The Polities of Economic Reform in Affiea

The Polities of Economic Reform in Affiea Edited by Peter Gibbon, Vusuf Bangum G, AmOfitad No. 26 titute of Mcan Studies Seminar Proceedings No. 26 AUTHORITARIANISM, DEMOCRACY, AND ADJUSTMENT The Politics of Economic Reform in Africa Edited by Peter Gibbon Yusuf Bangura Arve Ofstad Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala 1992 (The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies) Political participation Structural adjustment Cover picture: Adriaan Honcoop Typesetting: Eva Lena Volk and Grafiska ByrAn AB, Uppsala Copyediting: Sonja Johansson and Mai Palmberg O Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1992 Printed in Sweden by Bohuslaningens Boktryckeri AB, Uddevalla, second imprint 1993. ISSN 0281- 0018 ISBN 91 -71 06-321- 8 (Hard cover) ISBN 91 -7106-323-4 (Soft cover) Contents Preface Adjustment, Authoritarianism and Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa An Introduction to Some Conceptual and Empirical Issues Yusuf Bangura and Peter Gibbon Authoritarian Rule and Democracy in Africa A Theoretical Discourse Yusuf Bangura Empowerment or Repression? The World Bank and the Politics of African Adjustment Bjorn Beckman Interest Group Politics and the Implementation of Adjustment Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa John Toye Structural Adjustment and Pressures toward Multipartyism in Sub-Saharan Africa Peter Gibbon Stick and Carrot Political Alliances and Nascent Capitalism in Mozambique 169 Kenneth Hermele Structural Adjustment and Multiple Modes of Livelihood in Nigeria Abdul Raufu Mustapha References Notes on Contributors Abbreviations AC Africa Confidential CM1 Chr. Michelsen Institute EC European Community ECA Economic Commission for Africa ERP Economic Recovery Plan (Tanzania) FAO Food and Agricultural Organisation forex foreign exchange Frelimo Frente de LibertacBo de Mocambique FT Financial Times GDP Cross Domestic Product GLSS Ghana Living Standards Survey (1987) IF1 International financial institution(s1 [i.e. the World Bank and IMF] ILO International Labour Organisation IMF International Monetary Fund MHT Mosley, Harrigan, and Toye study (see references) NAI Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies) NGO Non-Governmental Organisation OAU Organisation of African Unity PCP petty commodity production PNDC Provisional National Defence Council (Ghana) PRE Economic Rehabilitation programme (Mozambique) RSC rent-seeking capitalism SAL Structural Adjustment Loan SAP Structural Adjustment Programme SECAL 9ctoral Adjustment Loan SSA Sub-Saharan Africa TCP transnational capitalist production UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund UNIP United Nations Independence Party (Zambia) UNRISD United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Preface This book arose from an international symposium on "The Social and Political Context of Structural Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa" held at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Bergen, Norway in October 1990. The symposium was jointly organised by Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, (the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies), CM1 and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). Each of these organisations is active in the field of structural adjustment research. The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies was established in Uppsala in 1962 as a research and documentation centre on Africa for the Nordic countries. It is an independent agency, since 1980 responsible to the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Traditional- ly research activities at the Institute reflected the interests of visiting Nordic researchers, but under the recent directorship of Anders Hjort af Ornas the Institute has initiated a series of specific research programmes. The most recent of these, dating from 1990, is "The Political and Social Context of Structural Adjustment in Sub- Saharan Africa". Currently, the programme's main components are support to a network of African researchers working on adjustment issues and collaborative work between the programme coordinator and other Scandinavian scholars. The main areas of research being pursued are the political economy of agrarian change under adjustment, women as informal sector workers and household structures under adjustment, developments in the social sector, changing relations between the state, donors, and the non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the politics of adjustment in adjusting and donor countries. Chr. Michelsen Institute is an independent research institution located in Bergen. A development research programme (DERAP) has been a major part of CMI's Department of Social Science and Development since the 1960s, and consists of 15-20 researchers. The DERAP programme undertakes basic research as well as commis- sioned research and consultancies, and the research staff spend a substantial part of their career on long-term assignments in developing countries. The present research areas are economic policies and management, local government and organisation, basic studies on gender relations, population and resources, and democratisation and regional cooperation in Southern Africa. The geographic focus is mainly on Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia. A programme of human rights studies concentrating on the developing countries was added in 1983. CM1 research on Southern and Eastern Africa has approached the problems of economic and political reforms and restructuring under the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPS)from various angles. Studies have been conducted on the economic effects of the SAPSin Mozambique and in Malawi, and ways of measuring the effects are being developed in Uganda. Another set of research projects con- cern the role of organised interest groups in the introduction and implementation of SAP in Zimbabwe and Zambia. A third and more micro approach is used in studying the impact of and responses to structural adjustment among women in agriculture in Zambia, and among fishermen and fish traders in the region. One objective of these research projects is to develop viable alternative policies to overcome the present crisis. The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)is an autonomous research organisation based in Geneva. It specialises in research on key aspects of contemporary social development. UNRISD selects its own research themes and is advised by an independent Governing Board of prominent scholars in the field of international development. Among its current research activities is the project "Crisis, adjustment and social change", which supports field research by multi-disciplinary teams in Africa and Latin America on livelihood strategies and the dynamics of social change. The Editors November 1991 and Democracy: Introdudion to Some Conceptual and Empirical Issues Yusuf Bangura and Peter Gibbon The great majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa* have adopted-more or less involuntarily-programmes of economic reform designed by the international financial institution~.These "structural adjustment programmes" have included producer price reforms, removal of subsidies, liberalisation of internal and external trade, new foreign exchange regimes usually involving severe deva- luations, the introduction of "cost sharing" for state-supplied servi- ces, privatisation, restructuring of government institutions and more recently, legal reforms aimed at supplying an "enabling envi- ronment". Structural adjustment has been devised by the international financial institutions on the assumption that economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa will only be resumed through a contraction of state activity and the development of liberalised markets. The adoption of structural adjustment programmes by governments in Sub-Saharan Africa has usually (but not always) occurred in a context of economic crisis. This crisis has had exogenous and endogenous aspects and causes. While its origins are subject to fundamental dispute, there is broad agreement that its most important result has been African governments' increasing balance of pay- ments and budgetary management difficulties, arising from dimin- ishing export earning, an increasing burden of debt servicing and inappropriate domestic policies. Structural adjustment lending by the international financial institutions has consisted of transfusions of foreign exchange with the primary intention of "buying" condi- tions under which domestic imbalances can be corrected and export earnings can be increased (and hence debt serviced). * The term is used throughout to mean all the countries in Africa south of the Sahara, except the Republic of South Africa and Namibia. 8 Yusuf BQngura and Pet0 Gibbon Both the economic crisis which preceded adjustment and the pro- cess of adjustment itself have meant the erosion of the economic assumptions on which most African governmental politics rested during the first two decades of independence. How to to characterise the content of these politics, as well as to interpret their meaning, is also subject to dispute but most commentators share the view that their central element was an expansion of state responsibility and regulation in the service of developmentalist objectives. Mostly, these politics were cast in an authoritarian mould, although they also had strong consensual features (sometimes expressed democratically). A fundamental characteristic of the present period in Africa has been an increasing differentiation of authoritarian and democratic political tendencies, in

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