Project Description

Starting Point

Amidst China’s expanding global investment activities and infrastructure projects, political and academic discourses currently observe a growing influence of China on African politics, potentially signaling a global spread of “illiberal” Chinese governance patterns. This influence, perceived as competing with and weakening the traditional European influence in Africa, might also stem from African elites emulating Chinese discourses and practices, thus representing a case of African agency. Contrasting hypotheses and assumptions about China's visible footprint in Africa are currently under scrutiny, but the empirical data supporting them are often weak and fragmented.

To address these gaps and to perform a reality check of China’s impact on African politics, our project applies and further develops the concept of political settlement, as first developed by Khan (2010). This approach suggests that the emergence and stability of political institutions are dependent on the distribution of political power shaped through state formation processes, resulting in various types of settlements. This settlement approach serves as an innovative method to map differences in the domestic politics and political economy of African countries and systematically includes the role and impact of Chinese actors within a model of African political governance. Our project is analyzing three case studies (Ghana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania), each with a long history of interactions with China but differing in their internal political settlements. This approach not only focuses on the agency of competing elite segments in African countries but also observes how Chinese strategies and practices evolve in these varying contexts. This contributes to a better understanding of how the growing involvement of Chinese actors in African politics alters perceptions, discourses, and eventually leads to strategic policy adjustments on the Chinese side.

In summary, our project, rooted in innovative theory formulation and empirical research, enhances understanding of the dynamics of African politics and governance in its growing diversity and interaction with external actors. It also contributes to a more nuanced comprehension of China’s fragmented, multi-actor-based foreign policy as it evolves in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, moving beyond the long-assumed regime-type-neutral approach.

Objectives

Our project focuses on three main objectives:

1. Assessing the impact of external actors, specifically China, on the transformation of political order in Africa. While observers often attribute such influence to entities like the World Bank or former colonial powers like France, China’s impact remains conceptually and empirically less clear. Furthermore, the role of 'China' in Africa is often simplified to the official statements and policies of Beijing’s party leaders, leaving the diversity of Chinese actors on the ground largely unexplored and under-researched.

2. Demonstrating the significance of varying domestic institutional contexts in shaping how external actors engage in African politics. We are keenly assessing the utility of a political settlements approach in this context. Our goal is to explore how settlements might systematically influence interactions with Chinese actors, and how changes in settlements may result, in intended or unintended ways, from Chinese influence. By examining the three selected case studies of China-Africa interactions, the project aims to illuminate the dynamic interplay between structural and ideational layers of institutions and political settlements, and the roles played by Chinese actors. While not focusing on the impact of settlements or China on the broader dynamics of African economies, the political settlement approach allows us to contribute to the debate on African agency, focusing on the agency of competing elite segments and gaining a more precise understanding of the structural constraints for exercising agency.

3. Understanding how the increasing involvement of Chinese actors in the politics of African states is modifying perceptions, historical reconstructions of Chinese-African interactions, discourses, and ultimately, strategic policy adjustments on the Chinese side. We are exploring to what extent Chinese policies and discourses reflect the diversity of political settlements in Africa and whether actors in the Chinese non-state sector (e.g., the private economy) adopt more pragmatic positions compared to the state-owned sector, despite no major revisions in the PRC’s official views on Africa and its foreign strategy.