Editing Politics of the Comoros (section)

==Precolonial and colonial political structures==
Sultanates in the late nineteenth century used a cyclic age system and hierarchical lineage membership to provide the foundation for participation in the political process. In the capital, "the sultan was assisted by his ministers and by a madjelis, an advisory council composed of elders, whom he consulted regularly".<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Walker |first=Iain |date=2007 |title=What Came First, the Nation or the State? Political Process in the Comoro Islands |journal=Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |volume=77 |issue=4 |pages=582–605 |doi=10.3366/afr.2007.77.4.582 |issn=0001-9720 |jstor=40027276 |s2cid=143860412}}</ref> Apart from local administration, the age system was used to include the population in decision making, depending on the scope of the decision being made. For example, the elders of the island of Njazidja held considerable influence on the authority of the sultan.<ref name=":1" /> Though sultanates granted rights to their free inhabitants, were provided with warriors during war and taxed the towns under their authority, their definition as a state is open to debate.<ref name=":1" /> The islands' incorporation as a province of the colony of Madagascar into the French colonial empire marked the end of the sultanates.

Despite French colonization, Comorans identify first with kinship or regional ties and rarely ever with the central government. This is a lingering effect of the sovereign sultanates of pre-colonial times.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Handbook of Federal Countries, 2005|last=NERENBERG|first=KARL|date=2005|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|isbn=978-0-7735-2888-8|jstor = j.ctt809gp}}</ref> French colonial administration was based on a misconception that the sultanates operated as absolute monarchs: district boundaries were the same as the sultanates', multiple new taxes forced men into wage labor on colonial plantations and was reinforced through a compulsory public labor system that had little effect on infrastructure.<ref name=":1" /> French policy was hampered by an absence of settlers, effective communication across islands, rough geographical terrain and hostility towards the colonial government. Policies were made to apply to Madagascar as a whole and seldom to the nuances of each province: civil servants were typically Christian, unaware of local customs and unable to speak the local language.<ref name=":1" /> The French established the Ouatou Akouba in 1915, a local form of governance based on "customary structures" already in place that attempted to model itself after the age system in place under the sultanates. Their understanding of the elders' council as a corporate group bypassed the reality that there were men "who had accomplished the necessary customary rituals to be accorded the status of elder and thus be eligible to participate in the political process in the village",<ref name=":1" /> which effectively rendered the French elders' council ineffective. Though the Ouatou Akouba was disbanded, it resulted in the consolidation and formalization of the age system as access to power in the customary and local government spheres. The French failure to establish a functioning state in the Comoros has had repercussions in the post-independence era.<ref name=":1" />