Politics and Society in the Developing World

Mehran Kamrava

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134615896
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is a welcome new edition, which completely updates and revises the very popular first edition, Politics and Society in the Third World. Mehran Kamrava has brought the book in line with the major changes in global politics, and the politics and social issues of the developing world.
The book examines key issues such as democratisation: civil society organisations and NGOs, 'political society', state collapse, democratic bargains and transition, consolidation and problems of legitimacy, elections, multi-party politics; industrial development; dependency theory and globalisation; the roles of the IMF and the World Bank, the GATT and other multinational institutions; urbanisation; social change; the increasing influence of western values, capital and institutions; urbanisation; social change; the increasing influence of western values, capital and institutions; political culture: its role and impact in newly democratic developing countries; revolution; and gives more examples from Africa, East Asia and rural societies.

1 Political systems and processes

The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed a remarkable transformation in the very fabrics of politics and society in the developing world. Politically, numerous tyrants and autocrats have been overthrown in popular, democratic revolutions, while the few remaining ones, still found primarily in the Middle East and in parts of Africa, have had to devise new strategies for survival and for placating demands for political reform. Socially, constant advances in information technology – from satellite television to facsimile machines, computers and the internet – have made it all but impossible to keep societies politically isolated and unaware of the larger currents under way globally. Late into the 1990s, the Third World political formulas of the 1960s and the 1970s seem simplistic and rudimentary in comparison, relics of an era in which dictatorships reigned supreme, ‘underdevelopment’ was a universal Third World attribute, and democracy was only a distant ideal for many and a farcical gimmick for others. Today, however, the rules of the political game have changed in many developing countries, complicated by the onslaught of democracies and all they entail: free elections, parliamentary politics, independent judicial systems, social autonomy and the rule of law.

Authoritarian holdouts do continue to exist, however, especially in the Middle East and much of Africa, and a strong argument can be made that the ‘democracies’ found in a number of developing countries – Peru, Venezuela and Kenya among them – do not really deserve the label. This chapter focuses primarily on such restrictive political systems, leaving the analysis of democratic transition and consolidation to be discussed separately in Chapter 7. It argues that the political processes that occur in the developing world can in large measure be summed up as efforts to attain institutionalisation and legitimacy. For reasons enumerated below, these two developments assume crucial importance in developing countries, whether authoritarian or newly democratic, where the combined effects of rapid industrial and urban growth, intense social change and disjointed political cultures have made political instability and sudden changes frequent features of the body politic. In essence, the politics of the developing world is driven by continuous struggles on the part of governments to attain legitimacy and in the process to consolidate their rule in relation to their societies. Different types of government develop out of these efforts, of course not without the influence of indigenous factors, ranging from personalist states to bureaucratic-authoritarian, populist or, lately, democratic ones.

INSTITUTIONALISATION

Political institutionalisation is one of the central dilemmas that Third World governments have long faced. Institutionalisation refers to the effective establishment of state authority over society through specially created political structures and organs. In its most elementary form, political institutionalisation is a state-building process. As an unavoidable phase in the process of political development, institutionalisation involves the ‘extent to which the entire polity is organised as a system of interacting relationships, first among the offices and agencies of the government, and then among the various groups and interests seeking to make demands upon the system, and finally in the relationships between officials and articulating citizens’.¹ Some scholars view institutionalisation as a linear, evolutionary phenomenon whereby ‘a political structure is made operational in accordance with stipulated rules and procedures, enabling more regularised, hence predictable, patterns of political behavior, minimal trauma in power transfer, and a foundation for the effective development of policies as well as the application of justice’. ‘Ideally’, they argue,

political institutionalisation enables a movement from the erratic practices and arbitrary decisions stemming from a high dependence on personalized rule. In its success, it also reduces the likelihood of abrupt, drastic change in basic structure, including revolution, since change is made possible in legal, evolutionary manner by established procedures.²

Yet such a directional definition of political institutionalisation – with democracy as an implicit reference point – is applicable only to selective and recent cases, where political actors have deliberately set out to create state institutions and political procedures that are democratic. Apart from such efforts under way in Africa immediately after independence and in Eastern Europe and South America in the 1980s, following the collapse of authoritarian states, institutionalisation often takes place over time and gradually. The longer a state is in existence, the more elaborate tend to be the means through which it interacts with or controls society. Institutionalisation is the penetration, both objectively and subjectively, of society by existing state institutions. The degree to which a particular system is institutionalised depends not on the extent of its correspondence to democratic rules and practices, as the above quotation implies, but on its success in penetrating the various levels of society, hence resulting in popular compliance with the body politic, whether voluntarily or through an actual or perceived threat of coercion. Thus institutionalisation involves more than the mere mechanical penetration of society by various state agencies and institutions. It carries with it an implied emotional and ideological acceptance, whether forced or voluntary, of the credibility of institutions which emanate political power.

In essence, institutionalisation determines the extent of the strength of the nexus between state and society. It is this function, that of a linkage between state and society, that makes institutionalisation so quintessentially pivotal to the political process in the developing world. It is, indeed, as will be shown, the extent of institutionalisation that to a large extent determines the viability of particular states and the measure of their popularity among those they govern. The greater and more in-depth the institutional bonds between state and society, the less likely it is for political alternatives to gain hold among the popular classes. Conversely, the more fluid such nexuses, the higher is the probability of political change and the less permanent are state structures likely to be. The inherently fragile political systems of most developing countries, and the even more tenuous bonds that bridge political and social actors together, are both products of what is at best skewed and incomplete institutionalisation.

It is important to note that institutionalisation is possible only in societies where there is a clear and dominant centre of power that is capable of overcoming other competing power centres. Institutionalisation cannot take place when political institutions are either insufficiently strong or do not have a single and identifiable social mass to penetrate (Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s, and Afghanistan, Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia in the 1990s).³ In such societies, deep communal divisions and conflicting allegiances prevent the effective domination of one group over another and result in the emergence of community-exclusive authority structures. Thus in these countries – as well as in Mandatory Palestine, Northern Ireland and Cyprus – ‘political authority is divided between the sovereign political center on the one hand, and the institutionalised or semi-institutionalised political centers of the constituent communities on the other’.⁴ In the absence of any overwhelming centres of authority, the rule of the state becomes precarious and highly susceptible to shifts and fluctuations in the economy, demography and communal balances of power. For institutionalisation to take place, there needs to be a dominant centre of power that is capable of enforcing its authority over other social forces. Without such domination by any one group, political institutionalisation cannot occur and a ‘stateless society’ emerges.

Political institutionalisation in the developing world takes place through several mechanisms and at various levels. Specifically, institutionalisation occurs first in the narrow confines of the political establishment itself. In this sense, it refers to the development of norms and explicit as well as implicit codes of conduct, ‘the rules of the game’, among principal political actors and institutions. It signifies the routinisation of certain political procedures and the prevalence, whether due to precedent or to legal prescriptions, of certain principles over others. This sort of political institutionalisation is most frequently attempted through the provision of national constitutions, most of which lay down in detail the mechanics of the political system and the relationships of its various components. In a broader level, implicit codes of political conduct and procedural behaviour emerge and dominate the political life of society, frequently sanctioned by the highest levels of political office.

A second mechanism through which political institutionalisation is achieved is through various institutions that link the political system to the various strata of society. These institutions include, most notably, the bureaucracy and other administrative arms of the state such as parastatals and quasi-governmental agencies (e.g. government-owned banks, cooperative shops and insurance companies), its coercive organs such as the military and the police, and other organisations through which the state solicits popular support and participation.

The most prevalent of these measures, and traditionally perhaps the least effective, has been the provision of constitutions that lay down the overall nature and the characteristics of political institutions in elaborate detail. It is often thought, both by political figures and by intellectuals, that the provision of a constitution is the first and the most fundamental step towards the creation of an ideal state. Constitutions are often intended to serve two diametrically opposed goals. For revolutionaries and national liberation fighters, of the kind that pervaded Africa in the 1960s, constitutions hold promises of institutionally guaranteed civil liberties and political democracy. They are official documents intended to outline the contours of the political establishment and to keep in check the powers of politicians and other public figures. Often, such constitutions are hurriedly put before the public in a national referendum, in order to enhance their popular legitimacy and supposed sacrosanctity. In the Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville), for example, President Denis Sassou Nguesso – who had ruled from 1979 until multi-party elections in 1992 and returned to power after a five-month civil war in 1997 – has promised to devise a new constitution to present to the people in a popular referendum. It was with these same aspirations that European-style constitutions proliferated in postindependence Africa a few decades earlier, with the hope that the democracies of the former colonial powers could be transplanted on to the entire continent.⁵ In the aftermath of the collapse of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and South America constitutional engineering has once again re-emerged as a viable tool for establishing democratic polities. In 1998, for example, the Mozambican government distributed 50,000 copies of the country’s constitution for debate among politicians, lawyers, religious leaders and various social groups over proposed amendments designed to reduce the power of the presidency.

But not all constitutions set out to delineate democratic systems. In numerous developing countries, especially those ruled by authoritarian regimes, constitutions are tailor-made to fulfil specific political purposes and to present a mere cloak of legitimacy to norms and practices otherwise considered as unpopular and illegitimate. In the 1970s, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Kim Il Sung in North Korea and General Park Chung-hee in South Korea, to name only a few, devised constitutions convenient for their own personal ends,⁶ as do to this day successive military governments in Thailand⁷ and the new regimes of Africa.⁸ Even the democratic provisions of the first constitution of post-revolutionary Iran have been changed beyond recognition, retaining little if any of their original democratic flavour.⁹

Nevertheless, whether democratic or authoritarian, by themselves constitutions are largely incapable of guaranteeing the longevity of the systems they were intended to create and to safeguard. This unworkability of (democratic) constitutions in the developing countries can be generally attributed to their failure to take into account indigenous social and political conditions.¹⁰ To begin with, a lack of existing political infrastructures, organisational cohesion and a shared political heritage in most developing countries precludes the evolution of political institutions there based on constitutional models imported from the West. Efforts at wholesale constitutional engineering have met with little success because they blindly attempt to implement an overnight transformation of political attitudes and practices. Political institutionalisation involves piecemeal social engineering and time instead of mere importation of ideas and institutions.¹¹ In post-independence Africa, of which Nigeria is a prime example, the constitutional pattern of the colonial countries was emulated in an effort to superimpose European institutions on African settings.¹² But the predominance of communalism and tribal loyalties invariably resulted in the breakdown of imported institutions such as parliaments and of concepts such as democracy. Imported European institutions were no more capable of overcoming the centrifugal forces of African societies than were any other institutions.¹³

In Latin America efforts to import North American and Western European political ideals and constitutional measures yielded equally dismal results. Before the wave of democratisation that appeared in the 1980s, despite the devotion that Latin Americans have traditionally had for constitutionalism, little respect for constitutional mandates could be found in the region, with the majority of political leaders observing constitutional procedures only when it suited their purposes.¹⁴ The element of personalismo in Latin American political culture has also encouraged the predominance of leaders with strong personalities over political institutions and principles, thus further reducing the practical viability of constitutions.¹⁵ Similar reasons have led to the failure of constitutionalism in the Middle East, whose political culture is marked by a predominance of personalities and strong elements of patrimonialism. In most Middle Eastern countries dictatorial leaders are often the embodiment of the very political systems over which they rule.¹⁶ The forceful personalities of leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hafiz al-Assad, Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini, coupled with their distaste for limitations imposed by democracy, have left little or no room for the growth and maturation of constitutional restraints and principles. Moreover, most Middle Eastern countries share Africa’s problems of communalism and ethnic heterogeneity, as s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Preface to the first edition
• Preface to the second edition
• List of terms
• 1 Political systems and processes
• 2 Industrial development
• 3 Urbanisation
• 4 Social Change
• 5 Political culture
• 6 Revolutions
• 7 Civil society and democratisation
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index