african democratisation and the leninist option

African Democratisation and the Leninist OptionAuthor(s): Marina OttawaySource: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 1-15Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162051 .

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The Journal of Modern African Studies, 35, I (997), pp. I-I5

Copyright ? I997 Cambridge University Press

African Democratisation and the Leninist Option

by MARINA OTTAWAY*

THE political openings that took place in the early i99os, followed by a wave of elections across Africa, were widely interpreted as the beginning of a transition to democracy. Few persons knowledgeable about the continent assumed that this process would be easy. The obstacles, it was recognised, were legion, ranging from the nature of the existing regimes to the difficult economic circumstances confronted by virtually all countries. Nevertheless, the overall assessment remained optimistic. Slowly, imperfectly, with set-backs, Africa would move in the direction of democracy, and western liberal democracy at that.

It is time to reassess the validity of such expectations, not least since much of what has happened in Africa on the political front during the past five years could easily be interpreted as indicating the persistence of authoritarianism, the spread of ethnic conflict, or the continuation of a process of state disintegration. Indeed, there is a real danger that attempts to analyse how close African countries are coming to democracy, or how far away they remain, may in the end blind us to the real significance of the available data. Hence the need to re- examine why the idea that Africa is experiencing a democratic transition, however, imperfect, gained ground.

THE POLITICAL AND THEORETICAL CONTEXT

The fall of communism created the new political context of the I990S. If the strongest, best organised totalitarian systems could collapse so suddenly and apparently so completely, certainly Africa's petty tyrants, presiding over weak states and fragile institutions, had little hope for survival. Modest support for the forces of democracy in civil society, coupled with judicious pressures on recalcitrant leaders

* Professorial Lecturer, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC.



2 MARINA OTTAWAY

through the suspension of aid, would tilt the balance of power against Africa's authoritarian regimes, several of which appeared to be doomed without the possibility of assistance from the vanished Soviet bloc. Programmes to support the process of transition were put in place during the initial phase of enthusiasm, and eventually acquired a life of their own, as programmes are wont to do. Organisations devoted to democracy-building have become part of the international political environment.

The theoretical underpinnings of the renewed faith in the universality of democracy were much more complex. The first salvo in what was to become a prolonged battle was fired by Francis Fukuyama in a now well-known article that was published in i989 under the provocative title 'The End of History?'.' Improbably going back to the writings of Hegel for inspiration, Fukuyama revived the idea of history as a universal movement towards more advanced forms of human societies and political organisation, driven forth by successive failings and contradictions, and culminating in a system which could not be improved upon. What Hegel had prognosticated for an indefinite future, Fukuyama saw in the present, given the fall of communism. Whatever failings real-life democratic political systems might experience, 'the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved upon', and this signalled the end of history.2

By proclaiming the triumph of liberal democracy as the highest stage of human evolution, Fukuyama gave a new lease on life to modernization theory, a set of ideas much closer in time than Hegel's, and more familiar to contemporary social scientists. Implicitly, the ' end of history' thesis asserted that modernization theorists were correct when they saw the industrialised nations as the mode of civilisation all other countries would have to follow. By extension, this also meant that those which had attained the highest stage of universal history - or at least embraced ideas that represented such a stage - had the right and even the duty to impose their model on the rest of the world, particularly now that the Soviet Union was no longer there to tell them otherwise.

Many of the scholars who dominated the field in the early age of decolonisation assumed that developing countries would evolve in the

' Francis Fukuyama, 'The End of History?', in The National Interest (Washington, DC), i6, Summer, I989, pp. 3-I8.

2 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York and London, I 992), p. xi.



DEMOCRATISATION AND THE LENINIST OPTION 3

same direction as those that were industrialized. Developing countries were not intrinsically different, only further behind. From a policy point of view, this suggested that they could and should be encouraged to hasten their transformation. Politically, it meant fostering the creation of democratic institutions. This helps to explain why studies of African countries in this period routinely assumed that most were 'backward' rather than 'different', and included a discussion of their prospects for democracy.

From a liberal perspective, modernization came under attack because of its ethnocentrism and cultural insensitivity. Making western nations the model ignored the possibility of different paths to development, thereby devaluing the history and tradition of those concerned. Most Africanists came to support the position taken by African politicians that their countries required different institutions and styles of leadership. Policy-makers in North America and Europe accepted the contention, not in theory, but de facto with their actions. It was easier to accept the claim of the cultural specificity of African countries, and to rely on strongmen well-disposed towards the West, than to try and coax reluctant leaders towards democracy, particularly when there was a risk of pushing them into the arms of the Soviet Union.

Neither the arguments of modernization theorists nor those of their critics were new. Indeed, the conflicting viewpoints echoed the dilemmas faced by the colonial powers. Should Africans be allowed to remain under their traditional rulers, to maintain their land allocation systems and their customs, or should they be forced to accept superior, and universally valid, forms of political, social, and economic organisation? It was a question never clearly answered by European administrators, nor by educated Africans themselves, torn between new foreign ideas and their culture, and between the desire to enter the western world and the rejection they encountered there. Fukuyama's thesis about the end of history thus linked back to old, thorny debates and revived them.

Writing a few years later, when it was already clear that the end of the cold war had not ushered in a happy era of pax Americana and democracy, but a host of conflicts, all the more difficult to handle by being seemingly unrelated, Samuel Huntington boldly announced that there was a pattern to the turmoil. Underlying the apparent chaos, he argued, was a clash of civilisations. In an article in Foreign Affairs, which gave rise to as much controversy as Fukuyama's had earlier, he painted in bold strokes a vision of a world sharply divided into conflicting



4 MARINA OTTAWAY

civilisations,3 not ordered by a universal history leading to the triumph of liberal democracy, first as an ideal and eventually as a political system. On the contrary, it was like Rudyard Kipling's world, where 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet'. While Huntington did not specifically address the issue of democracy in detail, the implications were obvious: deeply different civilizations by definition do not embrace the same political values.

Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures.4

... For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others.5

The vision of Fukuyama and the modernization theorists, as well as the colonial administrators and missionaries intent on civilising Africa, was based on the convergence of all societies in embracing the universal values first accepted by the western world. This was rejected by Huntington, who did not share the optimism of those scholars and third-world leaders in the i g60s and I 970s who foresaw different peoples freely progressing and developing their own, culturally adapted, but nevertheless sound institutions. Rather, his was a highly pessimistic vision of western countries keeping at bay with difficulty the forces of darkness of other, threatening civilizations. In Robert Kaplan's words, it would be a struggle by the West to protect itself from 'the coming anarchy'.6

The United States and many European countries were deeply influenced by the initial enthusiasm about the triumph of democracy and its universality, but not by the later debates and pessimism. US policy-makers, in particular, remained convinced that African states, like the rest of the world, could be coaxed towards democracy. They even convinced themselves that it was possible to do so with a minimum of expenditure - a conviction dictated less by reason than by cuts in the foreign aid budget. The question was not whether, but how.

3 Samuel Huntington, 'The Clash of Civilizations?', in Foreign Affairs (New York), 72, 3, Summer I993, pp. 2I-49. See also, The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate (New York, I993), which includes the original article, as well as commentaries.

4 Huntington, 'The Clash of Civilizations?', p. 40. 5 Ibid. p. 49. 6 Robert Kaplan, 'The Coming Anarchy', in Atlantic Monthly (Boston), February I994,

pp. 44-76.




FROM THEORY TO POLICY

The initial approach was rather simplistic. Since the most visible, clear-cut difference between democratic and authoritarian countries is that the former periodically hold multi-party elections and the latter do not, as many African regimes as possible must be helped - if necessary, forced - to organise elections. With surprising speed, a veritable 'elections industry' developed around the world, acquiring increased complexity and sophistication as time went by. Starting from the relatively simple task of fielding monitors and observers to help keep transitional elections as free and fair as possible, coalitions of donors moved on to the daunting task of organising elections in countries, such as Angola or Cambodia, where peace had barely been achieved.

The United Nations developed considerable elections expertise. So did the US and several European states, through newly formed pro- democracy non-governmental organisations (NGOs) supported by government funds. Not surprisingly, their concerns were welcomed and encouraged in a number of states by opposition movements, particularly those that were too weak to force the end of single-party rule themselves. As a result, donors could always justify attempts to impose elections with the argument that they were simply backing what was widely wanted, and increasing the chances of success of a political process that was already underway.

That elections were not sufficient to bring about meaningful democracy became abundantly clear very soon. They could not be held in a vacuum, and in any case their outcome was frequently disappointing. The elections industry thus expanded into a democracy industry. Newly elected members of parliament and their staffs had to be taught the 'rules of the game', judicial reforms needed to be supported, laws regulating the formation of associations and the functioning of the media had to be amended, and the process of strengthening civil society and political parties, as well as of educating citizens to the meaning and functioning of democracy, needed to be continued.

The more sophisticated the approach to multi-partyism became, moving from observing elections to crafting democratic societies, the more far-reaching became the assumptions on which the activities were based. Obstacles in the way of monitoring elections successfully were numerous, but of a practical and logistical nature. Although attempts to strengthen democratic institutions were more ambitious, long term, and politically intrusive undertakings, they could still be regarded as



6 MARINA OTTAWAY

being in the category of training and technical assistance. But projects dealing with civil society fell conceptually in the realm of social engineering, despite the fact that they translated modestly into small amounts of financial support for nascent NGOs - some office equip- ment here, training there, a computer, the printing of a pamphlet, a conference.7

The focus on civil society that came to characterise democracy programmes was rooted partly in austerity-driven pragmatism, but also in the output of scholars who started documenting how ordinary people carved out for themselves spaces for autonomous action that allowed them to survive in even the most authoritarian states. Indeed, the more incompetent and corrupt the central regime, the more a variety of mainly informal organisations began to emerge in both urban and rural areas. Traditional and non-traditional networks and mechanisms, many illegal, allowed people to carry on with their everyday lives in the face of governmental failures.8

Other writers concluded that the strength of civil society was the key to democracy. Most notably, Robert Putnam introduced the concept of ' social capital' in the lexicon of democratization as a result of his study of civil traditions in modern Italy. The accumulation of a rich social capital of associational life in northern Italy explained why the new regional governments there functioned democratically, while virtually identical entities relied heavily on clientelism in the associational void of the southern part of the country.9 Putnam argued that differences in the availability of social capital could be traced back to events and trends in the late Middle Ages. This should have been a highly depressing thought for donors in the West, but was overlooked and replaced by the optimistic conviction that the needed social capital could be built up quickly with the help of small grants and training programmes.

Scholars seldom influence the thinking of policy-makers unless their studies fulfil both political and financial requirements. During the I 980s the Washington-based international financial institutions felt obliged to channel funds through NGOs that were supposedly more capable of bringing real development to the people than large

7 On programmes sponsored by the United States in Africa, see Marina Ottaway, 'African Democratization: an update', in CSIS Africa Notes (Washington, DC), I7I, April I995.

8 A study that played an influential r6le in calling attention to the importance of civil society was Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan (eds.), The Precarious Balance: states and society in Africa (Boulder, i988).

9 Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: civic traditions in modern Italy (Princeton, I993).




bureaucracies. In the same period, the US Agency for International Development came under considerable political pressure to work through supposedly more efficient private contractors. Above all, the decrease in flows of aid made civil society projects attractive: they were mostly small and cheap, and they relied on NGOs, which were automatically considered part of the private sector even when their funds came almost entirely from governmental sources.

The conclusion that the time for democracy in Africa had arrived, and that the West could speed up the process, was thus not reached inductively by studying trends in the continent, but deductively from theories and the experience of other countries. The end of communism engendered a sense of triumph, especially in the United States, and a renewed conviction that democracy was not only possible but also inevitable.

LOOKING AT AFRICA

The widespread evidence that Africans are dissatisfied with their leaders, and that they want change, does not mean that conditions are favourable for democracy. The question whether the continent is 'ready for democracy' cannot be answered easily. The idea that there is a single set of conditions that makes the process possible, and which precludes transformation if it is absent, can be readily discarded. Even the most superficial historical knowledge suggests that countries have democratized under very different circumstances. It is difficult to think of a set of conditions common to nineteenth-century Britain, post- Franco Spain, and Japan after World War II, for example.

But this does not allow us to jump to the conclusion that democratization is always possible in the short or medium term - there is little or no point trying to discuss what might be feasible in an indefinite future. Nor can we conclude that there are no conditions more favourable to democratic transformation than others. Putnam's study, for example, shows clearly that different circumstances favoured the establishment of democratic regional institutions in some parts of Italy and hampered it in others. Conditions, in other words, do matter. The list of those found to be associated with democratic transitions is long and disparate. Obviously some conditions are relevant to Africa, others less so.

The international context, with its dominant ideas and demonstration effects, is important. Indeed, democracy appears to have come in a number of waves, three of which have been usefully recognised by Huntington. In the first, affecting mostly Europe and



8 MARINA OTTAWAY

North America, transformations were essentially domestic affairs. In the second, which started after World War II, outside pressures became a much greater component. Germany and Japan, for example, started democratizing after a military defeat and under US occupation, while most colonies in Africa were endowed with self-governing institutions by the metropolitan powers at the time of independence. As for the 'third wave', which Huntington deals with at length in his I99I book - dating from the uprising of the armed forces in Portugal in I974 and extending to much of Southern Europe and Latin America by I990 -

this was also largely internal, although here too, the demonstration effects were undoubtedly important.10 In addition, we now know that the fall of the Berlin Wall in I 990 marked the beginning of what might be categorised as the still ongoing, fourth wave.

But although external conditions should be considered favourable at present, creating a pull on non-democratic African regimes, they are not sufficient. Other factors that are often mentioned as making democracy possible include: evidence of economic development, the existence of an enterprising bourgeoisie, high levels of literacy, and, more recently, a rich social capital or a 'vibrant' civil society. Countries with such characteristics can probably make the transition with greater ease than those which have virtually no bourgeoisie, hierarchical relationships, and a stagnant economy that provides few opportunities for social mobility. However, such statements only offer a broad indication of favourable conditions, not strict parameters. Economic prosperity is relative to time and place, and some very wealthy nations, Saudi Arabia for example, give no sign that a democratic transformation can be expected in the near future. As for the members of a sizeable middle class, they have promoted progressive ideals in some countries and periods, but supported right-wing authoritarian regimes in others.

Everyday conditions in Africa, with all the caveats outlined above, appear singularly unfavourable to democracy at present. With the possible exception of South Africa, what countries in the continent have undergone the kind of rapid socio-economic transformation since the i960s that suggests that democracy is more likely to succeed now than at independence? To be sure, some have become much more

urbanised, but they are not much more industrialized and un- employment has increased. The young have more educational

10 Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: democratization in the late twentieth century (Norman, OK,

I99').




opportunities, but most families have not been brought into the new world of literacy and technology. Civil society has shown its resilience and capacity to resist the encroachments of the authoritarian state, as during the colonial era. Unfortunately, contemporary studies of civil society in Africa, mostly by political scientists, seem to be almost totally divorced from the work on urban associations and urban-rural networks undertaken by sociologists and anthropologists in the I950S

and i96os. The result is that we have no clear idea whether African civil society is stronger and better organised today than it was 30 years ago, or how present features may differ.

South Africa is at least in part an exception. First, economic transformation there had a well-documented political impact. The greater demand for skilled labour by technologically more advanced mining and industrial enterprises forced the Government in the i98os to relax the laws designed to keep blacks as migrant labourers sojourning only temporarily in the cities. Laws stopped being enforced even before they were formally abrogated. This was not democracy, to be sure, but was evidence of considerable cracks in the apartheid system. Secondly, civil society became more mobilised and organised during the i98os than at any time in the past, mainly through the network of 'civics' that emerged in the townships to become eventually grouped under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front.1" The process of democracy-building is thus taking place under different socio-economic as well as political conditions in South Africa than in the rest of the continent.

There are, to be sure, considerable variations from country to country that would need to be considered in a more detailed discussion of these issues. But only a very few have reached a level of socio- economic development that by itself creates the need for broadening the government's basis of support in order to give a greater voice in politics for the populace. This does not mean that democratisation is impossible. Rather, it suggests that if it is going to take place, the pressures will have to be exclusively political in nature, rather than emerging slowly from an evolution of socio-economic conditions.

"' Tom Lodge and Bill Nasson, All, Here, and Now: black politics in South Africa in the 198os (London, I992).



IO MARINA OTTAWAY

THE LENINIST OPTION

Confronted with Marx's assumption that a socialist revolution could only take place in an industrialized society with a large proletariat, as well as evidence that Russia was nowhere close to satisfying those preconditions, Lenin was unwilling to wait for history to take its course and hence sought to devise a shortcut. Political organisation could make up for the missing underlying conditions, he concluded. In turn, the formation of a strong vanguard party could be used to engineer the socio-economic changes deemed indispensable to support a socialist system in the long run.

Democratic transformation in Africa is envisaged today by western policy-makers in strikingly similar terms. Even the most optimistic among them implicitly recognise that conditions are not favourable to democracy. However, there is a short-cut. External pressure, support, and expertise can make elections happen, strengthen parties, and create institutions. But this is not enough: civil society must also be strengthened to provide the underpinnings for the new democratic structures. The process is much more benign than the one envisaged by Lenin, of course. The Soviet socialist man was to be created through a deliberately brutal process of forced collectivisation.12 The new African democratic man will be created through civic education by grass-roots NGOs. But the assumption that the right political institutions and processes can make up for poor underlying conditions is the same, as is the belief that deliberate plans can change the society in the desired directions.

What might be described as a Leninist approach to democratic transformation failed in Africa when attempted by the colonial powers at the time of independence. France and Britain tried to make a number of states instantly democratic by virtually writing their constitutions and setting up their new institutions. Conditions were probably more favourable then than they are now: political movements had mobilised large segments of the population, and in most countries they had not only fought against the colonial powers but also competed

12 Document 24 in Richard Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin: from the secret archive (New Haven, CT, i996), shows Lenin's handwritten instructions to the communists of the Penza district that they should 'Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers'. According to George R. Urban in The Sunday Times (London), I 7 November i996, 'We can now see Lenin as a man whose outstanding brain power and unbending resolve were harnessed, from the beginning, to a scheme of things so Utopian in their purpose and wicked in their execution that only genetic change in the nature of Man would have made possible their practical realisation.'



DEMOCRATISATION AND THE LENINIST OPTION II

with each other, thereby creating the beginnings of a multi-party system. And while social and economic indicators at the time revealed small middle and working classes, a virtually non-existent entre- preneurial stratum, and, in most cases, very low levels of education, there was at least a strong sense of optimism and hope on the continent.

Almost concurrently, the Leninist option of socialist transformation failed in Africa, to the dismay of the USSR, especially. Considerable efforts were devoted by Soviet and Eastern European advisors to train party cadres and organise Leninist parties, as well as to set up the basic mechanisms of economic control and planning, notably in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Angola. In the end, the consolidation of socialism by using these new institutions to change the society was not even seriously attempted because they were never properly established.

Attempts to engineer political systems in Africa have thus failed before in both their democratic and socialist variants. They focused above all on institutions, and not social transformation. The colonial powers were hampered by their own ambivalence about the changes they wanted to see - they trained young men in their universities, but also gave official recognition to traditional authorities, thus sending at best mixed signals. As for the project of creating a new socialist man, this floundered on the reality of Africa's subsistence households, which defeated efforts to plan economic development and create a proletariat.

The problem in consolidating new political systems in Africa thus appears to have been the underlying socio-economic structures. It is relatively easy to set up formal institutions, but difficult to transform the society enough to support them on a lasting basis. What kind of organizations can be effective under African conditions?

RETHINKING CIVIL SOCIETY

The only guarantee that a government will remain democratic is the existence of a strong opposition. Otherwise, institutions providing for the separation of powers and constitutions guaranteeing human rights - in other words, all the essential features of democracy - do not work. Although no political system can be considered democratic in the absence of any countervailing centres of power, their importance is not clearly acknowledged in programmes designed to strengthen civil society, probably because their process of creation runs the risk of becoming too conflictual.

We accept the need for political parties to compete and curb each other's power. But when we think of civil society, we emphasise the



I2 MARINA OTTAWAY

advantages of local initiatives and autonomy, hoping that, in the end, such activities will curb the power of the state. The goal is the emergence of a thousand points of light, and support is given to small pro-democracy NGOs, human rights groups, and struggling inde- pendent newspapers. We look with suspicion at large organisations with a mass appeal in the belief that civil society ought to be decentralized, with a mosaic of small clubs and associations trying to protect their interests, and thus harnessing the excessive power and authoritarian tendencies of the state. We promote, in other words, de Tocqueville's vision of democracy.

But the state in Africa has little in common with the situation in America during the I83os. Decentralised organizations, pursuing special interests, were sufficient to countervail the power of a government that was distant and minimalist in outlook, and politics was, for the most part, truly local. Elsewhere, by way of contrast, democracy became a means of protection against a centralised and authoritarian state. The countervailing forces that emerged were of a very different nature: they were often internally authoritarian political parties and trade unions capable of mobilising their mass membership. In many European countries it was such essentially undemocratic organizations, subject to the 'iron laws of oligarchy', as Robert Michels argued, that curbed the power of the government and made democracy possible.13

The African political systems with which democratic forces have to contend are centralized and authoritarian in outlook. Personal power exercised through a network of clients, rather than the rule of law implemented by an impersonal and impartial bureaucracy, has been the goal of most strong leaders in weak states. African regimes have become peculiar hybrids: patrimonial, but with modern aspirations to regulate and guide all aspects of social and economic life; poor, with meagre financial and organizational resources, but with ambitious plans for social and economic development; and 'soft', but with an authoritarian core. Hence the existence of states precariously poised between repression and disintegration. Zaire is paradigmatic in this respect, with Mobutu Sese Seko presiding over a disintegrating country, despite a patrimonial system endlessly able to repress and co- opt opposition groups. This is probably the worst case scenario for democratization, which requires the weakening of the incumbent

13 Robert Michels, Political Parties. A Sociological Study of Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York, I949), pp. 32ff.



DEMOCRATISATION AND THE LENINIST OPTION I3

regime, but the continued strength (or, at the minimum, existence) of the state.

Engineering democracy in Africa may require undertaking simul- taneously two conflicting tasks. The first is simply to keep the 'soft' state from collapsing, since anarchy will almost certainly characterize a country where the only authority is local, as recent events in Somalia and Liberia have shown. The second requirement is that of curbing the authoritarianism of the ruling regime. Small, autonomous, decentralized networks are unlikely either to prevent disintegration or to break the hold of the governing elites on the economic resources of the country and the instruments of power. But institutions large and strong enough to satisfy both these requirements will probably not be democratic. Nevertheless, the desired transformation is more likely to emerge from the mutual accommodation of, say, two well-supported organisations than by a proliferation of small NGOs. In Africa, politics and power are central, not local, and the process of democratization can only start from there.

The example of South Africa is important. The mobilised society that shook the apartheid regime during the i980s was composed of thousands of protesting groups, including hundreds of township 'civics'. But what made them into an effective tool in the struggle against the National Party (NP) Government is that they and their diverse agendas had coalesced into an overall movement that helped to increase mass support for the African National Congress (ANC). The emergency laws of the late i980s were designed to battle against what the NP perceived to be, and indeed was, the many-headed hydra of the ANC. Nor were these organisations necessarily democratic in their patterns of leadership, methods of struggle, or even goals. Their members resorted to peaceful rent boycotts, but some also killed and maimed, 'necklaced' their opponents with petrol-filled tyres, and terrorised those who disagreed with them; many believed in socialism, not democracy. Yet they were a crucial feature of the democratic transition in South Africa.

Similarly, what created a completely new situation in Algeria after decades of centralized, authoritarian rule by the Front de liberation nationals (FLN), was the growing strength of the equally non- democratic Front islamique du salut (FIS), which succeeded in mobilising the population. Unfortunately, this story had no happy ending because the political opening was so short-lived. Civil conflict and repression have continued in the absence of any democratic accommodation



I4 MARINA OTTAWAY

between the leaders of the FLN regime and the FIS, despite the fact that the latter remains a mass political organisation.

The issue of democratization goes beyond the question of whether or not a Leninist option could accelerate transformation in the face of unfavourable conditions. Equally important is the vision of the political process that might work in countries where the state, although weak, is both authoritarian and centralized. Hence the need to avoid the unrealistic approach that assumes the key to democracy is the existence of a plethora of small localized groups, rather than of countervailing forces that can fight for power at the centre.

CONCLUSIONS

The view that Africa was ready for democratic transformation was shaped by events in the former socialist countries, and the ensuing dramatic changes had very little to do with the continent. On the contrary, conditions there remain quite unfavourable to democracy. Hence the view that a transformation can only take place through the Leninist option: namely, the manipulation of the political process, and more fundamentally of the entire society. Policy-makers in the West seeking to promote democracy implicitly recognise this when they emphasise three 'engineering' tasks: organising elections, strengthening institutions, and, most ambitious of all, enhancing civil society in the expectation that this will create the missing underpinning for the transformation.

Present efforts, however, are unlikely to succeed because of two fundamental flaws. The first is the neglect of the issue of power and the resulting naively non-conflictual image of democratization. The second is the assumption that this process is best promoted by a civil society organised in diminutive, decentralised components, since this does not take into consideration the character of most African states. But democracy is 'government by conflict', as Ralph Dahrendorf has argued.14 It recognises the inevitability of conflicting interests and establishes procedures and mechanisms for their regulation. By way of contrast, authoritarian systems use repression to create the illusion of consensus. A civil society made up of small, decentralized components is more likely to fall victim to repression than to support the conflictual but non-violent relations with the government without which democracy cannot thrive.

14 Ralph Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York, i967), p. I47.



DEMOCRATISATION AND THE LENINIST OPTION I5

Those who live in what might be described as 'mature' democracies, including the United States with its narrow spectrum of political options and low level of participation, easily forget how hard fought have been the battles to reach their present system of government and administration. It needs to be remembered that the successful process entails a massive redistribution of power that can take place in two ways. The more benign is the result of lengthy socio-economic changes which create new centres of power and a variety of interest groups, often undermining the standing of old elites. The ongoing transformation under these conditions is seldom traumatic, amounting to a formal restructuring of the political system to reflect adjustments that have already been taking place incrementally. Promoting democracy by following this approach might mean postponing political changes for the time being, and devoting instead more resources to economic development. This would be a long-term policy, beyond the time horizon of a government elected for four or five years.

The second way in which the momentum for democratization can be maintained is by forcing a redistribution of power through political means, and this is really what most donors in the West have been trying to do for some years. But it is unrealistic to assume that the needed changes can take place with little conflict since resistance to any redistribution of power is always high, and only likely to take place if countervailing centres of power emerge to fight it out with the incumbents. It is hardly surprising that democratization programmes do not recognise this reality because donor governments and agencies are not in the business of promoting conflict around the world: they see their interests as best protected by stability and predictability. But the political reality of most African countries suggests that democratization can only be the result of conflict - a fact conveniently forgotten by many of those who praise the success of the South African transition.

This is not to suggest that either violent conflict and/or non- democratic mass organisations should be promoted in Africa. What it does mean, though, is that policy-makers in the West should be under no illusion that they can make a fundamental contribution to political transformation in Africa under the present unfavourable conditions, when democratisation could only emerge from the kind of bitter, disruptive struggle for which little, if any, external assistance is likely to be forthcoming. The Leninist approach to political transformation is not one that can be realistically pursued. Democratisation is, first and foremost, a domestic political battle to which outsiders can only make a minor contribution.



african democratisation and the leninist option

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