The question of legitimacy is fundamental for a state. It is through legitimacy that it becomes acknowledged by its population, who thereby subscribes to it, voluntarily submits to its authority, and accepts the social regulation it produces. However, the mechanisms of power legitimacy are complex. Multiple sources of power legitimacy are at stake and interact in ways specific to the context.

In order to try and grasp this complexity, it helps to start with the societies and their environments, wherein which coexist full ranges of regulations (religious, traditional, economic etc.). In their everyday life, the actors (individuals, civil society organizations, businesses, etc.) relate to these regulations according to their material and symbolic needs. Thus they are subject to multiple loyalties that bare on their worldview, their sense of togetherness and that guide their relation to power and public institutions.

The legitimation of the state depends on the mobilization of these multiple loyalties. Therefore, it does not rest on a single pillar, but arises from a broad range of sources ferried by a society’s actors. By taking these diverse sources into account, the state is able to produce a social regulation shared and accepted by a broad spectrum of actors. This is one of the essential conditions for the effectiveness and legitimacy of public policies. It is in order to better understand, in practical terms, this diversity of sources of legitimacy, their interactions, and their relation to the state in varied contexts that the IRG initiated a project of multi-actor encounters: The International Meeting Process for Debate and Proposals on Governance.

The International Meeting Process

Coordinated by the IRG and supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Foundation Charles-Léopold Mayer, the International Meeting Process for Debates and Proposals on Governance aims to investigate sources of power legitimacy in the different parts of the world in order to gain a better understanding of the particular contexts in which they operate.

The diverse stages of the International Meeting Process have brought out a diversity of situations. At the Bamako Meeting, “tradition” and “modernity” stood out as two important sources of legitimacy in dialectical tension. In Southern Africa, at the Polokwane & Pretoria Meeting, constitutions stood out as the mainstay of power legitimation. In eastern Africa, the Arusha Meeting highlighted the importance of security issues in the legitimation of power. In Andean America, the legitimacy of the region’s states henceforward relies on the integration of indigenous communities along with their own traditions and customs. In the same spirit, the object of the Yaoundé Meeting was to analyze the sources of legitimacy at work in the Central African sub-region.

The Yaoundé Meeting

As in the previous stages of the International Meeting Process, the Yaoundé Meeting was conceived as a forum straddling four dimensions. Firstly, as an intercultural dimension because critical thinking, albeit focused on a particular region, must feed on a cross-fertilization of mindscapes and representations. Secondly, a debate on governance supposes the participation of all the actors (public authorities, civil society, private sector): the multi-actor dimension is therefore of the essence. Thirdly, the question of power legitimacy stands at the intersection of the social, economic, political, cultural, anthropological and even legal realms and therefore requires a pluri-disciplinary dimension towards developing a broader analytical perspective. Finally, power legitimacy cannot be addressed at a single territorial tier and thus the debates had to take into account the diverse levels of governance, their relations, interactions, and imbrications.

In accordance with this four-dimensional methodology, the Yaoundé Meeting brought together a broad cross-section of actors on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of November 2010: national or international political leaders, researchers, traditional chiefs, religious leaders, trade unions and NGO representatives, etc. The participants, hailing mostly from Central Africa (Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad) but also from Western Africa, (Senegal, Mali), Southern africa (south Africa, Zimbabwe), Latin America (Colombia), North America (the United States) and Europe (France, Germany), met over three days to take part in the debates.

The meeting ran over three days on the same model as earlier ones. The debates were structured around three lines of enquiry. (i) The identification and analysis of the diverse sources of power legitimacy at work in the region (e.g. legality, international normativity, tradition or even religion). (ii) The analysis of the interactions between these diverse sources of legitimacy. In what way (cohabitation, adjustment, substitution, instrumentalization or confrontation) do these interactions take place? The management of land rights served as a case study in order to understand and give a concrete example of how those diverse sources of legitimacy were called upon and how they interacted in the context of a specific issue. (iii) The analysis of constitutional processes and the way in which they take the plurality of sources of legitimacy into account – or not as the case may be. To which extent do constitutions contribute to the construction of a social regulation that is shared and inclusive, the basis for a true social contract?

The debate’s key points

Of the multiple sources of power legitimacy at work in Central Africa, the participants of the Yaoundé Meeting highlighted four: religion, tradition, ethnicity and international recognition. Their development will occupy the first part of these proceeding.

The second part will consider the interactions between sources of legitimacy through the concrete case of the management of land conflicts in the administrative district of Efoulan in Cameroon. The field study organized around this question helped illustrate the “ineffective legal syncretism” (between religion, tradition, and state law) that the participants had stressed during the debates.

Finally, the third part of the proceedings will focus on constitutions and constitutionalism. Meeting after meeting, constitutions have been pointed our as being a singular object in terms of legitimacy since it is both a source of legitimacy and a legal transcription of a political and social regulation; thereby making it the more or less inclusive integration of diverse sources of legitimacy. In other words, a constitution is not only the legal basis on which a state constructs its operation and its public action, but also the reflection of an intended togetherness, of a social contract. At the Yaoundé Meeting, the debates notably stressed the importance of a greater inclusion of a society’s diversity within the constitution.