ABSTRACT
Urbanization and other modernization processes “naturally intrinsic problems of social integration—of adjustment, containment and reaction”. Research in Africa on urban political integrative institutions has largely focused upon formal structures. The actual behavioral patterns have remained at the periphery of most scholars’ work. Most African towns display integrative patterns that maintain sufficient continuity that it is appropriate to term them political systems. Each system, in turn, appears to be composed of several distinct primary subsystems so intercoupled that the output of one acts as an input for the other. The organizational expression of ethnic political solidarity and shared political interest, whether the group is tribal, racial, or areal in origin, is its ethnic voluntary association. Two broad patterns emerge, one based upon the concept of political decentralization and the other based upon centralization. Active manipulation involves making the sociopolitical practices and perspectives of the various subsystems less divergent and contradictory.
