10.1177/001041402237944COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / December 2002Englebert et al. / DEBATE ON AFRICAN BOUNDARIESDo African countries sufferfromtheirarbitraryboundaries?Theauthorstestseveralhypothesesfrom the debate on this question. They differentiate, one by one, the degree of arbitrariness ofAfricanboundariesalongtwoaxes:theextentto whichtheypartitionpreexistingpolitical group-ings (dismemberment) and the degree to which they bring together distinct precolonial politicalcultures (suffocation). They findthat dismemberment is positively associated with internationaldisputes and that suffocation magnifies the likelihood of civil wars, political instability, andsecession attempts. The evidence appears to support claims that Africa has paid a substantialprice for refusing to challenge some of the arbitrary boundaries it inherited from colonialism.The authors discuss the policy implications of their findings.DISMEMBERMENT AND SUFFOCATIONA Contribution to the Debateon African BoundariesPIERRE ENGLEBERTSTACY TARANGOPomona CollegeMATTHEW CARTERClaremont Graduate UniversityThere is little disagreement that the boundaries of contemporary Afri-can states are unusually arbitrary as a result of their largely colonial ori-gins (Ajala, 1983; Asiwaju, 1985; Barbour, 1961; Bello, 1995; Brownlie,1979; Davidson, 1992; Kum, 1993; Nugent & Asiwaju, 1996; Sautter, 1982;Touval, 1966). There is no consensus, however, as to whether this has been aliability for African states. Some argue that borders everywhere are artificial1093AUTHORS’NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2000 annual meetingof the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC. The authors are grateful forthe insightful comments of Daniel Bach and two anonymous referees, as well as for the feedbackof participants in the Pomona College Department of Politics “Pizza and Politics” luncheonseries. Stacy Tarango and Mathew Carter’s participation was made possible thanks to PomonaCollege’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program.COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 35 No. 10, December 2002 1093-1118DOI: 10.1177/001041402237944© 2002 Sage Publicationsand that the case for African exceptionalism is weak (Clapham, 1996a;Odugbemi, 1995). Others do not dismiss the relatively erratic nature of Afri-can boundaries but suggest either that it has had few deleterious conse-quences (Ottaway, 1999; Touval, 1969), that the boundary lines also repre-sent a source of opportunities for African populations (Bach, 1999; Nugent,1996), or that they are an asset for state consolidation (Herbst, 2000). Stillothers agree that Africa has suffered from its partitioned nature but see thecosts of reshuffling states as greater than the hypothetical benefits (“Africa’sbizarre borders,” 1997; Barbour, 1961; Bayart, 1996; “Consensus and stabil-ity,” 1995; Griffiths, 1996; Young, 1996). Finally, a few authors believe thatat least some African states would gain from territorial reconfiguration(Bello, 1995; Herbst, 1990, 2000; Nkiwane, 1993; Southall, 1985).Recent political conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, characterized by inter-nationalanddomesticconflict,state failures,andthe criminalizationof struc-turesofauthority, haveheightened theurgencyofidentifyingwhetherbound-aries share responsibility for the continent’s predicament. Yet lively as thedebate on African boundaries has been, it has suffered from several short-comings that have prevented substantive progress on this question. First, ithas received little systematic treatment, with much of the literature provinganecdotal, opinion-based, or dependent on few and possibly biased cases.Second, despite a few exceptions (Bach, 1995; Thom, 1975), it has tended tosubsume African states into a single category without distinctions in degreesof territorial arbitrariness, whereas the particular conditions of each stateactually vary widely. Without accounting for these variations, inferencesabout the consequences of arbitrariness have been vague. Finally, the debatehas also been limited by its emphasis on international conflict. Given theapparent lack of interstate conflicts in Africa until the late 1990s, the argu-ment that artificial borders “do not matter” has gained prevalence (“Africa’sbizarre borders,” 1997; Bayart, 1996; “Consensus and stability,” 1995;Joseph & Herbst, 1997). Whatever its validity (which we investigate), thisclaim misses a crucial dimension of the nature and consequences of bound-aries. For, if borders determine who the other is, they also define the self andconfer membership in the polity. As Clifford Geertz (1973) argues,postcolonial states are not only liable to “dismember” peoples across bor-ders, but they may also “suffocate” heterogeneous groups within. Hence, thedomestic consequences of territorial arbitrariness must be studied alongsidetheir international counterparts.In this article, we test hypotheses derived from the debate on Africanboundariesand from germane argumentsaboutthenature of Africanpolitics.We differentiate, one by one, the degree of arbitrariness of African bound-aries in terms of suffocation and dismemberment and look at possible inter-1094 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / December 2002national and domestic consequences.1Despite measurement difficulties, ourfindingsare surprisingly strong and contrast with the hesitations of the litera-ture: Arbitrary boundaries do magnify the likelihood of international anddomestic conflicts and weaken the stability of governments. We concludewith a discussion of some policy issues raised by these findings.THE ARTIFICE AND ARBITRARINESSOF AFRICAN BOUNDARIESTHE CONCEPT OF BORDERAlthough the idea of “natural” boundaries is often the product of organicideologies of the state, and most international boundaries are at least some-what artificial and accidental, contemporary African borders appear particu-larlyartificialboth with respect tomost African political culturesand in com-parison with borders elsewhere.2Precolonial African societies werecharacterized by low population density and technology levels. As a result,their political systems were neither in need nor capable of projecting theirpower over large territories. Political authority and property rights extendedover people more than land and, with a few exceptions such as Ethiopia(Clapham, 1996b), the concept of territorial delimitation of political controlwas by and large culturally alien (Allott, 1974; Herbst,