Micro-Democracy? The Merger of Farmer Unions in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Political analysts, both liberal and historicist, point to the quality of associational life in civil society as an important factor affecting the installation and consolidation of democratic regimes. For de Tocqueville (1966), democracy hinges on the creation of voluntary associations through which citizens learn to act politically and to demand accountability from the state. For Gramsci, organizations in civil society—such as schools, churches, unions, and interest groups—can help to legitimate the prevailing political regime by either reinforcing or challenging the way power is exercised (Femia 1981). People therefore apparently get the governments they deserve: where they associate readily, govern themselves democratically, and assert independent opinions, they can contribute to the construction of sustainable democratic institutions, even at the macro-political level; where people eschew self-organization in favor of establishing personal ties to powerful patrons and by deferring to entrenched authority, they help to reproduce at all levels of the polity the patterns of rule that already prevail within the state and the broader society. Africanists cannot comment definitively on the character of associational life in Africa because the contemporary literature is thin in several respects. We currently lack a theoretical framework to account adequately for the development and status of voluntary associations and the relationships of such groups to the state. The available conceptual models of group formation and interest representation—such as pluralism, neo-Marxism or corporatism—were designed to account for politics in parts of the world distant from Africa. When Africanists borrow these models, we too often do so unselectively and uncritically, failing to recognize that “the goal is not to recycle theory but to reinterpret it” (Bianchi 1989, 10).