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The argument that « power drives mad and absolute power drives absolutely mad » is often mobilized as a moral formula, almost lazy, to disqualify leaders who deviate from their promises or harden their governance once installed.
Yet behind this sentence is a mechanism that is more complex, deeper, and more systemic. It is not an individual pathology, nor a simple moral betrayal, but a chain of psychological, institutional and economic processes that gradually transform the exercise of power into a dynamic of empowerment, rigidification and sometimes predation.
In the context of French-speaking Africa, this dynamic is exacerbated by presidential regimes largely inherited from colonial architecture, characterized by extreme centralization, personalization of power and chronic weakness of effective counter-powers.
The "Power madness"is therefore not an accident: it is often the logical consequence of a system that concentrates, isolates and sacralizes political decision-making.
Power as a psychological transformation: what exercise of authority does to individuals
Power profoundly alters the individual's relationship to himself, to others and to reality. The cognitive sciences and social psychology converge on a fundamental point: access to a dominant position reduces internal brakes that usually regulate behaviour.
The first effect is disinhibition. When the individual perceives that his or her decisions are no longer immediately sanctioned: legally, socially or politically, he or she adopts a more risky, impulsive, sometimes brutal behaviour. The feeling of impunity, even diffuse, produces an illusion of control and invulnerability. The leader no longer sees himself as an actor among others, but as a functional exception: the one to whom ordinary rules apply only in an imperfect way.
To this is added a Impairment of empathy. Power reduces the need to understand others finely. Where the citizen must convince, negotiate, explain, the leader can order, arbitrate, impose. People gradually become abstract categories: voters, opponents, social forces, threats, masses. This functional dehumanization facilitates increasingly instrumental decisions, sometimes indifferent to real human costs.
Finally, power favours a phenomenon ofmoral self-justification. Faced with permanent compromises, the leader develops internal narratives that make choices initially perceived as problematic acceptable. The "state reason", "stability", "the best interests of the nation" become narrative frameworks for neutralizing moral dissonance. This rationalization is not necessarily cynical; It is often sincere, making it even more dangerous.
In the most advanced cases, these mechanisms converge towards what can be termed, without psychiatrizing, as "the best way to do things". d-hubris syndrome : overestimation of its capabilities, intolerance to contradiction, contempt of procedures, sense of historical destiny. The leader no longer governs a state; He identifies with him.
Absolute power is not a degree, but a qualitative breakdown
What turns an ordinary drift of power into absolute drift is not the intensity of authority, but the absence of effective counterweight. Power becomes absolute when three conditions are met: low institutional accountability, low probability of alternation, and extreme concentration of decision-making.
In such an environment, the psychology of the leader evolves in a bubble. Flattery replaces information, loyalty supplants competence, and fear prevents alerts from rising. The real becomes scripted. Figures are adjusted, field visits staged, crises minimized or exaggerated according to their political usefulness. The leader no longer governs a real country, but a filtered representation of the country.
It is in this context that the "foliation of power" takes on its full meaning: not as an individual delirium, but as an individual delirium. progressive disconnection of reality, fed by a system that eliminates any corrective friction.
Francophone hyper-presidentialism: a structural matrix of drift
In many French-speaking African countries, post-independence constitutions have reproduced, sometimes by amplifying, the central features of the colonial state: administrative centralisation, verticality of command, sacralisation of the executive.
The President concentrates on key appointments, controls the political agenda, arbiters access to budgetary and land resources, and has a decisive influence on instruments of constraint. This concentration makes the presidential power the main access point to wealth, protection and career. The whole political society is therefore organized around this centre.
This architecture mechanically produces a political economy of the court. Around the president gravitates a constellation of actors whose survival depends on their proximity to the centre: advisers, senior officials, economic operators, security officials, notables. Their interest is not to correct power, but to consolidate it. Information becomes a political currency. Saying the truth becomes risky; please becomes rational.
Why Electoral Promises Sever Once in Power
The denial of promises is not always the result of initial duplicity. It often results from a brutal shock between the logic of conquest of power and that of its maintenance.
In the campaign, the candidate operates in a logic of aggregation: He must seduce heterogeneous social groups, sometimes with conflicting interests. The promises are therefore broad, often ambiguous, sometimes unrealistic.
Once in power, he discovered fiscal constraints, institutional power relations, organized interests that could block or divert reforms.
From this moment on, governance shifts in a logic of political survival. Structural reforms, costly in the short term, are postponed. Decisions focus on visibility, targeted distribution, neutralization of oppositions. The communication replaces the substantive action. Speech hardens, not out of ideology, but out of fear of losing.
In hyper-presidential regimes, losing power often means losing much more than a mandate: it means losing access to resources, protection, sometimes exposing yourself to prosecution or settling accounts. This fear of post-power is a central driver of defensive authoritarianism.
The post-colonial factor: silent continuity and perverse effects
Colonial heritage is not confined to arbitrary borders or official languages. It is embodied in administrative practices, cultures of government and institutional reflexes. The state is historically conceived as an instrument of control, not as a space for deliberation. The rule is less a common framework than a tool of selective domination.
In this context, the law often exists more as a symbol than as a constraint. Its differentiated application reinforces arbitrary. Power is exercised by permanent exception. The opposition is perceived not as a normal component of the democratic game, but as a threat to neutralize.
To this are added contemporary amplifiers: rent economy, massive information, social dependence on the state, and increasing security of political discourse. Power becomes both a source of wealth, protection and survival. Losing him becomes unacceptable.
Privileges, entourage and institutions: a necessary clarification
It is essential to distinguish three often confused levels of analysis.
The power privilege acts on the leader's psychology. It weakens internal brakes, promotes disinhibition and nourishes the feeling of exception.
Lsurroundings acts on the perception of reality. It filters information, builds stories, creates threats and certainties. He locks the leader in a cognitive bubble.
But the decisive factor remainsinstitutional architecturebecause it determines the cost of errors and abuses. Where counter-powers are effective, drifts are contained. Where they are neutralized, drift becomes rational.
The real challenge: reforming architecture, not moralizing individuals
The central question is therefore not whether African leaders are more virtuous or cynical than others. It is to understand why the systems in which they operate almost mechanically transform power into a trap.
These abuses are not corrected by ethical calls or by the renewal of elites alone. They are corrected by a institutional engineering rigorous: real limitation of mandates, independence of supervisory bodies, budgetary transparency, depersonalisation of the State, effective decentralization, security of alternation and post-power.
As long as power remains concentrated, sacralized and existential, it will continue to produce the same trajectories: reformer hope, centralization, hardening, locking. And adage will continue to be invoked, not as an explanation, but as a fatalistic finding.
Power doesn't drive crazy, it reveals and amplifies what the system allows
In contemporary French-speaking Africa, the "folio of power" is less an individual drift than a structural phenomenon. Power does not magically transform men; It reveals their vulnerabilities in an environment that rewards centralization, servile loyalty and political survival.
Changing men without changing the rules is about moving the problem. As long as the architecture of power remains unchanged, the trajectories will be repeated. It is not the leader who must first be monitored, but the system which allows him to be no longer monitored.
There, and only there, is the future of political governance in Africa.
