Close but not too close: opposition network strategy and democratization in Zambia

ABSTRACT

Current literature finds that democratization is most likely when opposition social movements have initiated a political transition. Yet little work has disaggregated bottom-up transitions to suggest when this effect obtains. This article examines a case not widely known in the social movements’ literature: the 1991 political transition in Zambia. It proposes a novel theoretical avenue to help explain this case’s incomplete democratic transition. The piece re-conceptualizes the opposition movement as a multi-organizational actor network. I argue that opposition movements face strong incentives to unify through either centralizing around a single organization or creating a dense network of multiple, overlapping connections. The strategy they pursue affects the transitional political landscape. Highly centralized opposition networks are likely to lead to less democratic outcomes while dense decentralized networks will have more democratic outcomes. I find that high centralization by the opposition in Zambia undermined political accountability during the transition and limited Zambia’s democratic progress.

KEYWORDS:

• Protest
• network analysis
• transitions
• Africa
• unity
• civil resistance

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper from Consuelo Amat, Maciej Bartkowski, Charles Butcher, Sirianne Dahlum, Cassy Dorff, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, Jacob Lewis, Howard Liu, participants at my panel at the 2017 meeting of the International Studies Association and the 2018 “Securing the Victory” workshop at NTNU, and the editors and anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See the appendix for the complete list of interviewees.

2. This process was approved by the Institutional Review Board at University of Denver, protocol number 962008.

3. Interview 25

4. Other trade unions also occasionally participated in resistance actions, but these tended to be more peripheral. See (Rakner, 1992) for more details.

5. Interview 102.

6. Interviews 39 and 52 emphasized this in particular.

7. Interview 55.

8. For a detailed description of the Garden House meeting, see (Mbikusita-Lewanika, 2003).

9. Interview 42.

10. Interviews 107 and 39, both of whom attended and played a significant role in the Garden House meeting, particularly emphasized this aspect of the conference.

11. Interview 39.

12. Interview 55

13. Interview 100.

14. Interview 2.

15. Interview 68.

16. Interview 32

17. Interview 39

18. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for making this suggestion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict through their 2016 PhD fellowship program. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict or the United States Institute of Peace.

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Pinckney

Jonathan Pinckney is senior researcher for the Program on Nonviolent Action at the United States Institute of Peace. His research focuses on the intersection of nonviolent resistance, peacebuilding processes and democratic political change. He received his PhD in 2018 from the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.