The politics of economic reform in zimbabwe continuity and change in development

Agricultural Marketing Authority Association of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Industries Association of Rhodesian Industries British South Africa Company Communal Area Conservative Alliance of

General Editor: Timothy M Shaw, Professor of Political Science and national Development Studies, and Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie Univereitv, Nova Scotia, Canada

Inter-Recent titles include:

Manuel R Agosin and Diana Tussie (editors)

TRADE AND GROWTH: NEW DILEMMAS IN TRADE POLICY

Jerker Carlsson, Gunnar Kohlin and Anders Ekbom

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EVALUATION

Edward A Comor (editor)

THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION

0 P Dwivedi

DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION: FROM UNDERDEVELOPMENT

TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Steen Folke, Niels Fold and Thyge Enevoldsen

SOUTH-SOUTH TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT

Anthony Tuo-Kofi Gadzey

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POWER

STATES, MARKETS AND REGIMES IN GLOBAL FINANCE

Stephen P Riley (editor)

THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL DEBT

Alfredo C Robles, Jr

FRENCH THEORIES OF REGULATION AND CONCEPTIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR

Ann Seidman and Robert B Seidman

STATE AND LAW IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Timothy M Shaw and Julius Emeka Okolo (editors)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FOREIGN POLICY IN ECOWAS Frederick Stapenhurst

POLITICAL RISK ANALYSIS AROUND THE NORTH ATLANTIC Deborah Stienstra

WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS Arno Tausch (with Fred Prager)

TOWARDS A SOCIO-LIBERAL THEORY OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT Nancy Thede and Pierre Beaudet (editors)

A POST-APARTHEID SOUTHERN AFRICA?

MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS

and London

Companies and representatives

throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

First published in the United States of America 1995 by

ST MARTIN'S PRESS, INC

Scholarly and Reference Division,

175 Fifth Avenue,

New York, N.Y 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Skalnes, Tor

The politics of economic refonn in Zimbabwe : continuity and

change in development I Tor Skalnes

p em.- (International political economy series)

Includes bibliographical references and index

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995

All rights reserved No reproduction, copy or transmission of

this publication may be made without written pem1ission

94-43719 CIP

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or

transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with

the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,

or under the tem1s of any licence pemJitting limited copying

issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court

Road, London WI P 9HE

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil

claims for damages

ix

5 Majority Rule: Parties, Interest Groups and the Drive

v

List of Tables and Figures

Gross Domestic Product, 1980-94 (1980 prices)

Distribution of land by sector and Natural

Nominal and real producer prices, 1970/1-1979/80

Nominal and real producer prices, 1980/1-1992/3

Maize intake in '000 tonnes by the Grain

Acknowledgements

In the course of writing this book, I have received help from many quarters The Chr Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway and the Depart-ment of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA provided very stimulating intellectual environments The Southern African Political and Economic Series (SAPES) Trust, Harare, Zim-babwe, extended practical help during fieldwork in 1991 Thank you

I would also like to thank the institutions which funded this project The Norwegian Research Council for Social Science and the Humani-ties gave a generous four-year scholarship during 1988-91 as well as travel grants to the United States and Zimbabwe Den norske Banks Jubileumsfond for Chr Michelsens Institutt funded the writing of a first draft during 1992 Financial help was also received from the University

of California, Los Angeles

While the usual disclaimers apply, I wish to express my deep gratitude to Richard Sklar at UCLA, for offering his unfailing guidance and friendship The following individuals also made helpful comments

on the entire manuscript: Edward Alpers, Helge Hveem, Tore Linne Eriksen, Michael Lofchie, Richard Sandbrook and Timothy Shaw In addition, a number of people gave careful and stimulating criticisms of chapic• Jrafts which I presented at UCLA (December 1990), Uppsala (May 1992), Bergen (May 1992, October 1993 and February 1994), Lund (August 1993) and Kampala (April 1994) I want to mention, in particular, Bjorn Beckman, Nina Byers, Peter Gibbon, Vegar Iversen, Alhadi Khalaf, Atul Kohli, Guillermo O'Donnell, Lise Rakner, Phil

appreciation is also due to all those Zimbabweans who gave generously

of their time and contributed their valuable insights during confidential interviews Inger A Nygaard did an excellent job turning the manu-script into a camera-ready copy

My warmest thanks are nevertheless due to my wife, Gro Beate, and

my three children, Helene, Hakon and Sunniva, for all their love and support

vii

Agricultural Marketing Authority

Association of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Industries Association of Rhodesian Industries

British South Africa Company

Communal Area

Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe

Commercial Farmers' Union

Central Intelligence Organisation

Cotton Marketing Board

Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Cold Storage Commission

Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries

Dairy Marketing Board

Domestic Resource Cost

Employers' Confederation of Zimbabwe

Extended Export Promotion Programme

Economic Structural Adjustment Programme Forum Party of Zimbabwe

Federation of Rhodesian Industries

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

Gross Domestic Product

Grain Marketing Board

Indigenous Business Development Centre

Industrial Conciliation Act

Indigenous Commercial Farmers' Association International Monetary Fund

Industrial Relations Act

Import Substitution Assurance

Import-Substituting Industrialisation

Kenya African Democratic Union

Kenya African National Union

Labour Relations Act

Large-Scale Commercial

Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe

viii

,North

+ a r- > L MASHONALAND

) CENTRAL _, MASHONALANDI- r- / ~Q , , WEST • 1 Bin~ura ).J ~ ,

of various ideological hues to promote development and establish popular legitimacy Economic crisis has played a large part in encouraging a fundamental reconsideration of ideological tenets of the past In the early 1980s, falling world commodity prices, greatly increased real interest rates, and the continuing difficulty of access to new lending all combined to bring the economic problems to a crisis point Still, most African countries were slow to respond But Africa's economic downturn continued to manifest itself in insufficient per capita agricultural production, stagnating industrial output, loss of export market shares, severe balance-of-payments problems, debilitating debt, occasional hunger and starvation By the late 1980s and early 1990s, change appeared to be engulfing the continent Although the crisis was never as deep in Zimbabwe as in much of the rest of Africa, that country nevertheless faces the twin challenges of economic and political restructuring in the 1990s

The often timid reactions of African leaders to new economic challenges have prompted many analysts to emphasise external factors

in their explanations of African social change Consequently, decisions

1

of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to involve themselves heavily in conditional or policy-based lending have encountered resistance and frequent protests against 'neo-colonialism' Numerous observers now cite Africa's aid dependence to account for the general acceptance by African governments of IMF/World Bank prescriptions for structural adjustment Donors are currently also pushing strongly for democratic reforms, which are seen as necessary

to put governments on a more secure political foundation as well as a pre-requisite for stemming Africa's economic decline Recently, many analysts have pointed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe

as an additional reason for Africa's reorientation towards liberalism Military and financial support for ostensibly left-wing rulers has evaporated On their part, western countries now have little reason to support self-proclaimed anti-communist governments on the continent Partly as a consequence of this, the National Party in South Africa inaugurated negotiations with the liberation movement These negotiations have resulted in a temporary power-sharing agreement and

in the election of a Constitutional Assembly in April 1994 Hence, another rationale has been removed in the Southern African countries for their adherence to old ideas of economic nationalism and political regimentation

THE CHANGING INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT OF

ZIMBABWEAN POLICY-MAKING

Although changes in Eastern Europe have weakened the appeal of the Marxist-Leninist ideology adopted by ZANU (PF) in the 1970s, the party's policies since independence, in 1980, have borne little resemblance to Marxist-Leninist practice as it has been seen elsewhere Among the country's political elite, firm adherents to Marxism-Leninism have been relatively few in number Neither the Soviet Union nor its satellites were ever a source of funding for Zimbabwe -development aid has always come mostly from the West, and the country is rather well integrated into the world economy despite its legacy of import-substituting industrialisation During the guerrilla war against the minority regime of Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front in the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Mugabe's ZANU obtained its main 'anti-imperialist' ally outside of Africa in the People's Republic of China The fall of communism in Eastern Europe, therefore, had few immediate practical consequences for Zimbabwe

The changes elsewhere in Southern Africa, especially in South Africa, more clearly called for a reconsideration of policy South Africa

is now unhampered by sanctions and is determined to attempt to revive its flagging economy The rationale for nationalising South African-owned companies in Zimbabwe and for reducing dependence upon imports from, and trade routes through, the south has disappeared In fact, Zimbabwean policy makers are worried that the foreign investment they once shunned will now not be forthcoming because South Africa will be seen as more attractive to international capital South Africa became a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in August 1994 and plans have been made to strengthen that organisation by consolidating economic cooperation and expanding functions into fields such as human rights, conflict resolution, defence

a Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Calls have been made for the merger of SADC and COMESA

One possible Zimbabwean response to this new situation, and the one largely followed by the authorities, was to welcome South Africa into the fold, seek areas of cooperation, begin negotiations to reduce trade barriers and further integrate economies, and improve investment incentives at home so as to be able to attract, among others, South African firms However, many South African businessmen and govern-ment officials have been keen to discourage what they see as unrealistic expectations by neighbours that the country can act as an engine of economic development and investment in the region South Africa, they say, needs to concentrate for quite some time on solving domestic problems of low investment and high unemployment

Increased isolationism might have been an understandable intellectual and political reaction on the part of Zimbabweans, too The inclusion of South Africa into SADC was not greeted with universal enthusiasm and fears have been frequently voiced that the country will

of formal changes to SADC and PTA are yet to be felt to any cant extent Bilateral trade relations between South Africa and Zimbabwe are also problematic because the old 1964 agreement has been terminated while a new one has yet to be negotiated This has led

signifi-to an effective end signifi-to Zimbabwean exports of textiles and clothing signifi-to South Africa Partly in response to this, Zimbabwe raised its own tariff barriers to these products Many have predicted a 'regionalisation' of the world economy as a result of the end to superpower military rivalry That end has led instead, it has been said, to an increased economic

rivalry between Europe, North America and East Asia that has weakened global arrangements and stimulated regional trade pacts in many comers of the world Notwithstanding SAOC and COMESA, however, this tendency is as yet weak in Southern Africa compared, say, to Latin America

Uncertainties about the practical economic consequences for the region of regime change in South Africa are compounded by the diffi-culties in ascertaining the drawbacks and benefits of global trade liberalisation under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which is being transformed into the World Trade Organisa-tion The liberalisation of trade in agricultural products agreed upon during the Uruguay Round may be beneficial in some ways to countries such as Zimbabwe Nevertheless, fears have also been voiced that gradually doing away with special tariff rates under the General System

of Preferences and the Lome conventions will work in the other

regional changes outlined above do not strongly predict recent Zimbabwean policy reforms

In many countries around the world, fundamental policy changes have been made only in the context of immediate problems with the balance of payments and government finances In 1990, however, Zimbabwe did not face a crisis so deep as to clearly compel change

According to the government's Frameworkfor Economic Reform (

1991-1995), the country's trade balance was in surplus over the years

1985-90 while the current account deficit was a relatively mild US$89 million in 1989 against a surplus of US$78 million the year before Between 1985 and 1990, merchandise exports increased from US$1124 million to US$1688 million, while imports rose from US$922 million

to US$1333 million External debt service peaked at 34 per cent of export earnings in 1987 and decreased to about 24 per cent as the

Framework was written The fiscal deficit was high at 10.6 per cent of

GOP in 1990/1, but could be financed out of a 'healthy savings rate of

the 1980s but picked up in 1989-90 Zimbabwe's problems were of a more long-term character: prospects for future growth were hampered

by the obsolescence of productive equipment and infrastructure, caused

by long-lasting insufficiency of private and public investment Consequently, there had been little employment creation and stagnant

or falling real wages It is my contention, therefore, that it is this domestic context and the internal political reactions to it which are most important to explaining the adoption of structural adjustment in

Zimbabwe This is not to argue that international economic trends have not been significant or that international financial institutions have not

quite to the contrary, demonstrate that they have But comparative analysis tells us that there is no clear association between the extent of economic crisis and debt in various countries and the vigour with which

large variations in initial response call for analysis of domestic policy

After having advocated 'self-reliance' for a decade since coming to power, Zimbabwe's ZANU (PF) government embraced structural adjust-ment in 1990 The World Bank and the IMP had pressed for economic reforms since the early 1980s, but without much success In 1990, however, World Bank support was welcomed for a new Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) While altered international circumstances constitute a background to policy change, external factors are only loosely constraining Domestic politics is of fundamental importance in understanding Zimbabwean policy change

THE DOMESTIC REASONS FOR POLICY CHANGE

Despite its Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, the ZANU (PF) government tried

to preserve the largely white-owned productive structure while it increased opportunities and benefits for the African population Private power remains entrenched in the country's diversified economy and pluralistic social structure Robert Mugabe inherited a system of market controls originally put in place by Ian Smith after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Great Britain in 1965 These controls were intended to benefit the Europeans; hence, Smith's government shielded industry from international competition, subsidised large-scale agriculture and protected European wages and salaries After

1980, ZANU (PF) used and extended these controls so as to benefit the majority: industrial protectionism was maintained, wages and working conditions were regulated, and agricultural support was given to African farmers At the same time, the fundamental structure of ownership was left intact, although state ownership increased and a limited amount of previously commercially farmed land was redistributed to smallholders ZANU (PF) in reality did little but strengthen an inherited system of

dirigiste capitalism so as to favour its political constituency among

African workers and peasants This strategy, however, gave rise to a

number of conflicts and discontents which undermined domestic support for the government's economic policies

Despite the recent decision by ZANU (PF) to maintain formal partyism, open political contestation is barely tolerated by the ruling elite; yet interest groups have been strongly entrenched for decades In key sectors, erstwhile supporters of protectionism and economic controls gradually adopted a favourable attitude towards liberalising reforms In conjunction with the World Bank in particular, the various organisations representing producer interests in the country began to lobby an originally recalcitrant government for structural adjustment A core argument in this study is that Zimbabwe's ESAP represents the successful outcome of the lobbying efforts of certain domestic interest groups as well as of the World Bank and other donors This argument goes against the grain of important theories in political economy

multi-POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, INTEREST GROUPS AND THE STATE

For the past quarter-century, development studies have been strongly influenced by analyses which emphasise the structural obstacles to modernisation Such impediments are thought to originate in both the international economic system and domestic political economies Consequently, a search has often been made for forms of political organisation and particular institutional devices which may serve to break down apparent barriers to change Many neo-Marxists and neo-liberals alike have counted on 'state autonomy' to function as such a device Yet, many others now claim that where state-centric models of development have been followed, they have often had strongly negative consequences There is no lack of evidence in Africa's post-indepen-dence experience to support that assertion

Meanwhile, a 'new institutionalism' has emerged to guide research

in political science and economics Political institutions, it is said, should be studied in their own right They should be seen, to use more technical language, as independent variables insofar as they structure the possibilities for access to the portals of power by various ideas and

of various societal pressures Many scholars use this perspective to give added refinement to state-centric theories The concept of political institutions, however, transcends the analytical state-society divide Parties, interest groups, and other political associations, as well as

informal patron-client networks, are alternative institutional devices by which the preferences of groups and classes in society may be channelled with varying degrees of effectiveness into a country's policy-making bodies: bureaucracies, legislatures, governments While governmental policy may not be a simple reflection of the power-weighted preferences of societal actors, societal organisation is some-times a potent resource for influencing the actions of bureaucrats and politicians An institutional perspective on economic policy-making might therefore start with an analysis of how societal actors organise to bring their influence to bear upon government, and proceed to studying how governments employ their own organisational resources in order

to meet, modify or resist societal demands

For many of those who have become exasperated with the failures

of statism in Africa, the strengthening of civil society represents a necessary antidote They reject the claims of civilian and military autocrats to represent uniform national aspirations and exclusive knowledge about how to attain them Civil society as understood here denotes a space for organising, in partial or complete autonomy from governmental influence, interests that are shared among a certain number of individuals and that transcend bonds of family and their extensions such as lineage and clan Organisations which normally do

so include political parties; civic organisations; ethnic associations; churches; farmers' associations; trade unions; chambers of commerce, industry and mining; and so forth In this study, we focus specifically

on economic interest groups and political parties

Empirical analyses of the effects of interest group politics are heavily influenced by normative considerations- to a large extent, by whether or not one believes in the benefit to a country of the policies which ostensibly result For much of this century in Europe and North America, interest group politics has been associated with a form of managed and regulated capitalism which was subjected to increasing scrutiny in the late 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s From both the right and left of the political spectrum, group politics came under attack for being but the expression of particular, vested interests inimical to the legitimate concerns of broader segments of society For Marxists and other radicals, pluralist democracy institutionalised the dominance of capitalists over the workers, of the 'haves' over the 'have-nots', of the few over the many; for conservatives, it militated against the adoption

of policies deemed to be in the national interest In the non-Western world, the perpetuation of policies of economic nationalism is similarly often explained with reference to the political power of interest groups

The solutions advocated in response to the purported failings of interest group politics have been many Those who profess to be able

to ascertain and act upon the needs of the whole rather than the part

-be that need defined as national self-sufficiency, free-market orientation, socialised production and distribution, equality or some other goal -have frequently favoured centralisation of power by the chief executive, the top-level bureaucracy, the single party, or the vanguard party Those who adhere broadly to liberal-democratic ideas but recognise a potential conflict between certain national goals and private aspirations, have advocated various institutional changes within the broad confines of representative democracy In any case, the institutional arrangements for dealing with the apparent conflict between particular and general interests are many and diverse The means of linking organised econo-mic interest groups to the national policy-making institutions range from the authoritarian solution of 'state corporatism' to fragmented 'pluralism', via 'societal corporatism' This study identifies the Zim-babwean system as a particular form of societal corporatism in which producer interests hold sway Such a system has certain beneficial consequences for resolving collective action problems and formulating relatively consistent policies and programmes of fundamental reform THE ARGUMENT IN BRIEF

In Zimbabwe, a vibrant group politics operates to exert considerable pressure upon government to alter economic policies, despite govern-ment attempts to centralise decision-making power and increase state autonomy in order to pursue a certain vision of the 'national interest'

As the institutionalised expressions of strongly entrenched and centralised private economic and political power, Zimbabwean interest groups engage in the formulation of economic policies of national significance The organisational form of Zimbabwean interest groups and the particular institutional framework within which they operate differ from the patterns found elsewhere in Africa This helps account for the characteristics of public policy-making Generally, political authoritarianism in Africa served to repress broad-based organisations along class and sectoral lines and encourage instead the expression of narrow and localised interests In Zimbabwe, in contrast, the politics of reconciliation among the races has resulted in the maintenance of highly centralised economic interest groups which command strong and wide-

spread support in their sectors These groups take a keen interest in issues of general economic policy, growth and efficiency (Chapter 2)

In order to trace the development of the brand of interest group politics found in Zimbabwe, it is necessary to go back to the economic crisis of the 1930s During that decade and those following, a particular structure of state-society interactions developed Interest groups were tied to the country's policy-making institutions in a manner akin to that found in certain European countries, and which can be described as a form of societal corporatism The policy outcome resulting from such government-interest group collaboration varied considerably over time,

as the interests of the different organisations changed with international political and economic currents Flexible adjustments within the broad confines of an 'open economy' defined the resultant economic policies

of Rhodesia until 1965 (Chapter 3)

In Chapter 4, I consider how demands for majority rule were ceived as a threat by the ruling minority, and how this perception resulted in the Unilateral Declaration of Independence and consequent changes in the country's political structure and economic policies These policies fall within the broad confines of import-substituting industrialisation

per-Chapter 5 outlines some important results of the establishment of majority rule and the attainment of formal independence from Great Britain The resolution of the conflicts between ideological and prag-matic considerations, the outcome of the struggle over the one-party state, and the compromises between the aspirations for African advance-ment and the need for racial reconciliation had important consequences for the nature of political institutions and the possibilities for various groups to influence government policy In general, parties and parlia-ment never developed as significant institutions for expressing the interests of the African majority Interest groups were seen by the ruling party - ZANU (PF) - as less threatening to its authority; hence they were able to reassert their autonomy and legitimacy as channels for influencing government policy

Chapters 6 and 7 describe the background to ZANU (PF)' s eventual adoption of structural adjustment in the 1990s The government's attempt to extend controls so as to benefit the majority created a number of strains in the economic system that eventually served to undermine support for economic nationalism (Chapter 6) The major erstwhile beneficiary of protectionism, the manufacturing sector, became the key group lobbying for reform in the late 1980s That sector made a large imprint on the particular manner in which reform was

undertaken The bargaining process amounted to a strengthening of the system of government-interest group collaboration or societal corporatism (Chapter 7)

Throughout this study, I try to show ( 1) that interest groups can be

a force for policy change in general and economic liberalisation in particular, depending on how they are organised and on the distinctive institutional arrangements for mediating their interests; and (2) that interests subjectively defined by key actors themselves are open to considerable modification and change in response to changing economic circumstances and the perceived adequacy of governmental policy in meeting new challenges This may create considerable scope for government flexibility in economic policy-making over time

Beyond these issues, however, I am concerned with the particular constellation of group interests and power in Zimbabwean society that can be held accountable for the 'fine print' of the structural adjustment programme Although ESAP set Zimbabwe off on a course of economic liberalisation, the actual content of the programme represented to some degree a compromise among different views and interests For instance, some degree of tariff protection continued (Chapter 7) Also, govern-ment involvement in agricultural pricing and marketing looks bound to remain large (Chapter 8), and the labour market is only partially liberalised (Chapter 9) Through an analysis of these issues, I assess the relative strengths of various interest groups in Zimbabwe and their consequent potential for influencing public policy Theories of urban bias posit an alliance between manufacturing industry, workers and bureaucrats as the societal basis for protectionism Primary producers are seen as the main supporters of liberalisation In contrast to these theories, I view structural adjustment in Zimbabwe as a result of the pressures not only of commercial farmers and primary sector producers,

external actors and certain government officials Small farmers, labour unions, and a number of government ministers and bureaucrats have tended to resist reform With respect to macroeconomic policies, the former alliance seems to have won out, while the latter has been influential in slowing down the extension of reforms to the agricultural sector

Notes

1 Southern African Economist (Harare), August 1994, pp 7-8

2 See, for instance, Nancy Thede and Pierre Beaudet, eds, A Post-Apartheid South Africa? (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1993)

3 For Zimbabwean perspectives on these issues, see Daily Gazette (Harare), 17

January 1994 and The Herald (Harare), 14 and 21 April 1994

4 Government of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe A Frameworkfor Economic Reform 1995) (Harare: Government Printer, January 1991), pp 1-5 and p 25, table 4

(1991-5 For an analysis from a dependency perspective, see Colin Stoneman, 'The World Bank and the IMF in Zimbabwe', in Bonnie K Campbell and John Loxley, eds,

Structural Adjustment in Africa (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1989), pp

37-66

6 Stephan Haggard and Robert R Kaufman, eds, The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)

7 Paul Mosley, Jane Harrigan and John Toye, Aid and Power Vols I & II (London

and New York: Routledge, 1991) For an analysis that argues that breakdowns in debt negotiations and adjustment policy programmes result from insufficient willingness by the IMF and other donors to take domestic political and economic situations into account, see Matthew Martin, The Crumbling Far;ade of African Debt Negotiations: No Winners (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991)

8 See, for instance, Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds,

Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); James

G March and Johan P Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989); Peter A Hall, ed., The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1989)

Within the field of the political economy of development, theories

of policy-making now almost invariably stress the role interest groups play to maintain a protectionist status quo, while 'state autonomy' is

in this literature, connotes the ability of a government to ignore pressures from domestic groups and classes (such autonomy can go

Underpinning the view that the free play of interest group politics will only serve to stall necessary economic reforms are two fundamental assumptions: (I) that losses resulting from policy change are often certain and immediately felt while benefits are usually uncertain and,

at best, long-term; and (2) that losers are often spatially concentrated and well-organised while winners are frequently dispersed and badly organised Since people must be expected to follow their own narrow and short-term interests to the exclusion of broader and more long-term considerations, this bodes ill for reform Among Africanists as well as others, it has become commonplace to argue with Robert Bates that farmers and rural dwellers in general must be expected to constitute the main beneficiaries of reform while industrialists, bureaucrats, urban workers and consumers bear the brunt of adjustment? This argument follows directly from the idea that reform consists in correcting for the

12

Farmers, however, are often remotely located, have difficulty cating with each other and the government, and are rarely represented

communi-by strong organisations They are therefore unreliable political allies for

a government wishing to implement change in the face of vocal and

In Zimbabwe, however, many groups in both the urban and rural sectors are fairly well organised Furthermore, politically strong urban groups have argued for liberalisation In fact, a long-protected manu-facturing sector represented a major domestic political influence behind the adoption of structural adjustment In order to explain this situation,

we need to take a look at the literature concerned with societal ratism as practised in Western Europe This literature contains compara-tive evidence to suggest that interest groups, under certain institutional and political circumstances, regularly adopt positions and attitudes which reflect a willingness to take into account long-term considerations

corpo-of national economic growth and well-being in addition to the narrow, short-term interests of their members Under such circumstances, com-promises over economic reform may be easier to fashion, with resultant beneficial consequences both for the legitimacy of market-oriented economic policies and for the sustainability of liberal politics in the longer run

Compared to the rest of Africa, the political economy of Zimbabwe

is in many ways exceptional Elsewhere on the continent, excepting South Africa, formal associations of economic interest are weaker and much more fragmented Hence, the views such organisations propound may perhaps be more narrowly self-interested and shorter-term than those of the more broadly-based associations found in Zimbabwe Differences in levels of development contribute, unsurprisingly, to understanding why, since the vitality of civil society is, in part, a function of the development of market exchange and of industrialisa-tion However, an equally significant explanatory factor is the role of governments In Africa, attempts have been common to restrict and control the free expression of economic interest through the construction

of 'state-corporatist' structures of state-society interaction In general, these attempts have been counterproductive: rather than serving to align private aspirations with national goals, they have encouraged narrow and localised pressure-group politics while suppressing sectoral and class-based conflicts Long-standing policies of suppression and frag-mentation constitute, I suspect, an important reason why it is now difficult for many regimes to mobilise stable support behind coherent and long-term programmes of economic reform In such a situation

increasing 'insulation' or 'autonomy' for policy-making organs tutes one possible response; a democratic opening, so that political parties may seek to mobilise diffuse and dispersed support for economic

ECONOMIC POLICY AND ECONOMIC RATIONALITY

According to a great number of neo-classical economists, most forms

of state intervention, such as protection from external competition, produce sub-optimal outcomes and tend to reduce overall welfare in an economy Not only is it allegedly the case that global welfare would be enhanced by adherence to the principles of free trade and minimal intervention; but, with limited exceptions, an individual country has nothing to gain by departing from such principles, according to this body of theory In other words, free-market economic principles consti-tute models of economic rationality

There is a great deal of evidence that countries with an orientation towards world markets have enjoyed higher long-term rates of economic growth than have countries following a strategy of pronounced domestic-market orientation But there is little empirical support for the contention that outward orientation requires minimal state intervention Specifically, there is not much evidence for the thesis that export

that be the case, economic rationality cannot simply be defined as the pursuit of strict or ideal-typical free-market policies but has to be defined in a more circumspect manner This is increasingly recognised

in recent debates

Certain forms of state intervention may be necessary in some circumstances to increase efficiency of resource use within a broadly market-based economy The literature on 'public goods', for instance, emphasises the role of government in correcting for 'market failure' Government intervention may be required, among other things, to restrict monopolistic practices and supply credit where private capital markets are underdeveloped As Tony Killick argues, 'the concept of

"market failures" has proved quite robust against the criticisms of

effective implementation of any economic policy, whether of tion or control, may require a strengthening of the role of public

cognisant of the need for such reforms as devaluation, deregulation and

trade liberalisation, argue against the idea that this would entail the

The key question for development may not be the optimal extent of government intervention in the economy, but rather the proper form of

adjustment, trade and exchange rate policies have been dominant concerns, as have supporting macroeconomic policies of curbing inflation through the reduction of excessive government budget deficits Setting realistic exchange rates and achieving more uniform levels of protection imply to a large extent a change rather than a reduction in the role of government Limiting government budget deficits through increased cost-recovery or through cuts in excessive levels of public employment similarly do not necessarily imply 'rolling back' the state Limitation of the government's role is, on the other hand, the issue where privatisation or liquidation of public enterprises is contemplated and where producer and consumer subsidies are reduced Some forms

of such reduced intervention may be propitious for effective market development, while others may not be For instance, it may, on the one hand, be necessary to encourage private trading where agricultural state marketing boards have become inefficient and exploitative But on the other hand, agricultural producer price increases may easily be cancelled out by input subsidy reductions

That the form rather than the extent of state intervention may be the crucial issue is further illustrated by the experience of the East Asian 'newly industrialising countries' (NICs) Not only is it the case that the governments of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have actively intervened through credit controls, the setting up of public manufac-turing enterprises and the like, but quantitative restrictions and other import control measures have been used so as to shield some products from competition on the domestic market Price controls and restrictions

on foreign direct investment have also been extensively applied But the way policies were used to encourage exports remains a crucial difference between East Asian NICs and Latin American and African countries Outward orientation led to a strong exposure to competition

Asian governments not only set export targets for firms and channelled investment towards them, but made it possible for these firms to compete on world markets through active exchange rate management Overall, the trade regimes in East Asia were more liberal than in Latin America and Africa According to Sebastian Edwards, 'the successful outward-oriented countries have generally had lower coverage of prior

licence systems, lower average tariffs, less dispersion in their tariffs,

budget deficits have also been kept under control In contrast, many African and Latin American countries have had overvalued exchange rates and large government budget deficits which have served to channel investment away from productive and export activities Thus, while East Asian economies have been far from open and the governments far from non-interventionist, the world market orientation

of these countries did have a highly disciplining effect on key government policies as well as on the strategic decisions of individual firms Nevertheless, both orthodox and non-orthodox economists can find support for some of their prescriptions in certain aspects of East Asian policies Therefore, the debate about the relative importance of the state and the market in explaining the success of these NICs is still

Economic rationality, then, cannot be easily identified with any clear and unambiguous model against which the successes and failures of governments can be measured Rationality in policy-making should therefore be identified less with following a set of rigorous standards than with policy flexibility and government willingness to discard elements of policy which have obvious deleterious effects on efficiency and growth Which political factors contribute to such rationality? POLITICAL REGIMES AND ECONOMIC POLICY

In the 1970s, harsh political repression of the popular sectors, including domestic businessmen and workers, was said to be a necessary condi-tion for a successful strategy of industrialisation in Latin America An alliance of the 'bureaucratic-authoritarian' state, international capital and large domestic firms was said to account for an economic strategy characterised by the use of a mixture of orthodox and heterodox policies: macroeconomic stabilisation, selective export promotion by way of subsidies and increased import-substitution focusing on capital goods and other industrial inputs Guillermo O'Donnell called this a

According to this literature, autonomous states and external actors drew initial (but not lasting) support from a narrow segment of local society and forced through a strategy of industrialisation that appeared

to be successful at the time The posited link between deepening of import-substitution- that is, the heterodox aspect of the strategy- and

political authoritarianism was criticised by a number of authors.15 However, several studies upheld the proclaimed causal link between political authoritarianism and orthodox policies of macroeconomic

authoritarian regimes in Latin America and the economic chaos that many of them left behind led, however, to a reconsideration of these issues in the late 1980s In a series of articles, Karen Remmer argued that Latin American regimes of different types have all experienced severe problems trying to implement reforms but that the balance of evidence nevertheless suggests that democracies have handled

argue that broad regime types generally explain little and that finer distinctions need to be made in terms of both regime sub-types and

The failures of bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes in Latin America undermined to some extent the thesis that a high degree of state autonomy facilitates economic progress At the same time, however, certain highly repressive East Asian regimes continued to achieve rapid economic growth This reinforced the popularity of state-autonomy arguments among certain scholars Asian successes include not only the 'four little tigers' of Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, but also Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia Policy flexibility has been characteristic of them all: various forms of governmental intervention have been tried over time, from import-substitution in the early days via state-directed export promotion to the more recent implementation of

a number of the policies that go under the name of structural ment Rhys Jenkins explains Latin American stagnation and East Asian success in terms of the alleged greater autonomy of the latter's

find no evidence of successful pressure by societal groups behind East Asian economic policies Indeed, the suppression of societal demands

This unqualified statist explanation of successful economic policies

in East Asia has not gone without challenge With reference to countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Peter Evans develops

an analysis of state capacity that 'challenges the tendency to equate capacity with insulation' Instead, Evans emphasises the beneficial role

writers challenge more directly the hypothesis that state autonomy is a necessary condition for rapid economic growth and successfulliberalisa-

tion, focusing on the 'second-tier NICs' - Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia where governments are generally believed to have been much weaker than in East Asia and where it is well documented that interest groups, notably those representing private business, have

While bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes in Latin America were dismal economic failures and while state autonomy did not obtain in all East and Southeast Asian cases of success, in Africa political authori-tarianism is almost universally associated with economic stagnation and decline Various regimes- whether military or civilian, one-party or no-party, 'capitalist', 'socialist' or 'Afro-Marxist' - have pursued highly protectionist and statist economic strategies According to a number of writers, authoritarianism in Africa has not facilitated legal-rational bureaucratic consolidation nor modern capitalism Quite to the contrary, authoritarianism has given rise to patrimonial, prebendal or personalistic forms of rule that undermine the rational policies and predictability needed for long-term development Particularism and arbitrariness is the

focus attention on institutional development and call for enhanced 'governance' or indeed for pluralism and democracy, as the World

academics, C.S Whitaker sees democratic legitimacy as a necessary condition for the establishment of the political authority and trust

authors are highly sceptical of democratisation in the context of clientelist politics, and predict that competitive party systems will only exacerbate the tendency to disperse the resources of the state rather than

Among Africanists, there is widespread scepticism that a political constituency can be found among the population for structural adjust-ment and economic liberalisation Such scepticism is fundamental to the writings of those who look with favour on the resurgence of 'civil

as well as those who see economic liberalisation as vital to the point

time when state-autonomy interpretations of Asian economic successes are being increasingly challenged, the call for technocratic 'insulation'

Jerry Rawlings constitutes the African evidence cited to back the argument that technocratic insulation from all manner of interest group

argument in this book is that Zimbabwe constitutes a case where tural adjustment resulted in large part from pressure by domestic interest groups

struc-The comparative literature has failed to establish a clear connection between broad regime type and the capacity to undertake economic reform On theoretical grounds, the most one seems to be able to say

self-interest to establish the secure property rights that would underpin

inconclusiveness of the debate suggests that abstract regime categories such as democracy and authoritarianism may be insufficiently capable

of capturing the more concrete aspects of social reality which are relevant to understanding why some societies embark on modernising thrusts while others do not With respect to Africa, I suggest that one key to understanding this is the specific patterning of the relationship between governments and interest groups

THE EXPERIMENT WITH STATE CORPORATISM IN AFRICA Authoritarian rule in Africa has served, in general, to weaken or suppress broad-based interests, such as those of sectors and classes The means for doing so have ranged from outright repression to cooptation

by use of threats and inducements In any case, African governments have denied themselves access to information needed for the formula-tion of public policy and for correcting past mistakes At the same time, interest group politics has not been effectively stifled, but only taken different forms Rather than building sufficient consensus around a shared view of the general interest, African military and one-party regimes have relied on fluid, narrow and often rather localised bases of support

Whether they were included in the ruling coalition or banned, rival parties disappeared soon after independence in the great majority of African countries In single-party states, there was a strong tendency for the party to lose its relevance for policy formulation altogether and for decision-making to be concentrated to an ever greater extent in the hands of the president and the top-level bureaucracy Elections, parties and parliaments lost their significance as channels for expressing alternative political programmes and for translating them into govern-ment policies

At the same time, African rulers moved to restrict the effectiveness

of 'functional' representation, in other words, of class and sectoral interest groups Erstwhile voluntary associations were often constrained

to act within a 'state-corporatist' framework whereby they became affiliated with the single party, their leadership hand-picked and controlled from above, and their organisational basis nominally secured

by the granting of representational monopoly on the principle of 'one

distin-guished from other ways of ordering the relations between governments and economic associations, notably 'pluralism' and 'societal corpo-

practice They are distinguished from each other mainly by the greater variety of competing groups found in pluralist than in societal-corporatist systems Societal corporatism also entails a greater organisational centralisation and inclusiveness of potential group membership A relatively high degree of voluntariness and autonomy characterises them both, however, in contradistinction to state-corporatist systems where governmental controls are strict on the contents and forms of interest articulation and demand-making

In Tanzania, for instance, the ruling Tanganyika African National Union moved in the early 1960s to outlaw the independent Tanganyika Federation of Labour and the autonomous farmers' cooperatives and to form party-affiliated labour and cooperative movements, as well as

structures for the regimentation of all interests in society perceived as legitimate by the regime were erected in Ghana in the late 1950s and early 1960s, under President Kwame Nkrumah More limited state-corporatist devices have been used, focusing particularly on labour, in countries such as Kenya, Zai're and Zambia An alternative to such state corporatism, of course, has been outright suppression or at least the weakening of autonomous interest groups by denying them privileged access to government or by eroding their economic resource base An illustrative case from the 1980s is that of the once-prominent Kenya

Thus, African leaders have differed in the extent to which they have used state corporatism as a strategy for enhanced political control and inclusion Sometimes state-corporatist controls have effectively stifled open dissent In Tanzania, for instance, the ruling party and its affiliated organisations managed to preserve a political monopoly for decades despite the continuation of a severe and deepening economic crisis In many other cases, however, interest groups tried to break out of the

state-corporatist straitjacket For example, the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions, drawing strength in particular from the affiliated Mineworkers' Union, resisted restrictions on its autonomy to a

movement even became a centre for the opposition against United National Independence Party rule In Burkina Faso, too, the trade union movement has proved difficult to incorporate within pseudo-democratic

authori-tarian state-corporatist integration by successive civilian and military regimes have been rendered ineffective due to the determined oppo-sition of a veritable myriad of interest groups towards such devices The result has been that all Ghanaian leaders have had severe difficulty

state-corporatist arrangements in Africa have tended to become irrelevant for the expression of societal demands and for aligning particular interests with national aspirations To characterise African political economies

as 'corporatist' in the Latin American bureaucratic-authoritarian sense

Making heavy use of the rhetoric of the 'national interest', independence African leaders attempted to justify their development policies When moral exhortation and political cooptation failed, out-right coercion was resorted to in order to limit the effective expression

post-of interest-group demands This was particularly evident in government policies towards trade unions In most countries, the government lectured trade unions on the need for wage restraint if economic growth

his thoughtful study of Kenyan trade unions, the workers saw in the ostentation and corruption of the new political rulers a vindication of their suspicions that the leaders' ideology of 'African socialism', stressing as it did the need for individual and group sacrifice in the name of national development, was hollow rhetoric In deliberations with the government, the Kenyan unions had been prepared to accept wage moderation if some of their demands could be met: tax reform;

controls on profits and prices as well as wages; and worker

demands would have signified the creation of a societal-corporatist system of interest-group mediation through national 'concertation' or bargaining rather than state corporatism or other authoritarian patterns

of policy-making Needless to say, these suggestions were ignored by the government The ruling party opted instead for further controls on

leadership selection, restrictions on the right to strike, and cooptation

of trade union leaders into governmental positions In the absence of meaningful bargaining, however, trade union leaders close to the rank-and-file membership tended to stick to a limited strategy of maximising wage gains, often by means of sporadic and illegal strikes

Taking the rhetoric of African leaders at face value, state corporatism may be said to have constituted an attempt by the authori-ties to distance policy-making institutions from the demands and pressures of societal groups in the interest of national development - in other words, to increase state autonomy State-autonomy arguments are built on the assumption that a political process which allows interest groups to influence policy-making will inevitably lead to reduced economic efficiency, growth and structural change in the economy, because vested interests lobby for the maintenance of the status quo or for an expanding share of presently generated wealth But policies predicated on state autonomy have failed in Africa We therefore need

to ask whether there are feasible institutional alternatives Under what conditions may interest-group politics contribute to bringing African countries out of their present quagmire? In order to ascertain this, we need to briefly consider the policy effects of more open processes of interest-group politics

INTEREST GROUPS AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY

Ethical critiques of interest-group politics in liberal democracies have regularly emphasised that such politics encourages the expression of 'narrow' demands Ostensibly, public-spiritedness is hampered and the

con-ceptualised group politics as an open, fluid process in which a large number of interests could exert pressure and help determine ever

process was often rather closed, that public institutions were captured

by narrow elites, and that resultant public policies predictably failed to deal with important problems, whether these were seen as redistribution

or growth

No doubt, narrowly-founded rather than broad-based groups

logical underpinnings to the expectation that such tendencies would

supply, if obtained, cannot be restricted to those who contributed to

obtaining it, self-interest normally dictates 'free-riding' This problem

is especially pronounced in large groups, whose individual participants would tend to feel that their contributions of money, time and effort could only marginally affect the outcome Furthermore, should they choose not to contribute, they would still enjoy an only slightly reduced share of the benefit When groups are small, in contrast, collective action problems are more easily overcome Hence, policies demanded

by large, dispersed groups are generally underprovided while those of small, concentrated groups are frequently overprovided

Nevertheless, many well-organised, large groups exist in pluralist democracies This was also the case in Africa around the time of independence, and was indeed a major reason why they were feared and therefore suppressed by the authorities Collective choice theorists have made an extended effort to provide an adequate rationalist theory of why large groups exist The quest for such theory has not yet been

to provide a compelling logical critique of pluralist theory, and an effective denial of the liberal claim that competitive group politics facilitates compromise so that a legitimate conception of the public interest can be built

In recent years, Mancur Olson has elaborated a theory of how interest groups undermine the public values of efficiency and growth

this theory, the extent of the formation of 'distributional coalitions', which seek to capture a larger share of the 'economic pie' for their members rather than promote more efficient production among them and in society as a whole, correlates negatively with the rate of economic growth However, evidence suggests that this relationship does not hold up in comparisons among developed countries European countries in which interest groups have been most heavily influential in economic policy-making have ranked among the most successful

suggested that societal-corporatist systems, as opposed to pluralist systems proper, have managed their way through economic crises while holding both unemployment and inflation at comparatively low levels Thus, important distributional goals and competitiveness have been

govern-ment-mediated compromises between labour and employers in which unions have agreed to moderate wage rises, reduce strike activity and accept productivity-enhancing technological change in return for

redistributive social policies and active governmental countercyclical demand management

Olson recognised that 'encompassing', or in our terms, broad-based and inclusive, organisations might be interested in promoting the effi-ciency and productivity of their members as well as in achieving redistri-bution The larger the group, the less of the negative effects of growth-reducing policies can be expected to be borne by others Large groups therefore have an incentive to promote efficiency from a purely self-regarding point of view However, in his analysis of differential rates

of growth, Olson took no account of variations in the degree of passingness' Indeed, he thought that centralised bargaining among a small number of actors would reduce the effectiveness of decision-making and slow down response to crisis, thereby virtually eliminating any presumed efficiency-promoting advantages inherent in such a

however, seems hardly to suggest such a general conclusion

In Africa, we suggest, the forced attempt through state-corporatist devices to restrict narrow demands and instead create broad-based interest groups that would have their demands aligned with govern-ments' conceptions of the national interest, served to create a cloak behind which political leaders could pursue their own narrow interests The irrelevance of state-corporatist structures encouraged a different kind of interest group politics which exacerbated the problem of narrowness and undermined possibilities for enhancing economic effi-ciency

In Zimbabwe, however, where a form of societal corporatism was already long established and entrenched at the time when that country became independent, a greater dialogue between the government and powerful societal groups was encouraged The particular institutional form of interest group politics in Zimbabwe provides a major basis for understanding the government's economic policies and ability to adjust

In order to bring out the contrast with most other African countries, we need to take a closer look at how particularism was institutionalised elsewhere on the continent in the post-independence period

THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF PARTICULARISM IN AFRICA

As already noted, the failure of many African countries to develop institutions for meaningful national bargaining reinforced the expression

of the short-term aims of labour unions This tendency was also much

in evidence in the treatment given by governments to the interests of business In Zambia, for instance, lobbying by business associations in the 1960s and 1970s for modifications to governmental economic policies was attempted with singular lack of success The government had a highly ambivalent attitude to African business and President Kenneth Kaunda did not wish to be seen to directly promote their interests Nevertheless, individual firms and businessmen were often effective in gaining limited, personal favours, such as a particular

en-couraged activity to seek exemptions from those rules As tive discretion increased, policy became fragmented and political corruption ubiquitous This pattern of policy-making, as any student of Africa knows, is hardly confined to Zambia Indeed, the granting of concessions and favours by government ministers and bureaucrats to individuals, firms and narrow groups- in exchange for money, political support, or other advantages - has become so widespread and deeply ingrained in African political economies that this practice has become

administra-a key defining tradministra-ait of the systems administra-as such

Such a pattern of decision-making tends to undermine rational economic policy, however the content of such policy is defined Thus,

to take but one example, some broad aspects of policy may be stood with reference to the general principles of import-substituting industrialisation, notably the high degree of overall tariff protection found in many countries Equally significant, however, is the enormous

explanation for such variation may be found in a pattern of particularised, individual-by-individual, firm-by-firm, 'bargaining'

In a seminal article, Theodore Lowi defined certain 'arenas of power' in terms of the nature of public policy-making in the United

in-finitely divided and distributed 'unit by small unit', such as the tective tariff, various kinds of public investment, government contracts, and so on Such 'distributive' policies encourage coalition-formation among non-antagonistic interests at the expense of more general policy-formulation and the public purse By contrast, 'regulatory' policies are not so infinitely divisible, since 'they cannot be disaggregated to the level of the individual or the single firm , because individual decisions must be made by application of a general rule and therefore become

a regulation on the maximum level of external profit remittance a firm might undertake, maximum levels of toxic waste emissions, across-the-

board tariffs for certain broad categories of imports Finally, 'redistributive' policies are those whose direct impact are upon wide segments of the population, such as social classes Examples are income taxation and welfare state programmes While regulatory and redistribu-tive policies stimulate processes of conflict and compromise among broader interests and the government, distributive policies foster log-rolling among ultimately non-antagonistic, narrow groups By creating divisible resources, governments can therefore avoid the sectoral clashes and class conflicts inherent in regulation and redistribution

Several authors have noted how authoritarianism in Africa has couraged the expression of local demands and the translation of these demands into distributive policies Donald Rothchild and Michael Foley note that ' in Ghana, where agricultural interests were systematically excluded by the 'youngmen' of the Nkrumah regime, patterns of under-representation have grown, forcing demand-making into local, sub-regional and ethnic channels ill-suited for acquiring the concessions

notwithstanding the regime's greater attentiveness to the sectoral interests of agriculture, lobbying is mainly carried out by local communities The 'semi-competitive' electoral arrangement instituted

in the wake of the imposition of single-party dominance, whereby rival Kenya African National Union (KANU) candidates could compete within each constituency for the voters' favour, had been particularly

point is reiterated by Robert Bates, who notes that only in the brief period in the late 1950s and early 1960s when a competitive party system forced the realignment of ethnic groups into two major national blocs (KANU and KADU) was politics marked by broader ideological

Even in a country such as Kenya, where large-scale commercial farming has been long-dominant, the agricultural interest may not be organised wholly around the pursuit of general policies of a regulatory

or redistributive nature In fact, since farming is an activity in which most successful politicians are engaged and since rural industries are operated as parastatals under the heavy influence of those same politi-cians, the 'agricultural interest' may not be defined solely in terms of

contribute to explaining why large-scale agriculture in countries such as Kenya has resisted the decontrol of marketing and other policies of de-regulation of farming As noted by Mosley et al., '[i]n both [Kenya and Ecuador], the President of the country had a personal stake in agri-

business, and the "distortions" objected to by the [World] Bank formed

an important part of the mechanism for ensuring political support for

So prevalent has this pattern of policy-making been in Africa that several observers have detected in it the basic feature of the continent's political economy In early statements, Richard Sklar, following Gaetano Mosca, noted the rise to power in Nigeria of a new 'political class' Access to political power rather than control of productive assets

Subsequently, Sklar elaborated on this process of class formation, specifying various forms of state action, such as administrative

Olson's term, one might say that Sklar detected the formation of a

distributional coalition par excellance Various authors have expanded

upon this characterisation of African political economies, and under the impact of economic crisis from the late 1970s on have tended to further emphasise the economically and politically destructive consequences of what has been variously described as patrimonialism, prebendalism or

The particularistic dispensation of favours and resources constitutes the counter-thesis to legal-rational bureaucratic organisation and militates against flexible and sound economic policy-making and hence against growth Arbitrariness and unpredictability pervades decision-making and destroys the basis for long-term calculation upon which modem capitalism is built The only solution would seem to be the establishment of a political economy that would encourage a greater degree of predictability - that is, a properly organised market-based economy operating according to general rules implemented by a thoroughly 'Weberian', bureaucratised administration Lowi's critique

of the effects of narrow group politics, administrative discretion and logrolling, which he levelled with such gusto against the American system, can be made with infinitely greater force against the operation

of African post-independence political economies Lowi's solution to the problem of distributive politics - the strict application of general rules of regulation and redistribution - is paralleled in the Africanist literature by calls for a shift from patrimonialism to legal-rational administration

Patronage politics may well result in policies which are generally skewed against certain sectors and classes, as for instance theories of 'urban bias' would have us believe Nevertheless, the ultimate outcome

in terms of overall policy need not result from the political pressure of

such broad groups, but may rather be the aggregate result of a number

of more particular pressures The urban coalition that bureaucrats are said to have built with workers and businessmen was, after all, one in which the latter two groups were highly constrained in the manner by which they could press their demands The only way to counter the policy fragmentation inherent in the politics of distribution would seem

to be to encourage the formation of broad political groups in society, whether parties or associations of economic interest

INTEREST GROUPS IN ZIMBABWE

Low levels of economic development, only partial penetration of markets, highly dispersed rural populations living in relatively self-contained communities, and consequent lack of the functional speciali-sation that gives rise to the sectoral and class conflicts typical of thoroughly modernised countries, make African populations susceptible

to the kind of informal, patron-client politics described above However, several African societies had been sufficiently transformed at inde-pendence so as to exhibit a degree of sectoral and class conflict and the organisational forms that go with such conflicts Farmers created inde-pendent rural cooperatives to further their own interests in the market-place; workers combined in labour unions; businessmen formed associa-tions in order to influence public policy That such interest groups were deemed important is underscored by the sustained attempts to coopt or suppress them Due to this stifling of institutional growth in civil society and the distrust of government it created, it is perhaps not surprising that it has, in recent times, been difficult to locate a constituency for the reform initiatives of autocrats Jerry Rawlings, for one, found that even after a decade of structural adjustment designed to benefit farmers in that country, he was still unpopular among that group

academic literature that autocratic reform efforts cannot easily be sustained in the long run unless governments manage to 'create' a con-

illustrates that such political engineering can be very difficult to take Although this is still speculative, it may well be that reforms are best secured where societal actors are given some say in the matter at the outset, either through autonomous interest groups as in Zimbabwe,

under-or by means of the free vote as in a few other African countries

In Zimbabwe, interest groups have been able to maintain a high degree of autonomy from government European-dominated organisa-tions, such as those representing industry, commercial agriculture, mining and commerce, have a history dating back to the first half of this century Africans, however, were to a large extent hampered by repressive legislation prior to 1980 On the coming of independence, however, voluntary associations representing African workers and farmers immediately tried to establish themselves

A number of African countries are relatively small in size and population and exhibit unitary systems characterised by centralised, national decision-making In Europe, countries exhibiting such traits have sometimes developed elaborate structures for bargaining between inclusive and centralised economic interest groups, societal corporatism Such government-interest group collaboration takes place in Zimbabwe

as well, and has a history dating back to the 1930s However, tarian government attitudes and policies have served to limit participa-tion, especially of labour This is as true for pre-independence as for post-independence times

authori-Nevertheless, Zimbabwean interest groups have considerable experience trying to influence governmental policy The case of Zimbabwe, as we shall see in the following chapters, illustrates the point that the existence of broad-based, inclusive and nationally organised interest groups may be crucial to the initiation and effectuation of necessary, macroeconomic, policy change

Notes

1 Several comparative studies of the politics of economic reform generally follow this line of argument See Joan M Nelson et al., Fragile Coalitions: The Politics

of Economic Adjustment (New Brunswick, USA and Oxford, UK: Transaction

Books, 1989); Nelson, ed., Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990);

Stephan Haggard and Robert R Kaufman, eds, The Politics of Economic ment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) and Robert H Bates and

Adjust-Anne 0 Krueger, eds, Political and Economic Interactions in Economic Policy Reform (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) While not employing the term 'state

autonomy', Bates and Krueger nevertheless stress the importance of delegation of power to technocrats

2 Robert H Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley, CA: University

of California Press, 1981 )

3 Many studies have served to qualify the view that there has been strong urban bias

in Third World and African development This is recognised by Robert Bates in his 'Agricultural Policy and the Study of Politics in Post-Independence Africa', in

Douglas Rimmer, ed., Africa 30 Years On (London: James Currey; Portsmouth,

N.H.: Heinemann, 1991), pp 115-29 See also the debate in the special issue edited by Ashutosh Varshney of The Journal of Development Studies 29, 4 (July

1993)

4 This is a key argument in, among other literature, Joan M Nelson, 'Conclusions',

in Nelson, ed., Economic Crisis and Policy Choice, pp 321-61 at pp 354-6 and

Thomas M Callaghy and John Ravenhill, 'Introduction: Vision, Politics and Structure: Afro-Optimism, Afro-Pessimism or Realism?' in Callaghy and Ravenhill, eds, Hemmed In: Responses to Africa's Economic Decline (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1993), pp 1-17 See, however, the articles in the latter volume by Jennifer Widner and Jeffrey Herbst which provide evidence that African farmers sometimes organise in defence of their own interests

5 For the latter point of view, see Michael F Lofchie, 'Trading Places: Economic Policy in Kenya and Tanzania', in Callaghy and Ravenhill, eds, Hemmed In, pp

398-462

6 Sebastian Edwards, 'Structural Adjustment Policies in Highly Indebted Countries',

in Jeffrey D Sachs, ed., Developing Country Debt and Economic Performance,

Vol I (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp 159-207

9 Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of Africa's Economic Recovery (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993); Callaghy and Ravenhill, eds, Hemmed In

10 Killick, Reaction Too Far, p 27

11 For comparisons between Latin America and East Asia, see Gary Gereffi and Donald L Wyman, eds., Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialization in Latin America and East Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990);

Stephan Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery (Ithaca and London: Cornell

University Press, 1990)

12 Edwards, 'Structural Adjustment Policies', p 181

13 Robert Wade, 'East Asia's Economic Success: Conflicting Perspectives, Partial Insights, Shaky Evidence, World Politics 44, 2 (January 1992), pp 270-320 See

also the comprehensive assessment made in World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)

14 Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Reflections on the Patterns of Change in the Authoritarian State', Latin American Research Review 13, 1 (1978), pp 3-38 See

Bureaucratic-also O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism (Berkeley, CA:

Institute of International Studies, 1973)

15 A representative sample of such critics are found in David Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1979)

16 See, for instance, Thomas E Skidmore, 'The Politics of Economic Stabilization in Postwar Latin America', in James M Malloy, ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press,

1977), pp 149-90