Understanding Domination and Popular Inaction Under Repressive Regimes in Africa
blurb:isstoday:09122008dominateregime
9 December 2008: Understanding Domination and Popular Inaction Under Repressive Regimes in Africa
In recent times, Zimbabwe has experienced what can generally be termed unjust rule, with state apparatus being used to suppress opponents and intimidate civilians. Compounding this problem has been a general decline in social service provision with electricity, clean water, fuel and health services being underprovided. The emergence of diseases such as cholera, which have claimed hundreds of lives and affected thousands more, underscore the gravity of this unjust rule. All this has, as yet, not been sufficient to encourage collective action against the government.
On 6 August 2008, a group of high-ranking military officers moved to oust President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in a military coup d’état in Mauritania. The military junta that took over power accused the ousted president of acting unconstitutionally. Although many people concede that Abdallahi had, since assuming power, made some grave errors of political judgement, they maintain that these mistakes were not a sufficient justification for the military to intervene in the democratic process in the country. He was the first ever democratically elected head of state in that country since its independence in 1961. Almost all the major external partners of Mauritania, including the AU, the UN, the European Union, and the Organisation of Francophone States (OIF) have condemned the coup, and these partners are still insisting on the need for the return of the country to constitutional rule under the ousted president.
Until recently, however, the new authorities seemed to be getting more and more support from local politicians and parliamentarians. More than two-thirds of members of parliament (67/95), and the same proportion of senators (37/56) were reported in mid-August to have put their names to a statement supporting the change. As in many similar cases in Africa, the most striking observation was the absence of any meaningful popular resistance and the tendency of the population and politicians of the former regime to rally behind the new rulers or keep quiet.
Why do the many accept the rule of the few even when it seems against their interests to do so? Historical examples abound of compliance by a majority to an “oppressive” minority. This compliance has often appeared to be garnered with limited coercion and led to tempted conclusions that “oppressors” do not often rule by force alone. But the intriguing question that emerges from this is to know the other factors that play a role in maintaining such situations.
As one of the central themes in political philosophy, the idea of voluntary servitude to oppressive rule has received significant attention from theorists such as Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and Antonio Gramsci. While ideas focusing on how rulers maintain their power, such as ideology, false consciousness and hegemony have dominated discourse on this issue, they have tended to underplay the role played by the ruled in their obedience to oppressive regimes, namely that there may be among them a problem of collective action.
The problem of collective action, known in game theory as the prisoner’s dilemma, is that effective social coordination is inhibited by the discrepancy between what is rational for the individual and what is rational for the group. It is highly plausible therefore, that while the majority of those oppressed in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the continent understand well the reality of their oppression and are not under a false consciousness, the pursuit of the common good – an inclusive democratic dispensation – by a single individual seems less rational than complete inaction. To understand the problem of collective action it is worth looking at some key tenets of its logic.
Collective action, according to Elinor Ostrom in Collective Action and Property Rights for Sustainable Development, “occurs when more than one individual is required to contribute to an effort in order to achieve an outcome.” The resultant outcome, known as a public good, possesses two characteristics central to the problem: non-rivalry and non-excludability in consumption. Briefly, these two properties imply that the benefits of a public good, such as democratic dispensation in a formerly authoritarian state can be enjoyed equally by every individual within that state and extends even to those who do not contribute to its production. The problem of free riding, that is, benefiting from the provisions of a public good without having contributed to it, is precisely what inhibits collective action.
Under conditions of unjust rule people would ideally favour well-organised and pervasive social coordination to overthrow the regime or resist its taking hold in the case of military coups d’état. Such organisation, which would likely succeed against the state’s limited means of coercion (police, army, etc), requires widespread participation. Given the properties of a public good, when presented with two options, maintaining the status quo (that is, unjust rule) or social action, the individual would prefer the former. His or her reasoning would be motivated by the scepticism about the prospects of widespread participation by the fellow oppressed. The uncertainty would be fully justified if the individual considered them to be as rational as him or herself. If their participation is forthcoming, the benefits from non-participation will be greater than any costs the individual incurs. If participation is not forthcoming however, the individual’s lack of action insures him or her against incurring severe sanctions from the state. In any case, inaction would, according to the logic of collective action, be rationally justified.
According to the logic advanced above, a primary reason why the majorities in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa have accepted and continue to accept the rule of their respective regimes is because in all these cases, rational self-interest predominates over group interest. Although recognising the unjust nature of their condition, people may be unwilling to engage in revolutionary activity because of their perceptions of the participation, or lack thereof, of others.
This said, collective action might still occur and succeed but only if there are mobilisers who have direct access to the group and use strategies and techniques that can dissipate mutual suspicion between members of the group. That latter should also be convinced that the benefits they stand to gain from their action outweigh the costs. In other words, they should be led to believe that their collective action would have high outcome benefits (so it is worthwhile) and low outcome costs (so it is worth it).
Leruo Moremong, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
