Strands in Political Theory:
Analytical & Operational Trajectories of
Political Transition in Africa
Public Policy Lecture, RL- CXXIV, MMXVI Vol. XI No. VIII
Lecture and Think
Piece – CXI – 1993, Cotonou, Benin & Revised for a
2014 speech at the African Union Headquarters, Addis Ababa
Costantinos
Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD,
Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate
Studies,
College
of Business & Economics, AAU,
Summary
It is asserted that if large rural
majorities in Africa are too poor to participate, too dispersed to organize,
too remote from information to know alternatives, a multiparty democratic
system with universal suffrage does not give them democratic influence. The trajectories of struggles over political rules can be summarized
according to the predominance of one organizational sector or another.
Governing elite, and in particular the executive, take the lead in bringing
about political liberalization. If state-led transitions are characterized by
the presence of an executive leader willing and able to undertake some limited
reform, society-led transitions progress thanks to the actions of organized
opposition groups and despite the unrelenting resistance of governing elite and
the executive. Perhaps the majority of transitions constitute a hybrid of these
first two types, with a combination of opposition pressures and incumbent
initiatives propelling the process.
On the other hand, current discussions and
analyses of transition to plural politics in Africa generally are marked by
several limitations. These include a tendency to narrow democratic thought and
practice to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered,
political and social action, a naive realism, as it were. Furthermore, it
includes the inattention to problems of articulation or production of
democratic systems and process within African politics rather than simply as
formal or abstract possibilities. There is also the dimension of ambiguity as
to whether civil society is the agent or object of democratic change and
concerning the role of the state and a nearly exclusive concern in certain
institutional perspectives on political liberalization in Africa with generic
attributes and characteristics of political organizations and consequent
neglect of analysis in terms of specific strategies and performances of
organizations in processes of transition. Finally, it is the inadequate
treatment of the role of international agencies and of relations between global
and indigenous aspects or dimensions of political liberalization in Africa.
Key words: political
transition, Political liberalization, democracy, analytical limitations
See link to lecture here or https://www.academia.edu/30810634/Strands_in_Political_Theory_Analytical_Operational_Trajectories_of_Political_Transition_in_Africa
Professor Costantinos (Costy),
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this awesome article. I like the content of the summary and the message therein is really appealing to the contest of our mother Africa. However, I am too naive when it comes to politics and political ideologies. I wonder what your take is regarding "the dimension of ambiguity whether civil society is the agent or the object of democratic change"? And, in African context, what does it mean or imply when the civil society becomes "an agent of democratic change"?
Hope to get an insightful response so I gain more knowledge regarding the above topic.
Stay safe pal!
Greetings,
ReplyDeleteLet me share some lines from a report I compiled to the UNECA in 1999 on this very issue.
Social capital is crucial to democratic deepening and poverty reduction but many, on a more sceptical note deprecate the carnival air surrounding much of the recent discussion of social capital as the midwife of democracy and development – arguing that the complexities of associational life in Africa are less elegant and seamier, than much of the literature cares to admit. To engender an understanding of and the strengthening of the Social capital it is imperative that we grapple with issues and research related questions as follows.
Given the predatory nature of the state in Africa, shouldn't studies focus as decisively on the state as a continuing variable in the increasing de-institutionalisation and weakening of social capital? On the other hand, how can high trust organisations such as the faith organisations be used in further efforts to strengthen African social capital without undermining the emergence of a genuinely pluralist society? What kind of reforms need to institute and to engender a strong and vibrant social capital realm?
Indeed, there is a vast and growing, if recent, literature on associational life in Africa. Much of this literature is an important and much needed corrective to the afro-pessimism prevailing in policy circles in the West. Having despaired of revamping the supposedly derelict African state, researchers and some policy makers have averted their gaze to social movements and groups, optimistic that these, if re-invigorated, may organically lead to stronger and more democratic states in the continent. Whereas these movements were once perceived as the touchstone of democratic transition and consolidation, their brief has been widened. Researchers and policy makers alike see them as the harbingers of development and the solution to the deep poverty that afflicts the continent. Can these movements and groups, loosely termed social capital, carry the large brief cut out for them?
In its initial application, little distinction is done to differentiate civil society from society. If anything, civil society was perceived as a way of conceiving society when the latter is politically active. To some, society by nature is in a state of perpetual warfare. It is the task of the state to impose order upon this violent competition among individuals. Nevertheless, what emerges out of this position is the establishment of order through near total subjection of individuals to unlimited power. On the other hand there is a school of thought that seeks equilibrium between the unlimited power of the state and individual rights. It is here that the idea of a constitutional state posits that it is the state’s responsibility to settle conflict in the society. To crown this, is the process by which the dominant class creates and protects its hegemonic grip on the state, while allowing the same to be presented to subordinate classes as legitimate.
Yet, others predicate civil society on the transition of “rude” society into “commercial society”. Under the former, no private property existed, and relations between men were casual. It is the acceptance of subservience under capitalist production relations that facilitates the emergence of civil society. Here civil society is treated not as synonymous with the adaptation of particular rules of the game, but as those behaviours by which different cultures define the rules of the game. It also argues that the missing dimension supplied by the idea of civil society is that, in the process terms working understanding concerning the basic rules of the political game or structure of the state emerge from within society and economy at large. In substantive terms, civil society typically refers to the points of agreements on what those working rules should be. Society consists of autonomous societal groups that interact with the state but delimit and constrain its action. Associational life is seen as salient to civil society.