Modern African states need to be analyzed from a perspective which complements, corrects, or specifies dependency/world-system and structural marxist explanations of peripheral political dynamics. This dissertation offers such a perspective as it seeks to explain variations in state-society exchange among four comparably dependent modern nations of the Sahelian African region (Senegal, Mauritania, Chad, Sudan). The model accounts for the political ramifications--state's mode of rule, level and type of opposition mobilization--of each country's ethno-religious configuration. It assumes that trans-national economic (and/or geopolitical) dynamics do not necessarily weigh more heavily on the dynamics of state-society relations than local political processes.