Authoritarian Rule and Democracy in Africa: A Theoretical Discourse

most of the dominant social groups still perceive of politics as the struggle for the control andappropriation of public resources. Difficulties in forging a sustainable social alliance 11 havecontributed to the intensification of authoritarian practices. The adverse conditions created byboth economic liberalization and authoritarian rule provide an “enabling environment” forcivil groups to press for democratization. Democratization in this context is an antidote tostructural adjustment. This distinguishes the democracy movement in Africa from that ofEastern Europe and explains the ambivalence of Western powers and international financialinstitutions toward the struggles for democracy in Africa. 12 While in support of democracy,they remain opposed to any attempts to change the direction of the economic reforms.The second conclusion is the contradiction between the dynamic pressures fordemocratization at the civil arena and the conformist thrust of the political actors at the statelevel. Democratization requires the liberalization of both civil and political society. Most ofthe active groups in civil society have not been able to make much impact at the widerpolitical arena. The military and the principal political parties continue to dominate thissphere. The decision by the civil political class to accept the military-decreed parties is anindication of its reluctance to open up the political system to democratic challenges andestablish effective links between the pressures in civil society and the democratization of statepractices. On the other hand, the strength of the civil groups is compromised by the virtuallack of participation of the peasant communities in the pro-democracy movement. Both themilitary and the politicians rely on the disarticulations in rural-urban relations, and thepatronage networks that arise therefrom, to maintain the status quo at the political level.Underlying the authoritarian character of democratization is the crisis of state power andcapitalist hegemony in civil society. The debate on capitalism in Africa has been concernedprimarily with the dominance of capitalist property relations rather than with the socialcontext in which they operate. 13 Radical political economists tend to assume that thehegemony of the business class and the power élite will naturally follow from thedevelopment of capitalism. But the recession and the market reforms seem to have generatedan intense ideological and cultural opposition to capitalist rule. The rate of popular rebellionsand withdrawals from formal state and transnational projects is a function of weak ruling classhegemony (Rudebeck, 1989 and 1990). This weakness has undermined the capacity of theruling authorities (both civil and military) and business groups to opt for democratic forms ofgovernment. Beckman’s advocacy for a “bourgeois democracy” in Africa, with strongpressures from popular forces, is difficult to sustain in this context (Beckman, 1990). AsGutto puts it, African ruling classes “fear free and fair elections” (Gutto, 1988). Elections,conducted fairly, will impose some accountability on state practices and check the excesses ofrent-seeking activities. The dilemmas of the ruling groups have meant that in most countriesin the continent, popular social movements have come to play a major role in the struggles fordemocracy. This has not excluded sections of the dominant power groups from joining theseforces in the pro-democracy movement.The central role of the poor and disadvantaged in the democracy project underlines the needto link formal democracy with more substantive forms of popular rule. I highlight twoarguments for this linkage. The first, primarily theoretical, is derived from my original11 Programmes such as MAMSER (mass mobilization for self-reliance) and DFRRI (directorate forfood, roads and rural infrastructure) have not achieved their objects of creating a new social orderdespite the huge resources they command and their co-optation of many professionals.12 French troops were sent to oil-rich Gabon in 1990 to defend Oman Bongo’s régime against the massdemonstrations for democratization.13 The debates on capitalism in Kenya in the Review of African Political Economy (Nos. 8, 17, 19)and on classes and imperialism in Africa, in Dar es Salaam (Y. Tandon (ed.), State, class andimperialism, Tanzania Publishing House) did not address the social dimensions of capitalism.28