This article addresses the question of whether, or under what conditions, democratic institutions contribute to ‘developmental governance’ in sub-Saharan Africa, in forms such as coherent policy formulation, effective public administration, and limited corruption. While few dispute the desirability for Africa of democracy and good governance in theory, many remain sceptical about whether the two necessarily go together in practice. Using a simple framework informed by the new institutional economics, I analyse the impact of political institutions on governance quality in a sample of 38 sub-Saharan African countries. The main finding is that a combination of democratic contestation and institutional restraints on governments' discretionary authority substantially improves developmental governance. Judged against liberal democratic ideals, Africa's emerging democracies have many shortcomings. Yet the article shows that democratic institutions systematically enhance African states' performance as agents of development.

Growth-friendly egalitarian distribution of land and smallholder farming notwithstanding, rural Ethiopia continues to face an ever-deepening livelihoods crisis. This paper synthesises the theoretical and empirical literature on Ethiopian and other comparable land institutions, in search of a coherent economic framework for pinpointing the roots of the problem and a menu for sensible policy options. It argues that land privatisation, as an integral part of a second agrarian reform, is necessary for attaining optimal farm sizes, thicker markets and robust industrialisation. A sordid history of political marginalisation of the peasantry makes freehold a superior alternative to more secure state leasehold. For a thoroughgoing agricultural transformation, however, sufficiency entails substantial increases in public investment that are designed to crowd-in private investment. Ethiopia's market-led agricultural development strategy must focus on boosting sustainable growth while ensuring subsistence for all.

In early 2004, 29% of Namibian Members of Parliament were women, putting Namibia fourth in continental Africa and seventeenth worldwide in terms of women's representation in a national legislature. This article sets out to determine how such a high percentage of women has been elected to the National Assembly in Namibia since independence. It suggests that electoral gains have been achieved through a combination of factors: the use of a closed list proportional representation electoral system and voluntary quotas on the part of political parties at the national level, sustained pressure over the past three to five years from a nascent women's movement influenced by the global women's movement, and the active participation of women inside and outside the country in a protracted and violent struggle for independence that was only attained in 1990. The first two factors confirm past experience and accumulated knowledge on the significance of choice of electoral system and use of quotas, and the importance of women's organisations to elected women's legislative agendas and success. The last factor deviates from experience, and from a literature that suggests that women's active participation in political struggles has not always translated into tangible gains for women.

This paper evaluates the evolution and the implementation of the ANC government's commitment to fostering a black capitalist class or black economic empowerment (BEE) as a non-racial nation-building strategy. A substantial black bourgeois i.e. and other middle classes begun to emerge over the last decade, contrary to popular perceptions. The legitimating role assigned to the emergent black bourgeoisie by the ANC and the government is, however, threatens to turn the strategy into a nepotistic accumulation. This development is paradoxically threatening to re-racialise the country, widening black inequality gaps, and precluding the rise of a black bourgeoisie with a nurture capitalist agenda. Other equally powerful social groups have begun to challenge the prevailing strategy, compelling the government to explore a more accommodating strategy exemplified by the recent introduction by the government of ‘broad-based economic empowerment’. Should a less patrimonial, less racially and ethnically divisive BEE strategy emerge from this quasi-pluralist power play, such a change holds prospects for the creation of a ‘growth coalition’ capable of sustainable capitalist development and true empowerment of the black majority. That would be a positive development in terms of establishing and consolidating democracy in South Africa.

The recent food crisis in Malawi has drawn stark attention to the failures of development policies over the last forty years to create wealth and develop a robust economy or the markets on which such an economy must depend. Current market liberalisation policies have achieved at best mixed success in addressing the generic problems inhibiting smallholder agricultural development: low returns to farmers' and service providers' investments, with high risks from natural shocks, price variations, coordination failure and opportunistic behaviour. Post-independence institutional mechanisms in Malawi were more successful in addressing some of these problems, in particular those of coordination risk, although external and internal difficulties led to increasing costs and declining effectiveness of these mechanisms, and to their collapse. They do provide, however, important lessons about the different failures of both market intervention and market liberalisation policies. We suggest and discuss a set of critical elements needed for economic development and wealth creation in poor rural areas, and propose four basic principles to guide the search for, and design and implementation of, effective rural development strategies and policies.

In one party dominant democracies, political parties often lose vitality. Interviews with ANC branch members reveal a more encouraging picture of the party's inner life. Members engage voluntarily in a range of party-sponsored activities. The ANC's organisational deployment is directed at the mobilisation of a militant activist community. Its commitment to consultative decision-making has declined, however, though under certain conditions the rank and file can challenge leadership successfully. The ANC's internal electoral arrangements promote consensus rather than competition, despite the interest they evoke from members. In general, despite the ANC's hegemonic aspirations, increasingly it conforms to the behaviour of an electorally oriented party in a liberal democracy.

Through a comparison of two rural Tanzanian districts, this paper traces the effects of a humanitarian influx – the arrival of refugees and international relief – on the economic practices of the host population in one western Tanzanian district (Kasulu). It argues that, despite popular and Government claims to the contrary, there is little evidence that the influx has effected a transformation of citizens' economic lives. While changes in exchange and resource use patterns have occurred in the five years since the influx began, they are not fundamental and many are better attributed to shifts in macro-economic policy than to the refugees, the presence of the relief agencies or the distribution of humanitarian aid. The fact that the influx has not induced a shift towards increased market activity and capitalist modes of production not only challenges government and popular pronouncements, but also reaffirms the resilience of localised modes of production against external market pressures.

This article addresses the theme of entrepreneurship in Africa by focusing on second-hand car markets in Cotonou, Bénin. At first glance this booming business seems to confirm neo-liberal and institutional models of entrepreneurship, in which entrepreneurial behaviour constitutes rational calculation in a situation of economic opportunity. The universe in which African car traders operate, however, is characterised by significant capital scarcity, dramatic losses and widespread bankruptcies. The article argues that viewing entrepreneurs as economic calculators is not the proper way to understand the Cotonou car trade. Based on case analysis of a Béninese car trader, it shows that the outcome of car trading in Cotonou is determined by the manipulation of social contacts, characterised by self-interest and distrust among business partners. Analogous to the Klondike gold rush, it appears that the car trader's engagement with the trade is to a large extent motivated by the dream of making a fortune. Thus, even though entrepreneurial failure is widespread among African car traders, most of them remain convinced that car trading can yield significant profits.

This article examines the politics of youth in Ijebu-Remo (henceforth Remo) from the 1950s to the present. The emergence of the politics of youth in the 1950s and 1960s drew on precolonial discourse and was closely associated with the emergence of Remo's anti-federal postcolonial political identity. Since Nigeria's political and economic decline in the mid-1980s, strong feelings of exclusion – strengthened further by the political sidelining of Yoruba-speaking politicians in national politics between 1993 and 1999 – have contributed to an increase of nationalist sentiment in Remo youth politics. This is enacted through secrecy, a reinvention and utilisation of ‘traditional’ cultural practice, and the growing definition of local identity through ethnic discourse. Traditionally, Remo youth and elite politics have legitimised and supported each other, but the cohesion between these groups has declined since the return to democracy in 1999. Rivalry and conflict over local and national resources have led to bitter intergroup fighting, and young men's strategies to combat social exclusion remain mostly individual.

In 1954 several hundred Hai//om San were evicted from their homes in Etosha National Park in the former South West Africa. As a result they joined the legions of landless generational farm-labourers who sustained an uneconomic and heavily subsidised white-owned commercial agricultural sector. This paper explores the predicament of this community vis-à-vis land rights in post-apartheid Namibia. It draws on recent historical research to contextualise Hai//om demands for land, and discusses the emergence of history as a dominant paradigm for the articulation of contemporary Hai//om identity. Likewise it explores the Hai//om's invocation of history to justify their demands for greater parity in land access. In doing so, it queries the usefulness of invoking an indigenous rights model as a justification for Hai//om land claims.

As elsewhere in the world, Africa has experienced a rise in litigation against transnational corporations for adverse environmental and social impact. Cape plc and RTZ have been sued in British courts for environmental damage and for breach of employment rights in Africa. Companies which sold products to South Africa's former apartheid regime, such as Fujitsu and IBM, are now being sued in US courts. Shell and Chevron are being sued in US courts for human rights abuses in Nigeria. At the same time, foreign firms have been successfully sued in African courts for social and environmental damage. This article outlines the main relevant court cases and attempts to assess the significance of this litigation. The discussion of litigation in this article is divided into three parts: court cases filed in English, American and African (mainly Nigerian) courts. This is followed by an explanation of the triggers of legal change, a discussion of the impact of litigation and the conclusion.

A major financial problem in many municipalities in South Africa is the inadequate collection of service charges due to widespread non-payment. The prevailing view is that non-compliance is caused by poverty and the existence of an ‘entitlement culture’. However, huge variations in compliance exist both within poor communities and between communities with similar socio-economic characteristics. How can these differences be explained? Moreover, what factors determine citizens' compliance? This paper argues that non-payment is related not only to inability to pay and ‘a culture of entitlement’, but also to whether citizens perceive the local government to act in their interest. In particular, three dimensions of trust may affect citizens' compliance: (1) trust in the local government to use revenues to provide expected services; (2) trust in the authorities to establish fair procedures for revenue collection and distribution of services; and (3) trust in other citizens to pay their share.

New leaders are often assumed to be better able to push for policy and sector reform because they are less tied in by established patronage networks. The article discusses this assumption by examining public sector reform in three East African countries under different leaders. It finds that while neo-patrimonialism is an important reason why public sector reform is often blocked, this paradigm cannot explain why some public sector reforms are actually implemented. New leaders are not always new brooms, and whether they are so depends as much on formal conditions, such as the existence of a political coalition, as on informal neo-patrimonial factors. The article also finds that in some cases, old brooms can sweep too. When succession is institutionalised, as the Tanzanian case shows, even a relatively weak leader can carry out reform effectively in his second term because he does not have to consider re-election.

Theory informs us that decentralisation, a process through which powers, responsibilities and resources are devolved by the central state to lower territorial entities and regionally/locally elected bodies, increases efficiency, participation, equity, and environmental sustainability. Many types and forms of decentralisation have been implemented in Africa since the colonial period, with varying degrees of success. This paper explores the process of forest management decentralisation conducted in Cameroon since the mid-1990s, highlighting its foundations and characterising its initial assets. Through the transfer of powers to peripheral actors for the management of forestry fees, Council Forests and Community [or Village] Forests, this policy innovation could be empowering and productive. However, careful observation and analysis of relationships between the central state and regional/local-level decentralised bodies, on the one hand, and of the circulation of powers, on the other, show – after a decade of implementation – that the experiment is increasingly governed by strong tendencies towards ‘re-centralisation’, dictated by the practices of bureaucrats and state representatives. The paper also confirms recent empirical studies of ‘the capture of decentralised actors’. It finally shows how bureaucrats and state authorities are haunted by the Frankenstein's monster syndrome, concerning state–local relationships in decentralised forest management.

Within a period of just a year during the late 1980s, the Ethiopian Revolutionary or ‘Red’ Army suffered serious defeat in both Eritrea and Tigray. Although numerically and technically superior to its opponents, dissension in the army's ranks, political meddling from Addis Ababa, loss of will, and the remarkable skill and determination of its opponents prevented it from achieving victory. Two years after its humiliating defeat in Tigray, the army collapsed, and the military regime it had sustained disappeared. Eritrea succeeded in declaring its independence and the Tigrayan rebels seized power in Ethiopia. This article demonstrates that the Eritrean and Tigrayan forces ultimately won because they had grass-roots support and because they were able to back each other militarily and politically. In the meantime, the dictatorship in Addis Ababa was losing popular support as its ‘citizens’ were no longer willing to make the sacrifices that were necessary to continue the struggle. Only by considering these points can we appreciate why Africa's second-largest army was annihilated or, conversely, why the insurgents triumphed, for their success was not inevitable.

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has long been criticised for its price-distorting impact on world markets. Pressure to reform the CAP emanated previously from domestic European concerns over the costs, efficacy and efficiency of the policy and, internationally, from countries whose competitive advantage was undermined. More recently developing countries, NGOs, multilateral institutions and development agencies have orchestrated a campaign to liberalise European agriculture, in the expectation that developing countries will benefit from a shift in production away from high-cost European producers. But it would be naïve to think of liberalisation as bringing universal benefits to the developing world. Inevitably, under any system of regulation, market or intervention, there will be a complex pattern of winners and losers. This paper examines the impacts of Europe's sugar policy on southern Africa and finds, somewhat surprisingly, that the region stands to benefit more from a preservation of the status quo than from liberalisation.

Colonial processes continue to dominate many indigenous peoples' development programmes in countries around the world. This paper examines some of the underlying factors that contribute to continued failure in the implementation of the Remote Area Development Programme (RADP) in Botswana. It argues that the problem is not just failed implementation, but a more fundamental problem found in its philosophy, which suggests relentless colonialism. This paper is based on the empirical findings of a recent study in one Basarwa settlement in Botswana and draws on the practical experience of the author. Case examples from this study are used to unravel and illustrate embedded colonial practices of the RADP. Recommendations from the findings argue for the development of a ‘decolonising approach to development practice’ that may respond effectively to problems that resulted from relentless colonialism.

This article attempts to understand why ethnic-regional civil war has challenged the national unity of Côte d'Ivoire and not Ghana, two neighbouring countries with nearly identical ethnic, religious and regional divisions, by examining politics at the grassroots. Based on a carefully controlled comparison of two similar regions of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the study investigates how participation in local voluntary associations reinforces the local experience of the state to shape the ongoing development of political values and affect the prospects for ethnic peace and democracy. The article finds that participation in ethnically heterogeneous voluntary associations does not necessarily promote democratic values and practice. In fact, in Côte d'Ivoire, participation in ethnically heterogeneous cocoa producer and mutual assistance organisations reinforces vertical patronage networks based on narrower ethnic identities. In contrast, in Ghana, participation in more ethnically homogeneous local church groups encourages the development of democratic values and practices at the local level that mediate the potential for ethnic conflict and support the consolidation of a democratic regime.

Calls to reform Lesotho's traditional or customary land tenure abound. The main argument of those who call for reform is that there is no security of tenure, and therefore economic development and foreign and local investment in agriculture are lacking. Lately, traditional land tenure has been blamed for environmental degradation of agricultural land. Using oral and documentary evidence collected in the Rothe Ward, Mafeteng District, and the Mafeteng District Secretary's Office, this paper argues that the traditional land tenure is ambiguous on ownership of land, and is in need of reform designed to prevent various forms of chiefly abuse. However, no evidence of insecurity of tenure per se was found. Instead, poverty and lack of capital with which to acquire agricultural inputs in order to improve production were most prevalent in the responses of rural communities. Finally, the paper ends on a note of caution that reforms as envisaged may have calamitous long-term consequences both for rural communities and the country.

Despite the dramatic changes that have occurred in South Africa over the last fifteen years, the chieftaincy remains an important political institution that continues to exercise authority. It has not only been given official recognition and protection in the constitution, but has attempted to become more involved in activities such as development, local government, and elections. How this institution might affect the process of democratic consolidation, however, has failed to generate much research. This article explores the ways in which the chieftaincy has responded to the introduction of democratic electoral practices at the local level. While the chieftaincy has not been immune from the social and political changes that have swept through the country since the transition, it has nonetheless sought to direct, or redirect, these changes in ways that bolster its own authority. Many local communities expect the chieftaincy not only to assist with the formal electoral process, but also to allow for more participation within local level chieftaincy institutions. A close examination of chieftaincy–societal relations demonstrates that while the chieftaincy has been affected by new democratic rules and practices, it has also influenced how local communities practice and understand these same rules and practices. This mutually transformative process illustrates the complexity of democratic consolidation, as well as the ability of the chieftaincy to adapt to changing political and social environments without sacrificing its unique claims to authority.