Institutional anthropology in Africa

This book on the political economy of governance holds up a mirror to the structural impasses of neoliberalism in Africa, with Benin at the epicenter of the analysis. It reveals a hard-hitting thesis: current systemic fragilities are not contingencies, but the deliberate product of a paradigm that has methodically sacrificed public ethics and the general interest on the altar of market logic and rent-seeking. On a philosophical level, the author explores the disinheritance of the res publica. By subordinating politics to the market, this model has led to a dilution of responsibility and an erosion of the rule of law, reducing democracy to a mere procedural mechanism stripped of its ethical lifeblood. The reform of the party system, analyzed here with scientific rigor, reveals a paradox: far from stabilizing the political game, it has accentuated the concentration of power, transforming institutions into instruments of exclusion and exacerbating citizen mistrust. The aesthetics of this reflection lie in its surgical clarity, revealing the symptoms of a legitimacy in agony. The author proposes an "insurrection of the mind" for a new social contract.