Indirect Political Participation in Two Sierra Leone Chiefdoms

Abstract

In the literature of the social sciences, increased political participation is often regarded as one of the symptoms of a ‘modernising’ polity,¹ but there have been few attempts to examine the detailed implications in any African rural society. This short article attempts to show that the national leaders in Sierra Leone feared the implications of mass participation in politics. Basically conservative and opposed to the idea of upsetting the status quo, they were satisfied in so far as they retained the support of their people in the struggle for independence, and if thereafter they were able to command enough votes at election times. They were afraid of the changes which countrywide political ‘involvement’ might imply, since these would have threatened their own privileged position.