How ignorance, poverty and fear are used to ‘manufacture’ state legitimacy

Dar es Salaam. The ‘democracy euphoria’ of the early 1990s has since waned, giving way to creeping despair regarding the prospects for consolidating democracy in Africa.

According to Freedom House the number of electoral democracies during the 1990s jumped from 10 in 1992/93, to 18 in 1995/96 and on to 25 in 2005/6. By 2002, 42 out of the 48 sub-Sahara African countries had conducted multiparty elections.

The last decade, however, has witnesses what has variously been described as the retreat or reversal of democracy in the continent.

Some of the observed indicators include: declining voter turnout rates particularly among youth, increasingly contested election results due to vote rigging (real or perceived), over-securitization of election processes, rising executive dominance over the legislature and judiciary leading to declining separation of powers and checks and balances, growing political intolerance between incumbents and opposition, increasing use of excessive force by the police, suppression of freedom of expression and dissemination of information, creeping authoritarianism/dictatorship, etc.

In responding to the above trend many analysts have focused on issues relating to obstacles that stand in the way of democratic consolidation and largely been preoccupied with some of the shortcomings in the electoral systems and democratic practices, i.e. democracy deficits. In this vein, considerable attention has been paid to issues arising from institutions, policies, procedures, processes as well as laws and regulations governing elections, for example.

Many such responses have variously recommended improvements in areas such as civic/voter education, electoral management bodies (EMBs), electoral systems and in a few cases constitutional amendments. This approach, however, has not stemmed the tide of democratic reversal. It is our submission in this paper that the trend continues not because of democracy deficits but, rather, that these deficits are themselves symptoms of a deeper systemic malaise – a crisis of state legitimacy.

It is therefore not the ‘democracy deficits’ but the ‘legitimacy deficits’ that lie at the root of the democratic reversals in Africa.

State legitimacy is commonly defined in political science and sociology as: “... the belief that a rule, institution, or leader has the right to govern. It is a judgment by an individual about the rightfulness of a hierarchy between rule or ruler and its subject and about the subordinate’s obligations toward the rule or ruler.”

The Stanford Encyclopedia goes further to distinguish between descriptive and normative legitimacy. The descriptive concept, associated with the works of Max Weber, stresses peoples’ beliefs about political authority and notions of political obligation of citizens addressing the question: why should people voluntarily obey the authorities in power?

The normative concept, however, is more prescriptive. It refers to some yardsticks or benchmarks of political acceptability or justification of political power particularly as a condition for political obligation on the pat of the ruled – be they citizens or subjects. In this paper we embrace both the descriptive and the normative concepts.

There exists a close and reciprocal relationship between state and electoral legitimacy. While state legitimacy is a necessary condition for electoral legitimacy, the latter also functions to re-enforce the former.

The key determinants of voter behaviour in democratic elections, including voter registration, turnout and candidate selection are, first; the voters’ perception of the legitimacy of the state and the electoral process.

Second, is their perception of the integrity and autonomy of the election process as well as the Electoral Management body. Third, is the accuracy and credibility of the results announced by the election management bodies. In a democratic election the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of the voters is arguably the most important determinant of voter behaviour.

Democratic elections, on the one hand, re-affirm the acceptability of the state as a rightful political order in which the change of leadership follows accepted rules and procedures.

On the other hand regular, free and fair elections serve to reproduce, if not enhance or legitimize, the ‘rightfulness’ of the state in the hearts and minds of most citizens. In order for legitimacy of one kind or the other to prevail, there must be a source from which it springs and each source carries with it implications for state-citizen relations. There are at least two types of legitimacy: organic and manufactured legitimacy.

Organic Legitimacy

Organic legitimacy is the kind that stems from the spontaneous consent of citizens, i.e. the belief that the political order and its institutions, rules and processes deserve to exercise public authority and in return to obtain the compliance of the citizens. In relation to elections, in particular, organic legitimacy would be expressed through high voter registration and turnouts (where voting is not mandatory), voluntary acceptance of election results and concession of defeat by losing candidates or political parties. Organic legitimacy is rooted in system affect, political competence and participation of citizens, inclusiveness, as well as the political culture and traditions of the population. It is concisely captured by Bruce Gilley who states: “… a state is more legitimate the more that it is treated by its citizens as rightfully holding and exercising political power”

In a search for a causal theory of legitimacy Gilley identifies three indicators as the critical causal variables (determinants) for state legitimacy. They are good governance, democratic rights and welfare gains. Other scholars have long identified different concepts for political legitimacy as either a descriptive category that affirms or a normative category that justifies the exercise of coercive power.

As Gabriel Elias states: “In short, action can be described as legitimate for the way it adheres to procedural codes; but for coercive action to feel legitimate it also must occur within the range of what people will believe to be acceptable behaviour – their norms and values.”

Organic legitimacy is also rooted in a culture of constitutionalism. Constitutionalism, in my view, is the kind of political culture that places the advancement of the ends society at the core of the exercise of public power and regularly submits that power to popular control through elections in the pursuit of those ends.

Constitutionalism therefore demarcates the boundaries of public power and places the interests of the majority above the interests of those who happen to be in power at any one time.

Commenting on the state of constitutionalism in Africa, Okoth-Ogendo (1991) observes: “The African ruling elites are attracted relentlessly to the idea of constitutions…missing the noble idea of constitutionalism. The exercise of state power must seek to advance the ends of society and, the country that satisfies that rule is a country that has a culture of constitutionalism.

I must add that the state in that country is also likely to enjoy organic legitimacy and the spontaneous consent from the citizens. It does not have to invoke the ‘monopoly of coercive force’ routinely, in order to obtain compliance in its day to day administration of public affairs.

Constitutionalism is the bedrock of organic legitimacy and it bears the following features:

• Sovereignty rests in the people who are the ultimate source of all public authority.

• Habitual normative respect and adherence to the spirit and letter of the constitution which is based on and responsive to the popular will.

• Voluntary consent of the citizens confers legitimacy on the state and is assured through regular free, fair, peaceful and credible elections.

• Major political decisions are reached through an inclusive and participatory political system through appropriate institutions, rules and procedures. This creates ownership of policies and nurtures stakeholders in their implementation.

• Transparency, openness and accessibility of public authority.

• Orderly, consensual and peaceful resolution of conflicts promotes consistency and predictability in political practice.

Manufactured Legitimacy

Manufactured legitimacy, on the other hand, emanates from deliberate actions aimed at getting citizens to accept and obey the state and government even in matters that may not be consistent with their political traditions, wishes, interests or the popular will.

This can be obtained either through the use of persuasion (carrots) or the employment of coercion (sticks). The basket of carrots may include bribes, lies, propaganda, etc. while the arsenal of sticks includes the use of threats, intimidation, violence, etc. The use of carrots in the African situation exploits the vulnerabilities of the population (poverty, ignorance, ill-health and fear).

Carrots may range from buying voters’ IDs; to providing meals and handing down pieces of clothing to impoverished voters at public rallies; to house to house visits with food items and other gifts, etc.

The use of sticks, on the other hand, plays upon the people’s fear of state violence as well as exploiting their fears or instilling fear in them. In relation to elections, manufactured legitimacy may be reflected in the bribery, low voter turnouts, contestation of results, massive protest or spoiled votes.

Manufactured legitimacy is founded on propaganda, intimidation, repression, alienation, exclusion, political incompetence of citizens and ideological hegemony. To that end, political parties can provide an effective tool for manufacturing legitimacy in and out of parliament as well as before, during and after elections. Equally, the other arms of the state can engage in manufacturing state legitimacy particularly if they surrender their autonomy or if they are otherwise captured by the executive.

The central argument of this paper is that; when faced by organic legitimacy deficits and probably political discontent and accusations of dictatorship or authoritarianism by citizens, states and governments resort to manufacturing legitimacy in the minds of their citizens.

This move is deliberately designed to create the impression, no matter how false, that the state or government in question is exercising political authority with the consent of, at least, the majority of citizens. In order to accomplish this objective, states may adopt coercive or persuasive means.

The choice of means will crucially depend on the general socio-economic and political development of the society in question. The less advanced the political society the greater the possibility of the state adopting coercive means relying, almost exclusively, on the “monopoly of legitimate force” or “monopoly of violence” and doing very little, if anything, to court the spontaneous consent of the governed.

In his book entitled Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, Noam Chomsky referring to the US argues that: “Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to dictatorship”.

Chomsky further argues, inter alia, that manufactured consent is created and maintained by propaganda through media. This is what produces and is reproduced by ideological hegemony whereby the political class systematically “treats people like cogs in a machine so that the power elite can maintain control, private ownership of public resources and increase profits”.

Our argument in this paper is that there is a direct relationship between susceptibility to propaganda and level and quality of education. An uneducated or ill-educated and parochial population is more likely to swallow propaganda; line, hook and sinker and act as expected, while a population that is educated and cosmopolitan is more likely to be questioning. The latter population is more likely to embrace critical thinking and to exercise independent judgment.

It can be generally stated that constitutionalism and therefore organic legitimacy has, on the whole, failed in Africa. This means that African states that suffer from instability and various forms of state failure including state collapse, are basically lacking in organic legitimacy.

In these they progressively resort to manufacturing legitimacy but, unfortunately for them, the efforts to manufacture legitimacy through persuasion, coercion or propaganda have also not been unquestionably successful. The consequence of this has been pervasive forms of coercive rule attended by various forms of resistance on the part of the governed resulting in persistent tensions between the rulers and the governed.

In other words in situations where we have strong (coercive) governments, as is the case in Africa, you are bound to find weak and quiescent political societies. Contrary to popular claims that governments seek to educate and enlighten their societies the opposite seems to be the case. Such governments only seek to impart enough education to impose and maintain their hegemony rather than obtain spontaneous consent and organic legitimacy. What appears as consent is, in fact, submission of the citizens out of poverty, ignorance and fear.

To be continued on Wednesday.

The writer is a professor of Political Science. He currently teaches at the St Augustine University of Tanzania.