Local and Community Power in Angola

Abstract

N 1964-65 a study of contemporary Portuguese Africa was initiated by the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon and carried out by a team of American and English specialists. As part of the study the author was commissioned to examine the institutions and processes of local government and public administration in that part of the world.' The terms and conditions of the study made it possible for the author to test the validity of two propositions concerning the political process in an authoritarian society during two months of field work in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. The propositions tested are the following: 1. As distinct from the attempt in totalitarian societies to destroy competing foci of power and construct a monistic social structure, the political process in authoritarian societies is identical with that of democratic societies with the exception of the power of bloc voting in the latter. 2. In authoritarian societies the state (government and bureaucracy) is clearly seen as a distinct power aggregate different in function but not different in kind from other power aggregates operating in society and engaged in the political process. This is in distinction to the confusion that arises between the state and society itself, and which occurs in both totalitarian and democratic societies in totalitarian societies because of the conscious effort to identify the two and make them in fact identical, and in democratic societies because the directing group in the state, the government, is chosen by society at large or by some part of it.2 The overseas territories of Portugal are divided into provinces, of which five are in Africa, the two most important by far being Angola and Mozambique. Policy decisions covering all of the overseas provinces are made by the Overseas Ministry in Lisbon, subject to the approval of the Prime Minister, who is ultimately