Volume 17 1990 Issue 49

Review of African Political Economy (Published by ROAPE Publications Ltd.) Regency House, 75-77 St. Mary's Road Sheffield S2 4AN, UK Telephone (0742) 752671; Fax (0742) 738214 Managing Editors: Doris Burgess, Peter Lawrence Subscriptions: Judith Mohan Book Reviews: Morris Szeftel Contributions: Articles, Briefings, Debates, Documents and Book Reviews to D. Burgess at the ROAPE office (see inside back cover for specific details). Editorial Working Group: Chris Allen, Carol Barker, Carolyn Baylies, Janet Bujra, Ray Bush, Lionel Cliffe, Robin Cohen, Carolyne Dennis, Shubi Ishemo, Peter Lawrence, Barry Munslow, Tony Rich, Pepe Roberts, David Seddon, Francis Snyder, Colin Stoneman, Morris Szeftel, Tina Wallace, Gavin Williams, A. Zack-Williams. Overseas Editors: Yusuf Bangura (Zaria); Jonathan Barker (Toronto); Bjorn Beckman (Stockholm); M.R. Bhagavan (Stockholm); Bonnie Campbell (Montreal); Billy Cobbett (Johannesburg); Poitr Dutkiewicz (Warsaw); Tore Linrie Eriksen (Oslo); Amadina Lihamba (Dar es Salaam); John Loxley (Winnipeg); Mahmood Mamdani (Kampala); John Markakis (Rethymnon, Crete); Raufu Mustapha (Zaria); Lloyd Sachikonye (Harare); John Saul (Toronto); Meredeth Turshen (Newark/Rutgers). Contributing Editors: A.M. Babu, Jean Copans, Basil Davidson, Bill Freund, Duncan Innes, Colin Leys, Claude Meillassoux, Prexy Nesbitt, Phil O'Keefe, Ken Post, Tamas Szentes, Eskor Toyo. ISBN no. 0305 6244 No.49: Winter 1990 3 Editorial: Democracy and Development While there are some more promising signs for the growth of competitive party democracy across the continent as country after country declares its intention of holding multi-party elections, the development prospects continue to cause despair and alarm and can undermine this trend in the longer term. The distortions that can occur to the democratic process under a multi-party electoral system are well known and there is no reason to believe that Africa will be exempt from such distortions. Yet at the same time, the ability of an electorate to rid itself of a 'bad government' legitimately — without the need for massive bloodshed through coup d'etat or armed insurrection — will surely mark a step forward in a continent too frequently torn by a civil strife which has rarely resulted in improved living conditions for the people or greater civil liberties. This issue of the Review takes democracy and development as its twin themes. The relationship between the two has been the subject of much debate. Many have argued that without sufficiently high levels of economic development democracy becomes impossible. Put most succinctly in the words of Barrington Moore 'no bourgeoisie — no democracy'. Gavin Kitching argues that material poverty makes meaningful democracy impossible, because the poor are too concerned with survival to engage as active citizens and those who occupy public office bring with them the same concerns of their own material insecurity. A similar conclusion was reached at a conference attended by nine experts from the Institute for African Studies, USSR Academy of Sciences, meeting in Germany in 1989, when they stated quite clearly that underdevelopment does not provide the prerequisite conditions for either socialism or democracy. Such warnings, though not conclusive, serve to remind us that democracy is neither an easy option nor a panacea. Does this mean that Africa must wait patiently for the due passage of time to 'bring' economic development before realizing the fruits of democracy and civil liberties? Has the democratic process no positive role to play upon the development imperative? Indeed, is democracy a veritable handicap to economic development? Does democracy demand a pluralistic system? Looking at the available evidence, Sandbrook's survey of 39 states in sub-Saharan Africa shows that authoritarian regimes do not have a better comparative developmental record than liberal democratic regimes, nor do they have a better record on national unity, the other key justification used for one party rule. Diamond similarly draws the conclusion from a comparative study of 26 developing countries that democracies do not inevitably or inherently have a worse economic record than dictatorships 4 Review of African Political Economy (Three paradoxes of democracy'). Differences in economic performance, he concludes, depend more on policy choice, skill in policy implementation and policy consistency. The developmental challenge has been used repeatedly to justify one party rule. But as von Freyhold has commented (in ROAPE, 39, 1987) 'Developmentalism, left or right, socialist or capitalist in rhetoric, has always consisted of the promise by the state to take care of development if only the masses kept quiet and did not resist the co-optation or suppression of whatever autonomous or semi-autonomous organisations they had'. Such promises lie broken all across the continent and for many, if not most people, the argument has now worn thin. Disillusionment with the Marxist-Leninist, vanguard party model impos- ing a 'dictatorship of the party over the proletariat' is widespread in Africa, even more so after its collapse in Eastern Europe. Those countries that previously adopted such systems such as Ethiopia, Angola, Benin and Mozambique, have now renounced them. President Mugabe is currently meeting with stiff resistance from within his own Politburo in his efforts to swim against the tide and institute such a system in Zimbabwe. Yet the call for democracy and concern with how democratic practices can be combined with development imperatives has engaged social movements at various times across the continent, from the civic associations in South Africa to the Nigerian Workers and Peasants Party and the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) in Liberia. The discussion by Basil Davidson and Barry Munslow in this issue of the Review takes up the theme of the need for a greater decentralisation of power and increased participatory democracy. The experience of Cape Verde, it should be noted, has much to offer in this respect. Zack-Williams in his article on Sierra Leone reveals the sense of hopelessness that many people feel in Africa, given their cruel economic circumstances and the incapacity of the one-party system to begin tackling their problems. Many if not most states are now facing a crisis of legitimacy as people find solutions to their problems in traditional or local ways based on familial survival. The notion of the nation state in Africa becomes ever more problematic as the inability of the governing class to maintain political stability and national integration grows. Such is the message that emerges also from Lars Rudebeck's West African village case study on Kandjadja. There is certainly a more positive relationship between democracy and development that can be discerned for the future. The World Commission on Environment and Development better known as the Brundtland Report argues that a sustainable development future necessarily requires, in addition to the proper integration of environmental concerns into the development equation, a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making. Only if Africa's farmers have a political voice will their needs be properly addressed by governments. This is certainly the lesson to be drawn from the historical experience of Europe and North America. Interestingly, the powerful multilateral institutions of the Bretton Woods agreement appear to have accepted the need for Editorial 5 political pluralism, as they add democratic conditionality as the new watchword of the 1990s to their structural adjustment packages. The World Bank report of late 1989 (From Crisis to Sustainable Growth) stresses the need for an enabling political environment and good governance as a key for economic renewal. The later 1990 World Bank World Development Report takes as its theme poverty, suggesting that a government's record on poverty alleviation should also be taken into account when financial renegotiations occur and be used as a lending criteria. This poses the question of how these new democratic, environmental, and poverty alleviation conditionalities can be squared with the by now familiar economic structural adjustment package? The dilemma was well posed in the Brundtland Report (p.75): To require relatively poor countries to simultaneously curb their living standards, accept growing poverty, and export growing amounts of scarce resources to maintain external credit-worthiness reflects priorities few democratically elected governments are likely to be able to tolerate for long. A forthcoming study reviewing the record of World Bank conditionality lending over the 1980s (P.Mosley, J.Harrigan and J.Toye, Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy Based Lending, Routledge 1991) suggests that even the economic conditionalities alone could not be enforced in many cases, as the banking logic of the need to lend money to earn money weighed more heavily than whether the conditionalities were met in determining if further lending would occur. However, the toughest conditions are imposed on the weakest countries and many of these are in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors conclude that the World Bank package has helped middle income countries but the poorer countries have not benefited as the liberalisation measures are irrelevant when dealing with economies in long term decline. Cuts in public investment failed to stimulate private investment. Indeed they tended to have the opposite effect. The study also confirms that authoritarian

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