EUROPE AND THE PROMOTION OF DEMOCRACY IN POST COLD WAR AFRICA: HOW SERIOUS IS EUROPE AND FOR WHAT REASON?

The ending of the Cold War brought new topics on the agendaof the international aid donors. Questions of democracy andhuman rights were voiced with rising intensity not least bythe European Union and by individual European countries. However,when it came to implementing the ambitious principles, boththe EU and the bilateral donors lacked a ‘serious’commitment. This is indicated by European policies towards SouthAfrica, Kenya, Niger and Algeria. The policies of the Europeanstowards Africa in the 1990s have primarily been influenced bysecurity concerns and thus by the narrow national interestsof individual donors. This is particularly manifest in the caseof France which has a dominating position within the developmentcooperation of the EU. Thus, only in very few exceptional instancesis it in the national interest of European donor states to promotemoral issues such as democracy and respect for human rights.In the 1990s such themes have become little more than the rhetoricof politicians and treaties, just as it was during the ColdWar.     

CONSOLIDATING SOUTH AFRICAN DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICAL ARITHMETIC OF BUDGETARY REDISTRIBUTION

An absence of legitimacy of an economic dispensation cannotbe overcome by democratization alone. In unequal societies,new regimes also seek to increase economic legitimacy and thereforetheir own political legitimacy through redistribution. Socialspending is the most promising redistributive device availableto South Africa's new democracy to reduce racial inequalities,but there are constraints on increasing social spending or evenredistributing existing spending. To maximize political impact,spending will thus probably be concentrated on the most visibleprogrammes and concentrated in die cities. The impact on blackmaterial living standards of complete redistribution of socialspending is shown to be fairly large, but still may not satisfythe newly enfranchised. Coloureds, Indians and poorer whiteswould lose most from budgetary redistribution. As demands exceedresources, resource allocation then becomes a question of politicalarithmetic. This may assist in consolidating democracy amongsturban black ‘insiders’, but would effectively leavethe unorganized rural poor fiscally disenfranchised.     

DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALISM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: THE CASE OF MALAWI

The collapse of the Banda regime in 1994 has led to a renewedinterest in the nature of the Malawian political tradition.This paper seeks to contribute to the debate by focusing onthe political beliefs of nationalist politicians in the decadeleading up to the cabinet crisis of 1964 which marks, in someviews, the true origin of the Banda dictatorship. It suggeststhat early nationalist politicians like James Frederick Sangalaand Levi Mumba combined a belief in the importance of unitywith a democratic awareness of the virtues of civil society.As Congress grew in popularity, however, elements of a totalitarianideology, deeply intolerant of dissent, began to appear, notonly in Dr Banda's speeches but in those of his lieutenantsand subsequent opponents such as Masauko Chipembere and KanyamaChiume. This tendency increased with the founding in 1959 ofthe Malawi Congress Party which developed as an absolutist bodyboth in terms of its own internal structure and in the demandsit made on Malawian society. Some politicians drew on the autocratictradition of the colonial era to produce justifications forthe establishment of an African-controlled dictatorship. OnlyDunduzu Chisiza provided a coherent democratic alternative tothese views. And even Chisiza had difficulty in reconcilinghis belief in strongman government with the need to protectindividual rights. A totalitarian strain, deeply intolerantof dissent, had thus entered Malawian politics prior to 1964.But this strain coexisted with a democratic tradition, articulatedin particular by Mumba and Chisiza.     

POLITICS WITHOUT PARTIES: AFGHANISTAN’S LONG ROAD TO DEMOCRACY

Democracy has not brought stability to Afghanistan in the almost two decades since the fall of the Taliban. But it would be wrong to conclude that the soil of Afghanistan is not conducive to the tree of democracy, when in reality it was never planted with any skill. Democracy did not fail in Afghanistan; it was never even tried.

A series of connected mistakes began with the introduction of a flawed electoral system, no insistence on a transparent register of voters, lack of proper scrutiny of polling, and a lack of support for the development of reformist political parties and other functioning civil society institutions. From the start the US did not see this as a ‘nation-building’ project, but nevertheless US officials made far-reaching decisions about the nature of Afghan democracy. These were seriously unsound, and the electoral system introduced itself operated against the development of strong democratic institutions.

This article outlines the problems inherent in the Single Non-Transferable Vote system, examines the history of Afghan political parties through the twentieth century and asks whether alternative and traditional forms of Afghan government provide any real obstacles to the development of modern politics. The 2004 constitution was the seventh since 1923: this was not a green field site in terms of institution-building as it was seen by many of the international officials who flooded in after the fall of the Taliban.     

THE GHANAIAN ELECTIONS OF 1996: TOWARDS THE CONSOLIDATION OF DEMOCRACY?

Foreign donors expended over $23 million on micro-managing theDecember 1996 Ghanaian elections in an attempt to ensure thatthe process was technically ‘free and fair’. Owingpartly to this expenditure and partly to the efficiency andimpartiality of the Electoral Commission, the conduct of theelections was in fact remarkably technically correct. The losingopposition parties still complained, however, that PresidentRawlings and his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC),exploited the advantages of incumbency to a degree that renderedthe result ‘free but not really fair’. The articleargues that such very limited acceptance of election results,however justified or unjustified, is almost bound to obtainin economically underdeveloped African societies where, partlyfor structural and partly for cultural reason, politics continuesto be very much a zero-sum game characterized by high levelsof distrust. This in turn suggests limits to the likely consolidationof multi-party democracy. The article also analyses the reasonsfor the electoral victory of Rawlings and the NDC, arguing thatit hinged on the rural population's trust in Rawlings' abilityto provide rural development and political stability.     

RECONSTRUCTING CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS AND THE COLLAPSE OF DEMOCRACY IN GHANA, 1979-81

This article attempts to contribute to an understanding of thechallenges involved in trying to bring military and securityagencies under constitutional rule in new democracies by analysingthe case of the Limann regime and the failed democratic transitionin Ghana in 1979–81. In the aftermath of democratizationin 1979 the civilian government made aggressive (and not alwaysdiplomatic) efforts to bring the armed forces under its control.In this instance both the civil government and the militarycommand were threatened by the possibility of a coup from belowand were anxious to prevent it. The analysis tries to answerthe question of why the government and the military commandfailed to make common cause, examining first the conflict betweencivilian officials and the military high command over jurisdictionaland other issues, and then between the security agencies themselvesthat provided the opening for the overthrow once again of democracy.The coup itself was the result of the double crisis of civiland military authority. The institutional arrangements throughwhich civil command has been exercised are examined; it is arguedthat civil control of the military in independent Ghana hashistorically been a myth, and that the existence of a civilianregime does not necessarily suggest civil control of the military.