Ifda dossier 47, May/June 1985

THE RISE OF THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE
by Claude Robinson
IPS Third World News Agency
Room 485
United Nations
New York, NY 10017
USA
Why have so many newly independent states, whether capitalist or socialist,
degenerated into authoritarian regimes where popular and democratic
demands are met with repression?
This question is explored in a new book by Clive Thomas I/, Guyanese
economist who has remained in the forefront of Caribbean scholarship and
political activism for much of the last two decades.
Focussing mainly on the Caribbean and Africa, and somewhat less on Latin
America and Asia, the book argues that the authoritarian state has its
genesis in the exclusion of the general public from real power under
colonialism. This, in turn "constituted the principal social basis on
which the post-colonial state - and its authoritarian version - was
foundedW.This exclusion continued after independence despite the leading
role played by workers and peasants in anti-colonial and independence
struggles.
Thomas, who has taught economics at the University of the West Indies in
Jamaica and at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, also argues
that the weakness of the economies gave the new state structure a lead-
ing role in economic development - a role that was used to consolidate
power.
Finally, the class structure was very weak, with no indigenous middle
class and with non-class alignments playing a major role in political
life. The result was that the lower middle class, to whom power had
been transferred at independence, used state power to form the nucleus
of an indigenous middle class.
In the absence of middle class-democratic constitutional restraints, the
"institutionalisation of all forms of corruption" occurred, the property
held by this class was substantially "enlargedu and there was an
accumulation of power in the hands of the executive. "There are even
cases where the head of state is constitutionally given the power to
appoint every important state official, is constitutionally made head of
the security forces, and is constitutionally given the office of leader
of the ruling party".
His native Guyana, lead by President Forbes Burnham, is cited by Thomas,
who is currently director of the Institute of Development Studies at the
University of Guyana, as an example of this "equation of person and
authority".
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I/ CUve Thomas, The Rise of the Authoritarian State in Peripheral Societiea
(New York: Monthly Revieu Press, 1984) 157pp. US$11.