Can democracy consolidate in Africa amidst poverty? Economic influences upon political participation in Zambia

Commonwealth and Comparative Politics

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 23-42

  Simon, David J ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION; POLITICAL PARTICIPATION; POVERTY;

AFRICA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WORLD; ZAMBIA;

EID: 24944577058     PISSN: 14662043     EISSN: 17439094     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/713999574     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. The term 'Third Wave' is from S. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press; 1991).
2. Electoral participation is far from the only kind of political participation that matters for developing countries. However, because elections are usually the most significant outward symbol of popular self-government and because they are conveniently measurable and comparable across countries, electoral participation is a useful starting point from which to begin to examine the issues raised above.
3. Key works include S. Verba and N.H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972);
4. L.W. Milbrath and M.L. Goel, Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing, 1977);
5. and S.J. Rosenstone and J.M. Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America (New York: Macmillan, 1993).
6. See J. Leighly, 'Attitudes, Opportunities, and Incentives: A Field Essay on Political Participation', Political Research Quarterly, 48 (1995), 181-209 for a more thorough discussion of the SES model of political participation, and of its alternatives.
7. S. Verba, N.H. Nie and J. Kim, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven Nation Comparison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 19.
8. A. Pacek, 'Macroeconomic Conditions and Electoral Politics in East Central Europe', American Journal of Political Science, 38/3 (1994), 724.
9. I. McAllister and S. White, 'Political Participation in Post-Communist Russia: Voting: Activism, and the Potential for Mass Protest', Political Studies, 42 (1994), 614.
10. S.P. Huntington and J.M. Nelson, No Easy Choice: Political Participation In Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).
11. M.L. Goel, Political Participation in a Developing Nation: India (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1976);
12. N. Kasfir, The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics, with a Case Study of Uganda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
13. Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA], Voter Turnout from 1945 to 1997: A Global Report on Political Participation (IDEA: Stromsborg, Sweden, 1999), 11.
14. E. Aguilar and A. Pacek, 'Macroeconomic Conditions, Voter Turnout And The Working-Class/Economically Disadvantaged Party Vote In Developing Countries', Comparative Political Studies, 33/8 (2000), 995-1017.
15. M. Bratton and N. van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
16. For the first decade of its independence, Zambia was actually one of the wealthier countries in Africa. Since 1974, however, population growth has consistently outstripped growth in national income - which has even been negative in several years. See World Bank, African Development Indicators (Washington: World Bank, 2001), especially 6 and 32-3.
17. Government of the Republic of Zambia Central Statistics Office [ZCSO], The Evolution of Poverty in Zambia, 1991-1996 (Lusaka: Central Statistics Office, 1997).
18. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2001 [CD-ROM] (Washington: World Bank, 2001).
19. Taking note of these trends, Michael Bratton has also analysed Zambian political participation in the 1990s. Bratton's work diverges from mine in that he is less concerned with the magnitude of economic influences upon trends in Zambian participation. Instead he focuses on the relation between 'institutional' and 'cultural' factors. He relies exclusively on survey data. See 'Political Participation in a New Democracy: Institutional Considerations From Zambia', Comparative Political Studies, 32/5 (1999), 549-88.
20. For a lengthier description of the 1996 election and the context in which it took place, see C.J.J. Mphaisha, 'The State of Democratization in Zambia', Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 38/3 (2000), especially, 131-6;
21. M. Bratton and D.N. Posner, 'A First Look at Second Elections in Africa, with Illustrations from Zambia', in R. Joseph (ed.), State. Conflict, and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 377-408;
22. and Bratton, 'Political Participation in a New Democracy'.
23. The survey was undertaken conjunction with the World Bank and the Government of Norway. Data are available on a CD-ROM produced by the Government of the Republic of Zambia's Central Statistics Office [ZCSO]: Living Conditions Monitoring Sun-eys 1996 & 1998 (Lusaka: Central Statistics Office, no date). Data presented in the following paragraphs reflect author's calculations.
24. The 1991 Survey - the Priority Survey I (PSI) - featured a smaller overall sample size and a different set of quota sampling criteria. Three alterations are necessary to take into account these differences. First, I eliminated from the analysis those districts for which there were insufficient data (fewer than 85 households interviewed) from the 1991 survey. Second, I weighted the PSI data by stratum - a descriptor of the economic level of the enumeration unit that served as one of the quota-sampling criteria in 1996 - according to the 1996 distribution across strata. Third, I use mean expenditure rather than the median, as the weighted data in 1991 are not amenable to the rank ordering necessary for taking medians. See ZCSO 1997 for a more complete description of the two surveys and the differences between them. Also see D.N. Posner and D.J. Simon, 'Economic Conditions and Incumbent Support in Africa's New Democracies: Evidence from Zambia', Comparative Political Studies (forthcoming) for additional information about district-level comparisons in Zambia. Data for 1991 are available on a CD-ROM produced by the Government of the Republic of Zambia's Central Statistics Office [ZCSO]: Priority Surveys 1991 & 1993 (Lusaka: Central Statistics Office, no date).
25. The essential voting unit is the constituency, rather than the district in Zambia. However, since economic and population data are available only at the district level, and as constituencies are always contained within single districts, I aggregate voting patterns to the district level. This strategy has the additional value of muting some of the constituency-specific factors affecting electoral races.
26. Bratton and Posner, 'A First Look at Second Elections in Africa', 398-400.
27. The correlation coefficient for (logged) median expenditure and depth of poverty in 1996 is -0.94. The correlation coefficient for change in (logged) mean expenditure and change in depth of poverty from 1991 to 1996 is -0.66. In effect, one should view models featuring expenditure and depth of poverty, respectively, as alternative tests of the same hypothesis, rather than tests of rival hypotheses.
28. Bratton, 'Political Participation in a New Democracy'.
29. I used the data set cited in note 17. For the analyses that follow, I used the statistical software package Stata 6.0. Using survey analysis procedures, I accounted for cluster effects using a sampling unit identifier variable, and for bias by using weights for the strata by which the sample was stratified. I also weighted the observations to account for the different selection probabilities for households versus individuals within those households. The weight is equal to ai/â where ai is the number of adults in household I, and â is the average number of adults per household.
30. Verba and Nie, Participation in America, 138-48; see also R.G. Niemi and J.D. Barkan, 'Age and Turnout in New Electorates and Peasant Societies', American Political Science Review, 81/2 (1987), 583-8.
31. Verba and Nie, Participation in America, 97-101; see also D. Hirschmann, 'Women and Political Participation in Africa: Broadening the Scope of Research', World Development, 19/12 (1991), 1679-97.
32. There is an extensive literature on the impact of social connectedness on political behaviour. For an overview, see J. Leighly, 'Social Interaction and Contextual Influences on Political Participation', American Politics Quarterly, 18/4 (1990), 459-75. For older applications of the theory beyond the American setting, see
33. Verba et al., Participation and Political Equality, 80,
34. and N.H. Nie, B. Powell Jr. and K. Prewitt, 'Social Structure and Political Participation: Developmental Relationships', in J.L. Finkle and R.W. Gable (eds.), Political Development and Social Change (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966), 414.
35. Posner and Simon, 'Economic Conditions and Incumbent Support'.
36. For example, see World Bank, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? (Washington: World Bank, 2000), 64-82.