China and the Transformation of Political Order in Africa

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Christof Hartmann; Professorin Dr. Nele Noesselt
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 469144017

Given China’s global investment activities and infrastructure projects, political and academic discourses assume a growing influence of China on African politics. But this influence differs across African contexts, and many aspects of this varying impact remain empirically unexplored and undertheorized. We see two factors at work: In their relationships with China, African elites exert agency that differs depending on their domestic political settlements; and in its outgoing strategy, Chinese overseas policy looks increasingly heterogeneous due to a growing number of its implementing actors and institutions. The expertise combined in this project enables us to examine both the different African settlements and the heterogeneity of Chinese actors to develop a general framework for understanding the increasing complexity of China-Africa relations. Our conceptual starting point is political settlements theory (Khan 2010). According to this approach the emergence and stability of political institutions depends on the underlying distribution of political power which has evolved through processes of state formation and resulted in varying types of settlement. A settlements approach is both an innovative way of mapping differences in the domestic politics and political economy of African countries, but also a promising strategy for systematically including the role and impact of Chinese actors within a model of African political governance. The project will thus analyse three select case studies (Ghana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania), which share a long history of interactions with China but differ with regard to their internal political settlements. The political settlements approach will not only allow us to focus on the agency of competing elite segments in African countries. Observation of how Chinese strategies and practices unfold in these varying contexts also contributes towards a better understanding of how the growing involvement of Chinese actors in the politics of African states modifies perceptions, discourses, and eventually, strategic policy adjustments on the Chinese side. In a nutshell, we therefore think that our project, based on innovative theory formulation and grounded in empirical research, will both enhance our understanding of the dynamics of African politics and governance in its growing diversity as well as in its dynamic interactions with external actors, and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of China’s fragmented, multi-actor-based foreign policy as it is evolving in Sub-Saharan Africa (and beyond).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants