ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the problem of political effectiveness, reviewing common mechanisms for channeling state-society relations, including, most notably, prominent forms of "elite consensus" systems. It discusses how state elites, irrespective of the regime types they have adopted, can augment their capacity for governance, putting themselves in a better position to achieve their policy objectives through reorganized governmental coalitions. The chapter looks at political recruitment policies under the two types of regime which have emerged during the first 25 years of independence: the hegemonial exchange and bureaucratic centralist patterns. It discusses the nature of emergent class interests and the implications of this emergence for operating hegemonial exchange and bureaucratic centralist-type systems. The African state is sometimes unable to restrain and bound intercommunity relations and, consequently, proves unequal to the task of channeling group conflicts along "constructive" lines. Despite regime differences, African ruling elites have in fact responded rather similarly to the overriding need to include ethnoregional intermediaries in the ruling coalition.
