Political Discourse About The Model State & Governance: Need For Grounded Theory In The Post-Colony

By Siri Gamage -AUGUST 2, 2021

Dr. Siri Gamage

When we examine the political discourse in the post colony on the desired state and governance, there are several features that can be observed 1) they are focused on personalities i.e. Prime ministers and Presidents, 2) focused on local conflicts such as ethnic conflicts, farmer conflicts, human rights issues deriving from state oppression and reactions by resistance movements. 3) focused on norms and ideals such as liberal democracy, 4) take capitalist/free-market oriented authoritarian states from the region as desired model e.g. Singapore or S. Korea. 5) draw from liberal democratic, Marxist, dependency or to some extent anti-colonial theory and discourse. 6) do not draw directions and inspirations from postcolonial and/or decolonial theory and discourse/agenda.

While there are grounds for each of these discourses and platforms, it is now necessary that the political discourse in the post colony has to move forward by drawing directions and insights from the postcolonial and decolonial theories and discourses on one hand and the ground realities of the State, governance, political practice, ideologies of nation etc. rather than relying on Western theoretical constructs and frames such as Marxism per se which seems to have not progressed much from the days of the Bolshevik revolution in 1918 and the Chinese Cultural revolution of a bygone era. The aim of this article is to highlight this imperative for the benefit of those concerned about the plight of post-colonies in the global south and futuristic imaginations for a fair society.

Before I embark on commenting on the above-mentioned points, let me quote from Appadurai’s review of two recent books (2021) dealing with the question of geography, history and knowledge as well as grounded theory:

Two new books—On Decoloniality, by Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, and Out of the Dark Night, by Achille Mbembe—help remind us of the history behind our geographies, setting the history of regions and continents back into the context of colonialism and empire. To do so, both books consider the different paths out of decolonization, only to find that neither the kind of nation-state that emerged out of decolonization nor the recent version of globalized capitalism that has come to define these nation-states has truly fulfilled the liberatory promises of decolonization. The strongest part of both books is their grounding in the areas from which they emerge—Latin America and Africa, respectively—and their common recognition that the heaviest price extracted by colonizers on the colonized in the past 500 years was not in the currency of labor and resource extraction but in the realm of knowledge, where colonial subjects were classified as the other in Europe’s empire of reason.

According to Appadurai, ‘Both books also represent a radical critique of European dominion over the rest of the world through the various ages of empire, and both agree that materialist analyses of this dominion—by Marxists, dependency theorists, and world-systems theorists—have misunderstood both colonialism and the decolonization that followed’ (Appadurai 2021). Referring to the book by Mignolo and Walsh (2018) in particular, Appadurai says, ‘Their joint goal is to make the case for decoloniality, the idea that a different form of decolonization or anti-colonialism was and continues to be possible in the Global South—one that does not rest on Western forms of knowledge but instead on Indigenous epistemological styles and claims’ (2021). This is an important point to reflect on when we attempt to articulate what is happening with the postcolonial State in the Post colony in the global south, in particular our over-reliance on western frames of thought including Marxism and its variations.  I wish to emphasise that I am not saying that Marxism and its variations have no value in analysing current state of affairs in the post colony.  My argument is that it is limited in many ways.  Postcolonial and Decolonial thought and discourse offer more relevant and sound analytical frameworks that we need to grasp if we are to move beyond the limitations of class analysis and the notion of Bourgeois State, working class and its liberation, infrastructure-super structure typical of Marxist thought/analysis. Some characterise such analysis as idealistic to say the least.

Political personalities are important to grasp the nature of specific regimes, their policies and programs, success and failures in terms of alleviating poverty, initiating development and education reforms, developing infrastructure such as roads and housing, or agriculture. When former colonies gained independence, such development was based primarily on the basis of western modernisation as a model to follow. In this effort, the leaders borrowed knowledge via experts, technology, financial and other assets from multilateral and bilateral agencies including States of the West. Various development and reform projects were launched with a finite timeframe and medium to long term goals. Politicians, beureacrats and professionals such as engineers, embraced such projects with both hands.

Governments changed along with the leaders and parties, coalition governments emerged out of the ashes of old parties and groups active in the political arena, and new regional players with political and economic significance emerged. E.g. China and India. New political and global concepts and philosophies emerged to account for the changes happening in the regions and the world e.g. globalisation, sustainability. Activist groups concerned about the negative effects of globalisation also emerged, especially by using new social media.

When it comes to political discourses in the post-colonies, much of the analysis and explanations were focused on personalities rather than the national or provincial systems as such. Failures in development projects modelled along the prescriptions of Western capitalist states and economies (or their equivalents in Asia, Africa, Middle East or Latin America) were also blamed on local political players or parties. Masses were taught to rely on the leaders to solve all problems in the post colony and they were treated as super heroes who could produce magical solutions. The leaders on the other hand have gone to donor countries and agencies with the begging bowl. Ediriweera Sarachchandra, a Sri Lankan inrtellectual, playwright and literary critic once wrote a novel titled ‘With the begging Bowl where he characterises this phenomenon and his experience being Sri Lanka’s ambassador to France. Modern day ambassadors from the post colony – instead of writing such novels seem to keep writing project proposals for further borrowing or at least promoting the same so that the dependency continues but the fortunes of ruling political class are ensured? It is even astonishing to see the Marxist intellectuals have failed to understand the nature and content of such political class in the post colony in a grounded way – other than to characterise them as personalities or by means of old theoretical categories that were popular in the past.

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