SandBrook

Economic Liberalization versus Political Democratization: A Social-Democratic Resolution?Author(s): Richard SandbrookSource: Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des tudes Africaines, Vol.31, No. 3 (1997), pp. 482-516Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/486196 .Accessed: 17/01/2015 03:12

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Economic Liberalization versus Political Democratization: A Social-Democratic Resolution?

Richard Sandbrook

Resume" De nombreuses societes africaines luttent aujourd'hui pour atteindre deux buts importants mais qui coexistent difficilement: arriver ai un redressement economique grace a des riformes economiques de grande envergure et consolider des democraties fragiles. La tentative de mener a bien simultanement ces deux entreprises pose d'&normes probl mes. La pauvrete predominante, la faiblesse des etats, les divisions entre societes et les economies dependantes representent dej~ suffisamment d'obstacles; mais ceux-ci sont aggraves par les tensions qui emergent entre l'ajustement economique et la democratisation politique. Tout d'abord, P'article presente des arguments en laveur de la poursuite de tels buts, malgr6 les difflcult"s, puis il se concentre sur trois tensions d'importance qui emergent. II defend ensuite 1'idle qu'une approche social dimocra- tique a l'adaptation au marche peut peut- tre reconcilier les deux processus et se reveler realisable dans les conditions actuelles.

Introduction Capitalism is irrational; socialism is unfeasible; in the real world people starve - the conclusions we have reached are not encouraging. But perhaps basic human needs can be universally satisfied even if the economic systems in which we live remain inferior to nineteenth-century utopias; even if they perpetuate some irrationality and some injustice (Przeworski 1991).

Many African societies today struggle to achieve two important but uneasily coexisting goals: to engineer economic recovery by means of wide-ranging economic reforms and to consolidate fragile democracies.' Judgements differ sharply on whether democracy provides a conducive context for neoliberal economic

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Sandbrook: Liberalization vs. Democratization 483

reform.2 Less controversial, however, is the notion that a poor, divided society's attempt to tackle both goals simultaneously poses enormous challenges. What precisely are these challenges, and how may they be overcome?

Africa's prevailing poverty, weak states, divided societies, and dependent economies furnish challenges enough, but these are compounded by the tensions that emerge between economic adjustment and political democratization. Three principal contra- dictions arise: adjustment policies, by adversely affecting the interests of the early urban supporters of the democracy movements, risk alienating vocal constituencies from democratic institutions; the top-down, technocratic style of adjustment programmes blocks the participatory, accountable, and open style which should characterize democracy; and a resurgence of clientelism under the pressures of democratic competition contradicts adjustment's emphasis on improved governance, in particular the efficient and transparent allocation of public resources.

If reform movements within Africa deem both market-led development and democratization worth pursuing, how may the tensions between the two processes be mitigated? I suggest that a social-democratic approach to adjustment may provide a practi- cable means of achieving this. Such a proposal will strike many readers as bizarre, in light of the neoliberal agendas of the leading capitalist powers and the dominant role of the Western-dominated international financial institutions in African economies. Nonetheless, recent shifts in World Bank thinking in response to defective programmes, together with the spectre of spreading anarchy fomented in part by economic disarray, may combine to make the hitherto unthinkable barely feasible as a political- economic strategy.

I explore this issue by reference to the experience of six countries: Ghana, Mali, Niger, Zambia, Tanzania, and Madagascar. I cannot claim that this sample validly mirrors sub-Saharan Africa's new semi-democracies. Nevertheless, it reflects the experience of the many low-income countries which suffered the implosion of their economies in the early 1980s,3 and which then pursued structural adjustment programmes and, later, transitions to democracy. The sample, moreover, is geographically diverse, with cases drawn from West, South-Central, and Eastern Africa, and includes both former French colonies (Mali, Niger, and


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Madagascar) and former British colonies or trust territories (Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania).

Adjustment and Democratization: Worth Saving? To ask how the tensions between economic and political liberalization may be mitigated is to assume that both goals, in modified form, are worth pursuing. Yet many readers will demur. It is therefore crucial to begin with a defence of this article's prob- lematique.

Unfortunately, no methodology exists which will lead to a consensus on the efficacy of the current development model in sub-Saharan Africa. The methodological problems are several.4 Analysts with different political values will select different measures of "success" and "failure." Analysts will differ in their estimation of how long it should take for a country to show positive results and how extensively a particular country has actually implemented economic and political reforms. It is very difficult to isolate the impact of any particular policies on overall prosperity, or the lack of it, when many other factors are also changing. And a judgement ultimately hangs on the analyst's evaluation of "alternatives" - their coherence, likely efficacy, and political feasibility. Even the vaunted "counterfactual" method, which supporters of adjustment tend to favour, is of dubious validity. Here, the analyst evaluates success by comparing a reforming country's performance to the "counterfactual," that is, what would have happened if that country had not adjusted. But critics contest such judgements because of the speculative assumptions which constitute the counterfactual; are we to believe that countries with imploding economies would have continued with the same failed approaches?

In fact, there is a case for market-oriented adjustment irre- spective of the methodological uncertainties. This case, however, does not hinge on the claim that this model has succeeded in achieving its goals. Even on its own macroeconomic terms, structural adjustment has produced results which at best are modest. A thumbnail assessment of the progress so far achieved in my six cases - and, indeed, more generally in Africa - would read some- thing like this. Reform programmes have generally stalled after the initial phase of economic stabilization and liberalization.



Governments have restored realistic exchange rates; decreased taxes on agriculture; reduced or removed subsidies and controls on price, interest rate, and exchange; lowered tariff and non-tariff barriers; restricted the growth of public sector employment; sold or liquidated some money-losing parastatals; and rehabilitated some physical infrastructure. Yet these reforms have rarely brought macroeconomic stability, let alone sustained economic growth. Inflation remains worrisome in Ghana, Tanzania, and Madagascar, and disastrous in Zambia, where it reached nearly two hundred percent in 1994. Ghana, flagged by the World Bank until 1993 as an African success story, saw its inflation rate again accelerate in 1993, reaching sixty to seventy percent in 1994 and 1995 before falling back to about thirty-five percent in 1996. Although Niger and Mali registered a decline in food prices in the mid-1980s, the fifty percent devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994 reignited inflation in consumer prices. All of these economies continue to record substantial deficits in their current accounts and government budgets. Only Tanzania has recently achieved a high annual rate of growth of per capita GDP at 2.8 percent. If the period is adjusted to run from 1984 to 1991, Ghana's growth rate approaches that of Tanzania. Growth elsewhere in this sample is modest or negative. Similarly, gross domestic investment has not yet risen to the rate needed to underpin sustained economic growth. The economic crisis has abated but little in Madagascar, Niger, and Zambia.5

Despite these disappointing results, I contend that the general thrust of the neoliberal model is "progressive" in the particular historical conditions of many African countries.6 State-led development will produce developmental disasters where weak and predatory neopatrimonial states hold sway (Sandbrook 1993, chapter 2). It is better under these circumstances to have a leaner, "liberal" state with fewer economic tasks, combined with a long- term programme of institutional reform to realize the "great transformation" of capitalist revolution. This, in essence, is what the neoliberal model now offers. The World Bank's 1997 World Development Report, for example, belatedly acknowledges that development requires an effective and active state that can play a "catalytic" role in economic life, and that the institutional foundations for a market economy are often lacking. It therefore proposes a wide-ranging programme to raise state capability by


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"reinvigorating public institutions." This Report thus strays far from the classical liberal assump-

tion that interventionist states are always inimical to economic development. The early experience of the East Asian NICs demon- strated, to the contrary, that a developmental state is highly func- tional to capitalist transformation. Unfortunately, however, the challenge in most African countries is not to build developmental states, but to prevent a further downward spiral of economic decline and political decay. In these desperate circumstances, powerful external agencies, acting in conjunction with democratic reform movements to advance institutional reforms and hold governments accountable, are historically progressive, though uncongenial to those on the left.

The second or institutional phase of adjustment that follows policy reform is now underway. Of primary importance is the rehabilitation of inefficient, ineffective, and often predatory states. This involves extensive reform of the civil service, the regulatory and monitoring agencies, the tax administration, the public services, the agencies charged with managing the social safety net, the armed forces, and the judicial system. The commercialization or privatization of state corporations, which has rarely progressed far, will need to be pushed forward where these corporations constitute a major drain on public resources. The financial sector, too, generally requires widespread restructuring and upgrading. More controversially, governments will need to build their capacity to define and promote an effective export strategy if these small economies are to prosper in a relent- lessly competitive global economy. Whereas the earlier changes in foreign exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and tariffs could be achieved by a "stroke of the pen," none of these institutional changes will succeed without the cooperation of diverse constituencies within the public and private sectors. Creating social peace and mobilizing such support pose major political challenges for reformers. Democratization offers a possible vehicle.

What, then, of political democratization? Is this trend of any significance for ordinary people? The genuineness of democratic transitions varies markedly, of course, from country to country. Poverty, illiteracy, a limited experience of party politics, clientelist traditions, ethnic/regional tensions, and an underdeveloped



infrastructure have inevitably taken their toll on democratic experiments. Even where, as in most of the six cases under review, the democratic transition was ushered in by an election judged by observers to be fairly "free and fair" (for details, see Sandbrook 1996), subsequent events soon showed how fragile and limited was the new (semi-)democratic regime. Key political elites have flouted democratic rules and thereby weakened fragile institutions. In Niger, a paralyzing deadlock between the president and the prime minister precipitated a coup in January 1996 which terminated the democratic experiment. (The political parties denounced the rigging of a later presidential election administered by the military regime and boycotted the subsequent legislative elections [Abdourhamane 1996]). Some less overt signs of the stalling of democratic consolidation were as follows:

Insurrections and Internal Wars: Elected governments in both Niger and Mali have engaged in heavy periodic fighting with the Tuareg rebels who occupy vast areas in the north of these countries. Ghana, though not bedevilled by deep ethnic antagonisms, nonetheless had to declare a state of emergency in six districts of the Northern Region in February 1994. This was occasioned by open warfare between the Konkomba and the Dagomba, the latter supported by the related Nanumbas and Gonjas. A fragile peace now prevails.

Military Indiscipline: In Niger, the Tuareg rebellion has placed great strains on the army, a problem compounded by the periodic non-payment of wages. Scattered mutinies and instances of indiscipline marked the period of democratic revival. In Ghana, if Rawlings had lost the December 1996 elections, the loyalty of the armed forces to the new civilian government would have been far from assured. The junior officers and ranks have constituted a strong base of support for Rawlings since his coups of 1979 and 1981. A Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, albeit dressed up as a voluntary association, still operates within the armed forces.

Violence and Disorder: All six countries have experienced violent protests since their democratic transitions. Mali has been the worst affected, with several phases of bloody confrontations


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between student protesters and the government in 1993 and 1994. Arson, destruction of public property, street violence, and disrup- tion of public schools distinguished these episodes. They were followed in 1995 and 1996 by two non-violent student protests against certain austerity policies (Smith 1997). Niger also experienced violent student protests prior to the 1996 coup. In Madagascar, the government arrested sixteen opposition members of the legislature in March 1995 for establishing a parallel government and for invoking the 1947 uprising against the French in their quest for public support. In Ghana's capital, government thugs attacked a peaceful demonstration against a value-added tax in May 1995, killing five people and injuring many.

Fragmentation of Parties: Only Ghana among the six cases has escaped this process. In Ghana, the larger Nkrumahist parties merged to form the People's Convention Party in 1995, and then joined a Great Alliance with the liberal New Patriotic Party. This converted the 1996 elections into virtual two-party contests. Elsewhere, parties are vehicles for personal ambitions and/or informally reflect regional/ethnic/communal loyalties. Few parties manifest a consistent ideological position. Niger and Madagascar have suffered the highest degree of factionalization, with Mali close behind. In Tanzania, the opposition to the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi frac:ured into ten to fouteen parties, though only four have representation in parliament. Zambia's opposition to the United National Independence Party (UNIP) managed to hold together in the Movement for a Multiparty Democracy long enough to defeat the government in 1991. United only by a desire to replace the authoritarian and corrupt UNIP, this coalition soon unravelled as splits produced new opposition parties. UNIP regained some of its support in this climate of opportunism and factionalism.

Executive Indiscipline: Commonly, elected presidents have sought to weaken the constitutional constraints upon their authority in order to survive in an insecure political world. They and their lieutenants have condemned the "irresponsibility" of opposition parties, the independent press, advocacy groups, and even the judiciary, sometimes silencing them through threats, violence, or cooptation. The success of intimidation and coopta-



tion has varied, however (Sandbrook 1996). Incumbents have also used personal loyalties and state resources to build informal clientele networks, thus subverting institution building. The prolifera- tion of mercenary linkages, and of the associated (and well publicized) corruption, breeds popular cynicism towards politicians and politics in the new democracies. Finally, the Zambian government's manipulation of the electoral rules led to the opposition's boycott of the 1996 elections. The detention of UNIP leader and former president Kenneth Kaunda in December 1997 further escalated political tensions.

Despite all these problems, Madagascar, Ghana, and Mali held second sets of national elections in 1996 and 1997, which many observers regarded as basically fair, though chaotic.

Even this brief sketch indicates that the critics' skepticism regarding the value of (liberal) democratization in Africa has considerable foundation. Within the neoliberal canon, democratization is valuable (among other reasons) for fostering the better "governance" (accountability, transparency, openness, efficiency) that the implementation of adjustment programmes requires. For critics of the left, in contrast, democratization actually produces only "low intensity democracy" or "consensual domination," whose main function is to legitimize structural adjustment and "the free operation of international capital" (Robinson 1996, 6, 67- 68). John Saul, in an eloquent critique of liberal democracy and defence of popular democracy, rightly points out that "much of the literature on 'Third World' democratization has come to turn on a very narrow reading of democratic possibility" (1997, 340). This reading is rooted, Saul suggests, in the notion of "polyarchy" (as popularized by Dahl 1971) in which democracy is reduced to a procedural exercise - periodic competitive elections in which organized groups vie for the popular vote in a context of protected civil liberties. Democracy is thus "thin," restricted to the political sphere and involving the replacement of one section of the elite by another. What is required, instead, is movement toward a "popular democracy." This is defined by Saul as synonymous with democratic empowerment (1997, 351) and by W.I. Robinson as a "dispersal throughout society of political power" that can be used "to change unjust social and economic structures" (1996, 57).

While granting the merits of popular democracy and the thin-


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ness of Africa's liberal democracies, one can still make a case for the progressive character of the latter experiments and thus for the value of preserving and extending them. First, it is unfair to characterize democratization in many African countries as a foreign imposition or even as solely an affair of the elites - unless the latter is construed to include such underprivileged elements as Ghana's famous "verandah boys," for example. Careful study reveals that dictators have often yielded to genuine democracy movements, which sometimes draw upon a long tradition of struggle against oppression.7 Second, even low-intensity democracy is preferable to its practical alternative - which is renewed dictatorship, not popular democracy. Even Saul accepts that the prospects for popular democracy are bleak in Africa (1997, 351). But this truth, he observes, still leaves many important issues to debate about actually existing democracy:

... the need to discipline abusive authority; the need to create fresh space for individual and collective self-expression; the need to institutionalize the possible means of reconciling communal ... differences and of reviving and refocusing some more positive sense of national purpose (Saul 1997, 351).

Precisely! But many of Africa's thin democracies compare quite favourably with their authoritarian predecessors in terms of human rights, institutional reform, and the management of ethnic/communal conflicts.8

Even if Africa's fragile experiments in market-oriented reform and democracy are worth saving (and reforming), this will prove very difficult.

Economic versus Political Liberalization What is the relationship between economic and political liberalization? In practice, neoliberals have been ambivalent in their atti- tude toward democratization. They have been quite willing to work with a dictator when he is committed to promoting economic "liberty" through "freeing" markets. One thinks, for instance, of the high regard in which General Augusto Pinochet of Chile was held by local and foreign business leaders and mone- tarist economists from the University of Chicago. Nevertheless, liberal theory includes the benign proposition that capitalism, by separating economic from political power and buttressing civil



society, promotes democracy. In Africa, however, democratization generally arose, not out of capitalism, but in reaction against the depradations of authoritarian neopatrimonialism and the costs of neoliberal reforms. Following electoral transitions, tensions between the dual processes of economic and political liberalization soon surface. These stresses, when combined with difficult objective conditions, threaten to derail both reform processes. In turn, three major tensions arise.

Political Winners, Economic Losers: Economic grievances, including the hardships imposed by structural adjustment, initially sparked the urban-based democracy movements. Yet well-organized and assertive elements of this coalition continue to bear the costs of adjustment following the democratic transitions. How can an elected government retain the will and capacity to implement reform programmes in the face of the alienation of its erstwhile supporters?

Popular struggles for democracy derived impetus from economic decline and the adoption of adjustment programmes. Most of the authoritarian regimes that emerged in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s and 1970s depended heavily for their survival on the politics of distribution. They favoured strategic urban strata and ethnic/regional allies in the allocation of public expenditures and the distribution of rents via clientele networks (Sandbrook 1993, chapter 2). Financial repression, widespread state controls and regulations, and a large parastatal sector ensured the availability of significiant rents for distribution for many years. However, the economic mismanagement inherent in this mode of governance, combined with external and climatic shocks,9 brought many economies to the point of collapse by the early 1980s. Decrepit economies could no longer generate the surplus to maintain an autocrat's political support. This presented beleaguered governments with little alternative but to turn to the IMF and World Bank for loans. The era of economic stabilization and liberalization thus began. However, structural adjustment was designed to redistribute income; this was inherent in the changes in relative prices, the elimination of many controls and regulations, and the shifts in public expenditures. In Africa's agrarian economies, adjustment is supposed to shift resources


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from "privileged" urban groups to the agricultural producers. This attempted shift inevitably disrupted political alliances (Grosh 1994).

Authoritarian governments, no longer as able to purchase political acquiescence as they were formerly, faced the anger and frustration of well-organized and strategically located urban groups. Public employees, organized workers in general, students, and professionals were adversely affected first by economic decline and then by (hesitant) structural adjustment. Devaluation, inflation, and reductions in food subsidies shrank real wages. Planned privatization and downsizing of the civil service threat- ened existing public employees and those in educational institutions who aspired to that status. A reduction of subsidies to secondary schools and universities produced higher fees and living expenses for students and a lower quality of education. Public services deteriorated. Consequently, economic grievances animated political protests as students, intellectuals, professionals, public employees, and workers blamed the economic crisis on the corruption and incompetence of personalistic author- itarianism. Subsequent transitions to democratic governments inspired public jubilation as democracy activists anticipated a return to better days.

Yet elected governments had little choice but to continue with the adjustment policies of their predecessors. Indeed, the IMF and World Bank demanded even more stringent implementation of stabilization, liberalization, and privatization programmes than before. When such efforts did not soon produce economic benefits, some of the erstwhile elements of the democratic movements turned against the new governments. Governments and donors erected social safety nets to cushion the effects of adjustment and reduce poverty, but these efforts have had a limited impact. By the late 1990s, public cynicism, strikes, and demonstrations had thrown the very survival of some democratic experiments into doubt.

This scenario has played itself out in Madagascar, Mali, Niger, and Zambia, though not to any extent in Ghana or Tanzania. The first three countries adhered to a quite similar pattern. Although only a quarter or fewer of their populations live in urban areas, secondary and university students, civil servants, and organized workers have had a political impact far beyond that which their



small numbers would suggest. Students, in particular, have shown themselves to be well-organized, tenacious in the defence of their privileges, and capable of mobilizing unemployed and disaffected youth outside their own ranks. Students in all three cases initi- ated or spearheaded the urban rebellions that precipitated the transitions to democracy (Fay 1995; Smith 1997; Gervais 1995a; Allen 1995, 64-67, 96, 105). Students and their urban supporters then expected their elected government to return them to their earlier privileged position. Yet this was not a reasonable expecta- tion in the context of economic crisis and adjustment. To make matters worse, economic reform has not generated a vibrant private sector which could provide alternative careers for unemployed students and displaced public servants. Alienation of some of democracy's key urban supporters has thus ensued, this alienation periodically erupting into street violence, the destruction of property, and peaceful demonstrations. Meanwhile, the illiterate and isolated rural majority continues to play a largely passive role in national politics.

In Zambia, a far more urbanized country, the pattern has varied. Students have played a less dominant role, and organized workers a more central one, in the oppositional coalition that prodded Kenneth Kaunda and UNIP to submit to a national election in 1991 (Bratton 1994). Zambia suffered a severe economic decline after 1975 as the world price of copper (the economy's mainstay) plummeted. Borrowing offset the decline for several years. In the 1980s UNIP's periodic adoption of stabilization and liberalization packages placed further strains on the living standards of its former supporters among copper miners, other urban workers, public employees, professionals, and even business- people. The government's removal of a significant subsidy on maize meal twice acted as a flash point for urban riots in the 1980s, forcing the government to reestablish a subsidy. By 1990, people had begun to blame UNIP's corruption and mismanagement for their economic hardships (Bratton 1994). A united Movement for Multiparty Democracy harnessed this anger to defeat UNIP in 1991. However, the new government initially pursued adjustment with greater zeal than its predecessor. After an initial "honeymoon" period, some of the MMD's supporters became disillusioned with continuing austerity, high inflation, and declining services. A wave of strikes beset the new govern-


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ment. Not surprisingly, the government then temporized in the face of donors' demands that Zambia privatize state-owned enterprises and cut the workforce in the publicly owned copper mines by half, as well as lay off 7 000 civil servants (Africa Research Bulletin (EFT) 31, no. 10 [1994]; Africa Confidential 36, no.2 [1995]). Although some privatization and redundancies ensued, the largest state-owned enterprises, including the Zambian Consolidated Copper Mines, remained untouched in 1996.

In Ghana, the politics of adjustment unfolded rather differ- ently than in these other countries. Flt.-Lieut. J.J. Rawlings seized power in December 1981 with the support of the lower ranks of the armed forces, the radical intelligentsia and students, and organized labour. This alliance was united by a common commitment to a vaguely defined populist revolution against a corrupt and exploitative elite of politicians and capitalists. Rawlings, however, changed course in late 1982 and entered into a stabilization agreement with the IMF in April 1983. By the mid-1980s, his former urban supporters (except the army) had begun to express their anger at this turn of events. The PNDC, however, met this opposition head on (Martin 1991, 243). It ruthlessly detained and harassed union leaders, closed the universities when necessary, and imprisoned middle class opponents. Rawlings also obtained some concessions in the adjustment agreements in 1986 to accommodate the interests of the protesters, and in 1988 launched PAMSCAD, a set of relief projects, to alleviate the distress of vocal groups, especially in the urban areas. By 1992, when Rawlings managed a transition to "democracy," his government could boast of some economic success. An eighty-percent raise in government salaries prior to the vote must also have allayed some of the urban disaffection. Finally, he succeeded in rallying a large rural constituency behind his banner of continuity. Even the opposition parties, by that stage, advocated the continuation of (modified) adjustment policies.

Tanzania, in contrast to the other cases, has experienced neither a strong, urban-based democracy movement nor sustained urban opposition to structural adjustment. Public demonstrations against the single-party CCM state were virtually non-existent from 1985 to 1988 and peaked at three or four instances in each of 1990 and 1991 (Vener 1994, 21). Demands for the legalization of opposition parties were voiced mainly by academics and promi-



nent lawyers in the pages of the independent press, and by former president Julius Nyerere. President Ali Mwinyi nonetheless bowed to the continent-wide trend to multi-party systems in 1992, probably confident that a small and divided opposition would pose little threat. Certain features of TANU/CCM rule largely explain this weakness of an urban democracy movement. First, the party had managed to monopolize all popular organizations since the mid-1960s. Independent associations were either coopted into the party or saw their leadership dominated by party militants. Second, the party's socialist, or ujamaa, ideology had restrained the privileges of the urban minority in this over- whelmingly agrarian society. When real incomes halved between 1975 and 1983 (Baregu 1993, 165-67), urban employees were willing to embrace economic liberalization as a way of escape from what they saw as the dead-end of existing socialist policies (Chege 1994, 276). What encouraged people, therefore, was the party's embrace of economic reform from the mid-1980s; political liberalization appeared secondary. If Tanzania succeeds in reigniting its economy (as seems possible), this will continue to muffle urban opposition to adjustment and the governing party.

Although the politics of adjustment do not inevitably contra- dict the consolidation of democracy, there is a strong tendency in that direction. To deal with this contradiction, democratic governments must placate opponents by buffering influential groups from the effects of adjustment and/or develop support among the putative beneficiaries of adjustment, especially small farmers and entrepreneurs.

Technocratic versus Democratic Policy-making: To consolidate democracy and build support for their economic programmes, governments need to consult widely on policy and institute transparent decision-making procedures. Yet adjustment programmes, covering the key areas of economic and social policy, emerge from a top-down and secret process of negotiations between tech- nocrats representing a government and an international lending agency. How can democratic institutions gain value among constituencies when legislatures, parties, interest groups, and the mass media have a negligible influence in shaping the most important governmental decisions?

On the one hand, the IMF, the World Bank and the bilateral


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donors negotiate agreements with governments in camera. Donors believe that they must deal directly with governments on policy issues. They assume that elected governments have a mandate to proceed with adjustment. It will therefore be the task of these governments to obtain a ratification of any agreements, including the conditions for loans, from constitutionally empow- ered legislatures.10 Donors seem also to feel that since adjustment requires unpopular sacrifices, a top-down decision-making process is preferable to a participatory one in which popular demands can derail "necessary" reforms (Grimm 1994, 1-2).

On the other hand, elected governments also eschew popular input into adjustment programmes. They find themselves in a difficult position. Not only do they have limited room for manoeuvre in negotiations with the IMF, the World Bank, and other lenders, but they are also expected to implement any agreements as negotiated. Knowing that they will therefore be unable to satisfy some demands, presidents and their lieutenants avoid consultations they cannot control and ignore or undermine artic- ulators of dissent and protest, such as opposition parties and independent newspapers. Where governments rest on shaky legislative coalitions, they will also avoid potentially divisive parliamentary debates on unpopular adjustment measures.

There are potential advantages, but also dangers, to a more open and responsive approach to decision making. On the positive side, adjustment programmes may benefit. The economic record of adjustment in Africa is far from impressive. Generic prescrip- tions have often run into political obstacles in the implementation stage or, if they are implemented, have not worked as planned. Extensive consultation and debate may lead to adjustment measures that are more finely attuned to the economic and political realities of particular countries. Moreover, a more participatory and inclusive approach to adjustment is more likely to build popular support for economic reform (local "ownership," in the donors' lexicon) and the sacrifices that are involved than the current top-down mode. This is crucial, as the institutional reforms that constitute the second phase of adjustment cannot succeed without the cooperation of the social sectors involved. Privatization, the restructuring of banks, civil service reform, and strengthening of the rule of law all require extensive cooperation from a variety of social groups. Will this be forthcoming if the



affected groups mistrust the government? A participatory approach to decision making will also strengthen democratic institutions. Why should citizens cherish legislatures, parties, interest and advocacy groups, consultative mechanisms, and independent media when, as currently happens, key debates and conflicts are not channeled through them? These bodies will only gain value in the eyes of their constituencies if they play a significant role in the policy process. Since ample room for disagree- ment exists on the mix, timing, sequence, and scope of reforms, the denial of such a role on the grounds of technocratic expertise lacks credibility.

Against these advantages of a less exclusionary approach, one must balance certain risks. First, democratic governments too attuned to their constituencies may succumb to "macroeconomic populism" - unsustainable concessions to aggrieved groups such as high food subsidies, generous wage settlements in the civil service, and the reimposition of price controls (Dornbusch and Edwards 1990). Macroeconomic populism, however, is not just a danger for elected regimes; Kaunda's autocratic government in Zambia yielded to such easy options on several occasions in 1983- 91. A participatory approach also poses another danger: policy paralysis. Virulent popular opposition to adjustment measures may persuade an elected government to vacillate on its reform strategy. Popular protests against economic reform are not, however, avoided by a top-down approach. Instead, this course deflects protest into violent or uninstitutionalized channels which are far more threatening to the survival of the new semi- democracies.

Political versus Economic Logics: In poor, peasant societies where ideological differences are muted and unlikely to command support, political success in democratic contests will depend heavily upon the distribution of patronage. Yet adjustment requires the minimization of rent-seeking, the efficient allocation of scarce resources, and, in general, the predominance of a market- based economic logic. How, therefore, will reforming governments survive politically?

On the one hand, adjustment on the free-market model demands a minimization of rent-seeking and populist distributional policies by governments. Neoliberals hold that govern-


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ments helped create the economic crisis in the first instance through heavy-handed interventions that promoted rent-seeking and pervasive clientelist politics. Democratic politics thus offer the advantage of building consent through policy-based electoral majorities, respect for human rights, and the rule of law, rather than wholly through the mercenary linkages of rent-seeking and patronage. If adjusting governments succumb to populism and clientelism, it is contended, they will unravel their economic reforms. Incompetence and corruption will continue to reign in the public sector as appointments and promotions serve as fodder for political machines. Particularistic exemptions and deals will whittle away at the logic of stabilization and liberalization measures. And public investments will contribute only mini- mally to production if they follow a political logic of building support for incumbent politicians.

On the other hand, political competition and the instrumental expectations of constituents impel politicians to adopt populist stances and patron-client politics. As persistent recession and stringent adjustment alienate strategic supporters, elected leaders resort to machine politics to repair the political damage. Clientelism and a reliance on personal loyalties represent ingrained political habits in poor, peasant societies. Such practices are deeply rooted in the culture and history of our six cases, according to experts.11 A recent comparative analysis argues that the specific neopatrimonial characteristics of preceding authoritarian regimes influence democratic transitions. The less institu- tionalized and more clientelist the authoritarian regime, the more likely is the reemergence of clientelism, personalism, and corruption in the new democracy (Bratton and van de Walle 1997). This suggests that a vicious cycle may ensue. Intermediary institutions are weak; insecure governments weaken them further; and clientelism, personalism, and corruption expand as a consequence, and additional cause, of such institutional weaknesses.

This oft-noted contradiction between economic and political logics is ineluctable in the democratic experiments of poor, peasant societies. Yet it is doubtful that corruption and rent- seeking in the new democracies exceed that which occur in most of the former authoritarian regimes. What changes is the extent to which such practices receive public exposure and criticism through resurgent private media outlets, opposition parties, and



civil associations. And the contradiction is actually not as profound as often thought. Economic recovery depends funda- mentally upon political stability and the political support that a reformist government commands. In heterogeneous peasant societies which have been further fragmented by years of recession and austerity, patron-client networks provide a basis - sometimes the only one - for governance. In this sense, clientelism and rent-seeking represent not simply waste, but a necessary cost of adjustment. The real danger is that neo-patrimonial politics will become unrestrained and thoroughly corrupt, thus engen- dering the public cynicism and deinstitutionalization that will doom both democracy and adjustment. Social-demnocratic Resolution? Is there a way out of these predicaments? Paradoxically, only a social-democratic approach to market reform seems capable of reconciling democratic consolidation with market-based recovery in the hostile circumstances of sub-Saharan Africa. Social-democratic approaches have received far more attention in Latin America than in Africa. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) has developed a "neo-struc- turalist" alternative to neoliberalism that emphasizes growth with equity and the rebuilding of states which will engage in a moderately interventionist or "managerial" economic role.'2 Radical critics charge, however, that neo-structuralism is not an alternative to neoliberalism, but simply its more benign second phase - "neoliberalism with a human face" (Green 1995b, 190). Adam Przeworski and his colleagues (Bresser Pereira, Maravall and Przeworski 1993) advocate a programme akin to neo-structuralism, though they add a deepening of democratic decision- making as a key element of their strategy. Hence, a social-democratic framework for African reformers would involve three mutually reinforcing components: the replacement of the prevailing top-down, technocratic decision-making style by a more inclusive and consultative approach to designing reform programmes; the expansion of policies to alleviate poverty and buffer the living standards of those who lose out in neoliberal experiments; and concerted programmes to rebuild the capacities of governmental apparatuses and other key organizations to permit a more managerial state role.


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Is this modest strategy feasible? This is a question to which we will return, but it is worth noting that the World Bank, donor agencies, and reforming governments have recently moved a long way toward a rhetorical embrace of the three principles. What is needed is a greater consistency between declarations and the actual practice of economic reform.

Deepening Democracy: Will governments and donors depart from their centralized and secretive mode of policy making? A more participatory mode will increase the risks of macroeconomic populism and policy paralysis, though these dangers were not absent even in the authoritarian context. It may, on the other hand, improve the efficacy of, and support for, adjustment programmes and strengthen democratic institutions. To achieve this reorientation, elements of civil society, especially professional and employers' associations, trade unions, human rights groups, and the independent press will need to persist in demands for more open and responsive governance. Such initiatives may persuade reluctant governments and donors to accept greater debate and consultation on economic and social policy.

If a more participatory style is to evolve, then intermediary institutions will need to develop their capacities. Political parties, parliaments, interest groups, and the press all operate under onerous constraints. Parties tend to fragment and lack ideological or policy coherence. Few parties boast sufficient financial and technical resources to sustain a capacity for policy analysis. Parliaments lack both experienced deputies (Zambia excepted among the six cases under review) and access to the financial and economic information and expertise with which to develop critiques of technically complex budgets and legislation. Legislators make do with rudimentary or nonexistent parliamentary libraries. They lack expert parliamentary staff and the funds to hire consultants. Governments often refuse their requests for information on adjustment agreements on the grounds that such information is "classified." Interest groups lack a capacity for policy analysis and advocacy owing to decades of authoritarian controls and the corrosive deal-making of clientelist politics. The press falls short in both professional expertise and the financial base to engage in in-depth journalism on the complex issues concerning economic recovery.13



Yet these weaknesses should not be used to justify the current top-down approach to adjustment. Indeed, the weaknesses reflect the strategy of presidents to marginalize, and sometimes subvert, the intermediary institutions which can impose day-to-day accountability on them. These institutions are far from irreparable. It is not enormously expensive to build parliamentary libraries, hire expert staff for legislatures, make official information available, train policy analysts, establish independent think- tanks, and assist in the reorganization of parties and interest groups. Donors are already assisting in these areas. And scattered experience suggests that intermediary organizations can build their capacities even in difficult circumstances.

In the case of Ghana, parties have amalgamated rather than fragmented. The 1996 elections saw the governing and rhetori- cally Nkrumahist National Democratic Congress opposed by a fractious Great Alliance of liberals and Nkrumahists. A division between a conservative Danquah-Busia tradition and a populist Nkrumahist tendency traces its roots to Kwame Nkrumah's split from the United Gold Coast Convention in 1949. Yet Ghana's parliament not only lacked resources, but was also dominated by the governing coalition until 1997 owing to the opposition's boycott of the 1992 parliamentary elections. Members of parliament were not ciphers, however. The two independent MPs often raised embarrassing issues. And the Assembly's Finance Committee launched incisive and well publicized reviews of economic policy. Since 1993 this Committee conducted lively hearings on the annual budgets, at which opposition parties presented trenchent critiques. Associations of employers, trade unions, and the Ghana Bar Association also made submissions.

Forums in which government consults interest groups on the direction of relevant policies and programs remain scarce in Ghana. Officials of the TUC have complained that the transition to democracy has not opened channels by which they could bring labour's interests to the attention of government (West et al. 1994, 60). Indigenous nongovernmental organizations do not have opportunities to make representations to government on development issues. Although a peak organization, the Ghana Association of Private Voluntary Organizations in Development, exists on paper, it is weakened by resource constraints and politically inspired factionalism. Women's associations are grouped in


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the government-created and led National Council for Women and Development; many are also affiliated with the 31st December Women's Movement which is headed by the wife of President Rawlings. Key business associations have not yet succeeded in establishing themselves as effective policy advocates on behalf of their members. Government-business relations have been bedevilled, first, by Rawlings' occasional populist denunciations of "exploitative" capitalists and, second, by the support which prominent businessmen have allegedly given to the opposition parties. Efforts by local business associations and IMF intermedi- aries to establish a forum for genuine consultations failed (Hart 1994). Only since 1995 has a private-sector think-tank, the Centre for Economic Policy, established an influential relationship with the government (West Africa 6-12 February 1995).

Finally, Ghana's press has continued to show vitality despite its severe constraints. It suffers from the usual set of limitations: undercapitalization, limited professionalism, government intimidation, and restricted markets. Nonetheless, several newspapers, notably the Ghanaian Chronicle and Public Agenda, have offered informed criticism of government actions and practices over several years. Private radio stations have recently emerged to offer another forum for public debate.

In sum, the Ghanaian experience of institutional development gives some grounds for hope. Intermediary organizations in some sub-Saharan countries can rise to the challenge of a more consultative and open policy process.

Promoting Social Equity: Reconciling adjustment with democracy also requires that governments address equity issues in their impoverished societies. Vocal and well-organized urban employees will become politically alienated if they are left to bear the brunt of adjustment measures. As well, the rural poor must feel that they have some stake in the democratic system if they are to participate in elections. Most corrosive is the popular belief that elected politicians concern themselves only with self-aggran- dizement, primarily through corrupt activities.

What, first, of the claim that adjustment policies on balance enhance equity by benefitting the poor, who are largely rural, at the expense of the hitherto "privileged" urban dwellers (Azam 1994; Killick 1995; Pio 1994; Sahn, Dorosh and Younger 1994)? In



theory, currency devaluation and increases in the locally paid prices of export crops should raise the incomes of rural producers, including the many smallholders. Market liberalization will probably also raise the price of food, but this will not affect the rural poor to the extent that they are self-provisioning or were already paying black market prices. Again in theory, adjustment should benefit rural dwellers by redirecting public resources to the rural areas. Revenues should depend more on urban-based taxes, such as gasoline and value-added taxes, and less on taxes on primary exports, whereas expenditures should favour the primary education, primary health care, and rural infrastructure that benefits the rural majority.

In Ghana, adjustment does seem to have supported the redi- rection of resources to the rural areas, as the theory suggests.14 Ghanaian smallholders have benefitted since the late 1980s from a higher share of the world price for cocoa, a shifting of more of the tax burden to urban consumers, a decentralization to the districts backed by central transfers for development projects, and major investments in rural infrastructure, including rural electri- fication, feeder roads, and schools (Green 1995a). However, the motivation of this rural policy bias seems to have been as much political as economic. It enabled President Rawlings to win elections by building a political base in the countryside (outside the Ashanti Region). Judging by the strong rural support Rawlings garnered in both the 1992 and 1996 elections, this strategy paid off.

Elsewhere, adjustment's distributional impact remains controversial. It is not easy to sort out the divergent effects which various policies exert on income distribution. Relevant data are unavailable or unreliable; hence, deductive reasoning from economic models, anecdotes, and hunches take the place of clear evidence. Critics have long maintained that adjustment does not help the poor. Such packages are "defective" in design, they hold; because these packages have rarely brought the sustained growth that poverty alleviation requires, they increase the burden on some among the poor, especially women, and they offer compen- satory schemes that are too meagre and urban-biased to be of much use (Stewart 1991). It was the World Bank's recognition of these sorts of problems that led to its adoption in 1990 of poverty reduction as a separate goal of structural adjustment.


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The new view was that "social dimensions of adjustment" programmes should target not only the "new poor" and other vulnerable groups who had been adversely affected by adjustment, but also the "chronic poor" whose low productivity had condemned them to poverty long before the advent of adjustment (African Development Bank, UNDP and World Bank 1990). SDA programmes would not simply compensate losers; they would reduce poverty in the targetted groups by raising their productivity. This would involve investments in human capital and household assets, changes in relative prices to favour the poor, the promotion of wage employment, and the organization of targetted groups within "empowering" community organizations.

Practice has fallen short of these lofty aims. Although IMF and World Bank adjustment lending now includes provisions to address poverty and the social costs of adjustment, the anti- poverty programmes do not dispose of the resources needed to make much headway against the widespread deprivation. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to condemn projects because they do not go far enough. (They are a lot better than nothing, which is the realistic alternative.) Meanwhile, plans to incorpo- rate poverty reduction into the design of adjustment programmes have had mixed results.

Social safety-nets in Africa are of two types (Marc et al. 1995). Social Action Programs (SAPs) are "regular investment projects," implemented in most cases by line ministries. Social Funds (SFs) involve the formation of a more or less independent agency to administer funds contributed by donors and the host government. The latter agencies respond to proposals for relevant projects made by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and local governments supervise their implementation and monitor their effectiveness. Both arrangements support similar projects. The most effective in assisting large numbers of people are labour- intensive public-works projects. They have not only created thou- sands of temporary jobs, but also usefully rehabilitated streets, drainage systems, sanitation facilities, water supplies, schools, health facilities, and markets (Marc et al. 1995, 63-65). Other types of projects include assistance to laid-off public employees and to the unemployed graduates of secondary schools and universities, and credit and training schemes aimed at managers of microenterprises, in particular women. SAPs have also used their



funds to restore basic social services used by the poor, such as basic health and educational facilities, and the supply of essential medicines and (occasionally) nutritional programmes.

Those who have studied these initiatives indicate their limited impact (Marc et al. 1995, 22; Graham 1994; Hutchful 1994). Where the majority of the population is poor, scattered projects will not improve the lot of very many. The urban bias of projects further reduces their poverty reducing impact, as the bulk of the poor generally live in the rural areas. This bias does, however, address the political realities of adjustment, namely that the most vocal and best organized opponents of adjustment reside in the cities. These opponents must receive some compensation if adjustment is to proceed. Finally, some governments divert funds designed to alleviate hardship into patronage channels. This further dilutes the anti-poverty thrust of social programmes. However, such diversions are not inevitable. Studies undertaken in Zambia (World Bank 1995a) and elsewhere (Graham 1994) indicate that independent and politically insulated agencies have administered Social Funds in some countries, and that they have succeeded in relieving distress, especially through labour-intensive public works.

Yet these safety-nets represent mere "add-ons" to existing programmes; the "deeper" approach now propounded by the World Bank and others focusses on building anti-poverty measures into the very design of adjustment programmes. This is to be achieved by promoting an efficient labour-intensive pattern of growth focusing on agriculture, by shifting public expenditures from less essential activities to primary education and primary health care, by directing credit to microenterprises, and by improving rural infrastructure and the marketing of agricultural products (see World Bank 1990).

If the World Bank actually adhered to these guidelines, then it would be within reach of a social-democratic approach. Growth with equity arguably demands more than a residualist concept of welfare, whereby the state erects safety-nets to maintain those who cannot fend for themselves in a market society. It demands the more activist role that occasionally appears in Bank reports. Here, governments have a responsibility to counteract market tendencies which perpetuate poverty and inequality. The Bank's emphasis on primary health care and primary education for all


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citizens, if consistently followed, would fit the more activist role. Some other equity measures that aim to augment the productivity of the poor will, however, probably prove impracticable. One such measure targetted support to microenterprises and small farmers in the form of credit facilities, research on appropriate technolo- gies, and marketing services. Such programmes assume a depoliti- cized and administratively advanced governmental apparatus to implement them effectively. Such apparatuses do not yet exist in the six country cases.

To reconcile democracy with adjustment where mass poverty prevails, governments will have to disprove the adage that "you can't eat democracy." People will need to eat if democracy and adjustment are to endure. Social safety-nets, though negligible in their societal impact, are nonetheless crucial in reconciling vocal urban critics to continuing adjustment. Experience suggests that separate agencies which enjoy some considerable autonomy from the executive and the civil service are most effective in adminis- tering Social Funds in a responsible manner. If donors are serious about encouraging both adjustment and democratic governance, they must be willing to buffer the inevitable tensions through long-term financing of such ventures.

But a deeper problem will remain: building a state with the will and the capacities to counteract inegalitarian market tendencies. Such a state would seek to promote the productivity and opportunities of the poor without imposing crippling regulations and controls. Democratic pressure may enhance the will to inter- vene. The building of the requisite capacities, however, is more problematical.

Building State Capacities: Neither democratization nor market- based recovery is likely to survive unless predatory and decrepit states are revitalized and made more accountable to emergent civil societies. Democratic institutions will not inspire popular support if the state apparatus is widely perceived as staffed by corrupt and incompetent officials. The legitimacy of the new regime will depend heavily upon its success in fostering recovery, acting in accordance with the law, and even-handedly managing an adequate social safety-net. Economic recovery, in turn, depends upon the creation of an array of institutional preconditions for the efficient functioning of markets, as discussed earlier.



In principle at least, the World Bank now endorses the rebuilding of state capacities to prepare governments eventually to play a more active, managerial role in market economies. The two-part strategy it presents in World Development Report 1997 represents a belated endorsement of a position long advocated by centre-left political economists. Where a state's capacities are low, it should limit its economic role to that which it can handle effectively, namely, getting the macroeconomic "fundamentals" right. But "capacity is not destiny" (World Bank 1997, 3). The second part of the strategy is thus to undertake the long-term process of "reinvigorating public institutions." When a state's political and administrative capacities have improved, it will be able to expand its economic role, perhaps even to the point of promoting an industrial policy.

But how does a society rebuild the capacities of state apparatuses which have markedly deteriorated? In fact, few firm guidelines exist.15 Politicization of the public sector by the penetration of clientelism and nepotism, pervasive corruption, poor training, low public-sector wages, and limited technical capabilities linked to fiscal implosion - all these factors lead to the decline and predatory practices of the state. Where do reformers begin?

A "governance approach" is an answer from the World Bank (Dia 1993). It realistically places the problem of civil service reform within the context of the prevailing "macro-institutional governance environment." The analyst first classifies a prospec- tive country in term of whether it manifests a "high," "low," or "average" patrimonial profile. Countries which rank high on the patrimonial scale will need to follow a "comprehensive institutional approach." This includes, in addition to an array of technical reforms, wide-ranging institutional adjustments - rebuilding the rule of law, forging a more open and accountable state, and strengthening civil society, especially interest groups. Countries which rank low on the patrimonial scale will require less pervasive, mainly technical and managerial, reforms.

This governance approach illuminates the immensity of the task of state rebuilding in the sub-Saharan countries. Most of them will rank high on the patrimonial scale; hence, state reform in these cases will involve a restructuring of the entire state- society relationship. No wonder, then, that a Bank evaluation of governance programmes resonates with uncertainty as to how to


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proceed in building states' institutional capacities (World Bank 1994b). By the time of the World Development Report 1997, however, the Bank seemed to have a firmer grasp of the issues.

Conclusion: Is the Strategy Feasible? This modest social-democratic programme is unlikely to spur a rapid economic recovery. High and sustained economic growth would be a miracle in a context of unfavourable international trends, daunting external debts, poor initial economic conditions, and missing institutional preconditions for efficacious market relationships. But deepening democracy, attending to social equity, and rehabilitating the state may reconcile democratization with market reform while laying the foundations for future prosperity. Enhanced legitimacy for a reoriented and more effective state and for a more inclusive society should militate against the dangerous spiral of economic and political decay in which many countries are trapped (Zartman 1995).

But is this programme feasible? Why would the dominant economic powers and transnational institutions favour a social- democratic approach in Africa? Social democracy is under attack, even in the advanced welfare states of the West. The impetus toward further liberalization and globalization grows in tandem with the growing power of transnational capital - as augmented by the end of the communist/socialist alternative, the growing mobility of capital, and the "informatics" technological revolution. Yet, as I have tried to show, the influential World Bank, in its ongoing rethinking of development policy in light of Africa's obdurate realities, has officially adopted positions close to the model sketched above. In advocating a "Nordic development para- digm" for Africa in 1989 (World Bank 1989, 187), the Bank signalled a shift in direction. Its later advocacy of "local ownership" and "good governance" implicitly endorses deepening democracy; advocacy of "poverty reduction," social safety-nets, public investment in primary health and education, and credit to micro-enterprises implicitly embraces equity concerns, and advocacy of a strategy of rebuilding effective states explicitly acknowledges the future necessity of activist states in Africa. What is needed is a greater consistency between pronouncements and actual implementation of reforms.

There is, perhaps, a powerful motivation on the part of the


Sandbrook: Liberalization vs. Democratization 5 09

Bank and its prominent members to adopt a social-democratic programme of market reform in Africa. This is needed to halt the slide into chaos, state collapse, or civil wars in this region. In Central Africa alone, eight contiguous states suffered rebellions or civil wars in 1997. Interventions in these internal wars by the armed forces of neighbouring states intensified the turmoil: Uganda supported the Rwandan Tutsi forces in 1990-94; Uganda along with Rwanda, Burundi, and Angola assisted Laurent Kabila in his overthrow of Zaire's Mobutu in 1996-97; and Angola inter- vened in Congo-Brazzaville against President Lissouba. And the defeated combatants of three decades of civil wars, scattered in exile throughout the region, heightened the general insecurity by hiring out as mercenaries. These conflicts seemed to confirm the dire forecast of Aristide Zolberg in 1992 (303): "[i]t looks as if tyranny might give way to anarchy," a forecast based on the sobering proposition that all of Africa's states were susceptible to such a breakdown. The World Bank appeared to endorse this fear when it recently commented that failures of institutional reform risked more than "just" delayed growth and social development; they risked political unrest and even disintegration, "exacting a tremendous toll on stability, productive capacity and human life" (World Bank 1997, 15). Owing to these enormous costs and the subsequent demands made upon the industrial powers, a preventive strategy is cost-effective. This is the reason why a preventive social-democratic approach may prove acceptable.

What, finally, will be the position of elected African governments? Centralized if anemic power, clientelism, and presidential hostility to intermediary institutions characterize most of these new (semi)democracies. Why would they embrace an approach that emphasizes political openness, consultation, attention to equity, and state-building initiatives that undermine rent-seeking and political machines? In most cases, they will not do so. But there is some latitude for political reform. Not only is the governing elite subject to persistent democratic pressures from civil associations supported by an international civil society (Gyimah-Boadi 1996), but the elite's instinct for self-preservation pushes it in the direction of compromise. Unrestrained political and social conflict threatens both democracy and the survival of the elite itself. With examples of chaos and state collapse close at hand, political elites search for ways to avoid the abyss. A


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minimal social-democratic approach, by reconciling market-based adjustment with democracy, provides a workable answer.

Notes 1 My thanks to Jay Oelbaum for his research assistance and provocative ideas. 2 For the former position, see van de Walle (1995); for the latter, see Callaghy (1995). 3 Economic implosion refers to sustained declines in per capita income, high inflation, large budgetary and (usually) balance of payments deficits, and the collapse of public services and infrastructure. For these dimensions in my cases, see Leechor (1994, 156-59), Dorosh (1994, 182), Chege (1994, 266, 270), Sarris and van den Brink (1994, 272), Bates and Collier (1993), Barrett (1994, 451-53). 4 Mosley and Weeks (1993) provide a useful review of the methodological controversies swirling around the evaluation of Africa's adjustment programmes until 1991. See Lipumba (1994), Sepehri (1994), Schatz (1994), Loxley (1995), and Gervais (1995b) for critiques of the World Bank's methodology in its most recent evaluation of adjustment in Africa (World Bank 1994a). 5 This data is drawn from various issues of the World Bank's African Development Indicators and, on inflation, its Trends in Developing Economies, Extracts, Volume 3, Sub-Saharan Africa. 6 For an analysis along the same lines, see Green (1996). Note that one can accept the general thrust of a model while still being highly critical of particular policies. Among adjustment's assumptions and policies that have had pernicious consequences for Africa are: the rapid and unilateral liberalization of imports; the promotion of the same traditional exports in many countries, leading to falling world prices; the early view that investors would automatically respond when "distortions" on market forces were removed; the focus on the domestic roots of economic stag- nation, thus underestimating the major international constraints - crushing external debts, limited financial flows, and poor terms of trade. 7 On Nigeria, see Ibrahim (1989); on Ghana, see Sandbrook and Oelbaum (1997). For a general discussion, see Bratton and van de Walle (1997, 31- 33). 8 Although I do not have the space to defend this assertion here, I have collaborated in doing so elsewhere. See Sandbrook and Oelbaum (1997) and Sandbrook (1998). 9 External shocks included two dramatic rises in the price of oil imports, declining international terms of trade, and soaring interest rates. Climatic shocks refer to the devastating droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. 10 This viewpoint emerged in conversations with several representatives



of the World Bank and aid agencies. 1 On Mali, refer to Amselle (1992); on Niger, to Charlick (1991, 18-19, 79-80); on Ghana, to Owusu (1970); on East Africa, to Hyden (1994, 78- 79); on Madagascar, to Fox and Covell (1994, 3-6). 12 Green (1995b, 188-209) provides a useful summary and critique of this model. 13 For more depth on the weaknesses of intermediary institutions, see Sandbrook (1996). 14 For evidence concerning the rural-urban distribution of poverty in the early 1990s compared to earlier surveys of household income, see World Bank (1995b). IS Naim (1995) perceptively analyzes the major challenges involved in rebuilding Latin America's weak and clientelistic states.

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Issue Table of ContentsCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des tudes Africaines, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1997), pp. i-iv+401-596Front Matter [pp. i-555]Mobilizing for Change: A Case Study of Market Trader Activism in Ghana [pp. 401-423]Development, Change, and Poverty in the Informal Sector during the Era of Structural Adjustments in Tanzania [pp. 424-451]Citizenship and Welfare in South Africa: Deracialisation and Inequality in a Labour-Surplus Economy [pp. 4

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