Nevertheless, substantial ethnic, cultural, regional, religious, and developmental, especially inter-elite differences cannot be ignored. Hence constitutional federalism attempted to account for both centripetal and centrifugal forces with the notion of unity in diversity: unity represents the ideal, long-term goal, diversity expresses current reality; the idea of unity in fact promotes a feeling of (future) oneness, while the guarantee of diversity makes popular acceptance of differences more palatable. Or, expressed in terms of elite consolidation and ruling-class interests, unity provides a dominant, central “trough” for the most successful, while diversity ensures a multiplicity of secondary, sub-national “troughs” as a kind of consolation …show more content…
The principle of checks and balances, though nowhere spelled out as such, was implicit in this division of powers according to their ostensible functions in government. The general effect of the system of checks and balances was supposed to be the creation of a broad need for intra-governmental co-ordination. Even while such a system caused “friction and delay,” it promoted “compromise and consultation” in the workings of government and thus—ideally—was to bring about a greater degree of active co-operation and identification between the component parts of the political system. Of course, it was not possible to confine the functions of lawmaking, law-execution and law-interpretation to these neat compartments, and not only did the executive manage to usurp many powers assigned to the other arms of government, but party power politics often overrode formal constitutional …show more content…
Admittedly, there are several further social subcategories within each of these groupings. This elite-mass distinction, it can be argued, is the most fundamental and persistent trend in the continent’s social structure. To discover why this is so, it is necessary to look again at the nature of colonial rule and its effects on the social structure. Under the colonial administration, the “national” elite or ruling class consisted primarily of foreigners, falling into roughly two categories. First, the educated expatriate elite whose positions were derived from advanced training and expert qualifications; these included administrators, functionaries, missionaries, military officers, policemen and other specialists. Secondly are the business elite who are the representatives of overseas concerns and those who set out to make their fortunes under colonial protection. In this scheme of things, aspiring African elites remained either (a) localized, as in the case of indirect rulers backed by the colonial policy of indirect subordinate, as in the case of those recruited for lower-level administrative positions for the colonial bureaucracy or foreign-owned businesses. This latter group in a sense was inherent in the logic of an expanding colonial capitalism which needed more and more persons to perform “modern” functions in the expanding economic order. The colonial administrators,