Abstract
Locke opines that, a State is created through the medium of a contract in which each individual agrees with each other to give up to the community the natural right of enforcing the law of reason, in order that life, liberty and property may be preserved. In modern States, such contract exists in their constitutions. The constitution grants power to citizens to hold the government accountable. The aspect as to whether the Locke’s idea of accountability works in Tanzania attracts an interesting debate. This article explores the mechanism (s) used in Tanzania by citizens to hold political leaders accountable basing on Locke’s idea of social contract using 2010 and 2015 general elections as case study. Data were collected through reviewing documents including the constitution of Tanzania and literatures on Locke’s social contract idea on political accountability. The study reveals that, it is through general elections citizens hold the government accountable hence, conforming to the said contract idea. The mechanism has its pros and cons in the country though debatably, the study opines that the cons seem to outweigh the pros. While the state moves on using the mechanism revealed, it can think of application of other mechanisms like referendum to better conform to Locke’s idea of accountability in Social Contract Theory. Keywords: Political accountability, Locke and Social Contract Theory DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/68-09 Publication date: September 30 th 2020
Highlights
The origin of the social contract theory is premised on an agreement entered into by men who originally had no governmental organisation which resulted into a State
5.0 Results and Discussion Locke’s idea of social contract unveils that, people surrender some of their sovereignties to one institution and in turn the government has to take care of its people including protecting them from any arbitrary actions
The United Republic of Tanzania through its constitution of 1977, the major mechanism through which citizens can hold the political leadership accountable is through general elections
Summary
The voters’ turnout for 2010 presidential general election was 42% of the total registered voters. If one take 2015 elections alone, despite the improvement of the voters turnout compared to 2010, the turnout is not that much effective due to the fact that more than seven million citizens did not get chance to vote out of twenty three millions eligible. This is a huge number when it comes to accountability raising skepticism about its effectiveness. Data on the voters’ turnout are given in table 1
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