ABSTRACT
Sierra Leone historically has had a hybrid political order with multiple loci of political power and cultural authority, including traditional chieftaincies and the “secret societies”, alliances of elites and, to a lesser extent, religious bodies. This chapter argues that the constructs of performance legitimacy common in contemporary state-building discourse—which assume that the core challenge is to reinforce the state so that it is willing and able to meet popular expectations, and that it is the failure to do so that accounts for instability—inadequately explains Sierra Leone’s current state fragility dilemmas. There is broad consensus that the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the state at Sierra Leone’s independence in 1961 set in motion the forces of fragility. The forging of a national state at independence required the extension of public services hitherto available only in the Colony to the wider territory.
