Author: Robert Fatton.

In spite of profound ideological and methodological differences, African political studies have tended to subscribe to the concept of the "soft state". The concept is grounded in the perception that the typical African state constitutes a weak and corrupt bureaucratic apparatus because it consistently fails to promote the general interest. This perception is flawed because it implies the theoretical expulsion of dass interests from the concept of the state. The reality is that states are never divorced from the material, political, and ideological interests of the ruling dass. The state is therefore never “soft”, it is always an organ of dominance, all the more so in African societies which are traversed by processes of ruling dass consolidation requiring the brutal accumulation and dosure of wealth, privilege, and status.