3 - Relevance of Social Formations

Summary

The social reality that Comparativists typically disaggregate in their political analysis is the replica of a society that has gone through an agrarian as well as an industrial revolution. It is organized into interest groups that constitute the basis of political parties. Political life is conceived within a right–left spectrum. Party systems are durable and subject to only minor alterations. The ability to encourage compromises and to produce sub-optimal policy outcomes is one of its key ingredients. Little attention, however, is paid to the underlying structures that keep the party system going, notably the fact that institutional stability in developed societies is effectively grounded in the economic production process. This variable is too often overlooked in the analysis of the quality of democratic institutions. The colonial powers encouraged the institutional fundament of such politics, but the ambition was unfinished at the time of independence. Trade unions, like cooperative societies, had started to emerge and provided the basis for the rise of a new political leadership. Once in power, however, these leaders introduced legislation to ban or reduce the powers of these non-state organizations. Because there was no independent African middle class with capital to influence development, the post-independence political organizations never took on a “class” character. The neo-Marxist criticism that flourished in the 1970s and onwards imputed too uncritically the exploitation and oppression on the continent to the presence of social classes similar to what would be found in Western society. Its influence, not surprisingly, waned quickly. By too readily assuming the hegemonic nature of colonialism, these neo-Marxist authors downplayed the role of indigenous African social formations in the same way as advocates of neo-liberal theory did in the decade that followed.