Structure, agency and regime change: a comparative analysis of social actors and regime change in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article questions why some transitions from authoritarianism reach democratic outcomes and others stagnate. It adopts an approach that looks at both structure and agency and proposes a framework that examines economic complexity, labour incorporation and social forces to understand the power distributions that emerge between economic groups that can affect a transitional progression. Structural conditions are strongly influenced by historical legacies and critical junctures and the article argues that these factors combine to affect the trajectory a state moves in during transition. It examines economic complexity in conjunction with the critical juncture of labour incorporation in the three cases of South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe to ascertain the conditions that influence their different transitional outcomes and to contribute to generalisations about social movements and political change.

Keywords:

• regime change
• economic complexity
• labour incorporation
• South Africa, Zimbabwe
• Zambia

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the generous funding provided by the Irish Social Sciences Platform to pursue this research. I would like to thank Neil Robinson and Tom Lodge for their inputs on many versions of this paper. I would also like to thank Maite Irurzun-Lopez and Tamara Last from UNRISD for their last-minute edits.

Notes

1. Interview with Miles Larmer, Sheffield University, Copenhagen, 27 October 2011.

2. Interview with McDonald Lewanika, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Harare, 30 March 2011.