The Materiality of State Failure: Social Contract Theory, Infrastructure and Governmental Power in Congo

Congo’s state failure is usually analysed in terms of a ‘broken social contract’, reflecting the degree to which mainstream understandings of state failure are conditioned by classical social contract theory. This article takes a different route to understanding Congo’s predicament by building on insights from actor-network theory (ANT). ANT’s insistence on society as a socio-material entanglement, it shows, translates into increasing attention to the role of material infrastructures in constituting governmental power. Conversely, this approach also allows the highlighting of the importance of the absence of the material underpinnings of rule in drawing up more nuanced accounts of state failure.