Political struggles are fought at the marketplace in Benin, Africa

Ebbe Prag's paper - Entrepot Politics: Political Struggles over the Dantokpa Marketplace in Cotonou, Benin - argues that marketplaces are a hub of formal and informal international trade. Furthermore, marketplaces are an important site for understanding national political struggles in Benin due to their key position in the economy. The lines of conflict at the very large Dantokpa marketplace in Cotonou duplicate the general pattern of fluid and opportunistic political alliances between 'regionally'-based parties around the government and the opposition in Beninese politics. At the market, political networks of non-state and state actors, party leaders, government officials and 'big men and women' compete for control over the huge resources generated from the market.

Ebbe Prag's paper argues that the competition is embedded in and has been spurred on by democratisation in 1990 and decentralisation in 2002. Formally, the Beninese state governs the market, but its authority is weak, and public authority is shaped through and by struggles and negotiations between the competing political networks in a fluid and informal environment of clientelistic politics.

The present series of working papers emerged from the “Markets for Peace? Informal economic networks and political agency” research network sponsored by the Danish Social Science Research Council (FSE) and hosted by DIIS between 2007 and 2009. The aim of the interdisciplinary research network was to gain a better under­standing of the role and significance of informal economic networks and activities on political processes.

The research network explored the dynamics of informal economic networks and activities; national, regional and international attempts to regulate informal economic activities; and the ways in which informal economic networks and activities are or are not converted into political influence. Presently a book is under preparation, in which the working papers published in this series will all feature with some changes anticipated. The book is edited by Lars Buur, Dennis Rodgers, Finn Stepputat and Christian Højbjerg.