Authoritarian Rule and Democracy in Africa: A Theoretical Discourse

themselves at the level of civil society and the state? Barrington Moore has demonstrated thata single mode of accumulation, situated within specific historical contexts, can give rise tocomplex patterns of societal development, and that it is the latter that is the primarydeterminant of the political forms of organization (Moore, 1966). Moore’s work shares someaffinity with Gramsci’s, whose major contribution to democratic theory is his retrieval of theconcept of civil society, which Marx had, following its dominant usage at the time, equatedwith material relations. Gramsci situates civil society outside the realm of both materialrelations and state power. Yet in contradistinction to liberal thought, he sees civil society asthe “soft underbelly of the capitalist system” (Pelczynski, 1988). Civil society offers thepopular classes an opportunity to deny the ruling class hegemony in the realm of ideas, valuesand culture, as a basis for the ultimate seizure of power and the transformation of capitalistproperty relations and the state. The emphasis Gramsci places on civil society has led manycritics to counterpoise his theory of politics to that of Marx (Bobbio, 1988).I argue that the basis for authoritarian rule should be located primarily at the level of materialrelations, which in the framework I have sketched, represents the contradictions in the formsof accumulation. But the dynamics of authoritarian rule and struggles for democratizationdevelop at the level of civil society. Workers organize themselves into unions and contest thepower of transnational capital at the work place and in the wider society. The defence ofseemingly economic interests – wages and welfare – draws workers and their unions into thearena of democratic politics. They demand for accountability, independent union organizationand the right to free expression and collective bargaining, critical for the resolution of wageand welfare disputes.Similarly, rent-seeking activities generate their own intractable problems. Firstly, theexpansion of state expenditure creates a public-sector labour force which shares similarconcerns with workers in transnational firms for the establishment of institutionalizedframeworks to promote reasonable working conditions. Secondly, state capitalism creates alarge middle class of teachers, journalists, lawyers, doctors and students, who yearn forprofessional competence and autonomy. Thirdly, the state itself may be caught up in a “fiscalcrisis” that is structural, having to defend both the demands of accumulation and the need forpublic revenue (O’Connor, 1973).Rent-seeking activities may compound the fiscal crisis of the state, and may threaten the jobs,incomes and working conditions of the groups that owe their livelihood to the public sector.Such groups are likely to be critical, in the long run, of corruption, inefficiency andmismanagement. Rent-seeking methods become illegitimate as the perpetrators of corruption,usually discredited ruling groups and private entrepreneurs, come under public censure.Probes on corruption are, in fact, very common in contemporary African politics. They openup possibilities for the democratic allocation of resources.Finally, the politics of patronage at the sphere of petty commodity production can beundermined by the very logic of transnational and state capitalist penetration of that sector.Two tendencies may be at work here. The authoritarian structures that incorporate peasant andsmall-scale producers into the modern economy may be in conflict with the demands forautonomy, free transactions and secure welfare that modes of self-employment usuallygenerate. African history is replete with peasant revolts against unfair prices, arbitrary landacquisitions and authoritarian rule. Similarly, the resultant social differentiation and sharpinequalities in resource use may produce an agricultural labour class and new rural alliances,possibly linked to mass urban social movements, and pressures for democratization.7