A central debate in the literature on the state has focused on the state's relative strength and weakness in relation to society (Skocpol 1979; Nordlinger 1981, 1987; Evans, et al., 1985; Carnoy 1984). While this debate initially examined developed states and, more recently, semi-industrialized states in Latin America, increasing attention has shifted to African states. It is here where a paradox has emerged that has generated further questions about state power and state-society relations. Africa is plagued with political instability, coup d'etats, deteriorating economic conditions, and ineffective policy implementation (Sandbrook 1985). The current difficulties in meeting scheduled debt repayment deadlines and the pressure to make significant economic adjustments further illustrate the precarious financial status of many African states. Yet, African societies are well known for their heavily centralized bureaucratic apparatus that consumes a substantial portion of expenditures and capital investments. One indicator of state influence is the steady growth of parastatals in African countries. As they have expanded in number and in function, state power over these firms also has grown. And, in response to rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, many African states have enacted widescale debt management controls on foreign investment, public borrowing, and public sector investment. Scholars, whether conceptualizing this influential social group as an “organizational bourgeoisie” or a “managerial bourgeoisie,” consider African state bureaucracies to have their own power capabilities and defined interests (Markowitz 1977; Sklar 1979).

Rural development projects involve the application of bureaucratic systems of consciousness to traditional areas where there have never been such normative systems applied before. This means that the values, norms, and ideals of bureaucratic institutions are implicit to how traditionally oriented rural villages are approached by outside development agencies and also how relationships develop between them.

In the years following World War I, the black population in Britain's port cities increased as a result of an influx of West Indian and African seamen who had been discharged from His Majesty's Service. Many of these new arrivals, along with long-term residents, suffered as post-World War I economic conditions worsened, causing hostility from the host communities to increase. Blacks in cities such as Liverpool not only had to endure overt racial attacks, but they were also victims of hidden racism.

There was no legal segregation in Liverpool, and just as many whites as blacks lived within Toxteth, an area in the city's south end near the docks. Blacks and whites mixed freely in the area's numerous pubs, and black men often married white women. Despite the city's historical relationship with the slave trade and slavery, many of those who lived in Liverpool during the 1920s and 1930s accepted the pervasive myth of racial harmony in the city. However, some blacks who were more observant recognized that they were being denied adequate economic and social opportunities. Indeed, the city was not free of racial prejudice. In reality, the legacy of the slave trade and slavery and the negative stereotypes of blacks which had been developed over many years were so ingrained in the minds, hearts, attitudes and actions of many Liverpudlians that, wittingly and unwittingly, racism adversely affected the quality of life for black people in the city.

The concept of civil society has gained currency in African studies. It is used in a variety of different ways, but usually refers to the emergence of new patterns of political participation outside of formal state structures and one-party systems (Bratton 1989, 407). In the absence of capable state institutions, the literature on Africa has started to shift attention away from the state and governing elites, and towards social actors who are devising various strategies to survive the nested crises of state action, economic development, and political legitimacy (Doornbos 1990). As an alternative conceptualization of possibilities of economic and social development, civil society is becoming an all encompassing term that refers to social phenomena putatively beyond formal state structures—but not necessarily free of all contact with the state.

Virtually no theoretical work, however, has been done on the concept as it relates to an African environment, with the exception of Bayart (1986) and, more recently, Bratton (1989). This essay explores in a more theoretical manner than has hitherto been the case what such a notion means within an African context by asking whether the growing use of the term contributes substantively to our understanding of new forms of participation and associational activity in Africa. The answer is affirmative, provided that this concept is elaborated and specified in ways which take into account the complex interaction between normative, economic, and organizational dimensions of civil society.