SOCIO-POLITICAL DIS/ORDER (IN AFRICA)

Understanding disorder through notions such as instability, violence and informality, and order through stability, peace and formality, African politics and society have often been described as inherently disorderly (de Vries & Mehler Reference Vries and Mehler2019). Chabal & Daloz (Reference Chabal and Daloz1999), for example, state that elites in Africa exploit disorder as a political instrument for personal enrichment, which they largely attribute to rational behaviour in the context of a somehow opaque notion of ‘African culture’. For them, the state is only a pseudo-Western façade masking deep personalised cultural relations. Similarly, although taking the formal state institutions more seriously than Chabal and Daloz, the ‘neopatrimonial state’ paradigm (Médard Reference Médard and Clapham1982) is a catch-all concept in African studies that portrays a ‘weak’ or even ‘failed’ African state as the root cause of disorder and instability (for a critical but engaging review see Erdmann & Engel Reference Erdmann and Engel2007). This school, at least implicitly, contrasts weak disorderly African states with a Weberian fictive ideal of strong Western states able to guarantee order. In doing so, the school tends to view ‘African culture’ as the prime reason for the disorder. In this article, rather than adopting a culturalist and atemporal explanation such as neopatrimonialism to understand order and disorder in Africa, I will take a historical and political economic approach to understanding politics and society in an African country (Bayart Reference Bayart2000).

Second, rather than using the concepts of order and disorder in normative ways and seeing them as mutually exclusive, as Europe displaying order and Africa displaying disorder, I follow the analytical perspective first formulated by Simmel (Reference Simmel1908) – that every social formation displays a kind of order in which convergent and divergent currents are inseparably interwoven. Order and disorder are mutually constitutive and simultaneously created in emerging situations (Strathern Reference Strathern, Mosko and Damon2005). Instead of assuming that order is the norm and disorder the deviation, I use the term ‘dis/order’ to highlight that order and disorder are inextricably entangled, that they are simply two sides of the same coin (see also de Waal Reference de Waal2017). To understand the production of dis/order, state-society relations – such as the role of the state and non-state actors, as well as the different actors’ perceptions of the production of dis/order – have to be taken into account (Benda-Beckmann & Pirie Reference Benda-Beckmann, Pirie, Benda-Beckmann and Pirie2007). In this sense, while the recent riots in Niger were classified by all the state and non-state actors involved (including those who organised them) as ‘disorder’ or even ‘chaos’, examination reveals both the ordering practices that produced the disorder, and a dynamic and historically emerging order in Niger in general. To illuminate these two dimensions, a processual approach is needed which focuses on the becoming, emergence, settlement and disappearance of dis/order, the cycles of a political drama, and the multiple creative means in producing dis/order (Benda-Beckmann & Pirie Reference Benda-Beckmann, Pirie, Benda-Beckmann and Pirie2007). Following a processual approach, I do not understand dis/order as the underlying and fixed base of society, but focus instead on dis/order as fragmented and historically sedimented over time (Bierschenk Reference Bierschenk, Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan2014), and which thereby continually transforms within and through (protest) events; and it is these events, or ‘generic moments of becoming’ (Kapferer Reference Kapferer2010), that open up new possibilities in forming social realities, rather than society inevitably returning to a sort of structural equilibrium.

GENERIC MOMENTS, HISTORICAL SEDIMENTATION AND THE RISE OF PROTESTS IN CONTEMPORARY NIGER

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded 187 protests and riots between 1997 and 2018 in Niger, with most occurring in the capital Niamey (Raleigh et al. Reference Raleigh, Linke, Hegre and Karlsen2010). Students and civil society regularly take to the streets of Niamey, in the country's west. However, frequent violent protests and riots also occurred in the country's Eastern regions, including Zinder, Maradi and Diffa. As Figure 1 shows, the number of protests and riots fluctuated over time, and increased markedly between 2013 and 2018. Several ‘generic moments’ have become particularly important in explaining the increase in protests brought about by the historical sedimentation of contemporary Nigerien politics and society.

Figure 1.

Protests and riots in 1997–2018 Niger, compilation based on internet and radio claims by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

First, the inaugural constitution (1960) of the former French colony provided for a multi-party system. Two large unions emerged, the students' Union des Scolaires Nigériens (USN) and the workers' Union Nationale des Travailleurs du Niger (UNTN) (renamed the Union des Syndicats des Travailleurs du Niger (USTN) in 1978). However, through the elimination and co-optation of political opponents and labour unions, and with the help of France which was interested in the country's uranium deposits in the Northern region of Agadez, Niger soon became an authoritarian regime (van Walraven Reference van Walraven2009). During the colonial era, France had transfered the captial from Zinder to Niamey, favouring western Nigerien belonging and Zarma ethnicity over eastern Nigerien populations. As a result, educated Zarma constituted Niger's political elite until the National Conference and the transition to democracy in the early 1990s (Ibrahim Reference Ibrahim1994). Even today, the rivalry between East and West remains strong in Niger. The Hausa majority in the East, in particular, claim historical political marginalisation.

Second, during the period of authoritarian rule (between 1960 and 1990), the USN became the regimes’ main opposition group until the regime of Seyni Kountché (1974–1989) eventually managed to silence the group through repression and co-optation. In February 1990, however, the two unions – the USN and the USTN – broke that silence to lead new protests against the International Monetary Fund's austerity policies. The protests, and the death of three students at the hands of the police, forced the authoritarian government under Ali Saibou (1987–1993) to allow for the transition to a multi-party system and the holding of a National Conference. The introduction of the multi-party system that followed changed the rules of the game in terms of political competition, civil society activism and media pluralism, and gave rise to a decade of experimentation and repeated breakdowns in the institutional order (Villalón & Idrissa Reference Villalón, Idrissa, Villalón and Von Doepp2005). A number of new political parties emerged, and civil society associations and media stations proliferated. Having becoming legal and legitimate counter-balances to state power at the National Conference, and driven largely by economic rather than political goals, labour unions have had an ambiguous role in regime change, contributing to both ‘autocratic’ and ‘democratic’ breakdowns from the 1990s until today (Elischer Reference Elischer2013).

Third, following repeated breakdowns of the institutional order in the first few years of Nigerien democracy, the era of President Mamadou Tandja (1999–2010) from the Mouvement National de la Société de Développement (MNSD-Nassara) saw relative stability, both through debt relief and an influx of development aid which allowed for an increase in civil service salaries and the buying of social peace. Social peace was first interrupted in 2005, when civil society protested against an increase in value-added tax; and again in 2009, when Tandja launched Tazartché,Footnote ¹ a campaign to alter the constitution to extend his presidency beyond the two-term limit. In both cases, the Tandja government successfully co-opted several popular civil society associations and labour unions to acquiesce or evince support for the government's position. Despite this support for Tandja, opposition parties and other important civil society groups staged large ‘protests for democracy’. The protests resulted in the February 2010 coup, led by Commander Salou Djibo, who claimed to be restoring democracy. But as in former times, pocketbook concerns rather than democratic values were the most salient grievances in these protests (Mueller Reference Mueller2013). Nevertheless, Tazartché is essential in understanding the emergence of contemporary lines of political conflicts in Niger.

Fourth, while the transitional military government of Djibo saw little opposition from the streets, new elections were held in early 2011. In March, the Parti Nigérien pour la Démocratie et le Socialisme (PNDS-Tarayya) under Mahamadou Issoufou came to power, and the former governing parties, MNSD-Nassara and Convention Démocratique et Sociale (CDS-Rahama), found themselves in opposition. The Issoufou government soon removed those civil society associations from governmental bodies that had supported Tandja, replacing them with those who had supported the collective fight against Tazartché. The new opposition soon started to (clandestinely) organise resistance against the Issoufou regime. This resistance first erupted around the opening of the oil refinery in Zinder – in the country's east – in late 2011. During my participant observation of the protests around the refinery's inauguration, I realised that opponents from civil society, politics and business successfully mobilised socially deprived male youth by mobile phone texting, and by co-opting youth leaders from fada (neighbourhood groups) and known criminals from palais (youth gangs) into the organisation of the riots (Schritt Reference Schritt2019b). Similar protests and riots took place again in 2012: first against water shortages in April, then on International Workers Day (1 May), and finally against the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims in September. In contrast to earlier protests, these protests were not dominated by students, labour unions, religious groups or civil society associations, but rather by disaffected and politically mobilised male youth.Footnote ²

Fifth, protests began to increase markedly after Issoufou called for a coalition of national unity in 2013. To establish the coalition, Issoufou had co-opted various politicians from opposition parties and brought them into his government, thereby fuelling leadership conflicts within the parties and weakening them. As a result, Hama Amadou from the Mouvement Démocratique Nigérien pour une Fédération Africaine (MODEN-FA Lumana Africa) left the government coalition and joined the opposition. With Hama becoming Issoufou's main rival in the years to follow, the violent youth riots that had been characteristic to the marginalised eastern regions also began – and became increasingly frequent – in Niamey, Hama's political stronghold. In 2015, religiously framed protests ‘against Charlie Hebdo’ were held in Zinder after Friday prayers on 16 January, and had spread to Niamey on the following day. The main protagonists in these protests were not fundamentalist religious groups, but rather disaffected male youth protesting against Issoufou's presence at the solidarity march in France, the detested former colonial power, and rioting in the streets (Schritt Reference Schritt2015). Supporters of Hama and his party, MODEN-FA Lumana Africa, again led violent protests in Niamey around the 2016 presidential elections. In response, accusing civil society associations of playing politics by the opposition, the government cracked down on them. Again in March 2018, large protests erupted in the capital against both a new finance act, which the opposition called ‘satanic’, and against the growing Western military presence in the country – which had come after Issoufou allowed the fight against global terrorism and irregular migration to also take place on Niger territory.

The historical sedimentation, generic moments and recurrent protests help uncover particular patterns of politics and society in contemporary Niger. Although protests in recent years have revolved around a number of different issues, they have unfolded in similar ways. Recent protests have been mostly mobilised by political opponents and have primarily occurred in opposition strongholds such as Zinder and Niamey. Zinder is dominated by CDS-Rahama (and to a lesser extent MNSD-Nassara) which has been part of the opposition since 2011; and Niamey is the stronghold of Hama Amadou, who has been an opposition leader since 2013. Civil society activists appear to be embedded in the same structures as politicians, with some groups joining the opposition, while others remain with the incumbent government. At the same time, historically shaped collective identities, especially long-standing internal East–West rivalries, have played a crucial role in many protests. These collective regional identities are partly a result of French colonialism, and Françafrique remains a common bone of contention employed in all kinds of rhetoric against neocolonialism. Moreover, since democratisation and the emergence of Islamic reform movements, religiously connoted protests have also been on the rise. Finally, disaffected male youth have invariably spearheaded protests, while women seem to be effectively absent in the protests. I turn to these dimensions in more detail now.

NEW MEDIA AND ‘POLITICS BY PROXY’ IN NIGER

Since the emergence of democracy in the early 1990s, and the new and deregulated media spaces that came with it, new public debates have been sprouting up in Niger. In these new debates, the politicisation of issues and events takes place ‘by proxy’ (Kaarsholm Reference Kaarsholm2009). That is, while politics were framed in terms of oil at the time of the refinery's inauguration, at other times, politics were framed in the idiom of other events such as a national holiday, Islam, the Françafrique, water shortages, elections or the high cost of living. Moreover, during protest events, political actors from both sides continuously use radio and press to accuse one another of creating the reasons for protest or organising the protests. In other words, since the introduction of a multi-party system in the early 1990s, political actors have exploited pertinent issues and events to pursue their own projects in a politically competitive environment; and they can use private media and the relative freedom of speech and press to make issues public and political.

The emergence of radio as the primary medium of mass communication is perhaps not surprising given that information in Niger has traditionally been transmitted almost exclusively orally; illiteracy is widespread, incomes are low, and the country's territory is vast. Political, business and civil society actors use private and associational radio stations to directly frame public debate by paying to release statements or to organise on-air debates. During the protests ‘against the high cost of living’ in 2005, for example, civil society activists not only heavily used the associational radio station Alternative but also distributed leaflets for students and used word-of-mouth to mobilise the local population.

More recent riots illustrate how the mobile phone, as an instrument of political agitation, has changed the nature of the political game. In these protests, texting allowed for the emergence of ‘smart mobs’ (Rheingold Reference Rheingold2002) or ‘people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other’ (Rheingold Reference Rheingold2002: xii). Thus, mobile phones allow for new rhizomatic and uncontrolled forms of information dissemination, as well as organising, mobilising and leading massed groups. However, rather than celebrating the accessibility of new media forms for enabling democratic activism, as has often and most prominently been the case in the ‘Arab Spring’ with notions such as the ‘Twitter’ or ‘Facebook revolutions’, it is not fixed whether and which social and political actors will be able to translate the new media into their political programmes. In the protests at least some, if not the majority, of the chain text messages promoting protest and violence were, in fact, designed by influential political opponents to mobilise the population against the government. In doing so, what might at first appear to be ‘politics from below’ was also ‘politics from above’.

NIGERIEN POLITICAL MACHINES

Protests are often mobilised by actors from the political opposition. Palais members in Zinder have openly affirmed that political opponents distribute money to them to take part in demonstrations and support them in case of arrest. One of these was wealthy businessman, politician and civil society activist Dan Dubai. Dan Dubai, whose political ambitions even extended to becoming president, had organised youth into so-called comités de défense in every quarter of Zinder city prior to the oil refinery's 2011 inauguration. His goal was to then establish these youth structures beyond the city boundaries and out into all regions in Niger, and then to transform them into a political party. To better understand how such patterns of mobilisation work in Niger, a closer look into the logic of the political game is necessary.

First, elections in Nigerien politics are not primarily fought or won along ideological lines, but are rather based on patterns of redistribution. A 2016 study on the political economy of voter engagement in Niger reinforces this point by showing how the clientelist electoral system functions, with political parties mainly mobilising voters through the distribution of electoral rent (McCullough et al. Reference McCullough, Harouna and Oumarou2016). As a result, the mobilising activists’ loyalty to a particular candidate is primarily based on his ability to provide material benefits, rather than on an ideological loyalty to a particular party or its program (McCullough et al. Reference McCullough, Harouna and Oumarou2016: 2). The result is an ‘activist market’ with so-called ‘pop-up activists’ – that is, activists who are willing to mobilise people to attend political meetings in return for small envelopes of cash and goodies during election season’ (McCullough et al. Reference McCullough, Harouna and Oumarou2016: 3). In turn, parties select activists – especially well-known opinion leaders like student and youth leaders or musicians – based on their presumed ability to mobilise larger groups of people. This logic of political mobilisation makes use of and reinforces generational divisions and the gap between the wealthy and the poor in Niger, a country with a tiny, older political elite (the evolués) that emerged with French colonialism, and an overwhelming majority of poor and/or unemployed, most of whom are youths (see section on ‘waithood’ below). At the same time, this underlying logic of elections also allows for the mobilisation and organisation of protests, as shown by Dan Dubai's mobilisation of comités de défense and the youth gang leaders who spearheaded the riots.

Second, social solidarity is based on personal, mostly family networks, as well as networks of friends and neighbours. These infamous networks, typically referred to in Niger as PAC (Parents, Amis et Connaissances), are crucial for finding work, asking for favours or receiving support. As such, they have an existential dimension: in an economy without any real state social security system, the population depends on mutual assistance within social networks to survive. However, these networks also place significant pressure and demands on employed people with a good position, for they are expected to redistribute their earnings, provide favours, or to misuse their power to benefit their PAC. Because finding paid employment or being in a position of power raises expectations to redistribute the earnings or provide favours within the personal network, status, morality and personal integrity are closely tied to gift-giving and redistribution (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan1999). Politicians and state bureaucrats are therefore caught in numerous ‘normative double-binds’: that is, the paradoxical moral orders of official office and social rules (Bierschenk Reference Bierschenk, Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan2014).

Third, there is a negatively charged moral discourse on politics in Niger. With the introduction of national elections in 1993, structural ‘rivalries of proximity’ within a small national political elite emerged (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan2017). These rivalries have not been primarily programmatic or ideological in nature, but rather personal attempts to gain privilege, bribes and postings. Nigerien political parties are dominated by their founding leaders, and have somewhat underdeveloped electoral programmes. Faire la politique (‘doing politics’), as it is generally referred to in Niger, is seen paradoxically as both acting outside the moral and ethical values of the community, and as the only way to find employment or to be included in redistribution networks. Indeed, the words politik in Zarma or dan ubanci in Hausa signify conflicts, rivalry, disputes and disunity, and evoke a nostalgic view of the ‘stability’ of former military regimes (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan2017: 120).

Taken together, I contend that politics in Niger are best understood through the notion of ‘political machines’ (Scott Reference Scott1969). Political machines are characterised by urban reward networks in which particularistic, material rewards are used to extend control over personnel and to maximise electoral support, thereby favouring patronage, spoils and corruption (Scott Reference Scott1969). Without any established catch-all parties financed by mass membership, political power in Niger is built on the support of wealthy businessmen. As elections were of little to no importance prior to the era of multi-party democracy, external funding was not needed, and therefore business did not play a significant role in politics. Initially, the emergence of democracy in the early 1990s shifted power to civilians, labour unions and intellectuals. However, with growing demands to fund campaigns, a merchant class emerged in Nigerien politics. By 2005, major traders and merchants already held over 80% of the seats in the National Assembly (Villalón & Idrissa Reference Villalón, Idrissa, Villalón and Von Doepp2005: 45). From a comparative perspective then, political machines appear to primarily occur in a political arena featuring elections, universal suffrage and a high degree of electoral competition, but in a social context that is considered to favour patronage, spoils and corruption (Scott Reference Scott1969). While political machines emerged in Niger with the introduction of electoral competition and in a context of a ‘moral economy of corruption’ (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan1999), it is interesting that the concept of political machines in African studies was only used for one-party systems (Bienen Reference Bienen and Lofchie1971), and has since been largely ignored, although the conditions for the emergence of political machines only truly came into existence with the ‘wave of democratisation’ in the 1990s. While the concept of political machines does not seem well-suited for an analysis of no or one-party states, because the main element of electoral competition is either missing or at least highly restricted, by the time African states had turned into multi-party systems, the paradigm of neopatrimonialism (and its atemporal and culturalist explanations) had already successfully conquered African studies (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan, Koechlin and Förster2014).

The neopatrimonialist paradigm effectively qualifies African states both as national cultural containers and negative deviations from the West (Hauck et al. Reference Hauck, Kößler, Kumitz and Wehr2013). In contrast, I see the Nigerien parties as ‘Janus-faced’ political machines that are both ‘extraverted’ and ‘introverted’ (Bayart Reference Bayart2009). The functioning of political machines is highly dependent on monetary flows from natural resource extraction, international donors and national businessmen, and the acceptance of this money by militants, activists and voters in exchange for support. However, rather than qualifying African states as corrupt and Western states as sound, I rather see a relative difference; whereas corruption in the West is more restricted to a politico-economic elite, in African countries such as Niger, it is also characterised by a petty corruption due to an existential dimension and moral obligations of social networks as a form of social security and survival. In this sense, it is not so much ‘traditional culture’ which brings forth the phenomena of corruption and cronyism, as the model of neopatrimonialism would suggest, but rather economic (social networks of subsistence and survival in the absence of a welfare state) and political realities (competition in multi-party systems) which favour the emergence of political machines.

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF CIVIL SOCIETY

In political machines, civil society associations often have a role to play, either as supporters of the government or the opposition. During the whole protest cycle around the oil refinery's inauguration in late 2011, I was a participant observer in a civil society committee called Comité Regional des Associations et Syndicats de la Région de Zinder (CRAS). As supporters of the former Tandja regime, CRAS emerged prior to the inauguration and thereby joined the political opposition in voicing oil-related grievances against the new government. The aim of CRAS members was to pressure the government into re-including them into governmental decision-making processes, positions they had lost after the regime change from Tandja to Issoufou. When they failed on this account, they began preparations for a mass demonstration against the government. Planning stopped, however, after three leading members claimed that political opponents planned to hijack the demonstration in order to turn it into a riot. These three leaders, in turn, were accused by another member of having taken bribe money from the government to cancel the demonstration. Internal discussions did not focus on the ‘fact’ that some members had taken government bribes, but rather that the money had not been shared amongst all the committee members. CRAS stopped working after the corruption affair.

In understanding the role of civil society in Niger, it is essential to focus on state-society relations and how these relations evolved historically. I thereby follow a definition of civil society in Niger that considers those groups as civil society that are characterised not only by self-awareness of themselves as civil society (Bayart Reference Bayart and Chabal1986), but are also ascribed the civil society label by others. These include labour unions, NGOs, and civil society associations, networks, committees, movements, groupings and foundations. However, there is also a distinction between more introverted civil society associations such as CRAS and extraverted development organisations labelled NGOs. While the extraverted NGOs must primarily align with the agenda of their international donors for financial flows to continue and thus rarely engage in public politics, introverted civil society associations play the public political game, because it is here that they can access (informal) financial flows.

Looking at the historically sedimented socio-political dis/order in Niger, we see how, since their legitimisation as a counter-power to the state in the post-transition constitutions after 1990, civil society organisations have successfully sought to influence and to become co-opted into political machines. With their ability to act as counter-powers to the state in a multi-party system, civil society had to be appeased, repressed or incorporated into government by political manoeuvres such as bribery, co-optation, intimidation and political arrest. In a context of political machines such as Niger, we therefore observe episodic civil society engagement in the political game, with phases of high activity when organisations are seeking to pressure the government, and phases of low activity or invisibility when they have become co-opted, or simply calmed down by informal redistribution (cf. de Waal & Ibreck Reference de Waal and Ibreck2013). As the graph illustrates, this episodic engagement has been visible in the fluctuation of protests since the start of democratisation.

The dynamics of civil society in political machines can explain the six strong tendencies that Tidjani Alou (Reference Tidjani Alou2015) identified amongst civil society organisations in Niger: proliferation, professionalisation, regrouping, political intervention, personalisation and an urban anchor. Political intervention is the first means of introducing oneself as a new negotiating party, to gain political leverage, and to be rewarded with spoils. An urban anchor is needed for successful political intervention, as urbanisation processes assemble political power in a dense space that enables acts of infrastructural sabotage (such as demonstrations, ghost town operations, burning barricades, strikes and meetings) which can stop the flow of urban life and the economy. Professionalisation is the result of governing techniques, either through co-optation in the state's administrative body, or through external funding from local businessmen or international donors, as well as status politics within organisations and committees to claim leadership positions. Personalisation and proliferation are the results of a ‘rent of political liberalisation’, in which membership of a civil society association becomes an important source of income, be it through external funding, daily allowances for work on governmental committees, or informal contributions from political players. Finally, the very result of episodic civil society engagement, regrouping is necessary to (again) acquire political capital after processes of personalisation and co-optation have either hampered the association's negotiating power or led to its disintegration.

In short, the assumed and Eurocentric dichotomy between the state and civil society cannot simply be transferred to the Nigerien context.Footnote ³ This dichotomy's normative and moral framework is misleading because it entails positive connotations of political progress, legitimate grievances and a better social order (Mamdani Reference Mamdani, Mamdani and Wamba-dia-Wamba1995). Rather, civil society engagement is embedded into the same structures that shape other political actors, including their opponents. In this way, the values and language of contemporary democracy – transparency, good governance, human rights – are primarily appropriated to acquire political legitimacy, and do not signal the development of emancipatory politics per se.

In the next section, I look at why the riots after 2011 first occurred mainly in Zinder before switching to Niamey in 2013, and investigate the significance of ethnicity and regional political strongholds in Nigerien politics.

ETHNICITY AND OPPOSITION STRONGHOLDS IN NIGERIEN POLITICS

Niger is composed of several ethnic groups. According to the 2001 census, the population was 21.0% Zarma-Songhai (dominating western Niger), 55.4% Hausa (dominating southern Niger), 9.3% Tuareg (dominating northern Niger), 8.5% Fulani (which are spread throughout the country, mostly along the Sahel-Saharan belt), 4.7% Kanuri (dominating south-eastern Niger), 0.4% Tubu (dominating the area along the Niger-Chad border), 0.4% Arab (mostly in northern and eastern Niger), 0.4% Gourmantché (living in western Niger) and 0.1% other groups (INS-Niger 2011: 73). However, this official ethnic breakdown did not and does not necessarily translate into ethnic politics. If voting behaviour is mostly built on the distribution of material rewards, as it is in political machines, we would not expect ethnicity to be a significant factor for parties.Footnote ⁴ Moreover, successive regimes have sought to weaken ethnic and regional identities in Niger; since the formation of the First Republic of Niger in 1960, it has been against the constitution to form political parties based on an ethnic, regional or religious character. When the country's second president, Seyni Kountché, allowed for associations to build his société de développement, he prohibited any organisation with an ethnic or regional character (l'ordonnance 884-6 du 1er Mars 1984, article 2), and even forbade references to ethnicity in public debates. To further break down ethnic identities by promoting inter-ethnic and inter-regional marriages, and to counteract corruption based on networks of kinship and solidarity, Kountché also started to post state bureaucrats outside their native regions.

However, the turn to democracy in the early 1990s also opened new possibilities for an ethnicisation of politics, and many of the parties that did emerge had an ethnic core (Ibrahim & Niandou-Souley Reference Ibrahim, Niandou-Souley and Olukoshi1998). At its foundation, the MNSD-Nassara was the party of notables in military, bureaucracy and business and had, as the direct successor of the previous military regimes, nationwide coverage (Ibrahim & Niandou-Souley Reference Ibrahim, Niandou-Souley and Olukoshi1998: 150). Although the MNSD-Nassara was originally a party dominated by Zarma, the ethnic group which mainly constituted the country's political elite during the autocratic period, the fact that Mamadou Tandja, a Kanuri-Fulani from the Diffa region won the internal race for the party's presidency gave it a new, non-ethnic appeal. Tandja's opponent, Moumouni Adamou Djermakoye, founded the Alliance Nigérienne pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (ANDP-Zaman Lahiya) in order to win Zarma votes. Following Djermakoye's death in 2009 and the foundation of the MODEN-FA Lumana Africa party the same year, the western regions of Niger became the electoral stronghold of Hama Amadou, a Fulani from Tillabéri. Hama had founded the party after Tandja ousted him from the MNSD-Nassara in a leadership conflict during the Tazartché campaign. In the early 1990s, the CDS-Rahama emerged as a regionalist-cultural party of Hausaland (Maradi and Zinder), an explicit response to western-Zarma hegemony. The party's electoral strategy was to win the support of the Hausa majority by underlining the historical political marginalisation of the East; this historic marginalisation also remains an important factor in the country's political disputes today (Schritt Reference Schritt2018). In contrast, the PNDS-Tarayya was primarily founded as a socialist party containing a broad cross-section of the Nigerien left, and was thus the most ideologically committed and non-ethnic party in Niger (Ibrahim & Niandou-Souley Reference Ibrahim, Niandou-Souley and Olukoshi1998). However, the party still wins most of its seats in Tahoua, the home region of its leader, Mahamadou Issoufou. Moreover, by being drawn into the logic of political machines over almost three decades of democracy, with ever-changing alliances, institutional breakdowns and extroverted policymaking to acquire international financial flows, the PNDS-Tarayya is today mostly a socialist party by name, and not by ideology or programme.

Taken together, ethnicity seems to criss-cross political mobilisation based on material rewards, making it not an either/or but rather a both/and question. In a comparative study of political parties in West African countries, Basedau & Stroh (Reference Basedau and Stroh2012) found ethnicity to be more politicised in Niger and Benin than in Burkina Faso and Mali. They concluded that the differences could be explained by historical legacies, socio-cultural relationships, and rationalist voting behaviour. In this sense, the role of ethnicity in politics appears to depend on the mobilisation strategies of elites, rather than on the collective interests of identity groups (Basedau & Stroh Reference Basedau and Stroh2012). It is striking that the recurrent protests in Niger have not only occurred in regions such as Zinder (with its claims to historical political marginalisation), but also in other regional opposition strongholds. Indeed, the fact that the capital Niamey itself has since 2013 repeatedly been a stage of violent riots illustrates the importance of political opposition strongholds for protest action in Niger.

In sum, regional and ethnic collective identities are constantly played on by politicians who can build on deep histories of political marginalisation that came with French colonialism.

FRANÇAFRIQUE, RHETORICS OF NEOCOLONIALISM AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES

The presidents of the former French colonies Mali, Niger, Togo, Benin, Gabon and Senegal attended the ‘Je suis Charlie’ demonstration in Paris on 11 January 2015, triggering protests in each country. This resistance illustrates the immediacy of the history of Françafrique in public national discourses in the former colonies. This is especially the case in Niger, where the demonstrations turned particularly violent, for two reasons. First, the economy of Niger is closely tied to the French parastatal company Areva, which has exploited uranium in the country's north since 1971. While Niger is the world's fourth-largest producer of uranium, it is frequently ranked last on the Human Development Index, an incongruity that is highly salient in the national public discourse, and has time and again triggered protests against Areva and ‘French neocolonialism’. Second, when the international community enacted sanctions against Tandja's regime in 2009 in response to his attempts to abolish the presidential term limits, he powerfully (re)produced the rhetoric of neocolonialism in Niger, blaming ‘the West’ and its meddling in Nigerien politics for the country's ‘underdevelopment’. These historical and political economy entanglements have produced a uranium-political configuration in Niger which is closely tied to neocolonial discourses (Schritt Reference Schritt2016).

In contrast to the widespread support Tandja received in his portrayal of himself as a strong leader able to resist Western neocolonial interference, Issoufou was widely insulted and abused in social media outlets for taking part in the ‘Je suis Charlie’ demonstration in Paris. On the Facebook group ‘15000 nigerien sur facebook’ users called Issoufou a puppet of Western regimes. One post, for example, caricatured French president François Hollande holding a monkey resembling Issoufou on a leash, who in turn had a baby monkey resembling Commander Salou Djibo – the coup leader who had ousted Tandja – on his back. The caricature refers to a widespread suspicion that France orchestrated the military coup against Tandja to install a president loyal to its interests. Similarly, France is still widely seen as responsible for the 1974 military coup against Niger's first post-independence president, Diori Hamani, although new access to archival material shows that France was not involved, and had even considered measures for his re-instalment (van Walraven Reference van Walraven2014).

Looking more closely at the posts on ‘15000 nigerien sur facebook’ reveals a number of popular discourses about Françafrique, neocolonialism and the world order. Aside from posts from Nigerien press outlets and risqué or controversial comments, anti-imperialist and/or anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are plentiful. In these posts, ‘France’, ‘the USA’, ‘the West’ or ‘the Jews’ are said to be behind all the evils in Africa and the world. Many of the conspiracy theories involving colonialism, Zionism, superpowers, oil, and the war on terror have travelled from the Arab World, and are perpetuated through terrorist propaganda such as by Al-Qaeda, but also through popular media outlets such as Al-Jazeera and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp (Gray Reference Gray2010). Of course, these neocolonial narratives and conspiracy theories are highly situational, popping up around particular events before retreating into the background again.

The high currency of these conspiracy theories needs to be situated in the context of global capitalism that, on the one hand, produces enormous wealth and, on the other, renders large parts of the population in the Global South redundant, thus fuelling a general feeling of global marginalisation. By connecting and to some extent conflating regional (the West versus the Global South) with religious identities (Christians/Jews versus Muslims), notions of Western imperialism become entangled with a general feeling of Judeo-Christian world domination over a marginalised Muslim world (with the Israel–Palestine conflict typically taken as the case of reference).

ISLAM, ISLAMIC REFORM MOVEMENTS AND RELIGIOUS CO-EXISTENCE IN NIGER

A politically secular nation, Niger is a predominantly Muslim and very pious society. According to the 2012 census, 99.3% of the population identify as Muslim, 0.3% follow Christianity, 0.2% follow African religious traditions and 0.1% declared themselves without religion (INS-Niger 2015: 44). Religion has a powerful affective dimension in the country, with 91% stating that religion is ‘very important’ in their life and that they actively practice their religion on a daily basis.Footnote ⁵

In an overview of Islamic reform movements in Africa, Loimeier (Reference Loimeier2016) identifies an Islamic historical legacy for Niger that is both pre- and post-jihadist, combining local religious traditions such as the Bori spirit possession cult with Islamic practices introduced by a jihadist movement in the early 19th century. Sufi brotherhoods of Sunni Islam, especially the dominant Tijāniyyah known for combining African traditions into Islamic practice, are strongly represented in Niger. With the advent of democratisation in the 1990s, a Salafi-oriented reform movement called Yan Izala blossomed, and began to contest the ‘pagan’, ‘supernatural’ and ‘unwritten’ Islamic practices of the Tijāniyyah on a national scale.

Started in neighbouring Nigeria in the late 1970s, the Yan Izala movement began in Niger in Maradi in 1987. After democratisation, the Association pour la Diffusion de l'Islam au Niger (ADINI-Islam) was formed to spread the movement, which it did effectively, triggering changes in fashion, lifestyle, marriage practices and gender relations (Masquelier Reference Masquelier, Otayek and Soares2009). Despite the fact that all Nigerien governments have defended the principle of laicité since democratisation to preserve their privileged access to state power, and that the state established the Conseil Islamique du Niger (CIN) in 2003 to tighten control over religious associations, politicians have also made use of Islam to ideologically foster their political legitimacy. As Elischer (Reference Elischer2015) argues, this state regulation has been successful both in maintaining peaceful and apolitical domestic Salafi associations, and in containing the emergence of a ‘political’ or ‘Jihadi Salafism’Footnote ⁶ in Niger which is significantly more prominent in neighbouring West African countries. Religious authorities, in turn, including the increasing number of Salafi-oriented groups, tend to avoid any displays of political involvement, as it is difficult to claim a connection between a pious lifestyle and the overwhelmingly negatively loaded notion of politics in Niger (Sounaye Reference Sounaye2016).

According to Charlick (Reference Charlick and Miles2007), the success of Yan Izala should not simply be attributed to a backlash against globalisation. Rather, he argues that Yan Izala fills a need amongst certain societal segments to modernise on their own terms, rejecting both Western-dominated modernisation and the traditional social and normative constructs of their own society. Indeed, in its early years, Yan Izala was supported in great numbers by wealthy traders and powerful merchants, for whom membership became a sign of social distinction (Grégoire Reference Grégoire1992); and by youth for whom membership was an opportunity to challenge tradition and customary authorities, and for whom the ideology of Yan Izala best matched their aspirations of upward mobility (Masquelier Reference Masquelier, Otayek and Soares2009). As a result and although they were not members, many educated youths I met sympathised (at least to some degree) with Salafi-oriented movements.

The growth of new Islamic reform movements in Niger has seen the development of violent factions. The rise of Yan Izala had first triggered religious conflicts with the Tijāniyyah. These conflicts turned particularly violent in 1992 and 1993, flaring up at different times, before calming down again by the early 2000s. As a growing movement, Yan Izala had a profound effect on public discourse, intensifying resistance to government policy in the name of Islam. Most significantly, it pushed for an Islamisation of the state and society, and led public resistance and protest against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), the institutional implementation of women rights, ‘pagan’ customs such as the Bori cult, and the ‘Westernisation’ of Nigerien culture. In 1998, in response to the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity in the Sahel, violence against Christians began, rising sharply the following year, and culminating in urban riots in Maradi and Niamey on 8 November 2000 against the second annual International Festival of African Fashion (Cooper Reference Cooper2003). During the riots, bars and churches were attacked and burned down, and symbols of Bori spiritual culture were desecrated (Cooper Reference Cooper2003).

Unlike in 2000, however, only some of the protestors against Charlie Hebdo in 2015 were dressed in white Islamic clothing, and it appears that many of the protesting youth led a relatively secular and western-oriented lifestyle, dressing in western clothes, drinking alcohol, and enjoying the nightlife and music in bars. Indeed, on several occasions I heard that the same youth who had burned down the bars had also helped themselves to the drinks. It is therefore no surprise that although the vast majority of the Nigerien population shared the grievances against the caricatures of Charlie Hebdo, many people saw protesting youths primarily as ‘gangsters’ or ‘hooligans’ who were either mobilised by politicians, or as opportunistic free-riders who used the opportunity for personal gain by looting, pillaging and plundering, thus negatively affecting the legitimacy of their complaints among the Nigerien population.

To understand the seeming contradiction in popular discourses between admiration for the Salafi-oriented reform movements and denouncement of the youth protestors as ‘gangsters’, we have to look more closely at the situation of (male) youth in Niger.

‘WAITHOOD’, VIOLENCE AND PATRIARCHY

According to the 2012 census, Niger has the highest birth rate of any country in the world, with 7.6 children born per woman, and an annual population growth of 3.9% (INS-Niger 2015). With a median age of 14, 69.5% of the population is under 25, with 63% living below the international poverty line (INS-Niger 2015). There is mass youth unemployment, and the few economic opportunities available are typically low-paid, such as motorcycle taxi drivers (kabou kabou) or street vendors. As such, urban youth have to wait increasingly longer to marry, found a family, and become contributing members of the community. The situation of youth has thus been described as ‘waithood’ (Honwana Reference Honwana2012) and is typically understood as ‘a prolonged and uncertain stage between childhood and adulthood that is characterised by their inability to enter the labour market and attain the social markers of adulthood’ (Honwana Reference Honwana2012: 19). Young men's inability to perform socially desirable masculine roles also has major repercussions for women, as Honwana (Reference Honwana2012: 24) argues: ‘[W]omen's ability to attain the social status of adulthood depends on men's moving beyond waithood’.

Young men and women thus experience waithood in different ways. The markers of adulthood vary according to gender roles within a society. As a predominantly Muslim society, (Hausa) hegemonic masculinity in Niger is connected to Islamic views on marriage and masculine domination, and has thus been constructed as protective of ‘female weakness’ and a man's duty to be the breadwinner and provide everything for his wife or wives (Salamone Reference Salamone, Ouzgane and Morrell2004). In contrast, female adulthood is attached to the private sphere of marriage, motherhood and care-giving. Moreover, both customary law and the recently growing phenomenon of wife seclusion (kubli in Hausa) privilege men's access to land and increasingly lock women into the house compound (Henquinet Reference Henquinet2007). As a result of this gender segregation and a lack of opportunity for young men in Niger, a ‘culture of masculine waiting’ has emerged in public spaces (Masquelier Reference Masquelier2013). With public politics the domain of men, women have largely been invisible in the violent protests and riots. This is not to say, however, that women have been passive or inactive. Women have indeed mobilised around gender struggles and other issues, often trying to advance their agendas at the negotiating table rather than through (violent) protests (Kang Reference Kang2015).

In a situation of waiting, large segments of the youth population, especially young men, organise themselves into informal neighbourhood groups called fada and palais. Fada began to emerge with the democratisation process in the 1990s and the rise of unemployment fuelled by the SAP. Fada are effectively conversation groups that meet for tea ceremonies lasting up to several hours, and in which youth from the same neighbourhood meet to socialise and exchange information, debate politics, gossip, talk about job opportunities, play cards, and listen to the radio or music. In other words, fada make time, which is otherwise experienced as boredom, meaningful (Masquelier Reference Masquelier2013). While fada were first associated with charitable works such as tree planting and neighbourhood clean-ups, most of these charitable activities have since ceased, and some of the fada have morphed into youth gangs called palais. Palais are a more recent phenomenon, having started around 2007, especially in Zinder. Many of the palais have chosen English names based on (imagined) US-American gang names such as ‘Capital King’, ‘City Boys’, ‘Big Money’, ‘Gang Boy’ or ‘Style Gang’. In contrast to fada, the activities of palais centre more on drug consumption, street fights, crime, violence and sex. This violence, in particular, has been a matter of growing public concern for several years. Whereas the fada are mostly non-hierarchically organised, affirming a spirit of egalitarianism and comradeship, the palais are highly hierarchical organisations with a leader often referred to as chef, boss, président or shugaba (Souley Reference Souley2012). Marginalised city quarters particularly affected by poverty often have high numbers of palais (Souley Reference Souley2012).

Due to the country's changing demography and increasing violence, male youth are increasingly becoming a force to be reckoned with in Nigerien politics. While male youth have primarily become significant discursively as a threat to society, they are also aware of this discourse. In interviews and talk-back radio, youths appropriated the narrative of a ‘ticking time-bomb’, publicly threatening, for example, government authorities of an ‘explosion’ or even ‘to make Boko Haram’. Having taken part myself in three different youth groupings in Niamey and Zinder, many of the grievances members voice in fada and palais are directed against the government, who they blame for a lack of employment opportunities or access to participation in politics. For young men then, violence offers one of the few effective channels to make their voices heard. In turn, they are the ‘critical mass’ that has to be governed and controlled, becoming targets of the political machines to rally behind either the government or the opposition. The hierarchically structured palais are particularly easy prey for political machines that reward youth leaders for mobilising their followers. With desperation levels of unemployment in African post-colonies, youth are ‘constantly available to be put to use for virtually any form of labour’ (Hoffman Reference Hoffman2011). In this context, youth groups offer violence as a form of labour available to the highest bidder on the market, rather than as a political act performed along ideological lines (Hoffman Reference Hoffman2011). In this sense, several youth leaders who were at the forefront of the violent protests around the refinery's inauguration in 2011 later became members of the newly created youth organisations, and with their newly gained privileges immediately distanced themselves from the violence. This is not to say, however, that the youths are not self-conscious about providing loyalty to politicians or businessmen as a kind of job. I often heard from youths (and civil society activists) that accepting money or other kinds of material rewards is a kind of contractual agreement which ends immediately after the job is done.

Taken together, violence in Niger is primarily the domain of young men who dominate the public sphere and who are mobilised by political machines, whereas women have not played a visible, public role in such protests. By engaging in the production of disorder during protests, the situation of youths also displays a new kind of order in which male youths become a growing matter of concern in public and politics; in this dis/order, political actors do not primarily seek to address youth issues but rather new mechanisms of repression, control and co-optation.