By Patrick Smith, Editor Africa Confidential

There is a worsening crackdown on journalists in many regions of the world, especially Africa, as governments and businesses struggle to deal with harsher economic conditions.

One of the latest victims in Africa is Ngota Ngota Germain, editor of the weekly Cameroon Express, who died in detention on 23 April in Yaoundé's Kodengui gaol. Along with two other journalists, Serge Sabouang and Robert Mintya, Ngota had been investigating allegations of corruption against Secretary General in the Presidency Laurent Esso and the state oil company.

For 150 years, Greece has relied on clientelism and political favors to run its economy, now with its $40 billion loan program for Greece, the International Monetary Fund is back in the nation-building business..

By Takis Michas 

The debacle of the Greek state should not be seen simply as the result of fraudulent budget statistics or a few years of profligate spending. Instead, it signifies the collapse of a model of economic development that from its very inception in the 19th century has always placed politics above markets.

The central organizing principle of Greek society has always been political clientelism--a system in which political support is provided in exchange for material benefits. In this situation the state's role as the main provider of benefits to various groups and individuals becomes paramount. As Greek left-wing historian Kostas Vergopoulos puts it:

"The fundamental structure of Greece has never been civil society but the state. Ever since the middle of the 19th century nothing could be done in Greece without it necessarily passing through the machinery of the state."

In the Anglo-Saxon world the state was primarily seen as a protector of certain Lockean rights, especially the right to private property. This concept went hand in hand with the existence of a ruling class with vested interest in large property holdings.

In Greece, however, the social group that took over after the liberation from the Ottomans were the local notables whose power lay not in their ownership of land but in the fact that they acted as tax collectors for their Ottoman rulers. Thus in Greece the ruling class that emerged after independence saw the state not as an instrument for the protection of pre-existing assets, but as its chief source of income.