46 SOCIAL SCIENTIST decolonized is the collaborative mechanism. Colonization occurs when the initial collaborative mechanisms fail, but colonial rule depends on new forms of collaboration whose subsequent failure determine when colonialism is to be dislodged.7 In this regard, colonialism is viewed as an alliance between imperial and local forces, an alliance which is dictated by the small number of ^the men on the spot", and the tendency by the imperial factor to economize its efforts which were nonetheless meagre.8 Yet there is confusion on what constitutes the collaborators and the collaborative mechanism. Collaborators could broadly be divided into two; traditional and modern. They varied from traditional chiefs, landlords, policemen, to the most sophisticated western educated elite.9 For some scholars it has proved somewhat puzzling whether policemen who manned the coercive apparatus of the colonial state can also be regarded as collaborators. Implied in such an enigma is the belief that collaboration and violence cannot coexist since the former is preservationist while the latter is destructive. However, it has been argued that the collaborative mechanisms apart, troops and the police played a pronounced role in the imposition of colonial rule as well as in its preservation. The police in particular played a very pronounced role during the nationalist phase battling with mass movements, strikes, and so on.10 Dualism of the Colonial State Nationalist historians, however, have found it hard to imagine how the colonized could have accepted colonialism unless they were misled into such alliances. Moreover, it has been said, collaboration was a term coined during the Second World War to denote alliances established between Nazi occupation forces and fifth columnists in various European countries. Nevertheless what is missing in these propositions and counter-propositions is the element of dual power \\hich is implied in the concept of collaboration. Such dualism denotes the existence of two sets of power: traditional and modern. The duty of colonial power was therefore to preserve the traditional centres of power and slowly wean over the natives to the modern centres of power. The activities conducted in the encapsulated systems have been termed ^the politics of encapsulation/911 and that at times those who manipulate the traditional centres of power can immobilize the colonial administration.18 Dualism also continues to entice Marxists like Kay. Kay perceives capital in two forms: industrial and merchant. While the former is dominant in the metropolis, he argues, the latter prevails in the Third World. Merchant capital does not enter the sphere of production, and its ambiguities in the underdeveloped world have been shown in terms of coexistence of the modern and the traditional, the capitalist and the pre-capitalist. Such ambiguities, Kay argues, are also found in the