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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Sovereignty Through a Bureaucratic Optic: Ghana's Customs Service and the Fault Lines of Neoliberal Reform
| Panel |
17. States at work: African public services in comparative perspective
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| Paper ID | 508 |
| Author(s) |
Chalfin, Brenda
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| Paper |
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| Abstract | What are the implications of neo-liberal restructuring and the allied dynamic of global economic integration for sovereignty within Africa’s post-colonial states? How are transformations of sovereignty brought into being through the everyday spaces and personages of rule--bureaucrats and local functionaries, government offices, check-points, and registries--typically held to be the target though not the authors or agents of reform? Why do the contours of state restructuring on the global periphery portend shifts occurring in all corners of the world and how can the ethnographic optic help us comprehend these dynamics?
This paper engages these concerns through an ethnographic portrait of Customs Officers in Ghana. Here, as in many post-colonial locales, bureaucratic orders such as Customs have long served as the ‘effective sovereign,’ providing the bulk of state revenue, guarding territorial boundaries, exercising force, and covering the whole of the nation with an extensive and highly visible administrative web, all the while maintaining close ties to ruling elites.
At the turn of the millennium, in Ghana the very terms of Customs authority are being refigured, fundamentally transforming the locus and composition of state power. In line with the neoliberal call to open markets and rationalize state interventions, Customs administrations are show-cased as the enablers of WTO free-trade provisions, international security and information technology protocols, and donor-mandated investment and trade-promotion schemes. At the same time, they must contend with the outsourcing of Customs operations to private multinationals, the rise of transnational migration and commercial activity (both legal and illicit) beyond their immediate control, and international anti-corruption initiatives of which they themselves are the target, all in the context of democratic reform where state power is supposed to derive from the electorate rather than military might or bureaucratic and personal entrenchment.
In this paper, ethnographic evidence from the Aflao frontier is used to develop two arguments about bureaucracy and sovereignty in the context of restructuring. First, the case of Customs suggests that the process of neo-liberal reform is thoroughly informed by Ghana’s legacy of military rule. In such an environment, not only do efforts to ‘clean-up’ Customs betray the lingering presence of military personnel and modes of rule but they foster anew the concentration the top-down spread of authority and allegation rather than power-sharing, transparency or due-process. The research also suggests that reform magnifies tensions within the state apparatus much more than tensions between state and society or among neighboring states. Rendering the frontier a space of increasing autonomy, this has decisive bearing on the territorial expression of sovereignty as Customs controls become concentrated in the state’s administrative capital and Customs officers at the frontier disassociate themselves from the renewed grip of headquarters. As a consequence, the border is divested of a certain or exclusive sovereignty even as Customs authorities extend the scope and locus of rule.
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