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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Politics and Power in Congo-Kinshasa
Author:Willame, Jean-Claude
Year:1971
Periodical:Africa Report
Volume:16
Issue:1
Period:January
Pages:14-17
Language:English
Geographic term:Congo (Democratic Republic of)
Subjects:presidential systems
bureaucracy
Politics and Government
Abstract:In its essential features the Congolese regime of President Mobutu approximates a Caesarist bureaucracy. Its two most noticeable features are the prominence of a personal and unique, although not charismatic, source of authority, and a progressive bureaucratization of the government apparatus. The bureaucracy is served by heterogeneous social groups which have grown under the shadow of the factional politics that characterized the Congo between 1960 and Mobutu's take-over in the fall of 1965. The Caesarist characteristics are exposed in the article. Mobutu's Caesarism has shown its most positive results in terms of the national economy; present prosperity is mostly due to an increase in agricultural production, the 1967 monetary reform, favorable world prices for copper, and more generally to political stability. As for the future of the Caesarism one possibility is the reinforcement of an authoritarian form of bureaucratic regime, another possibility is the emergence of a pure dictatorial regime. Map.
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