enough to protect local rice production. The proceeds from this tax were to permit the rehabilitation of the SEMRY, the rice parastatal, which was under considerable financial pressure. In fact, the Stabilization Fund never functioned properly and did not accrue revenues. Until mid 1989, even the importers with official import licenses managed to avoid paying the stabilization tax, while the flow of illegal rice imports failed to abate; the evidence suggests widespread complicity in the Customs Office and in the Ministry of Industrial Development and Commerce, the ministry in charge of import licenses. Incompetence, confusion, and poor records in both institutions have abetted fraud. Biya spoke out on behalf of the Stabilization Fund but was not able or willing to clamp down on the corruption that destroyed it. His motives were ambiguous; it was alleged that the worst offenders were businessmen from the south who were encouraged by Biya and Nomo Ongolo, the Minister of Industrial Development and Commerce until December 1987, to compete with the traditional Bamiléké and northern importers. 61
Parastatal Reform
Institutional reform in the public and parastatal sectors is another area where there was more rhetoric than action. 62 The World Bank made parastatal reform a cornerstone of its adjustment program and their excessive cost and inefficiencies had long been criticized by technocrats in the government itself. In May 1987, Biya appeared to side with the reformers when he appointed a national commission to review the performance of the parastatal sector. A group of five Cameroonian technocrats spent a year auditing more than 150 parastatals, with the assistance of foreign experts financed by the World Bank and the United Nations. They reported to the president in May 1988. Biya then procrastinated, expanding the Commission that summer and ordering it to examine the financial sector more thoroughly, before quietly shelving its report. Nonetheless, privatization has progressed, thanks to sustained donor pressures and budgetary exigencies. Initially, only several small parastatals were targeted for sale or liquidation, 63 but in mid 1991, the government published a list of firms to be privatized, including important public enterprises such as the Cameroon Sugar Company, although no deadlines or schedules were established. Outside of the banking sector, the most significant privatization has been the liquidation of the ONCPB. 64 Several thousand ONCPB employees were laid off and cocoa and coffee marketing channels were privatized. Significantly, considerable donor pressures could not prevent the process from taking several years, nor the government from establishing a new marketing organization, the Office national du Café et du Cacao (ONCC), to take over some of ONCPB's old functions.
There appears to be internal debate within the state elite regarding the steps to follow for the important parastatals. On the one hand, parastatal reform necessarily involves layoffs, management contracts, audits, and a tighter control of the purse, which it is loath to pursue; on the other hand, privatization has some appeal as a solution to the parastatals' problems, because discretion can be exercised over who the buyers are and the sale will provide revenues for the state. Perhaps as a result, the government has focused on parastatals that can be privatized rather than on those that have important noncommercial functions and where reform would focus on rehabilitation or liquidation. Privatization, however, involves daunting technical problems in a country with no stock market and a very sick banking sector. 65 Thus, again, reform seems to be slowed down by a mutually reinforcing combination of lack of commitment and lack of capability.
The Role of the Donors
The important donors have all offered capital to Cameroon to assist the process of adjustment; they are the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Development Fund (EDF) on the multilateral side; and France's Caisse Centrale de Cooperation Economique (CCCE), and USAID on the bilateral side. Donor finance provides the state with considerable discretionary resources and has become increasingly important as the state's own resources have decreased. As elsewhere in Africa, the conditionality of donor assistance has proven largely illusory: the donors disagree among themselves, promote difficult programs to monitor, and have strong incentives to avoid conflicts and showdowns with the national authorities. 66 The government has successfully played donors off each other: while still negotiating with the IMF it convinced France to extend 400 million francs for the rehabilitation of several parastatals, thus providing breathing space that lessened the need to accept the IMF's more draconian proposals. The parastatals France agreed to continue subsidizing included SEMRY and SODECOTON, two institutions originally slated for elimination by the World Bank. The IMF and World Bank opposed the construction of a new 88 billion CFA international airport at Yaoundé but the German government nonetheless provided subsidized loans for the airport. 67
The state has manipulated donors in order to increase aid flows, with little attention to developmental concerns. It appreciates the discretionary, extra-budgetary nature of the aid, particularly in this time of austerity. Few parastatals exist that have not been financed in part by the donors and, today, continued donor support has been a sure way to safeguard institutional survival. When Biya cut down the number of ministries from 29 to 22 in 1988 to save money, it was alleged that the Ministry of Women's Affairs owed its survival largely to its ability to attract donor support.
Adjustment and Political Crisis, 1990-1992
As I argued above, the regime's political legitimacy was traditionally based at least in part on a high degree of upward social mobility, and the sense that the state's resources were being divided equally across region and ethnic group. As economic opportunity dried up in the late 1980s, popular resentment toward the regime was increasingly fueled by conspicuous disparities in wealth, high-level corruption, and the perception that specific ethnic groups were privileged by state policies. Yet, until 1990, the regime seemed safe from the kind of large-scale popular protest that might have led to systemic change. The regime's political elite seemed cohesive and the state had successfully eliminated or coopted all the organizations that might have given political expression to popular resentment. Occasional outbreaks, such as the taxi strike in late 1987 to protest police harassment, or the student demonstration at Yaoundé University in December 1988 to protest delays in student fellowships, embarrassed the state but were too ephemeral to undermine its stability. As the Economist Intelligence Unit put it in late 1989: "The man in the street is still taking the economic crisis and the rapid contraction of purchasing power with an astonishing degree of stoicism. It is the higher echelons of the army, government and civil service that are most likely to react to the erosion of their privileges." 68 The biggest threat thus seemed to be a palace coup against Biya, who had not shown great skill in managing the process of economic reform.
The emergence of a pro-democracy movement across Sub-Saharan Africa in late 1989 had a dramatic effect on Cameroon politics, however. Spurred in part by events in Eastern Europe and by the new international climate, as well as by domestic circumstances, major protests erupted in countries as varied as Benin, the Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, and Zambia. 69 Initially, Cameroon appeared to be spared, but in February 1990, a prominent lawyer and ex-head of the national Bar, Yondo Black, was arrested for attempting to create an opposition political party. This led to a series of public demonstrations, notably by students at the University of Yaoundé, as well as the announcement of the creation of another new party in the Anglophone Northwest Province city of Bamenda. Antigovernment protests soon multiplied, growing in strength and reaching all parts of the country. They were reinforced by the adherence of prominent politicians from the Ahidjo era that Biya had pushed aside, as well as of several leading reformers of the single party who now defected. The absence of democratic freedoms, as well as governmental policy deficiencies and the lamentable state of the economy were the rallying cries of the protests.
Biya initially refused to compromise, arguing in April 1990 that the single party was needed to resolve the country's economic problems. Once it was clear that traditional repressive measures would not be adequate to silence the opposition, however, and under pressure from the Western donors, Biya responded with several reforms of political liberalization. Opposition parties were legalized, multiparty elections promised, and censorship relaxed in the second half of 1990. He also named a northerner as his prime minister, Sadou Hayatou, in April 1991, both to please the donors who had argued a prime ministry would increase governmental efficiency, and to attenuate growing accusations that his regime unduly favored the south. Hayatou's nomination did little to calm the north, however, and only exacerbated the unhappiness of the Bamiléké dominated western region. 70
At the same time, Biya continued to try to intimidate the opposition with arrests, censorship, and the brutal repression of marches. He put the army in charge of administering seven of the country's ten provinces, further undermining the beleaguered local administration's credibility. Most important, Biya rejected the opposition's demand for a sovereign "national conference" along the lines of the ones held in a number of Francophone countries, and which had already led to governmental changes in Benin, Congo, and Togo.
Throughout 1990 and 1991, a deadlock prevailed between the opposition and the Biya regime, in an increasingly polarized and conflictual environment. 71 The opposition was constantly weakened by personal, regional, and ethnic rivalries, as well as legitimate differences over strategy. It attempted to overcome its internal divisions by forming the National Coordination of Opposition Parties and Associations (NCOPA), a coordinating committee to determine joint strategies and actions to follow. It agreed upon the Opération Villes Mortes campaign in May 1991. Under what amounted to a permanent general strike and civil disobedience campaign, people were encouraged to boycott their jobs, refuse to pay taxes of any kind, and withdraw their money from the formal banking sector. After a dramatic start, in which it more or less closed down the entire economy for a couple days, the Villes Mortes campaign appears to have been followed unevenly, with little effect on life in Yaoundé, a greater impact on Douala, and a strong and sustained impact in the western region. It nonetheless further undermined the state's extractive capabilities, and by the end of the year the state may have collected as little as 15% of the previous year's revenues. 72
Nonetheless, thanks to the occasional infusions of donor capital, notably from France, the government managed to respect its most pressing budgetary obligations, and Biya stood firm in his refusal to agree to a national conference. Although Biya's credibility and legitimacy was further eroded, 73 his refusal to compromise with the opposition began to pay off, when the latter's unity weakened in the second half of 1991 and disagreements surfaced about whether or not to end the Villes Mortes campaign. The regime found it possible to manipulate the opposition's internal differences to its own benefit. Biya then caught the opposition off guard by announcing in a television address on October 11 his intention to hold legislative elections in February 1992, and his proposal that the prime minister meet with the leaders of the opposition to discuss the electoral code and access to the media during the election. The leaders of the NCOPA could not agree on the appropriate response to these proposals, amidst growing acrimony. Some opposition leaders favored some kind of negotiation with Biya to end the current stalemate, while other, more militant groups favored an extension of the economic boycott and refused to participate in an election they argued was sure to be rigged.
Eventually, much of the opposition agreed to forego the national conference and contest the elections, but Biya's political victory was tempered by the absence of several of the most prominent leaders of the opposition. These elections were held eventually on March 1, 1992, marred by procedural problems, violence, and some fraud. The CPDM, the ex-single party, won a narrow majority, and three other parties won seats in the new legislature. Although the election results indicated how little support the government retained outside of the Beti areas of the Center and South Province, 74 it did provide Biya with a much needed boost, demonstrating if nothing else his political survival skills. The presidential elections, scheduled for April 1993, were to be his next big test. Opposition leaders feared, however, that he would abruptly call the elections much sooner, 75 and this is precisely what he did. They were held hastily in October 1992, and Biya won by a narrow margin over five opponents, although serious allegations of fraud persisted.
The impact of these political events on the process of structural adjustment is complex. Obviously, the regime's political problems and the growing political instability had negative consequences for the economy and further eroded the government's willingness and ability to undertake reform. Within the administration, paralysis and indecision were probably heightened by a mixture of discontent, fear, and a wait and see attitude. Even more decisions were now referred up to the Presidency. The Villes Mortes campaign further weakened the state's extractive capabilities, as it provided a useful cover for widespread tax evasion, often quite unrelated to politics. Moreover, political instability fueled capital flight and deterred whatever little productive investment might have been forthcoming.
On the other hand, the deterioration of the political climate did not necessarily increase the unsustainability of the current situation and the need for economic reform. The donors appear to have decided to side with the regime against the opposition once Biya had agreed to the initial liberalization reforms in 1990. The fragmentation of the opposition and the absence of a clear alternative to Biya only comforted them in this choice. 76 The Villes Mortes campaign's impact on government revenues was so negative that there can be little doubt that the government was failing to respect the fiscal targets it had agreed to with its creditors. 77 Thus, the decision by France and the IMF to extend new capital to the country in December 1991, in the middle of the electoral campaign, signaled support for the regime in no uncertain terms, and provided it with a much needed boost. In other words, even though the economy was further undermined by the political events of 1990 and 1991, the situation was no less sustainable at the end of this period than it had been before.
The presence of an opposition, along with a media increasingly willing to test the limits of the regime's new tolerance, probably imposed a slightly higher level of accountability than in the past, moreover, and put pressure on the state to prevent the kind of abuses it had previously tolerated. 78 In addition, the opposition's policy views on structural adjustment were mixed, and did not much add to pressures on the government to change its policies. Beyond an agreement on the general proposition that excessive corruption was a major culprit for the crisis and must be eliminated, the diverse groups within the opposition offered sharply different views on the economy. Some leaders argued for a more rapid process of privatization and economic liberalization, to disengage the ineffectual state from the economy, albeit probably with various levels of sincerity. 79 Such views strengthened the reformers within the state itself and comforted the donors, even if they were often couched in terms of economic nationalism and were highly critical of donor conditionality. Other opposition groups criticized the government's implementation of past policies rather than the policies themselves, and seemed to imply that policy reform was essentially unnecessary as long as govenmental corruption was eliminated. 80
Thus, the emergence of an opposition in the early 1990s did not on the whole constitute a strong force for or against adjustment policies. On the other hand, the period witnessed a further deterioration of the state's extractive and implementation capabilities, and only the relaxation of conditionality by the donors was keeping Cameroon from debt default. At the time of writing, the prospects for economic reform were worse than ever, while, having survived legislative and presidential elections, the Biya regime could look to the future with more confidence, and its long-term survival was by no means impossible. In the immediate run, thanks to oil and aid, the state retained enough discretionary resources to stave off opposition or buy support as needs arise. Opposition politicians could be placated with various material benefits and in time opposition parties could be convinced to rejoin the majority. Persistent rumors suggested that some oil revenues continue to be squirreled away in overseas bank accounts in anticipation of further political emergencies. 81
Concluding Remarks: How Hemmed In Is Cameroon?
This brief description of the implementation of reforms so far suggests the prospects for structural reform are not good. Austerity will no doubt continue to impose budgetary cutbacks. In the absence of revenues, there will be haphazard expenditure cuts as the state peels off some its less important layers. The heralded opening up of the regime that Biya seemed to undertake in 1984-1986 was in some sense a process of enlargement of the ruling alliance. Oil money had made it possible and since 1987 austerity imposed the opposite process, with a retrenchment of the ruling alliance designed to save it. Biya's central challenge has not been to impose unpopular austerity measures on the population, although the regime's legitimacy may well collapse and the population express its unhappiness with increasing intensity. Certain constituencies will be treated more gingerly than others: the regime will be more hesitant to attack the purchasing power of civil servants than of peasants. But the regime has shown that it is not afraid to impose austerity if it is needed.
Biya's central challenge is rather to continue to manage this retrenchment of the state elite, in the context of diminishing resources. The inconsistent pace of reform, its recurring breakdowns and betrayals suggest Biya is maneuvering to placate the country's creditors while gingerly testing the political limits of the reform process. Ambiguity is an asset for Biya, as it keeps potential foyers of opposition off guard while cuts are made surreptitiously. Donor pressure and threats can be used to maintain pressure on recalcitrant allies. Still, Machiavellian machinations explain only a part of the reform's uneven progress. Some of the maneuvering may be little more than delaying tactics: time may after all solve some of the problems, while a rebound in world commodity prices could defer the crisis at least temporarily.
Moreover, it is not clear how much control Biya and the top echelons of the administration exert on events, or how much of what happens was designed. Can Biya raise the productivity of the administration, or get it to cut costs? Did he foresee what would happen when he ordered government cars sold? How much of government corruption occurs with his knowledge and at his discretion? The patrimonial logic on which the state is built subverts the capacity to implement change and lowers the internal discipline of the state apparatus; not only are managerial competence and technical expertise in short supply within the administration, but also they have never been the driving force behind the administration's work. Changing the social logic of the state apparatus would be a tremendous challenge for any would-be reformer.
The analysis of the preceding pages suggests that real structural adjustment-in the sense of a fundamental shift in the national allocation of resources-is unlikely without a change in regime. The current state elite is too dependent on the current pattern of allocation to begin dismantling it. Thus, even in areas in which implementation is not problematic, liberalization is unlikely if it undermines important rent seeking. Lip service will be paid to it, but specific reforms will be subverted or delayed.
At best, the egregious excesses of the boom years will be tempered. This supposes that Biya can muster enough personal prestige and power to persuade or coerce the ruling elite to behave with more discipline than it has since the beginning of the crisis. In the worst case scenario, Biya will not control the situation; reforms will then be systematically subverted by the regime's own barons and the state's ability and commitment to adjustment reduced to naught. Biya's power itself, after all, is based on the control of the state resources that are now melting away. He is the ultimate patron in the pyramid of prebendal networks that shapes political power: that is the source of his political legitimacy, such as it is. In this context, the prospects are not good. Before the pro-democracy protests, Biya had sought to gain a wider legitimacy with which to intimidate the state elite and increase his own autonomy. Albeit much too timidly, he had resorted to promises of liberalization, a populist discourse, and anticorruption campaigns, to gain new constituencies that might support or at least not oppose reform. Overtaken by the pro-democracy movement since 1990, Biya has increasingly become little more than the prisoner of his ruling alliance.
How stable is the current situation? Given African events of the last several years, predictions are doubtless foolhardy. Nonetheless, several comments can be safely made. First, events of the last two decades in Africa suggest that economic crisis and deterioration are not incompatible with political stability. In the absence of some unexpected exogenous event, the current patterns of economic stagnation are not necessarily unstable. The Côte d'Ivoire, with similar economic and political structures, has been in economic recession for almost a decade now. Houphout-Boigny, like Biya, has proven unable or unwilling to push through radical reform, and has successfully concentrated his efforts on managing the retrenchment of the regime's traditional social base. The Côte d'Ivoire has not yet faced the succession crisis that destabilized Cameroon, as it has other regimes, but a decade of donor-managed economic austerity and the collapse of its agricultural sector have not yet shaken the regime. 82
Nor is it unique. Several African countries have been rolling over debt and signing stabilization plans with the IMF since the first oil crisis almost twenty years ago. Cameroon's current predicaments would be the envy of many of these nations with their larger per capita debts and without Cameroon's diverse and rich resource base. The country's economic problems are not as severe-at least not yet-as those of say Ghana or Senegal, not to mention Sudan or Uganda. Between oil revenues and donor finance, there is no reason to think that the state's financial situation need deteriorate much beyond the current difficulties, even if complete recovery is also doubtful.
Over time, popular protest is less likely: the population begins to accept leaner times and expects less of the state; "urban exodus" may increase as it has in countries like Zaire or Nigeria and relieve some of the pressures in major cities. True, state effectiveness in fostering development will further deteriorate, but it was never that efficient anyway and the "exit" option is there for peasants to retreat back into subsistence agriculture. The point here is that countries much poorer than Cameroon have survived worse economic strains without a change in their regimes.
Several factors could undo this stabillity. First, of course, the political protests of 1990 and 1991 could revive with sufficient force to shake the regime. Sustained protests and street violence could lead the army to intervene on behalf of law and order. On the other hand, no organization appears capable of sustaining these protests or of unifying the opposition. The opposition leaders who emerged from the elections appear unlikely to promote a return to this kind of violence and appear for the most part willing to seek a modus vivendi with the regime. Strikes and student demonstrations may upset the government, but are unlikely to undermine the regime's stability.
Secondly, the possibility of large-scale ethnic violence has increased in recent years. Old quarrels have been reinvigorated both by economic hardships and by cynical politicians seeking short-term advantages. Biya himself has aroused considerable resentment by appearing willing to curry favor with his popular base in Beti country. Although still unlikely, widespread ethnic violence could conceivably destabilize the regime. In addition, resentment in the two Anglophone provinces has dramatically increased in the last couple of years and has given rise to secessionist sentiment. Legal, administrative, and even constitutional reforms could probably placate the Anglophone minority, but Francophone arrogance and the clumsiness of the regime on this issue could lead to an escalation of demands past a point of no return.
Thirdly, because the country can count on virtually no private capital, at least in the absence of Western public guarantees, the level of donor support essentially determines the government's budget constraint. It is clear that the end of the Cold War and budgetary difficulties are conspiring to reduce the West's interest in Africa. The consequence is a reduction in economic and military aid levels and a greater tolerance of instability and civil strife, if and when it occurs. The end of donor support for the regime could destabilize the current equilbrium. In particular, a more critical French attitude would impose on Biya the tough choices he has so far avoided. A tighter budget might impose cuts in the civil service salary mass, for example, arousing the wrath of the regime's leading constituency.
So much for factors that might subvert political stability. What factors are necessary to put the country on a virtuous economic path? To what extent, in other words, is Cameroon (and the rest of Africa) hemmed in? There is first and foremost, the governance dimension. In recent years, the link between the quality of governance and the economic crisis in Africa have increasingly become a subject of inquiry by scholars. 83 An emerging conclusion from this research is that state abuses have resulted from the lack of counterweights to state power in African civil society. There are fewer independent civic organizations in SSA than anywhere else in the developing world. Given state inefficiencies and low capabilities, associational life is vibrant and able to exert diffuse opposition to state policies, but it remains informal and too poorly organized to impose accountability on the state or to curb its excesses. Social forces have also been able to deflect and undo the impact of many policies, and often weigh on policy during its implementation phase. Few, however, have influenced the style of governance. Cameroon exemplifies these truths: every organized group to emerge from civil society has been coopted or destroyed by the state, from trade unions to farmer cooperatives. Until these groups are strengthened and develop an autonomous political project, pluralism and state accountability will remain unlikely. This process may have begun with the emergence of the pro-democracy movement in 1990. As I argued above, there are already signs that the opposition press has moderated government corruption.
It would be naive and historically incorrect to suggest that greater pluralism is a sufficient condition for sustained economic growth. On the other hand it is probably a necessary condition, at least in the African context. Clearly, authoritarian state structures have above all served to protect high-level incompetence and malfeasance. One may speculate that democratization alone can lead to the structures of state accountability and transparency that are needed for a vibrant private sector and effective governance in countries like Cameroon. Thus, Sklar has spoken of the need for "developmental democracy" in SSA, democratic regimes that promote economic growth. 84 One might further speculate that democracy would help promote a class-based politics in which numerically important groups in the population formed political alliances on behalf of economic growth. Democracy would then not eliminate patrimonial corruption, but it would limit its negative impact and potentially empower the groups that have the most to gain from economic reform: smallholders in the countryside and the private-sector middle class. By promoting the emergence of economic based interest groups, a class-based politics would moreover lessen the salience of ethnic solidarities.
Stable property rights and more effective governance will help promote economic growth. Secondly, however, it is clear that economic policy reform poses difficult dilemmas for any type of regime in SSA. Success stories in other parts of the world seem to indicate that true structural adjustment takes well over a decade of sustained effort and requires access to substantial international private capital to spearhead investment. In Africa, two decades of donor-inspired adjustment programs have not prevented a net disinvestment by private capital over the same period. Perhaps as a result, in countries as varied as Senegal, the Côte d'Ivoire, or Kenya, these programs have failed to deliver their promise of a "supply response" and healthy sustained development. 85 It is difficult to dispute the contention that this reflects the failure of state elites to implement these programs fully. Nonetheless, even committed reform governments, like the Rawlings regime in Ghana, have found it tough to sustain reform policies, as they provide few obvious dividends and as yet little extra private capital. 86 Where is the economic growth to come from? There are no obvious alternatives to the traditional commodity productions like cocoa and coffee whose value appear to be in ineluctable decline on world markets. A return to rapid growth in the world economy is probably necessary to stabilize commodity prices and stop the current trend toward increasing Western protectionism. Such a favorable international environment might then, along with improved governance structures, provide the conditions under which states like Cameroon could undertake sustained economic growth.
The current fiscal crisis of African states imposes cutbacks that undermine the little developmental capacity they had acquired, precisely when these are most needed to promote the infrastructural and social investments that will end economic stagnation. If it is true as I have suggested throughout this chapter that there is a negative synergy between state capacity and patrimonialism, then one of the ironies of adjustment is that it may end up strengthening the very features that brought about the present crisis, and cause a long-term period of stagnation. It will be difficult for Cameroon to devise new strategies to resolve these economic conundrums. Like many of its neighbors, it has so far preferred not to address them.
Note 1: An early draft of this paper was presented at the 1989 meeting of the African Studies Association, November 2-5, Atlanta, Georgia. It was revised thanks in part to a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Helpful comments from Jean-François Bayart, Thomas Callaghy, and Juan Gaviria are gratefully acknowledged. Back.
Note 2: The CFA (Coopération Financière en Afrique Centrale) Franc is pegged to the French Franc, at a rate of fifty to one. One U.S. Dollar was worth some 409 in 1984, 400 Francs in 1986, 319 in 1989, and 272 in 1990.Back
Note 3: Thomas M. Callaghy, "Africa's Debt Crisis," Journal of International Affairs 38 (Summer 1984): 61-79.Back
Note 4: These statistics are from the World Bank, Adjustment Lending: An Evaluation of Ten Years of Experience (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1989). For a summary review of the Cameroonian Economy, see EDIAFRIC, L'Economie Camerounaise (Paris: EDIAFRIC, 1984); and "Cameroun, 1988," Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens no. 2241 (October 21, 1988): 2793-2876. Early and somewhat dated reviews can be found in IMF, Surveys of African Economies: vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1968), chapter 6; and Philipp Hugon, Analyse du Sous-Développement en Afrique Noire: l'Example de l'Economie du Cameroun (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1968).Back
Note 5: See the glowing assessment of the regime's policy orientation in "Cameroun: 1960-1980," Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens, October 29, 1976, pp. 2812-2956. See also Salvatore Schiavo-Campo, et al., The Tortoise Walk: Public Policy and Private Activity in the Economic Development of Cameroon, Aid Evaluation Special Study No. 10, U.S. Agency for International Development, Washinton, D.C., 1983. A much less flattering view is provided by David Kom, Le Cameroun: Essai d'Analyse Economique et Politique (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1971), and Richard A. Joseph, ed., Gaullist Africa: Cameroon Under Ahmadu Ahidjo (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978).Back
Note 6: Piet Konings, "L'Etat, l'Agro-industrie et la Paysannerie au Cameroun," Politique Africaine 22 (June 1986): 120-137; Jean Claude Willame, "The Practices of a Liberal Political Economy: Import and Export Substitution in Cameroon (1975-81)," in Michael G. Schatzberg and I. William Zartman, eds., The Political Economy of Cameroon (New York: Praeger, 1986); P. Baris, C. Freud, and J. Zaslavsky, "La Politique Agricole du Cameroun de l'Indépendence à nos Jours," mimeo, Paris, March 1987.Back
Note 7: See Olivier Vallée, Le Prix de l'Argent CFA: Heurs et Malheurs de la Zone Franc (Paris: Karthala 1989), pp. 46-63.Back
Note 8: Mokpokpo Muki Dravi, The Alleviation of Rural Poverty in Cameroon, FAO In Depth Studies Series no. 11, Rome, 1984; Bureau International du Travail, "Disparités de Revenues entre les Villes et les Campagnes au Cameroun," Report Submitted to the Government of Cameroon, Addis Ababa: International Labor Organization, 1982.Back
Note 9: Mark Delancey, "Cameroon National Food Policies and Organizations: The Green Revolution and Structural Proliferation," Journal of Modern African Studies 7, 2 (Summer 1980): 121-128.Back
Note 10: J. Schwettmann, Etude Préparatoire Pour le Séminaire National sur le Mouvement Coopératif au Cameroun: Etude no. 3, Analyse Mesoéconomique, GTZ: Yaoundé, August 1987; author's translation.Back
Note 11: B. Essama Nssah, "Impact of Pricing and Related Policies on Agricultural Production in Cameroon," Yaoundé: U.S. Agency for International Development, mimeo, June 1984.Back
Note 12: Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens, "Cameroun, 1988," p. 2825. See also "Biya va Privatiser," Africa International, May 1988, pp. 88-90.Back
Note 13: Deepak Lal, "The Political Economy of Economic Liberalization," World Bank Economic Review 1, 2 (January 1987): 273-300.Back
Note 14: John Waterbury, "The Political Management of Economic Adjustment and Reform" in Joan Nelson, ed., Fragile Coalitions: The Politics of Economic Adjustment Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1989), pp. 39-56.Back
Note 15: Henry S. Bienen and Mark Gersovitz, "Economic Stabilization, Conditionality and Political Stability," International Organization 39, 4 (1985): 729-754; Joan Nelson, "The Political Economy of Stabilization: Commitment, Capacity, and Public Response," World Development 12, 10 (1984): 983-1006; Stephan Haggard, "The Politics of Adjustment: Lessons from the IMF's Extended Fund Facility," International Organization 39, 3 (1985): 505-534.Back
Note 16: Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), and Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Back
Note 17: John Ravenhill, "Adjustment with Growth: A Fragile Consensus," Journal of Modern African Studies 26, 2 (1988): 179-210; G. K. Helleiner, ed. Africa and the International Monetary Fund (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1986). Back
Note 18: Nicolas van de Walle, "Rice Politics in Cameroon: State Commitment, Capability and Urban Bias," Journal of Modern African Studies 27, 4 (December 1989): 579-600.Back
Note 19: Jean-François Bayart, L'Etat au Cameroun (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politique, 1985).Back
Note 20: Bayart's more recent work has extended this approach to the rest of the continent; see L'Etat en Afrique (Paris: Fayard, 1989). Similar approaches are to be found in Michael G. Schatzberg, Politics and Class in Zaire: Bureaucracy, Business and Beer in Lisaala (New York: Africana, 1980); Thomas M. Callaghy, The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); and Richard A. Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Back
Note 21: Pierre Flambeau Ngayap, Cameroun: Qui Gouverne? De Ahidjo à Biya, l'Héritage et l'Enjeu (Paris: Editions l'Harmattan, 1983).Back
Note 22: Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).Back
Note 23: See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971). Bayart provides a wide-ranging discussion of the nature of ruling class hegemony in L'Etat en Afrique, pp. 157-241; for a broader discussion of Gramsci's political theory, see Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 65-88.Back
Note 24: This is translated literally as "the goat grazes where she is attached." See "Cameroun: Biya resserre les Boulons," Jeune Afrique no. 1481, May 24, 1989 p. 18. See also Bayart, l'Etat en Afrique.Back
Note 25: Ngayap, Cameroun: Qui Gouverne?, describes at length the social and educational backgrounds of the governing elite.Back
Note 26: Richard Sklar, "The Nature of Class Domination in Africa," Journal of Modern African Studies 17, 4 (1979): 273-293.Back
Note 27: An amusing debate in the pages of Africa International as to which businessmen profited most from the state is instructive in this regard. See "Les Milliardaires Camerounais," no. 202, February 1988, pp. 67-68; and "Les Milliardaires Camerounais de l'Intox," no. 204 (April 1988): 51-53. Priso's political career is described in Bayart, l'Etat au Cameroun. Back
Note 28: See "NOBRA: Les Lecons d'un Naufrage," Africa International 205 (May 1988): 22-24, and "Chronique d'un Pillage Annoncé," Jeune Afrique Economie 151 (January 1992): 177-178. Back
Note 29: NOBRA would have a meteoric rise, producing 327,000 hectoliters of beer in 1983-84, but would soon fall apart amidst widespread allegations of fraud and mismanagement. A rehabilitation plan orchestrated by the SNI involving capital from a Danish government investment development fund in 1986 could not prevent final bankruptcy two years later.Back
Note 30: Henry Bienen and John Waterbury, "The Political Economy of Privatization in Developing Countries," World Development 17, 5 (May 1989): 617-632; Nicolas van de Walle, "Privatization in Developing Counties: A Review of the Issues," World Development 17, 5 (May 1989): 601-616. Back
Note 31: This is difficult to confirm, of course, but is widely believed in Cameroon. There is surely no good economic explanation for the lack of a decent road between these major economic and demographic centers. Indeed, when it was built in 1985, the Yaoundé-Bafoussam road resulted in an estimated 10-15% decrease in food prices in Yaoundé. See R. C. Kite, "Food Price Patterns in Cameroon: A Comparison of Yaoundé Retail Prices and West Province Market Prices," Yaoundé: USAID Agriculture Management and Planning Project, Ministry of Agriculture, mimeo, March 1988 . Back
Note 32: See Ngayap, Cameroun: Qui Gouverne?, pp. 35-48. He notes that "in twenty four years, the Ahidjo regime had 7 different education ministers, 7 health ministers, 8 ministers of finance, 8 ministers of public administration, 9 ministers of justice, 9 ministers foreign affairs, 11 ministers of agriculture, 12 ministers of information and 12 ministers of the economy." (p. 45, my own translation). On the other hand, Ahidjo's fellow northerner and confidant, Sadou Daoudou, was in charge of the army for twenty years. Back
Note 33: Hugon, Analyse du Sous-Développement, pp. 230-231.Back
Note 34: Existing data is very spotty. The government's 1983/84 Household Expenditure Survey suggests that the top richest ten percent of the households in Yaoundé and Douala spent roughly 30 percent of those cities' total household expenditures. This understates inequalities at the national level, since the income of the average urban dweller is roughly 8 times that of the average rural dweller. See Ministry of Planning, Republic of Cameroon, Enquete Budget-Consommation Auprés des Ménages: Septembre 1983-Septembre 1984, September 1987; Dravi, The Alleviation of Rural Poverty.Back
Note 35: Ministry of Agriculture, Republic of Cameroon, 1984 Agricultural Census, Yaoundé, 1984.Back
Note 36: Regarding the educational sector, see Philippe Lippens and R. A. Joseph, "The Power and the People" in Joseph, ed., Gaullist Africa, pp. 122-125.Back
Note 37: See Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics.Back
Note 38: The Bamiléké are a loose knit set of distinct tribal groups in the densely populated Western Province. Though this region has extremely rich soils, overpopulation has contributed to extensive emigration to the rest of the country, including large groups to Yaoundé and Douala. Overall, as much as a fifth of Cameroon's population may be of Bamiléké origin, depending on how narrowly one defines the ethnic group and the region it occupies. See Hazel Mcferson, Ethnicity, Individual Initiative and Economic Growth in an African Rural Society: The Bamiléké of Cameroon, A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 15, U.S. Agency for International Development, Washington, D.C., 1983; and Jean Louis Dongmo, Le Dynamisme Bamiléké (Yaoundé: Université de Yaoundé, 1981).Back
Note 39: Mcferson, Ethnicity, Individual Initiative; interviews. See also E. Kengne Pokam, La Problematique de l'Unité Nationale au Cameroun. (Paris: Editions l'Harmattan, 1986).Back
Note 40: There is now a long historiography of the UPC rebellion. See among others Joseph, Radical Nationalism, and J.-A. Mbembe, Ruben Um Nyobe: Le Problème National Kamerunais (Paris: Editions l'Harmattan, 1984).Back
Note 41: Interestingly, the same percentages are 72, 67 and 57 for the 1961-1971 period.Back
Note 42: These calculations have to be treated with circumspection for several reasons. First, the FOB values are nothing more than approximations and there are wide differences between the trade figures reported by the Cameroonian authorities, the ONCPB, and the FAO. Secondly, producers rarely get the official prices: there is systematic underweighing of their production during the marketing phase. The calculations used the price for the highest quality, and not the lower quality that the parastatal often arbitrarily assigns to a given farmer's crop. In this area too, there appears to be a good deal of corruption beyond the producer's control. These three factors suggest there may be large and unsystematic differences between the official producer price and the effective price paid to the farmers.Back
Note 43: ONCPB's official function is to serve as a stabilization fund; the levy was designed to allow ONCPB to accumulate savings in order to maintain producer prices stable when world commodity prices decreased. In fact, the producer price has always been below the world price, and the levy has in effect been a permanent tax on cocoa and coffee producers. Besides financing its own not inconsiderable growth and shoring up the now bankrupt banking system, the ONCPB used this revenue to provide extra budgetary support to a number of loss-making parastatals. It has provided some assistance to farmers-including those of UCCAO-notably subsidized fertilizers, credit, pesticides, and free marketing bags. See among other sources, Schwettman, Etude Préparatoire.Back
Note 44: Jacques Champaud, Villes et Campagnes du Cameroun de l'Ouest (Paris: ORSTOM, 1983), pp. 246-247.Back
Note 45: See G. Courade, P. Eloundou-Enyegue, and I. Grangeret, "L'Union Centrale des Cooperatives Agricoles de l'Ouest de Cameroun (UCCAO): de l'Entreprise Commerciale à l'Organisation Paysanne," Tiers Monde 32, 128 (October/December 1991): 887-899 for a similar if somewhat more positive assessment of UCCAO's regional economic role.Back
Note 46: Jean-François Bayart, "La Société Politique Camerounaise, 1982-1986," Politique Africaine 22 (June 1986): 5-36, Gilbert Moutard, "1983-1984: Deux Ans de Vie Tourmenté au Cameroun," Afrique Contemporaine 135 (1985): 38-45, and "Quelles Chances pour la Politique du Président Biya?" Afrique Contemporaine 139 (1986): 20-35. Back
Note 47: Uma Lele, Nicolas van de Walle and Mathurin Gbetibouo, "Cotton in Africa: an Analysis of Differences in Performance." Managing Agricultural Development in Africa Discussion Paper No.7. Washington: World Bank, 1989. Back
Note 48: Joseph, Gaullist Africa; J. F. Médard, "L'Etat Sous-Dévelopé au Cameroun," L'Année Africaine (Paris: Pedone, 1977). Back
Note 49: République du Cameroun, Déclaration de Strategie et de Relance Economique, Yaoundé, May 1989.Back
Note 51: This example of economic nationalism was applauded at home and by the Pan-African media. See "Cameroun: la Côte d'Alerte est Atteinte," and "Scenario Classique," Jeune Afrique Economique 96 (April 1987): 22-24 and 118; (April 1989): 40-42 respectively; and "Peut on se Passer du FMI?" Africa International 203 (March 1988): 69-72; "Making Ends Meet," West Africa, December 27, 1987, pp. 2534.Back
Note 52: Africa International, "Peut on se Passer du FMI?"Back
Note 53: Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéen, April 3, 1992, reported that the total salary mass had gone from 280 billion CFA in 1986-87 to 264 billion in 1990-91. During that time, the civil service had increased from 168,000 to 182,000, despite a job freeze.Back
Note 54: Charles Steedman, Rural Development Planning and Budgeting in Cameroun (Washington: Development Alternatives, April 1988).Back
Note 55: G. Courade, I. Grangeret, and P. Janin, "La Liquidation des Joyaux du Prince: Les Enjeux de la Libéralization des Filières Café-Cacao au Cameroun, Politique Africaine 44 (1991): 121-128.Back
Note 56: See "Country Report: Cameroon," Economist Intelligence Unit, No. 4, 1988; personal interviews in Cameroon in the spring of 1989 confirm these views.Back
Note 57: See Jeune Afrique, "Biya resserre les Boulons," as well as "Country Report: Cameroon," Economist Intelligence Unit, No. 3, 1989, p. 11.Back
Note 58: Thus 15,000 liters of illegally imported Nigerian gasoline was burned by the Customs Office in front of a big crowd in Maroua, northern Cameroon, in May, 1988. The government suffered some embarrassment when it was pointed out that the market value of the gasoline was more than 3 million CFA. See Le Combattant (Yaoundé), June 1, 1988. In a much commented speech to the party in December 1988, Biya loudly warned that corruption in high places would no longer be tolerated. See "La Colère de Biya," Africa International . 212 (January 1989): 31-32.Back
Note 59: Most observers felt that the election was only a partial success for Biya, given a high absentee rate, and the suspiciously long time some precincts took to report on voting. See "Après la réelection de M. Biya: Le Cameroun se prépare à un Accord avec le FMI," Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens, May 27, 1988, pp. 1357-1361; and "Cameroun: Et Maintenant?" Africa International 206 (June 1988): 21-23.Back
Note 60: The following account of the stabilization fund is taken from van de Walle, "Rice Politics." Stabilization funds for sugar and vegetable oil were established at the same time and also did not function properly.Back
Note 61: Interviews; Bayart, "La Société Politique Camerounaise."Back
Note 62: See Paul John Marc Tedga, Entreprises Publiques, Etat et Crise au Cameroun (Paris: l'Harmattan, 1991) for a more comprehensive treatment. Also see Marché Tropicaux et Méditerranéens, "Cameroun, 1988," pp. 2825-2827; "Biya Spells in out," Africa Confidential, September 23, 1987, pp. 5-6; "The Privatization Stakes," Africa Confidential July 1, 1988, pp. 6-7; Africa International, "Biya va Privatiser."Back
Note 63: See "Cameroun: Les Premiers Déchets de l'Ajustement," Africa International 219 (September 1989): 26-28.Back
Note 64: Courade et al., "La Liquidation."Back
Note 65: van de Walle, "Privatization."Back
Note 66: Elliot Berg and Alan Batchelder, "Structural Adjustment Lending: A Critical View," CPD Discussion Paper No. 1985-21, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1985; also see David Gordon, "Debt, Conditionality, and Reform," this volume.Back
Note 67: "Country Report: Cameroon," Economist Intelligence Unit, 2 (1989): 15-16.Back
Note 69: This phenomenon is analyzed at length in Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, "Popular Protest and Political Reform in Africa," Comparative Politics 24, 4, (July 1992): 419-442.Back
Note 70: See "Cameroon: An Unconvincing Premier," Africa Confidential, May 3, 1991.Back
Note 71: Jacques Champaud, "Cameroun: Au Bord de l'Affrontement," Politique Africaine 44 (1991): 115-120.Back
Note 72: See "Strike Aims to Bleed Cameroon's Economy to Force President's Fall," The New York Times, August 5, 1991; and "Cameroon: Crisis or Compromise?" Africa Confidential, October 25, 1991. Back
Note 73: See "Cameroon: Biya Besieged," Africa Confidential, July 26, 1991.Back
Note 74: See "Demi-Victoire Electorale en Forme de Désaveu," Jeune Afrique Economie, April 1992; and "Cameroun: Le Temps des Embrouilles," Jeune Afrique Economie, May 1992.Back
Note 75: In early 1992, for example, there were rumors that Biya would surprise the opposition by resigning well before 1993 and conduct the elections quickly, not allowing his opponents to organize themselves. See "Cameroun: Cap sur l'élection Présidentielle," Jeune Afrique, March 25, 1992.Back
Note 76: The U.S. position was more nuanced than France's generally uncritical support. On the one hand, the American embassy in Yaoundé has been critical of human rights abuses and has been openly sympathetic to the opposition; on the other hand, Washington forgave $73.4 million of Cameroonian debt in 1990 and welcomed Biya in his visit of the United States.Back
Note 77: See "Avec un Nouvel Accord du FMI, le Cameroun Amorce un Tournant Décisif," Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens, January 3, 1992.Back
Note 78: Jeune Afrique Economie published two articles in 1992 on governmental corruption in the country that were widely distributed and of great embarrassement to the government. The first ("Chronique d'Un Pillage Annoncé," January 1992, pp. 175-183) identified some fifteen officials as most responsible for the country's economic ruin through their corruption and mismanagement. The second ("Ainsi a été Pillé la SCB," May 1992, pp. 106-130) provided detailed evidence that corruption by Biya and his wife had contributed to the bankruptcy of the leading commercial bank in the country, the Société Camerounaise de Banque.Back
Note 79: Thus, for example, Bello Bouba Maigari, whose UNDP party (Union Nationale pour la Démocratie et le Progrès) would emerge from the March 1992 legislative elections as the leading opposition party with 68 seats, argued in an interview that his party's top economic priority was the "restoration of confidence and the flowering of economic freedoms." He went on to argue for tax cuts and more advantages to small businesses. See Jeune Afrique, May 27, 1992. On the other hand, this streak of economic liberalism had not been evident in the governmental posts he occupied in the seventies under Ahidjo, or as Biya's first prime minister in 1982.Back
Note 80: See for example the different contributions in Changer le Cameroun. Pourquoi Pas? (Yaoundé, 1990), a collection of essays on policy issues produced by a group of anonymous Camerounian intellectuals close to the opposition.Back
Note 81: Such a fund is a direct violation of agreements with the IMF and Franc Zone regulations. See Nord Sud Export 186, March 19, 1990.Back
Note 82: République Française, Ministère de la Coopération, Désquilibres Structurels et Programmes d'Ajustement en Côte d'Ivoire (Paris, 1986); Y. A. Faure and J. F. Médard, Etat et Bourgeoisie en Côte d'Ivoire (Paris: Karthala, 1982); for similar processes in Kenya, see Michael Lofchie, "Trading Places," this volume.Back
Note 83: Michael Bratton, "Beyond the State: Civil Society and Associational Life in Afica," World Politics 41, 3 (1989); The Carter Center of Emory University, Beyond Autocracy in Africa: Working Papers from the Inaugural Seminar of the Governance in Africa Program, Atlanta, 1989; Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988); Patrick Chabal, ed., Political Domination in Africa: Reflections on the Limits of Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Back
Note 84: Richard Sklar, "Democracy in Africa," in Chabal, ed., Political Domination, pp. 17-29.Back
Note 85: The World Bank, Adjustment Lending: an Evaluation of Ten Years of Experience, Country Economics Department, Policy, Planning, and Research(Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 1988); Carol Lancaster and John Williamson, eds., African Debt and Financing (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1986).Back
Note 86: Thomas M. Callaghy, "Lost Between State and Market: The Politics of Economic Adjustment in Ghana, Zambia, and Nigeria" in Joan Nelson, ed., Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Economic Adjustment in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). pp. 257-319.Back
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