New Trends in Democracy and Development: Democratic Capitalism in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya

Abstract

This article examines the complex relationship between capitalism and democracy in contemporary democratic regimes in Africa from the perspective of current trends in economic globalisation. It does so by underscoring the complexity of the prospects for democracy as is illustrated by some controversial trends in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya. These trends include the ‘fractured’ executives, as well as the dominant incumbent parties the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the People's Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria, and the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) in Kenya, that have all been embroiled in scandals recently. Using political economy theoretical themes and frameworks to illustrate the contentious effects that global regimes of capital are having on contemporary national democratic politics, the article shows how a democratic crisis in each country is associated with an economic crisis. It presents South Africa's French Connection Scandal, Nigeria's Globacom Affair, and Kenya's Anglo-Leasing Finance Scandal as iconic archetypes illustrating the thorny relationship between development and democracy in contemporary Africa.

Introduction

Harold Laswell classically defined politics to mean the same thing as liberal democratic politics, which determines ‘who gets what, when, where, and how’.1 The current analysis of democracy and development in Africa reflects upon Laswell's classic interpretation of democracy, which examines the ‘distributional’ elements of democracy and thereby illustrates the intricate relationship between questions of economy and the pluralist democracy. Laswell's conceptualisation of democracy is reminiscent of the current debates that explore the dilemmas relating to the paradoxes within capitalism and democracy among contemporary nation-states.

In advanced industrial democracies, a long-standing activism by pluralist forces within national democracies has resulted in the adaptations of both capitalism and democracy. This has produced democracies in the West that constitute mixes of market competition, political pluralism, participation and a healthy state attention to public welfare; however, developing world democracies, especially in Africa, have yet to arrive at this balance.

Nevertheless, especially in the contemporary era of economic globalisation, even for the relatively older democracies contradictions, paradoxes and dilemmas that are borne out of this complex integration between capitalism and democracy remain. Current manifestations of these contradictions in contemporary pluralist democracies have forced scholars like Gabriel Almond to ask questions such as—does capitalism support democracy? Does capitalism subvert democracy? Does democracy subvert capitalism? Does democracy support capitalism?2

With the current article, I will explore these challenges as a guide to understanding specific democratic institutional crises that three of Africa's democracies are currently undergoing. Capturing recent history by peering into the performance of the newly democratic regimes of Nigeria's former Obasanjo/Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), South Africa's Mbeki/African National Congress(ANC); and Kenya's Mwai Kibaki'/National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC), the article will broach a comparative examination of ways in which capitalist development is influencing democratic development in Africa.

To do so, I will link the political factionalism and the distributional struggles within these democratic regimes (democratic politicians and their electorates) to certain processes underlying specific economic structures. Namely, each country's economic structure, which is represented by its neo-liberal economic policy—NEEDS in Nigeria, GEAR/ASGISA in South Africa, and ERS in Kenya—and by processes that I characterise later as a contemporary manifestation of classical ‘nurture capitalism’, whereby the state invests to promote indigenous private capitalism often through ‘indigenisation’ programmes. Specific economic actors, including Globacom in Nigeria, Thompson CSF Holdings/Thales in South Africa and Anglo Finance Holdings in Kenya, play out aspects of nurture capitalism in each country's scandal.

Two broad approaches inform my methodology: political economy and comparative studies. First is the political economy approach to democratisation that will focus on actors—individual as well as collective—whose power is grounded in the control of economic and organisational resources and/or of coercive force. These actors especially vie with each other for scarce resources in the pursuit of conflicting goals.3 This paper, therefore, focuses on the political and economic relations between a political system and the society to analyse the processes of democracy.

A second methodological stratum is the article's conscious comparative study of democracy in Africa that seeks to construct a framework that avoids the voluntaristic bias of single case analyses that is typical of area studies work on Africa. Too often, the discussion of African politics in this respect is monolithic, assuming continental and/or regional commonalities and applying them indiscriminately to all countries. This fails to appreciate the diversity of democratic experience among Africa's variegated states and societies.

Looking at countries individually certainly underscores the rich and varied internal dynamics of democratic politics in African countries. However, this comparative method hopes to counterbalance what may be considered voluntaristic conclusions derived from the processes observed in a single case study. Rigorous comparative analysis is more likely to transcend the mere narrative and process orientation of a given single case study that is the norm. Additionally, it may provide greater explanatory intent about the behaviour of democracy and capitalism in the continent and elsewhere.

Capitalism and democracy: comparative theorising

There are two main issues to consider when exploring the relationship between capitalism and democracy in Africa's democracies. The first concerns the region's context of economic development as a factor that compels an examination of the economic conditions that foster the emergence of democracy; the other factor concerns the performance of democratic regimes and thereby speaks to the conditions required for democratic stabilisation, consolidation and effective performance.

The political economy of democracy

A political economic analysis of democratisation examines the power relations that surround the emergence and practice of democracy. Guillermo O'Donnell has pointed out that in the developing world, democratisation and power relations are more pronounced than in the advanced industrial world.4 According to O'Donnell, the high incident of centralised regime behaviour inclines the developing world political structures toward a ‘delegative democracy’ rather than a liberal, pluralist or ‘representative democracy’. This is to say that the deep social and economic crises that these democracies inherit from their previous authoritarian regimes reinforce certain practices and conceptions about democratic power and authority. Delegative democracy is not strongly embedded with either liberal values or the long-term historical features of representative institutions (O'Donnell 1996).

In their book Capitalist Development and Democracy, Reuschmeyer, Stephens and Stephens conceive of three constellations of power relations that underlie the behaviour of delegative democratic regimes. First are classes and class coalitions. In the context of contemporary developing world, dominant classes are usually configured around political elites and urban subordinate classes. A second power relation is the structure, strength and autonomy of the state and its interrelationship with civil society. A third is the impact of transnational power relations on the balance of power of the national state and the society. They go further to suggest that it is these constellations of power relations that determine whether democracy can emerge, or stabilise in a given context.5

This political economy relationship posits democracy as a product of political power relations for both state (elected leadership) and non-state (constituents, publics, civil societies, citizens) forces. From this perspective, democracy extends from the narrow scope of the political to the wider scope of the economic and social, and thus enables the examination of the interplay of shifting social sector constellations of political groups and individuals struggling for democratic inclusion and democratic authority.6

The crisis of democracy

Regarding democratic performance and its relationship to development, a cross-regional comparison that examines contemporary pluralist democracies provides important insights for Africa. As early as 1975, democratic theorists Michael Crozier, Samuel Huntington and Joji Watanuki explained the status of advanced industrial democracies as evidence of an increasing ‘crisis of democracy’.7 The authors sought to explain the status of advanced industrial democracies as having become overloaded by insistent demands from an ever-expanding array of participants, raising fundamental issues of governability.8 In describing the US case study, for example, Huntington argued that it was especially overwhelmed by a ‘democratic surge’ that had produced political polarisation, demands for more equality and participation, and less effective political parties and government.

The problems experienced by the advanced industrial democracies9 make for important tools for the introspection of the problems of recent democracies in the developing and transitional world, especially those in Africa. If, for example, there is a crisis of democracy in the advanced industrial world, a condition that is perhaps borne out of the inherent qualities of the pluralist democratic system, what then is the prognosis for this same model of democracy in Africa?

Democratic theorist Philippe Schmitter notes that it may come as a shock to discover that a democracy, despite its appearance of being stable and well entrenched, does contain in itself what he terms are ‘intrinsic’ difficulties that may not always make it work well.10 Such qualities he points out are democracy's tendency to be oligarchic, a situation in which politicians and political elite (governmental and NGO) exhibit monopolistic, as opposed to pluralistic, behaviour. In this respect, the democratic class becomes less accountable to its constituents because of a certain organisational default. Schmitter also argues that all modern pluralist democracies experience the problem of ‘policy-cycling’ which occurs when politicians, forced to compromise on policies due to the lack of a clear majority, end up enacting watered down policies that displease everyone, especially the electorate. Eventually this leads to a constantly divided government that the electorate perceive as non-performing.

A third ‘intrinsic’ feature of the pluralist democracy that Schmitter identifies is the autonomy of some institutions of the modern democratic state—the armed forces, the central banks, business investments, etc. While these institutions directly support a given democracy and are required for the stable functioning of a modern nation, there is a tendency for such institutions to remain impervious to citizenry pressures. Since democratic elites maintain the right to protect these institutions in the name of national security and the fostering of national economic growth and welfare.

Supporting the inclination by democratic governments to protect business and investment interests over citizens' interests, Fred Block has justified the autonomy that democratic political elites (or ‘state managers’ as he calls them) seek for certain business classes in advanced democracies in this regard. Block argues that the government's organisational position within the political system gives it a broader national perspective than most select constituents or corporate interests. However, Block also asserts that the paradox involved in the ideal functioning of pluralist democratic politics in advanced industrial democracies gives incumbent politicians the ability to resist pressure from certain segments of business while being dependent on ‘business confidence’ (growth, investment, buoyant economy) in order to secure economic prosperity as well as re-election.11

Yet, even the advanced industrial democracies, and perhaps especially the United State, are having difficulty in meeting the ideal political economic equilibrium that is referred to in Block's model. Instead, the numerous corruption scandals demonstrate the distortion of the relationship between democracy, business and economy. In 2005, former US representative, Randy Duke Cunningham, was sentenced for having received bribes totalling $600,000 in exchange for his help in getting a company called ADCS Inc. more than $800,000,000 in defence contracts. Through the US Congressional use of legislative earmarks, Cunningham successfully promoted defence contracts for his business clients.12 In 2006, the Indian Lobbying Scandal in the US related to political lobbyists Jack Abramoff, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., Grover Norquist and Michael Scanlon on behalf of Native American casino gambling interests to Congressman Robert Ney, a Republican in Ohio. The revelation of the acceptance of bribes by the US Congressmen in return for pushing legislation favourable to business clients of these lobbyists led to the ‘fall’ of the 109th Congress in November 2006.

Despite its contradictions, the tension between capitalism and democracy in older democracies like the US may fall into Almond's first question—does capitalism support democracy. However, in the US, an entrenched, constitutionally and institutionally empowered electorate has greater ability to act as a check on the distortions emerging from capitalism. It is the second question, asking whether capitalism subverts democracy, that is perhaps more pertinent to the relationship between capitalism and democracy for Africa's contemporary democracies. This is apparent as the negative tensions between capitalism and democracy continue to manifest in developing countries where democracy is seen to benefit the economic and political elite to the exclusion of the mass electorates.

Nurture capitalism and democracy in Africa

In the developing world context, analyses of problems that might influence the performance of democracy that are external or extrinsic13 (socio-political, economic, cultural) to the democratic system are frequent among discussions and debates regarding consolidation. However, few analyses have considered ways in which the ‘intrinsic’ features of democracy described above are shaping the performance and future consolidation of democracies of these regions. Democratising countries in Africa make interesting case studies to examine these intrinsic features.

There are differences between developing world and the advanced industrial contexts in this regard; particularly, given the fact that the crisis of governance occurs interactively with intrinsic factors as well as extrinsic features (such as multinationalism, capitalist production, uneven development, and security issues) in the developing world context. As a result, democratic performance and consolidation in the democracies of Africa remain much more problematic than the democracies of the West.

In addition to this difference, it is also important to illustrate the effects of unevenly developed economic structures on Africa's new democracies while also focusing on the intrinsic paradox related to the relationship between the economy and democratic politics.

Adam Pzreworski and others have referred to democratic transitions in which economic and democratic reform occur simultaneously as ‘democratic capitalism’. Pzreworski demonstrates how countries such as Russia, Mexico, and Turkey as well as several other African countries usually bear out the contractions and paradoxes associated with this process in which laissez-faire economic reform and liberal democratisation operates simultaneously. He argues that the consequence of this dual movement of political and market forces in a given national territory produces peculiar manifestations in democratic politics for such countries.14

Constructed another way, from the perspective of development studies, the African cases below offer some evidentiary response material for a question once posed by Giles Mohan, ‘How is the democracy-development trade off playing out in contemporary African politics?’15 Examining a similar dynamic that is contributing to democratic crises in the three select regimes in Africa provides some refreshing insights to the contemporary functioning of democracies in these countries. Extrinsic features add an additional burden to the intrinsic pressures on the performance of democracy in the new democracies of Africa that is not a dominant problem in Western democracies.

One such extrinsic effect is the context of economic development. In 1973, Sayre Schatz' first coined the term ‘nurture capitalism’ within the classical political economic framework of developing countries.16 Observing this phenomenon for Nigeria and other developing countries Schatz observed four unique characteristics of the phenomenon of development in post-colonial developing societies. First, capitalistic production as opposed to socialist and Marxist Leninist; second, governmental attempts to attract foreign investment; third, governmental attempts to nurture domestic ownership of the economy by promoting an ‘indigenous’ entrepreneurial class; and finally, the shifting tensions of conflict and uncertainty that arise between foreign business and indigenous business (which he calls universalism versus nationalism).17

Nurture capitalism continues to operate in Nigeria and Kenya and has emerged more recently in South Africa. However, nurture capitalism under one-party or military vanguardist rule in an age of Keynesian developmentalism differs from its manifestation in democratic politics in the contemporary laissez-faire economic regimes. By encouraging developing countries to ‘restructure’ their economies and hinge them to global market principles (neo-liberalism), post-Cold War, corporate globalist environments influence the character of nurture capitalism in Africa's contemporary democratic regimes. Countries in Africa are structurally compelled to reform their economies in accordance with the global economy so that they can attract both donor driven and corporate direct investment driven foreign capital to develop their economies.

The African context: South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya's network of democratic capitalism

Comparative political economy

South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya represent important case studies to examine the relationship between democracy and capitalism in Africa. As sample representations of Africa that will examine these political economic questions, the selection of the three countries underscores certain shared features of their contemporary democratic performance. All three countries provide important illustrations of the phenomena of democratic capitalism in Africa and thereby help to shed light on the ways in which certain intrinsic features of liberal democracy (pluralism and liberal democracy in particular) and extrinsic features of economic development (capital formation in a global laissez-faire capitalism) are contributing to a crisis of democracy.

The three countries in question are wealthier African economies by continental standard. In 2006, each was growing at the rate of 4.5 per cent (SA), 5.8 per cent (Nigeria) and 5.0 per cent (Kenya).18 Of the three, with a GNP of $587 billion (PPP) distributed among a population of 43 million, producing a per capita income of $13,300, South Africa presides over as Africa's richest economy. While being an oil rich rentier economy, Nigeria is relatively poor with a $191.4 billion dollar GNP and a $17 billion dollar budget distributed among 135 million people. The country's per capita income is much smaller at $1,500.19 While Kenya is poorer compared to South Africa and Nigeria, it is much richer relative to some of its neighbours such as Tanzania and Uganda. Its GNP income is $41 billion; per capita is $1,200, and it has a budget of $5.1 billion to support over 30 million people.

To understand the economic status of these countries internationally, it is instructive to compare the figures above to the US GNP of $13.06 trillion for three hundred million people, which translate to a per capita of $43,000.20 The state of Michigan itself has a budget amounting to $41 billion for its 10 million people. Compared to advanced industrial democracies, therefore, even the richest African democracies are significantly poor. It is no wonder then that in the context of a global economy focused on aggressive laissez-faire capitalism, one consequence of democratic transitions for these developing countries is a crisis of democratic legitimacy, since contemporary democratic politics and processes are fused with capitalist production and the reification of class hierarchy.

Politically, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria capture this dynamic, which large, developing countries are currently encountering in their attempts to consolidate a Third Wave of democratic transition.21 South Africa's democratic transition occurred in 1994 bringing the African National Congress (ANC) to power, with a second election in 1999 brining in the electoral victory of Thabo Mbeki replacing Nelson Mandela as President. Nigeria's Fourth Republic—its fourth constitutional democratic change and third democratic regime—brought in Olusegun Obasanjo as President on the People's Democratic Party (PDP) ticket in 1999. Kenya's rainbow coalition democratic victory ousting the stalwart one-party KANU, in 2002, ushered in the leadership of Mwai Kibaki and his National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).

Between 2003 and 2007, all three newly democratic regimes had been embroiled in political party fractional disputes that began to manifest themselves in national politics as succession crises between each respective President and Vice President. Let us turn to a discussion of each succession crisis below.

South Africa's ANC regime

It took the second election in 1999 and the assumption of President Thabo Mbeki at the helm of the party and the executive power, for the Mandela Renaissance era to wear off and make way for democratic realpolitik in South Africa. Since then, the ANC has been accused of centralisation, dominance and ‘talking left while acting right’.22 Midway through President Mbeki's second term, South African newspapers and analysts were reporting that South Africa's President and the Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, were not on speaking terms.23

The crisis began when the national prosecutor Bulelani Ngcuka publicly accused Jacob Zuma of benefiting from an illegal kickback in a multibillion dollar arms contract.24 The event magnified the growing party divide between supporters of President Mbeki who represented the technocratic ‘pro-reform’ policy stance of the party despite the ANC's radical social democratic roots; and his emergent opponent and Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, who was seen to embody traditional economic values representative of the ‘left’ of the party.25

The friction within the party crystallised when the President fired his deputy for his assailing indictments with the law. While ideological splits within the party explain the Mbeki/Zuma controversy, personal power and ethnicity also played a role even though these factors are much more subsumed. Many perceived the corruption scandal prosecutions and the firing as an attempt by the President to eliminate the opportunity for Zuma to succeed him in a future election bid in 2009. In an ANC alliance meeting in 2005, Mbeki wrote,

I am informed that some within our broad movement, who believe that Deputy President Zuma is a victim of a counter-revolutionary capitalist and neo-liberal offensive, are convinced that as president of the ANC and the republic, I occupy the leading position in the political onslaught against him …26

Nigeria's PDP regime

In Nigeria, battles between the country's executive and its legislature dominated President Obasanjo's first term of the Fourth Republic, in the form of series of impeachment charges and counter-charges between the President and key legislators. Democratic politics got worse in the second term when an internal party dispute within the PDP manifested as a power struggle between the President and the Vice President. Upset about rumours that his once loyal Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, was secretly mobilising against his third term bid, President Obasanjo allowed the conflict between the Presidency and the Vice Presidency to roll over into the 2007 electoral crisis.27

By 2006, Abubakar was credited to have resisted the subversion of his political rights by President Obasanjo, who had made it clear to the Nigerian public that he would prevent his opponent from succeeding him in the next election. Unlike in South Africa, in Nigeria, both Obasanjo and Abubakar were pro-reformers and so their dispute was based less on the ideology of economic philosophy but more on personal power politics and the ideology of Nigerian ethno-regionalism since Obasanjo is a southern Christian and Abubakar is a northern Muslim.28

Kenya's NARC regime

Kenya's crisis began as part of the historic transition elections in December 2002 that brought President Mwai Kibaki, MP Raila Odinga and the National Rainbow Coalition Party (NARC) to power. Much different from South Africa and Nigeria, the Kenyan democratic crisis began as a constitutional crisis. The dispute in Kenya led to an intra-party faction within NARC but it was not internal to the executive. It was a power struggle between the executive and Kenya's legislature on the one hand; and between the party coalition leaders—President Mwai Kibaki of the former National Alliance Party (NAP) and minister of works and housing MP Raila Odinga who had been the head of the Kenyan Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Prior to the 2002 electoral victory, both coalition camps were pro-democracy activists, however, their struggle against the incumbent KANU party set the stage for the later crisis. For example, Minister Odinga claims that he agreed to forge a coalition between his party and Kibaki's only to defeat the then incumbent Kenyan African National Union (KANU). Furthermore, Odinga supported Kibaki's 2002 presidential bid as the NARC coalition flag-bearer because Kibaki promised to appoint him to a future Prime Ministerial position.29

NARC was victorious and Kibaki became President, but Raila did not become PM, a post that was yet to be created. NARC's campaign promise to the Kenyan people was to deliver a Constitutional Reform bill, which would weaken Kenya's overpowering President's office created by KANU's Kenyatta and Moi by re-establishing the role of a Prime Minister as the head of government, thereby empowering the legislature and establishing a people's representative democracy. However, Kenya's crisis began in 2003 when the Constitutional Conference began.

With Odinga accusing Kibaki of reneging on his promise and for further supporting the role of a strong presidency over a weaker prime minister, the seeds of party split were crystallised. Odinga's faction—opponents to the Constitutional Reform Referendum—formed a new party, Orange Democratic Movement (ODM-Kenya) while Kibaki's ‘banana’ incumbency re-constituted the old NARC as the new NARC-Kenya.

A network of democratic capitalism: South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya

Table 1 illustrates the comparative political economic processes of each case. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya's democratic succession crises are examined within this network of political economic power constellations involving the democratic state, civil societal actors, including entrepreneurs, global capital and subordinate groups represented by the electorates. The dominant party and the regime executive's anti-corruption agenda are structurally linked in each case to economic reform policy.

Table 1.  A Comparative Network of Democratic Capitalism

	Democratic units/agents	Anti-corruption unit	Business corporation/s	Economic development program/s
Nigeria	PDP, Obasanjo (President), Atiku (Vice President)	EFCC	Globacom, IGate, Transcorp	NEEDS, SEEDS, LEEDS, PTDF
South Africa	ANC, Mbeki (President), Zuma (Deputy President)	Scorpions	Thompson-CSF Holdings/Thales, Nkobi Holdings, African Defence Fund	RDP, GEAR, BEE, ASGISA
Kenya	NARC, Kibaki (President), Odinga (Minister/Presidential Contender)	ACC	Anglo-Finance Holdings	ERS

Because of their adherence to classical, monetarist, and laissez-faire economic policies, these policies are inclined to structurally realign not just the economy but the polity in ways that skew resources toward global capitalists and national elite entrepreneurs and away from subordinate and working classes. Nigeria's neo-liberal economic policy is referred to as NEEDS; South Africa's latest programme is ASGISA and Kenya's is simply the Economic Reform Strategy (ERS).

The new regimes' elites' use of their incumbency to accumulate capital integrally linked the democratisation processes in all three cases to the tendency. The constellation of power relations involved in Nigeria's network of democratic capitalism involves the Obasanjo Presidency and Vice Presidency, the anti-corruption unit, EFCC, and multinational and national businesses such as the US-affiliated Globacom and Transcorp.

For South Africa, democratic capitalism is being played out among the Mbeki Presidency, the former Deputy President, the anti-corruption unit known as the Scorpions and the main business involved, the French Thompson CSF Holdings/Thales. Kenya's network involves Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga, political parties, the Parliament, the Anti-Corruption Committee and the London-based Anglo-Leasing Holdings and Finance.30

In all three cases, each country is playing out the contradictions that are inherent in the complex relations between democracy and capitalism. Democratic institutions (especially the executive and the parties) and economic structures (foreign direct investment and national economic policy in the context of a neo-liberal global economy) are all pushing democratic politics in each country to the edge of crisis. For Nigeria, this crisis was defined as ‘The Globacom Affair’, for South Africa, ‘The French Connection’ and for Kenya, ‘Anglo-Leasing Scandal’. An analysis of each scandal follows.

Demo-crazy, US Congressman William Jefferson, the 2007 Nigerian elections, and the Globacom affair

Of the three cases, the Nigerian crisis is probably the most critical as it has already borne the greatest brunt on democracy as reflected in the country's April 2007 elections; although Kenya has emerged as a serious contender for this honour in the aftermath of its elections. Moreover, Nigeria served as the context from which Schatz first formulated the conceptual framework of nurture capitalism. Thirty years later, nurture capitalism appeared to be at the heart of the democratic crisis within the country's democratic regime where what began as a power struggle between former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, and his former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, ended in a corruption scandal and a crisis of democracy.

Months before the April 2007 elections, Nigerian media headlines began to report that the President and Vice President were not on speaking terms. Fears were raised that the President was set to abuse the incumbent power of his executive office (the Presidency), his ‘party’ machine (PDP) and his ‘corruption-reduction’ machine (EFCC) to exclude the prospects of his Vice President from succeeding him as President in the upcoming elections.31 This set of actions launched the Globacom affair.

By this point, the fractures between the country's top politicians additionally went beyond a mere a power struggle between personalities. Several third regime institutions became important agents of a deeper impending democratic crisis. These included the Obasanjo Presidency, the President's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) established to reduce corruption, the Office of the Vice President, the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission (INEC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF), the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and iGate, Coneptro, NDTV, and Globacom. The actors involved included President Obasanjo, Vice President Abubakar, EFCC Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, Nigerian business magnates like Mike Adenuga, Globacom's Nigerian executive, Otunba Faswe, Alhaji Subair and Mohammed Babangida, US Congressman William Jefferson, and the Nigerian electorate.

The Globacom Affair had international connections as it involved the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and Congressman William Jefferson, currently under investigation for corruption charges. Through Nigeria's EFCC, the Nigerian Presidency claimed to have been acting on the request of the FBI to investigate the Vice President's involvement in the laundering of money from the PDTF fund to purchase shares in Globacom and other US ‘front’ companies. The Jefferson indictment listed the intended targets as Vernon Jackson, a businessman and CEO of iGate, the US telecommunications firm trying to do broadband technology business in Nigeria through NITEL, to whom the Congressman allegedly said he would pass on the $100,000 bribe to the third person on the list, Vice President Abubakar.32

The US investigation also asked for Nigeria's collaboration in investigating iGate, and a Nigerian counterpart, Netlink Digital Television (NDTV), whose chairman was Nigerian businessman, Otunba Fasawe, who is charged with having met Mr Jefferson during a trip to Nigeria. Among others, the DOJ also specified interest in bank records relating to any payment or transfer of funds from the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF). The President used the EFCC to investigate and indict Atiku Abubakar on charges of corrupt involvement in using ‘front’ companies (Globacom, NDTV, Conpetro) to purchase shares from companies that the Vice President was supposed to oversee as part of the country's ‘privatisation’ programme (PTDF).

The Vice President, whose office supervised the PTDF, was found guilty by both the EFCC and the government's administrative panel led by Bayo Ojo, of assorted malfeasance, diverting funds, meant for PTDF's operations nationwide, to various banks to promote personal interests that included Globacom and NDTV. With this indictment, the former President used INEC (the not-so-independent electoral commission) to bar the Vice President from contesting in the April elections.33 The former Vice President Abubakar counter-charged the President claiming that Olusegun Obasanjo had equally benefited from the shares derived from the privatisation sales in the selling of companies like Globacom. Mr Abubakar defended his right to contest the elections in a court case that challenged INEC's authority to bar him from running based on investigations by a presidential body such as the EFCC. The Vice President won his case.

However, the former President used the power of the Presidency to persuade the Senate to impeach the Vice President, which they refused to do on grounds of unconstitutionality. He then unilaterally fired Vicel President Abubakar by declaring his office vacant. Nigeria's appeal court declared the President's actions unconstitutional.34 Nevertheless, Abubakar's persecution continued, particularly as President Obasanjo had mobilised an alternative candidate, incumbent President Umaru Yar'Adua, to run on PDP's Presidential ticket. The former Vice President was thus forced to run on the ticket of a party created by the displaced PDP faction that he led, the Action Congress (AC). Naturally, he lost the election. It is this set of events which were effectively captured by the comments of popular Nigerian Afro-beat artist, Femi Kuti, on the eve of the elections:

The President says to his VP—you are a thief; his VP replies you are too. This is not Democracy but ‘Demo-crazy’ (BBC, April 2007).

The Globacom affair is intricately linked to Nigerian economic development. Both the 1999 and 2003 PDP regimes, ran on an economic reform agenda, National Empowerment Economic Development Strategy (NEEDS). An important goal of the NEEDS programme was to transfer state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to private ownership and creating an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. The Vice President's office, through institutions like the PTDF, was the caretaker of certain aspects of this programme.

NEEDS sought to restructure the Nigerian democratic state by making it smaller, stronger, better skilled and capable of providing essential services that promote an effective and efficient market.35 Like earlier phases of Nigerian politics, the NEEDS agenda is ‘neo-liberal’. It nurtures free market as means of development and tends to discourage state managed redistribution of resources by recommending the reduction in government spending on subsidies, social welfare programmes and state-directed development.

With capitalist and democratic development occurring at the same time, nurture capitalism underscores the relationship between the institutional behaviour of the Obasanjo regime and its economic development policy. It highlights new ‘global’ flows of foreign capital which manifest through proxy economic organisations such as Globacom, NDTV, iGate, Transcorp, as well as the development of an emergent Nigerian business class which is still strongly aligned with a state political class that William Graff once called ‘the fused state’.36 This undoubtedly facilitated the scandal of the former President, Vice President and their cohorts purchasing shares while overseeing the privatisation of Transcorp and Globacom through the PTDF.

The former President and Vicel President have been unapologetic in explaining these corruption charges. Arguing instead that, for example, the Presidents' purchase of 200 million shares to purchase Transcorp and in turn Transcorp's purchase of Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), Mobile Telecommunications (MTEL) and the NICON Hilton, are mere attempts to ensure that an indigenous Nigerian class rather than a foreign one own privatisation benefits.37

‘Mshini’, BEE, and the South African–French connection

Compared to Nigeria, South Africa is a wealthier country with relatively better-entrenched democratic institutions. The ANC is almost a century old, while Nigeria's PDP is but 10 years old. Thereby, while South Africa's crisis may yet culminate with less damaging outcomes to democracy compared to Nigeria's, the country's political economic crisis is certainly causing deep fractures for South Africa's Black majority democratic regime. Moreover, like Nigeria's crisis, South Africa has the same structural characteristics.

For example, there is an ‘international’ component—a French connection as opposed to Nigeria's American one. The French Thompson-CSF Holdings, later renamed Thales and called Thint locally in South Africa, stands at the heart of this scandal. South Africa's equivalent of Nigeria's EFCC is South Africa's Directorate of Special Investigations or the Scorpions, as they are well known.38 Equivalents of Nigeria's Globacom and Transcorp are South Africa's Nkobi and the African Defence Systems (ADS), both South African defence front companies for Thales.

In addition to President Thabo Mbeki and Deputy President Jacob Zuma, other key actors involved in the scandal included Deputy President Zuma's former financial partner, Schabir Shaik, head of the Scorpions (appointed by Mbeki), Bulelani Ngcuka, former Justice Minister, Penuell Maduna, and French arms dealer, Alan Thetard. Originally, South Africa's party dispute began as a power struggle between Deputy President Zuma and the Scorpion head, Bulelani Ngcuka, who was also a senior ANC official. The elements of their power struggle unfolded in 2003, when Ngcuka accused Zuma of having illegally benefited from under-the-table dealings with his financial partner Schabir Shaik, director of Nkobi Holdings and the African Defence Systems (ADS).39

Similar to the William Jefferson/Abubakar's role in the Globacom Affair, Shaik was alleged to have received secret payments of as much as $8,000 a month on behalf of Deputy President Zuma to promote the interests of Thales (Thompson Holdings). The Scorpions alleged that Zuma and Shaik solicited the bribe as early as 1998 with the French arms dealer, Thetart. Mr Ngcuka requested that the French government extradite Thetart and Perrier, which was refused on the grounds that the Zuma case was not about solving crimes but about political opportunism.40 However, political opportunism really set in when Shaik was found guilty of the procurement crime and sentenced to a 15-year jail term, and in response, President Mbeki fired his deputy president on 14 June 2005. Mbeki announced that this decision was ‘… in the interest of his Deputy President Zuma, the government, South Africa's young democratic system and the country at large’.41

Ironically, Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, wife of the head of the Scorpion, Bulelani Ngcuka, who had begun the prosecution of Zuma in the first place, replaced Zuma. The Scorpions then proceeded to officially indict the fired Deputy President for corruption charges on account of his involvement in the French arms deal. A few weeks later, Zuma was indicted on rape charges.

Like the Nigerian electorate, the South African electorate responded to the corruption indictment charges against the former deputy president politically. Leftist constituencies within the ANC such as the ANC Youth League, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP) all saw the persecution of Zuma as a way for the President's pro-economic reform wing of the party to oust an opponent.42 However, like Nigeria's prosecuted Vice President, Atiku Abukakar, Jacob Zuma won all his court cases too. He was acquitted of the rape charge and the corruption charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. Zuma was not reinstated as the Deputy President of the country, but he did retain his office as the Deputy President of the ANC. Vindicated of the charges, however controversially, huge crowds of supporters heralded him as a ‘Mshini’ (machine gun). Zuma became the President of the ANC on 18 December 2007 after defeating incumbent Thabo Mbeki at the ANC conference in Polokwane. This could make the prediction that Zuma's likelihood of becoming President Mbeki's successor in elections scheduled for 2009 may be an ‘unstoppable Tsunami’ ever true.43

In comparison to Nigeria's crisis, it is South Africa's better-entrenched institutions and the ideological attributes of the country's politics that are perhaps the reasons why the relationship between the President and Vice President has returned to status quo. The economic development institutions and policies that foster democratic capitalism in South Africa are much more ideologically nuanced compared to Nigeria's aggressive neo-liberalism. For example, during its almost 15-year transition, the ANC established several broad-based economic policy agendas, including former President Mandela's RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme), and President Mbeki's GEAR (Growth Employment and Redistribution), ASGISA (Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative, South Africa) and BEE (Black Economic Empowerment).

While the RDP exhibited the closest economic ideals of the pro-Left constituency of the ANC, as it promised to use the state as a vehicle to embark upon massive economic restructuring and redistribution to achieve socio-economic development and welfare among the country's majority poor. However, consistent with Nigeria's neo-liberal orientation in NEEDS, under Mbeki, GEAR became the cornerstone of the new democracy's economic policy. GEAR placed macro-economics and the attraction of foreign domestic capital as the cornerstone of its development plan.

As was the case with Nigeria, an important feature of nurture capitalism is the contention and coalition between foreign capital and an emergent indigenous capital played out between Vice President Abubakar, Nigerian capitalist, Mike Adenuga and the US Congressman, William Jefferson. South Africa's BEE programme could not have revealed the dimensions of nurture capitalism more clearly. BEE sought to undo the economic harm of apartheid through increased black ownership and control of companies, employment equity, and skills training. RDP, GEAR, and BEE have all stirred up class relations in contemporary South Africa in dynamic ways.44 The Black majority, particularly those who are at the tail end of the economic ladder, have rejected GEAR as neo-liberal and as the strategy by a small, wealthy White and Black elite to preserve the country's economic resources in their hands to the exclusion of the Black majority.

While established as a way to redistribute South Africa's wealth to an emergent Black middle class, on the other hand, BEE also fosters greater class inequalities. It is criticised for especially skewing resources away from the Black poor majority who do not have the education, skills, or the social capital to gain access to BEE's rewards. In this regard, they cite former ANC members like Cyril Ramaphosa who quickly emerged as a millionaire because of this programme. Jacob Zuma's own business travails are only tangentially connected to BEE.

Nevertheless, Nigeria, and South Africa's differences in the manifestation of democratic capitalism can be explained by the countries' different socio-political structures drawn from their separate histories of nation-state formation. South Africa's contemporary democratic state is rooted in both apartheid and post-apartheid economic structures and political institutions, particularly the dynamics of the ANC. As a result, ideology plays an important role in contemporary democratic politics in South Africa. Unlike his counterpart former President Olusegun Obasanjo, President Thabo Mbeki acknowledges the limitations of GEAR and neo-liberalism and thus has presented BEE and AGISA as alternative economic reform policies. BEE is presented as an equivalent of a much earlier version of Nigerian and Kenyan ‘indigenisation’ programmes. It can be seen as a core feature of nurture capitalism where nationalist elites see the need to transfer a significant share of the ‘foreign capital’ gains to indigenous capitalist elite.

In a post-nationalist era of federalist Nigeria, where the indigenisation policies implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, were being eroded and revoked in the 1990s by new regimes of neo-liberalism. The variants of NEEDS, were SEEDS (State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy) and LEEDS (Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy). Yet, the Obasanjo regime did not feel the need to examine the ‘distributional’ and poverty-reduction needs of the regime's economic policy despite the Nigerian electorates' constant demands for these. Instead, ethnic, regional and personal politics disguised real class realities in the country.

The country has a 60 per cent poverty rate and a 50.6 Gini inequality coefficient, which is not very different from South Africa's world-renowned 59.3 rating. However, in South Africa, with its 50 per cent poverty rate, President Mbeki complemented GEAR by establishing AGSISA as a way to adjust and accommodate leftist and populist criticism of his neo-liberal policies. AGSISA could be seen as an expression of a dual economy approach to economic policy in South Africa. It is supposed to target poverty reduction and economic development goals in rural regions, which could extend the redistributional focus to counter GEAR's neo-liberalism.

Eating like ‘gluttons’, oranges, bananas and the Kenyan Anglo holdings scandal

Kenya's experience with nurture capitalism and democratic politics has the same characteristics as Nigeria and South Africa's. Kenya's trajectory with capitalism was ascribed as a feature of the country's political culture under the post-colonial leadership of the country's first elected President, Jomo Kenyatta and the long-time dominant Kenyan African National Union (KANU). Kenyatta, representative of the Kikuyu trading-entrepreneurial tradition, was known to have often aggressively encouraged his new electorates in the 1960s to learn how to build wealth for themselves and for their communities.45

Today, Kenya is still a much poorer country with a public debt at 50 per cent of GDP compared to Nigeria's 10.4 per cent, and South Africa's 4.5 per cent. Consequently, Kenya's economic reform programme ERS (Economic Reform Strategy) relies more heavily on foreign donor aid than on foreign direct investment. Notwithstanding these differences, however, the dimensions of global capital influences on Kenya's indigenous capitalism and democratic politics manifested itself in 2003, in the sensational corruption scandal similar to the ones in South Africa and Nigeria. It was known as the Anglo-Finance Leasing scandal, which contributed to the chaotic and violent aftermath of the national elections in 2007, as predicted by the main opponent of Kibaki, Odinga.46

The actors and institutions that dominate Kenya's Anglo-Leasing Finance scandal include NARC, and now Party of National Unity (PNU), President Mwai Kibaki and his key loyal ministers, including the Finance Minister, David Mwiriaw, the President's Vicel President, Moody Awori, Energy Minister, Kuraitu Murungi and Transport Minister Chris Murungari. Other central institutions and actors to this controversy included John Gitthongo, hailed by young Kenyan populist youth in the same category as Che Guevara, his Kenyan Anti-Corruption Committee (equivalent of Nigeria's EFCC and South Africa's Scorpions), Anglo-Finance Holdings in Liverpool, Anglo's Director General, Deepak Kamani, and finally Sir Edward Clay, British Ambassador to Kenya.

The scandal hit headlines in 2002 in a comedy of errors; the British Ambassador to Kenya indicted NARC's involvement in the scandal at a diplomat's dinner controversially likening Kenya's corrupt politicians to vultures and predators. Sir Edward Clay accused Kibaki's ministers of ‘arrogance, greed and perhaps a desperate sense of panic’ which led them to ‘eat like gluttons’ and ‘vomit on the shoes’ of foreign donors and the Kenyan people.47 The government wanted to replace its passport printing system and so sourced bids from international companies. A French firm quoted the transaction at 6 million Euros and a British firm, Anglo-Leasing Finance, quoted 30 million dollars. Interestingly, the contract was awarded to Anglo-Leasing, which in turn sub-leased the contract to the French firm for six million dollars.

Even more egregious was the discovery that Anglo-Leasing was a phantom firm with no real address in England.48 Kenya's former anti-corruption official, John Githongo, blew the damning whistle on the Anglo-Leasing fraud and revealed the connection with the NARC regime, which allegedly went all the way to the top.

Four NARC ministers were implicated, though no charges have been brought against any of them to date. NARC's finance minister, David Mwiriar was the first to resign. While he accepted accountability for being part of an office that was implicated in the scandal, he vehemently denied any direct partaking in the Anglo affair. Other ministers who were implicated, Kiraitu Murungi and Chris Murungaru, were forced to resign to make way for an investigation. They claimed that they were innocent. The Vice President, Moody Awori who was also implicated, refused to resign despite pro-democracy rallies demanding that he do so or be fired by the President. Deepak Kamani, a wealthy Nairobi business man and Director of Anglo-Leasing, whose family owns the firm, is wanted by the Kenyan Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC).

John Githongo resigned from KACC in February 2005 and moved to England to live in exile claiming that there had been threats to his life. He was replaced by retired Justice Aaron Ringera, whose past connections with some of the accused caused some controversy, continues to investigate the Anglo-Leasing affair.

The Anglo-Leasing Finance affair is intricately related to Kenya's Third Wave of democratic politics. In the Githongo report on his preliminary investigative findings, he claimed that he had taped conversations with NARC ministers pleading with him that the reason why NARC had fronted Anglo-Leasing was to raise money for the party's Constitutional Reform conference and for the scheduled 2007 elections. One minister claimed that Anglo-Leasing is ‘us’—NARC!49 Other accounts also claim that there was an Odinga (ODM opposition candidate) and Githongo connection in the whole affair. Once again, like the Nigerian and South African cases, albeit in reverse order, the Kenyan press reported that Raila Odinga, the President's new opponent after their fallout during the Constitutional Reform process, and John Githongo had conspired to concoct the affair to ensure that the President and his new NARC-Kenya party would lose the election in 2008.50

Amongst Kenyan constituents rumours abounded suggesting that John Githongo's exile to the UK was temporary. Odinga boasted in campaign rallies that Githongo was holding onto one more smoking gun evidence that implicated the President himself in the Anglo-Leasing Affair. It was believed that Githongo would release this information during the 2008 elections just in time to deliver a defeat to the President. In an ODM-led democratic regime, presided over by Odinga as President, Githongo would be invited back to participate in Kenyan democratic politics in a senior civil service appointment.51

Evaluating democratic capitalism in Africa

The South African, Nigerian and Kenyan cases may be useful for understanding the relationship between liberal democracy and capitalism as they intermingle with intrinsic features of a developing nation's political system operating in the current international political economy. The democratic crises experienced by all three countries are linked to national and global economic structures that are negotiated among democratic actors, including elites, electorates and capitalist interests. Each case raises questions about the relationship between capital and the democratic state as an important disburser of capital and material resources in ways that are intended to achieve both growth and development.

For example, while both Nigeria and Kenya are dependent on foreign capital in terms of FDI and ODA, the crises among their political elites illustrates some of the stark realities of democratic capitalism as economically and politically fragile regimes are compelled to use scarce resources to run expansive electoral campaigns. Because such campaigns require the raising of significant capital, class inequalities are difficult to disguise in determining who has access to power. Moreover, the structures embedded in these electoral campaigns make them easily susceptible to the corruption that is occurring.

The influence of money on democratic politics is no less problematic in the advanced industrial democracy. In the US, for example, democratic constituents complain bitterly about the millions of dollars needed to run campaigns as well as the corruption among select politicians and business elite through lobbying groups. However, with stronger democratic institutions, larger and wealthier middle classes, stable and long-standing developed economies, independent governmental and citizen institutions that act as checks on democracy, corruption scandals and skewed wealth inequality in the advanced industrial democracy are more easily absorbed and thus tend not to drastically affect the smooth operation of democracy.

Whereas in each of the African cases, institutions had been set up to monitor democratic accountability, these institutions were highly compromised by the high personal stakes of the political elites involved. When such elites are the heads of government, governance and democratic crisis becomes the mainstay of political performance in these countries.

The factional disputes and resource grabs among each country's politicians should not be dismissed as mere ‘corruption’ or bids for ‘personal’ or ‘despotic’ power, which may herald a return to authoritarianism and neo-patrimonialism, as indicated by much of the mainstream analysis. Instead, as the new political elite in each case attempted to consolidate ‘representative’ power by employing centralisation mechanisms, the intrinsic vices of oligarchy began to characterise the democratic structures of these states by aggressive incumbency-seeking and increased vertical decision-making. However, these trends are often justified by the political elite in the name of public good, economic growth, development and/or national security and stability.

More than in the economically advanced countries, there is an increasingly strong tendency in the developing countries to aggressively seek business investment for the purpose of economic growth and poverty reduction. However, this translates into more than nurture capitalism due to their reliance on technocrats and big corporations, domestic and international, who are shielded from democratic constituents. Moreover, problems related to policy-cycling52 are not unrelated to this trend since in most developing countries, the economic policy is ideologically defined by a narrow pro-reform versus no-reform binary. In this framework, successful leaders are often those who can implement macro-economic structural adjustment policies efficiently and restore the nation's GNP growth and international credibility.

Parliaments and assemblies representing the people in each case tend to support no-reform policies as they have enough experience with economic reform polices to realise how harmful such policies are to the welfare and interests of their constituencies. Notwithstanding this reality, since economic policy primarily presides with the executives, who are usually loyal to their ‘autonomous’ central banks and to their international economic creditors, they tend to construct political majorities in parliament which is mobilised to support their technocratic, pro-reform economic policies.

Developing countries achieve this by creating political machines, which usually aids in the creation of single dominant party systems, as noted in all three cases. Each country's dominant party is driven by incumbent executive and by a loose coalition in the Congress or the Parliament, which is strung together by intricate political economic networks reflected in the fused socio-economic and political state dominated by the emergent entrepreneurial classes.53

Unable to represent their constituencies, at least in terms of major redistributive impact, these politicians are wedded to the policy and patronage designs of the dominant party and its executive rather than to their constituencies.54 While symbolic representations involving region, ethnicity, community, and race occur periodically, economic representations to encourage significant developmental redistribution remain subsumed to the dominant party machine. This creates a political economy of democracy that is skewed toward an urban elite and its entrepreneurial interest, encouraging economic reform for capitalist production.

Another characteristic of this politico-economic framework is that urban subordinate classes, who tend to represent the bulwark of activist democratic constituents, are severely hampered despite their ongoing democratic struggles for inclusion. Moreover, the new democratic regimes have been unable to satisfy rural community demands for infrastructural development in the form of electricity, roads, clinics and school, thus rural regions remain even more marginal in the political equations of their representatives. The culmination of this circularity is a crisis of democracy underscoring the reality that these countries remain highly unstable on many levels. There socio-economic struggles become manifest in both the political system, in the form of party fractionalisation and/or executive/legislature power struggles, as well as in the weakening of the national democratic institutions.

It is clear in the case studies above, that constituencies are demanding democratic representation that goes beyond mere suffrage, entitlements or political rights. As evidenced in the continued labour strikes, demonstrations, riots, and increasingly militant conflicts, democratic constituencies in all three case studies are agitating for a democracy that facilitates the developmental redistribution of their very scarce resources.

An important consequence, therefore, of democratic capitalism in Africa is the popular delegitimation of democracy. Each succession crisis signalled widespread dissatisfaction in the populace. The connection between Nigeria's governance crisis and the chaotic electoral processes underscore the gravity of the crisis of democracy in the country.55

The intra-party frictions between Obasanjo and Abubakar, PDP's aggressive inclination toward consolidation of power, and the incumbent regime's inability to make much impact on the significant developmental needs of the country (power and energy, infrastructure, resource distribution in Niger Delta) all contributed to Nigerians' dissatisfaction with political processes, magnified by the 2007 electoral crisis.

In South Africa too, successive elections recorded a growth in the ANC's share of the electorate, but a decline in voter participation, which was down by 11 per cent in the 2004 election. A survey indicated that 48 per cent of the constituencies polled stated that elections in South Africa are not free and fair, nor do their democratic representatives follow their constituent's will in decision-making.56 Many of the unsatisfied voters in South Africa choose not to vote as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with democracy. According to an opinion poll compiled by Robert Mattes, however, South African dissident voters just cannot find ‘another winning horse to back’, which can be an alternative to the ANC and Mbeki.57

While there are several studies linking South Africa's dissatisfaction with democracy to changing attitudes and the displeasure with economic well-being among constituents in the urban ghettos and rural townships, there is growing evidence that the Mbeki-Zuma dispute and thereby a crisis in governance is also contributing to this dissatisfaction. For example, dissident voters who originally saw Zuma as a ‘populist’ alternative to Mbeki are likely to become even more disillusioned with democracy in the aftermath of Zuma's corruption indictment and his rape trial.

A 2007 report recorded that majority of Kenyans are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in Kenya, especially because of the system's inability to equitably distribute resources. Public opinion poll figures on democratic satisfaction in the country dropped from 79 per cent in 2003, immediately after the NARC electoral victory, to 26 per cent in 2005. This study also revealed that while overall support for the democratic system of government in Kenya had declined only marginally, there was a drastic decline in the support for the Constitution. The study further indicated that the NARC regime's handling of the Constitutional Reform process was definitely contributing to Kenyans' dissatisfaction with democracy.58

Democratic leadership in Africa, therefore, is challenged in such an environment where democratic institutions have hardly had time to take root or engage with sophisticated, representative democratic politics. Instead, it resorts to a genre of democracy described by Guillermo O'Donnell as ‘delegative democracy’, taking on a paternalistic, guided democratic posture toward its constituencies while also nurturing the economic interests of its elite class and cohorts.

In my opinion the fears that democratic crises will delegitimise the democratic transition in each of the three countries discussed and lead to instability and breakdown of the nation-state are real. Cote D'Ivoire and Ethiopia are extreme cases of the crisis of democracy and development that led to civil war and conflict. Coups in Pakistan (1999) and Thailand (2006) were the outcomes of similar democratic crises in those countries.

Conclusion

Paradoxically, fears by Africa's democratic regimes that cause them to restrict and subvert the interests of their constituencies rather than to expand representation causes the quality of new democracies in the continent to remain sub-optimal. However, the future prospects of democratic consolidation for South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya will depend on whether each country can get beyond the crisis through peaceful political means.

In South Africa, there are several questions to consider that are beyond the scope of the current study. How long will the ANC remain a dominant party? Can a liberal progressive alternative emerge to challenge the ANC majority? Is there a future for an alternative to neo-liberal economic policy in South Africa? Will Jacob Zuma become South Africa's next President? Currently, South Africa's political alternatives have been unable to muster much support despite a large block of the electorate showing dissatisfaction with Mbeki's pro-reform policies.

Similar questions bedevil Nigeria. Can the country advance a viable non-ethnic, multiparty system without creating multinational, elite backed parties like the People's Democratic Party (PDP)? How long will the PDP dominate Nigerian democratic politics? Can pluralism emerge in Nigeria without fostering identity politics? Can a large enough independent capitalist class emerge in the country that will become sophisticated enough to nurture national development rather than amass personal wealth and private property? India provides interesting comparative insights in this context where patronage and clientilism remain core features of the India's so called ‘indigenous Third World democracy’ (Pinkney 2003). However, the large, multiethnic and multireligious state, having weathered the storm of narrow nationalism, economic protectionism and its gargantuan and inept bureaucracy, is employing its entrepreneurial class and its labour force to engage in the new global economy to its advantage.

Kenya witnessed a violent political, economic, and humanitarian crisis that erupted after incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the presidential election held on 27 December 2007. Supporters of Raila Odinga were angered by allegations of electoral manipulation, a notion widely confirmed by international observers. More than 1,000 people died and 600,000 were displaced in the ensuing rioting in several parts of the country. As of 28 February, Kibaki and Odinga have signed a deal called the National Accord and Reconciliation Act, which establishes the office of prime minister and creates a coalition government. For Kenya, then, in considering its future, one must ask whether the new coalition or any of the major parties are on the road to become another KANU? Will the political compromise hold up in the face of deep-seated political tensions and animosity? Will this democratic restructuring change the shape of Kenyan politics in the end, and to what extent? Despite the increased growth rate of 5 per cent (2006 estimate) under NARC, Kenya remains a very poor country whose productivity is primarily dependent on the minority urban classes. Kenya also continues to be the highest recipient of aid when compared to South Africa and Nigeria. It remains to be seen whether the new democratic structure in place will lead to more effective institutions of democracy serving the needs of its people, or whether the same patterns of corruption and infighting mar the developmental and democratic capacity of the state.

The World Bank, the IMF, select EU countries, and Canada froze aid to Kenya as a result of the corruption crisis; yet, as all three cases demonstrate, the corruption crises experienced in each country had roots in international finance capital. This reality has important implications for understanding the interweaving web of networks among national democratisation and an aggressive neo-liberal international capital.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rita Kiki Edozie

Assistant Professor of International Relations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1. Laswell (1935).

2. Almond (1991).

3. Rueschemeyer et al. (1992).

4. O'Donnell (1996).

5. Rueschemeyer et al. (1992, p. 5).

6. Moore (1969).

7. Crozier (1975).

8. Pharr et al. (2001).

9. Pinkney (2003).

10. Schmitter (1996).

11. Block (1987).

12. Condon and Stein (2007).

13. Schmitter regards extrinsic challenges of democracy to include (a) problems of boundaries and identities, (b) capitalists production, accumulation and distribution, (c) overload and un-governability, (d) corruption and decay, (e) external security and internal insecurity.

14. Pzreworski (1992).

15. Mohan and Zack-Williams (2002).

16. Schatz (1977).

17. Ibid.

18. CIA World Fact Book (2006).

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Pharr et al. (2001).

22. Bond (2001).

23. Wines (2006).

24. La Franiere (2005).

25. Africa Analysis (2002), London, 13 December.

26. ‘Controversy May Threaten Stability, Say Analyst’ (2005).

27. Atiku and Babangida wanted Obasanjo to exercise the Mandela option of a one term ‘reconciler’ of the 12 June mandate.

28. ‘The Battle of the Political Zones’ (2004).

29. ‘Will Kibaki Cede Power to Raila?’ (2004).

30. Africa Analysis (2003), London, 19 March.

31. ‘Nigeria's Political Wars Escalate’ (2006).

32. Elendu (2006).

33. Kolawole (2006).

34. ‘Atiku Abubakar's Many Legal Battles’ (2007).

35. Adogamhe (2007).

36. Graff (1988).

37. Kolawole (2006).

38. This outfit was established by President Mbeki to investigate national priority crimes including organised crime and corruption.

39. Wines (2006).

40. Zuma (2006).

41. ‘South Africa: Waiting for the Barbarians’ (2005).

42. ‘South African Commentator Says Ruling ANC Split Down the Middle Over Zuma's Fate’ (2005).

43. ‘Corruption Case Ends for South Africa Politician’ (2006).

44. Gelb (2006).

45. Young (1966).

46. ‘Kenya's Future’ (2007).

47. Crilly (2005).

48. ‘Kenya: Corruption Continues to Plague Government and Economy’ (2006).

49. Mulama (2004).

50. ‘Is John Gitthongo Working with Raila Odinga?’ (2007).

51. Obonyo (2007).

52. Though it should be acknowledged that the phenomenon in these cases differs from the divided government characteristics of the policy-cycling experienced by advanced industrial nations. In the African cases, international factors and actors play a larger role in policy-cycling, especially where economic policy is concerned. International financial institutions (IFIs) crowd out national economic policy-making in many developing countries. Policy-cycling stalemates appear to occur as a function of the friction between IFI's and the democratic regimes.

53. See William Graff's The Nigerian State (1988) for a discussion on the ‘class-based state’.

54. See Abrahmsen (2000) for a discussion on the relationship between the African states and the new global economic clientilism of the IMF/WB, which renders African states as exclusionary democracies.

55. ‘Africa's Attitude to Democracy’ (2006).

56. Voice of the People, 20 March 2005.

57. e-Africa, ‘Psst…Mind the Sell by Date’, The South Africa Institute of International Affairs.

58. ‘Kenya: Unhappy with Wealth Sharing’ (2007).