Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
****
(s&
On the Primacy of
Politics in
Development
ADRIN
LEFTWICH
INTRODUCTION
AND OVERVIEW
second wave, which arse out o the allied victory in the 1939-45
World War (Huntington, 1991). The percentage of formally democratic states in the worid grew from a bare 25 per cent in 1973 to
v***^
A. Laftwich
^Leftwich, 1993: 611; IDS Bulletin, 1993: 7-8). They all appear
( united in their belief that democracy is a good thing. And most
\ would endorse S. M. Lipset's observation in 1960 that 'democracy
< is not only or even primarily a means through which different groups
] can attain their ends or seek the good society; it is the good society
[itsclf in operation' (Lipset, 1960: 404). The more speculatively-minded
meorists of this view, such as Francis Fukuyama, portray liberal
...
>5$
and its distribution into individual and social welfare) into much
ical contexts, from South frica to South Korea and from Chile to
ence for such a claim? What are the prospeets for stable democracy
in societies which are undergoing rapid development and chance?
And what are the prospeets for rapic!^ and sustained development in
In the final chapter ofthis book I shall try to pul together threads
and comparative conclusions which emerge from the richness of
appropriate political arrangemenrs and institutions for the effective promotion of development?
In addressing these questions I will arge in this and the final chap
ter that, contrarv to the current orthodoxy, what matters for devel
theory and also in much of its imperial practice. This older view
held that many parts of what used to be called the 'undeveloped',
'backward' or colonial worid were not 'ready' for democracy and
that a considerable amount of economic and social progress, plus
?r of the book.
'
yv-
6 A. Leftwich
Since the notion of politics plays such a central role in the argu-
the term. I start from the assumption that human societies are char
acterized by a diversity of interests, preferences, vales and deas.
Each of these directly or indirectly involves the use of resources, or
and processes of human societies develop from simple forms of traditionalism to complex expressions of modernity. In political terms,
according to the general theory of modernization, these processes
have involved a shift from non-democratic to democratic forms of
Waal, 1982), the human species is the only one to have evolved a
sct of conscious processes for trying to sort out or resolve these
the interests, ideas and preferences have been sharp and henee less
compatible.
It will be clear from this definition why all 'development' is therefore inescapably political, not managerial or administrative in the
theory on left and right about change and development which prevailed from the nineteenth century to modern times. The bulk o,
kind, as the whole thrust of his writing on history and change illustrates, and especially his conception of the trajectory of revolutionpunctuated progress from feudalism to communism. Central to Marx's
theory of politics, moreover, was the fundamental postlate that the
'stage of development' of the 'economic structure' of society constituted the basis, or substructure, from which arises the 'legal and
A. Leftwich
condition for the free development of all' (Marx, 1958d: 54). Only
diis could librate the human species from the wheel of nature by
'replacing the domination of circumstances and chance over indi
viduis by the domination of individuis over chance and circum
stances' (Marx, 1977: 190).
^o*^^
Whether liberal or democratic-socialist in their approaches, theorists of the modernization school of the 1960s drew on all these
traditions, both in their conceptions of modernity and in their analyses of the trajectories of change towards it. S. N. Eisenstadt, for
instance, defined modernization as:
the process of change towards those types of social, economic and
political systems that have developed in western Europe and North
America from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century
and have then spread to other European countries and in the nine
teenth and twentieth centuries to the South American, Asian and
African continents. (Eisenstadt, 1966: 1)
12
A. Leftwich
Western development institutions, notably tlie International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and their major members attrib-
ii
Neo-conseruative hegemony
Mills, 1992; World Bank, 1991). The major faw in these strategies,
affairs and the curtailment of free markets and liberal trade regimes.
Reducing the economic power and role of the state therefore became
and bilateral aid donors - singly, but more often together - sought
to persuade many developing countries to adopt in return for loans
worid, and later Eastern Europe, was not simply a technical or the
politics, economies and publie policy from the late 1970s (Toye,
1987) with its emphasis on markets, deregulation, privatizaiion,
(Moslcy, et al., 1991: ch. 1). The aim of adjustment lending was to
promote open and free competitive market economies, supervised by
which links its concern with markets and economic growth to its
not only desirable but also necessary for a thriving free-market eco-
nomy, and vice versa, and that the two are inextricably implicated
Though the net long-term effeets of adjustment are as yet far from
clear, the important point for our purposes here is that the process
of adjustment lending legitimated the practice of openly imposing
especially the IMF but also the World Bank, it now became much
British aid minister was able to say in 1991, after a decade ofadjust
(but also some democratic ones) could and did prevent economic
cumvented. And while reducing its role in the economy was one
means of stripping the state of its power (through a variety of struc
toral politics carne to be seen as another crucial means for doing so.
structure of bipolar international political relations which had dominated the worid since the end of the Second World War (Gills and
Rocamora, 1992; Hawthorn and Seabright, in this volume). Invasive
1U A. Leftwich
11
tionary and diffusionist assumptions, has been criticized as arroganr, Eurocentric and wrong. Likewise, many of the post-war theories
of modernization received intense criticism in the 1960s and 1970s
'one of words rather than actions or deeds' (ibid: 181). The policy
over in Latin America from the mid-1960s (there were fewer demo-
Cold War intensified and the fear of communism grew, the US and
for such friendly but odious regimes, one US president made the
essential political point when he was alleged to have said: 'They may
be sons of bitches but at least they are our sons of bitches.'
Indeed throughout the 1970s and 1980s, official development
assistance (ODA), not to mention military aid, flowed frccly to non
democratic regimes, such as El Salvador; Honduras, Zaire, Kenya,
Pakistn and the Philippines under Marcos, most of them with appal
(Warren, 1980; Harrison, 1988). Why then dea! with them at this
developing worid suggests that preconditions have not been present and that modernization theories, on left and right, have much
to contribute by way of explanation. But, second, I also want to
emphasize the contrast which the new orthodoxy in official Western
thinking now poses to the earlier tradition and to ask why official
Western policy now runs counter to its earlier theory and practice.
The starting point for doing this is to look at its origins.
OR1G1NS OF CONTEMPORARY CALLS FOR DEMOCRATIC
GOVERNANCE
duras 8.5 per cent, Zaire 8.0 per cent, Kenya 6.9 per cent, Pakistn
2.9 per cent, and tre Philippines 3.2 per cent (OECD, 1984; Humana,
1987; World Bank, 1988: table 22).
there are four main reasons, and they are all political: the tegitiniization of conditionaCy (or 'leverage') as an instrument of policy;
the ascendaney o neo-conservative or neo-liberal theories ano ideo-
Legitimizing conditionality
In the twenty ycars after the first oil crisis of 1973, economic progress
in much of the developing worid has been very poor. With some
notable exceptions - for example Botswana, Mauritius, Thailand,
Indonesia and of course the East Asian 'tigers' - growth was negli-
Ib
A. Leftwich
\i
the prvate sector which would constitute the essential engine of eco
AND
this question, there is little doubt that underlying even this limited
visin of good governance is a Western model, ringing with Weberian
DEVELOPMENT
so elegantly reminds us? For is it not the case that any society -
opposite, bad governance. And is it also not the case, from a liberal
and that governments must 'level the playing field for the prvate
sector and individual enterprise so that they can act as engines of
growth', she went on to say that:
a major new thrust of our policy is to promote pluralistic systems
While Western governments have not specified the form which demo
assuming not only that democracy can somehow be made to happen, but also that it will work on a sustained basis and that it will
also promote growth. Nowhere in the official thinking of Western
governments or the multilateral institutions does there appear to be
any recognition of the fact that good or, more broadly, democratic
governance is not something that can simply be had to order. In
other words, Western governments and institutions do not seem
to appreciate that good governance and democracy are not mere
and capacity of the state which, alone, can institute and insist on
it. And the capacity of a state to deliver good governance and nrotect democracy is in turn a function of its politics and its develop
tion theory.
defined earlier as consisting of all the processes of conflict, cooperation and negotiation involved in the use, production and distribution
of resources.
14 A. Leftwich
aligned states into the arms of the Soviet camp. But the end of the
communist regimes also confirmed neo-liberal and neo-conservative
economic theory that non-democratic communist states were unable
I '>
':
.,..
from being partisan with respect to the internal politics of its mem-
its recent presidents, the bank does not impose 'political conditiondesirability of a 'pluralistic institutional structure', at least for frica
(World Bank, 1989: 60). In practice, the prohibition on political
considerations also appears to have stopped the bank from incor-
promote 'good order' (Shihata, 1992: 85), the bank has focused on
mainly technical, administrative and managerial issues of 'govern
ance' (not politics, note).
10 A. Leftwich
growth and the rules ofthe game for achieving it(Przeworksi, 1988);
21
over, does one kind of politics make them all possible or may their
requirements differ? And, in any event, what brings such politics into
being?
These are essentially the core questions which all strands of mod
ernization theory (however inadequately named) sought to address.
They remain good questions. And the history of developing societies
in the last 30 years suggeststhat it would be foolhardy to ignore some
!"' of the insights of that large body of theretical and empirical schol-
ir has been extruded for too long. But what kind o state is most
follow.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CONCLUSIN
tution, convencin or rule is likely to withstand for long the determined threat of the bayonec, che march of the jackboot or che rumble
of the tank. Institution butlding for development, in che language of
the current orthodoxy, which is essentially external in provenance or
NOTES
i
promocin appears less sure than at first sight. In May 1994 President
Clinton reversed US trade policy in rclation to China and granted that
country Most Favored Nation status, despite that regime's failure to
improve on human rights conditions.
REFERENCES
Avineri, S. 1969: The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baran, P. A. 1957: The Pol'':il Economy of Growth. New York: Monthly
d with development.
Review Press.
18
A. Leftwich
19
state, itself a product of the turbulent politics of the late 1960s and
early 1970s in that country. Gordon White suggests that in the easc
of China, the post-Maoist developmencal drive towards a reer eco
nomy could only have been undertaken by an authoritarian state
providing a stable political context for the transition to a mixed
and a free economy there appear grim. And, asJohn Holm's chiiptcr
may be, both are the product of particular kinds of politics and can
party rule of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and its leader
ship - all ofwhich has been almost unique in frica. Although we
do not deal with them in this volume, this is equally true of the two
other major examples of successful democratic development, .Smgapore and Malaysia. In both cases, the politics of democracy has
been the politics of de facto one-party rule. In the South Afncan
case, as Tom Lodge points out, the declining rates of growth \\\ the
tions and practices in societies whose politics will not support them
and whose state traditions (or lack o them) will not sustain them
over, the kind of political turbulence which such insistence may unleash is bound to have explosive and decidedly anti-developmental
white dominance and the confliets this generated, as must the dra-
keep them in place. It is politics that will determine the kind and
matic changes that were generated from 1989. Likewise, the enormous developmental tasks now to be achieved in South frica and
the prospeets for an enduring democracy will depend critically on
city. And it is politics, too, which will determine the kind of state
view> itiis the primacy of politics and the character o the state that
Mauntius and Thailand, not their regime Cypes (since half are demo
cratic and half are not). Likewise, it is their politics and their states
which explain the negative or weak developmental records of soci
from the South Pacific suggests that the politics associated vvith
turbulent transitional episodes and processes between low and high
levis of economic development, that is when growth and structural
22 A. Leftwich
London: Methuen.
Clarendon Press.
Press.
don: Methuen.
Freedom House Survey Team, 1992: Freedom inthe World. Political Riehts
and Civil Liberties, 1991-1992. New York: Freedom House.
243-344.
!is-
WodTBank
University Press.
Moslcy, P., Haragn, J. and Toye, J. 1991: Aid and Power. The World