14.4: Making Historical Comparisons

Although today’s politically liberal observers vary in their views as to how central and local governments function, the assumption among them is that there are at least some positive-sum gains to be had between local and central governments. Considerations of these local-central government relationships, not only at present but throughout history, do matter to the realization of political liberalism in all contexts. One should not shy away from making historical comparisons of yesterday’s liberalisation experiences with the circumstances of today’s liberalizing states.

Political theorists of the post-independence era of the 1950s and 60s similarly emphasized the need for ‘order’ in African and other developing country contexts before political liberalisation can take place. For example, in his 1968 book, Political Order in Changing Societies, Samuel Huntington famously argued that ‘political decay’ was to be temporarily expected in developing state contexts as they liberalize (Huntington, 1968). Disorder, Huntington argued, was part of the process of change – in fact, disorder and the ‘promise of disharmony,’ he later argued, is what the practice of democratic freedom requires (Huntington, 1981). In retrospect, of course, such arguments can be seen as providing excuses for delaying progress towards political liberalisation in the developing world, such as the kinds of Cold War influences that supported dictatorships elsewhere in the world (notably throughout the Middle East). The human reality since that initial period of optimism for African political change has been decreasing standards of living throughout the sub-Saharan African region, as so vividly described by Wrong and many others.

Many observers of the left and right, who had been so optimistic at independence, now deem African development as a lost cause. In fact, some Africanists have been so discouraged by events of recent decades that they have simply chosen to walk away from the African area of studies (Kitching, 2000). Those who have remained seem to focus on either the development of an African ‘civil society’ (bottom-up) or a change in African ‘leadership’ (top-down). Yet neither of these groups, roughly representing the Western political left and right, respectively, dares to make direct historical comparisons based on the practical underpinnings of liberal democratic practice. Instead, ideological assumptions that they might have about political development anywhere are simply transferred to their observations about politics in Africa. Both developmental agenda, in other words, are prone to ‘one size fits all.’ The one group of theorists that does emphasize historical circumstances – the historical structuralists (Marxist-Leninists) – have generally deemed Africa’s developmental circumstances as a kind of lost cause due to the nature of the global capitalist system. Since Africa’s independence, the very idea of comparisons of political development North-to-South, or developed countries versus LDCs (less developed countries) has been largely discredited due to the earlier works of modernisation theorists such as Daniel Lerner (1958) or Walter Rostow (1960).

Falling into Extremes

Genuine debates on the matter of political development are, in a sense, confined to a rather superficial level, largely because of persistent differences of ideology. On the one hand, many progressive leftist Africanists simply dismiss direct comparisons of political behaviour and experience as ‘modernisation theory’ and/or dismiss the prospects for African development because of the global capitalist system; their inclination is to support the development of African ‘civil society,’ largely based on their own preconceptions of democratic development at home, whereby the people ‘rose up’ to check the abuse of political power (Chazan, et al., 1999; Cooper, 2002). On the other hand, many conservative rightist Africanists prefer to avoid any discussion of external influences on today’s African realities and focus on the failings of what goes on within individual African states, for example, irresponsible leadership and their lack of understanding of effective policy, and unethical or corrupt governing norms (Rotberg, 2002; Lugan, 2004). The fact of the matter is that both groups have an overarching interest in promoting ‘modernisation’ of African states and societies, as can be seen in the ongoing work of the development industry.

The majority of Africanists fall into the first three columns: the first two columns represent the broad differences of those involved in the development industry who tend to focus on the internal changes required within African states to achieve ‘modern’ developmental goals. The third column includes many leftist academics, both within Africa and elsewhere, and though there might be much truth to their arguments, there are few professions where one can be an advocate of them other than in teaching and/or scholarship within Western power structures. In sub-Saharan African contexts, by contrast, this kind of logic has received much political support! Change of the external power structure is where there is the greatest political resistance and, in fact, there are inevitably local beneficiaries of relationships with external actors (forth column). Local beneficiaries are the local powerful who tend to be on the more conservative side of the political spectrum, locally defined.

Table 14.1 Internal vs. external focus on reasons for developmental woes.

FOCUS	INTERNAL LENS^[3]		EXTERNAL LENS^[4]
Political Orientation	Left^[5]	Right^[6]	Left^[7]	Right^[8]
Developmental Agenda	Civil society	Leadership	Anti-colonialism	Power, influence, wealth
	Community	Governance	Social justice against capitalist exploitation	Establishment of joint ventures (African government, foreign investment)
	Education	Policy	Cold War	‘Order’/non-democratic government
	Empowerment	Anti-corruption	Against neo-colonlialism	Attracting foreign direct investment (FDI); supporting multinational corporations (MNCs), notably resource extraction industries.

Given those diverse orientations about addressing African political concerns, it should come as no surprise that many African citizens themselves are losing faith in any ‘democracy’ that they might have had just a few years ago, in part because they have little faith in the development industry described above and because, for many, the meanings of democracy, democratization, liberalism and neoliberalism are too easily conflated. The work of Nigerian scholar J. Shola Omotola demonstrates, for example, that in African contexts ‘liberal democracy’ is generally equated with neoliberalism which is generally aimed at reforming markets in a reckless and ideological fashion (Omotola, 2009).

Liberalism and Democracy

Today, Africanists must address the shortcomings of formal ‘democracy’ and turn their attention to how their governing institutions can support locally defined forms of liberalism (understood as political freedom). This will require true historical comparisons that have thus far eluded the field of African area studies and mainstream comparative politics. But there are a few examples of this kind of effort. One is a 2001 book by Africanist Robert Bates, who undoubtedly wrote of the structure and purpose of Europe’s pre-liberal governing institutions with African political development in mind. For him, the original purpose of governing institutions was to control violence and, for individual citizens in the history of democratic states, this is experienced at the local level. ‘Political development,’ Bates argues, “occurs when people domesticate violence.… Coercion becomes productive when it is employed not to seize or to destroy wealth, but rather to safeguard and promote its creation” (Bates, 2001, pp. 101-102). For Bates, Europe’s pre-liberal governing institutions, by helping to deter violence, in turn aided European development. Again, with African development clearly on his mind, he argues rather provocatively, “Societies that are now urban, industrial and wealthy were themselves once rural, agrarian and poor” (p. 21).

To his credit, Bates does emphasize the importance of local government to political development in history. But like other conservative Africanists, Bates ignores the link between local governmental development and the new, and historically significant, external influences on African development. That is, there can be no doubt that local governance in sub-Saharan Africa has been dramatically affected by the dictates from outside actors (colonial, Cold War, developers, investors); the same could not be said of the medieval European village. On the other side of the political spectrum, leftist/historical structuralist Africanists are right to emphasize the role of history but, as in all schools of thought, the emphasis tends to be on ‘state’ development.

The rise of today’s illiberal democracy conditions that have direct significance to matters of human security is a direct result of today’s external/globalization pressures. Yet most observers continue to interpret illiberal conditions in the world through a superficial Cold War lens of a state-wide label of ‘democracy or not,’ rather than focusing on the needs of citizens on the ground. For example, in a 2004 article entitled ‘Why Democracies Excel,’ the authors provide a variety of statistics to make the point that democratic states outperform autocratic states in virtually every category of developmental change: economic growth, quality of life indices, and avoidance of humanitarian crises (Siegle et al., 2004). This is undoubtedly true. ^[9] But in doing so, they conflate liberalism and democracy. As Zakaria suggests, it is high time that we start moving away from ‘democracy or not’ superficiality and toward the important details that lead to liberal (locally–defined) circumstances that improve the prospects for human security.

As the Arab Spring (and other springs) demonstrates, Huntington’s 1968 argument that ‘political decay’ is only part of the process of change and that authoritarian regimes are a kind of necessary evil that promotes order amidst chaos, is now being challenged from all sides. That is, the policy of ‘order over democracy’ may not be as valid as previously thought and, following Siegle et al, we know that democratic states do consistently outperform ‘orderly’ autocratic or military forms of governance. But most discussions of what is required for newly declared democracies to work tend to remain focused on central over local governmental leadership.

Thus far the internal demand side of the debates on democratization has generally been portrayed in terms of ‘civil society.’ The prevailing logic of civil society proponents is that improved livelihoods, at the individual and local level, will lead to a variety of developmental improvements, manifesting in such phenomena as public political protest, which will eventually take place within the political system. In African contexts they have generally argued in terms of developing the demands of individuals and local representatives so that they may act, collectively, as a safeguard over otherwise authoritarian forms of government. This makes good theoretical sense but the efforts to improve livelihoods at the local level generally have little to do with locally-defined liberal ideals. Instead, discussions of civil society are overwhelmingly oriented toward the policy debates within ‘developmental circles’ that relate, specifically, to the provision of public services, such as water and electricity. While the provision of these public services is undoubtedly a meritorious venture, it is unclear that older democracies developed in such a fashion. Policy debates on democratization, framed either as an ideological quest or as a desperate call for water or electricity, are importantly neglecting the historical underpinnings of liberalism.

Liberalism Versus Democracy

The hard fact that Africanists have been slow to respond to is that democratic elections are limited in their impact. In today’s African context, a fundamental truth is that ‘democracy,’ as with previous forms of government, has been handed down from above without any political struggle by a large section of the people. While the media might portray urban protests as a positive sign of political struggle, a sizable percentage of sub-Saharan African citizens reside in the countryside where the kind of coordination required for effective political protest is generally lacking. This, in fact, may be very analogous to what happened in early democracies, where urban protest (later documented by historians) was where the debates of political theory took place, while the masses in the rural countryside remained largely removed from the process. ‘Democracy,’ in other words, can be thought of as an arrangement of the elites to keep the masses contented; all the while, liberalism is what the masses cared most about. ‘Democracy,’ conceived another way, was how then reigning elites maintained order, while simultaneously disposing of monarchy—obviously a direct interest of elites who were to usurp political power. Faced with an opportunity for establishing liberal state practice, elites were keen to do so, as it protected their own property (thereby avoiding disorder), but it also appealed to the masses in ways that Bates refers to (avoidance of violence) and, gradually, a sense of new possibilities for the future. In early democratic states then, as in new democratic states today, the vast majority of rural and urban residents continues to focus on day-to-day struggles and, if anything, generally has remained politically apathetic and disunited. This reality is not unique to Africa. Democracy is an important step toward political legitimacy but it is not what incites the interests of the elites or the masses in their respective futures; liberalism does.

The very fact that individual citizens have no real avenue to pursue effective protest is undoubtedly disappointing to many, but the disappointment stems from broader theoretical preconceptions about the historical development of democracy. Both Western and Marxist models of political development see promise in protest, in the ‘rising up’ of peoples, in an effort to hold their political and/or industrial leaders more accountable. But democracy is not a panacea as can be seen in the case of the ancient Greeks, where the masses were generally kept outside of any democratic experiment.

Upon reflection it is clear that the average democratic citizen in history has been less interested in theoretical democracy than in the day-to-day struggle for survival. This does not detract from the overwhelming virtue of democracy over other forms of government; the point is to emphasize the practical concerns of citizens at the local level. At this level of analysis, the individual’s struggle for political liberalism, viewed in terms of citizen demand, can be revealing. To the average citizen of pre-democratic and democratic states alike, the state did help to deter random acts of violence, but it also helped legitimize claims to private property ownership, a cornerstone of Western understandings of political liberalism. Because of their geographic proximity, at a time when travelling great distances was uncommon, local governments also fostered ties with the central government through, for example, collection of state tax or tribute and, ultimately, in matters of security. As Bates argues, contact with the state was considered worthy insofar as the state authorities provided a sense of protection from violence. Another crucial ‘spill-over’ effect, of course, was to affirm (through civil records of births, marriages, and deaths) a sense of national identity.

Most of these early local governmental tasks were largely administrative or jurisprudential and not, one might suspect, especially cumbersome, but they had revolutionary results in terms of their ‘liberal’ outcome. Accordingly, within today’s liberal democracies there exists a practical connection between government institutions and the citizenry – what Louis Hartz once termed a submerged Lockean consensus (Hartz, 1955). By this, Hartz meant a popular consensus within liberal states as to what political liberalism entails and what the role of government institutions should be, an interpretation that was first argued by the then radical John Locke contra the political philosophy on governance then promoted by apologists of illiberal state practice, such as Sir Robert Filmer. Locke’s argument that government institutions should protect our ‘lives, liberties, and estates,’ later interpreted as the protection of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ by Thomas Jefferson in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, is fundamental to liberal practice. The U.S. Declaration of Independence has often been interpreted as an important stepping-stone toward ‘democracy’; it might better be thought of as a crucial step towards today’s predominant view as to what political liberalism entails.

Stumbling Blocks

For political liberalism to be realized in sub-Saharan Africa’s new democracies, local governmental institutions must assume, at a minimum, the administrative roles that they had in today’s liberal democratic states such as maintaining civil records (births, marriages, deaths), titles to property, judiciary power, and a locally accountable law enforcement authority. Thus far, they have not (LaMonica, 2017). Instead, when local governance is mentioned in sub-Saharan African contexts, and for understandable reasons, the focus is on the soaring demand for other more visible public services. As witnessed in South Africa during the campaigns prior to 2006, candidates in local government elections were quick to make unrealistic promises regarding the provision of improved public health care, education, and the like, while burgeoning issues that underlie improved local government administration were entirely neglected. In the party manifesto of the African National Congress (ANC) it was declared, for example, that their action plan would make local government ‘speed up the delivery of services.’ Other parties, including the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) similarly focused on improving ‘service delivery.’ While political organizers know all too well that this would appeal to the voting public, there is little visible evidence that this will actually happen. Citizens of other early democracies did not have these kinds of public service expectations and one can reasonably assume that the citizens of sub-Saharan Africa will only develop cynical attitudes toward ‘democracy’ in this sort of atmosphere.

To date, administrative challenges such as keeping track of titles to property, which generally falls under the heading of ‘land tenure” in the development literature, have been consistently marginalized in discussions of sub-Saharan state policy. To the extent that government records maintain land tenure, there is a tendency to rely on the records of central government authorities that often date back to the colonial era. These notoriously incomplete records require careful consideration if political liberalism of any kind is to be realized in sub-Saharan Africa. And, certainly in the short term, there is no guarantee that the process of increasing administrative austerity at the local government level will work without controversy. The harsh and even violent property redistribution policies of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, allegedly justified on the grounds of an inequitable history of colonial rule (what the Mugabe regime described as ‘white’ over ‘black’ property ownership), has caused many throughout sub-Saharan Africa to fear reform in this area. Certainly, there is no intention here to support Mugabe’s approach to the problem; it is an exceptional case on the African continent. But the historical result of linking state power to property ownership in sub-Saharan Africa has been to alienate many locals from the administrative processes that underlie land tenure. Historically, all governing procedures at the local level had been viewed as linked to the interests of agents of the central government and, since well before the independence era, this has generally been something that local citizens would rather avoid. The impact of having the authoritarian Mugabe regime dictate land reform in a completely ruthless, violent and partisan manner (favouring ZANU-PF, The Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) has been to postpone the prospects for true local government reform throughout the region.

The Future

Improved records of titles to property, and other forms of civil administration, would improve the relationship of citizens with their local governments, as has been the case in all-liberal contexts. Moreover, doing so would be perfectly in line with the goals of the United Nations Commission on Human Security, which defines human security as “the protection of a vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and fulfilment” (UN, 2009, p. 6). Doing so would also require closer attention to matters of local governance than the majority of Africanists have paid to date.

Within sub-Saharan African contexts, internal politics on local governance is characterized by general avoidance of the issue; because central government authorities view the needs of local government as an inept bottomless pit – incessant demands for costly services – local governance is rarely listed on the national policy agenda. Indeed, one is not surprised to see external actors, such as internationally recognized non-governmental organizations (INGOs), in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa aiding local communities in a variety of ways. Whether these external actors are motivated by humanitarian concerns, the provision of ‘basic needs,’ or an expectation as to what a modern welfare state might provide, there is virtually no support for what might be termed Lockean ideals at the local government level. Land tenure remains largely a concern of under-funded anthropologists, while internal and external policymakers frantically address more ‘pressing’ policy matters. As the successes of the Grameen Bank and countless NGOs have demonstrated throughout the world, central governments are not especially adept at responding to household level needs. In order to achieve the goal of locally defined political liberalisms within today’s newly declared ‘democratic’ states will similarly require the involvement of local citizenries and the strengthening of local government institutions; absent this, sub-Saharan states are likely to continue falling into the post-Cold War phenomenon described by Zakaria as ‘illiberal democracy.’