Jean-François Bayart

Jean-Francois Bayart is a French political scientist and a leading scholar of African politics. His book The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly argued that African states are shaped by networks of patronage and accumulation rather than being simply weak or failed. He developed the idea of extraversion, the strategies by which African elites turn their relationship with the outside world into a resource of power. His work reframed debates about the postcolonial state and dependency.