Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:10:01.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Charismatic Legitimacy and One-Party Rule in Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

W. G. Runciman
Get access

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Notes Critiques
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , May 1963 , pp. 148 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) Unfortunately a good deal of Weber's writing on charisma is still not available in English. References are given to translations where possible. References to Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft are to the 4th edition (Tübingen, 1956)Google Scholar, cited hereafter as WuG. Other abbreviated references are to From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (New York, 1946)Google Scholar, cited as Essays; and to The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Parsons, T. (New York, 1947)Google Scholar, cited as Theory.

(2) Leadership in a parliamentary democracy is several times discussed apart from charisma in Weber's political essays. The basic problem here, as he himself formulates it, is this: “in welcher Richtung entwickelt sich die Führerschaft in den Parteien unter dem Druck der Demokratisierung und der zunehmenden Bedeutung der Berufspolitiker, Partei- und Interessenten-Beamten, und welche Rück-wirkung hat das auf das parlamentarische Leben?”; and again “gestatten die Parteien in einer voll entwickelten Massendemokratie überhaupt Führernaturen den Aufstieg?” (WuG pp. 868, 874Google Scholar, reprinted also in Gesammelte Politische Schriften2 [1958], pp. 378–9, 389)Google Scholar. The different problem of the role of charismatic leadership in a democracy is discussed in WuG, pp. 674 ff.Google Scholar, Theory, pp. 387–9.Google Scholar

(3) Theory, pp. 329, 382–3Google Scholar; WuG, p. 678.Google Scholar

(4) WuG, pp. 676–8Google Scholar, where Weber gives a series of examples of the role of charisma in modern representative democracy, and then explicitly remarks (p. 678) “Wie diese Beispiele zeigen, gibt es charismatische Herrschaft keineswegs lediglich auf primitiven Entwicklungstufen”; cf. p. 683 and Essays, pp. 295–6.Google Scholar

(5) Weber gives several slightly different definitions: the one quoted is taken from WuG, p. 124Google Scholar, as translated in Rheinstein, M., ed., Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society (Harvard, 1954), p. XLGoogle Scholar. A slightly different translation is given by Parsons, (Theory, p. 328)Google Scholar. See also Essays, pp. 295–6Google Scholar, Theory, pp. 358–9Google Scholar, WuG, p. 555.Google Scholar

(6) The concept of charisma is applied to Nkrumah and to the political development of Ghana by After, David, The Gold Coast in Transition (Princeton, 1955)Google Scholar. He sees charismatic legitimacy as necessary to the transition from traditional to secular norms, with which I agree. However, I do not find his attempt to link this to the structural-functional notions of the American theorists wholly successful, and it is never clear from his use of charisma quite what he understands the term to mean (see, e.g., p. 213, n. 18, where the difference between a leader and a charismatic leader is unclear, and p. 303 where “charisma itself” seems to be treated as a reined object).

(7) WuG, p. 676.Google Scholar

(8) This assertion is made e.g. by Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., in his article “On Heroic Leadership”, Encounter (12, 1960), pp. 3–11Google Scholar. Schlesinger also misrepresents Weber on both the other issues to which I have referred.

(9) Essays, p. 245.Google Scholar

(10) Professor Shils, however, has argued that the emphasis in underdeveloped countries on purely political charisma does inhibit economic initiative and the attitudes necessary for the creation of a rational, advanced economic structure. See his “The Concentration and Dispersion of Charisma: Their Bearing on Economic Policy in Underdeveloped Countries”, World Politics, XI (1958), pp. 1–19.Google Scholar

(11) WuG, p. 673Google Scholar “Das Plebiszit ist keine ‘Wahl’, sondern erstmalige oder (beim Plebiszit von 1870) erneute Anerkennung eines Prätendenten als persönlich qualifizierten, charismatischen Herrschers.” However, “when the organization of the corporate group undergoes a process of progressive rationalization, it is readily possible that, instead of recognition being treated as a consequence of legitimacy, it is treated as the basis of legitimacy, Legitimacy, that is, becomes ‘democratic’”. (Theory, p. 386.)Google Scholar

(12) Theory, p. 370.Google Scholar

(13) Theory, p. 385.Google Scholar

(14) Essays, p. 248.Google Scholar

(15) Theory, p. 371.Google Scholar

(16) Ibid. p. 410.

(17) Theory, pp. 386–8Google Scholar; WuG, p. 674.Google Scholar

(18) See n. 11, above.

(19) Theory, p. 389.Google Scholar

(20) Theory, p. 390.Google Scholar

(21) The authors of the pre-election survey conducted in Accra in 1954 were of the opinion that kinship ties were the only effective inducement to voters to support the opposition: see Birmingham, W. B. and Jahoda, G., “A Pre-Election Survey in a Semi-literate Society”, Public Opinion Quarterly, XIX (1955), p. 152Google Scholar. The extent to which elections in Northern Ghana were guided by purely local factions and interests is clearly shown by Austin, Dennis, “Elections in an African Rural Area”, Africa, XXI (1961), pp. 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(22) The Moslem Association Party, which won one seat in the 1954 and 1956 elections, should perhaps be described as a confessional rather than a regional party, although its support came mainly from the Moslem communities of certain particular localities.

(23) Nkrumah, Kwame, Autobiography (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 105Google Scholar. The regional basis of the opposition has continued to be beemphasized: see e.g. the Ghana Government's Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the Matters disclosed at the Trial of Captain Benjamin Awhaitey, and the statement thereon (1959), pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

(24) There are, of course, great differences among the types of political system covered by the term “traditional authorities” (e.g. between the Ashanti as described by Rattray and the Tallensi as described by Fortes). Moreover, the suecess or failure of the CPP in a given district has often depended on the personal popularity and following of particular individuals (e.g. Krobo Edusei in Ashanti, or W. A. Amoro in the Northern constituency of Bongo), However, the conflict of allegiances between the CPP and the traditional authorities, however different these may be, is sufficiently clear-cut for the use of the term to seem justifiable: all rest primarily on “traditional” legitimacy in Weber's sense.

(25) For an account of the 1951 election, see Price, J. H., The Gold Coast Election (West African Affairs No. 11, n.d.).Google Scholar

(26) Col. No. 248, Gold Coast: Report to His Excellency the Governor by the Committee on Constitutional Reform, 1949Google Scholar. Neither Nkrumah nor any radical nationalist was invited to serve on the committee.

(27) See The Government's Proposals for Constitutional Reform, 1953Google Scholar and Col. No. 302, Despatches on the Gold Coast Government's Proposals for Constitutional Reform, 1954.Google Scholar

(28) For an account of the 1954 election, see Bennett, G., “The Gold Coast General Election of 1954”, Parliamentary Affairs, VII (1954), pp. 430–439.Google Scholar

(29) In 1954, with 3 seats uncontested, 50% of the registered electors voted. In 1956, with 5 seats uncontested, the proportion was 48%.

(30) The only figures which might be used to draw conclusions about a national opposition are those of the 1960 presidential referendum: Danquah, 124,643; Nkrumah, 1,016,076. But even when regionalism may be presumed to be a less important factor, the referendum remains a choice of leader rather than policy. If (which some observers have questioned) the referendum was accurate, it must be regarded as a measure of Nkrumah's popularity rather than of opinion on issues.

(31) Autobiography, p. 147Google Scholar: “It has always been my conviction that after any political revolution, non-violent or violent, the new government should immediately on coming into power clear out from the civil service all its old leaders. My own experience taught me that by failing to do so, a revolutionary government risks its own destruction.”

(32) The continued commemoration of the 1948 riots in terms of the achievement by organized force of a self-conscious political objective may be cited as illustrative of this.

(33) See the Report of the Constitutional Adviser, 1955Google Scholar, Report of the Achimota Conference, 1956Google Scholar, and the Government Report on the Achimota Conference, 1956Google Scholar. In fact, strong but unavailing representations were made by the Joint Provincial Council delegation to persuade the Asanteman Council and the NLM and its allies to join.

(34) That one coup d'État is likely to lead to another is a danger explicitly recognized in the Statement by the Government on the Recent Conspiracy, 1961, p. 1Google Scholar, although “any revolution which is based on real and genuine mass support is justified” (p. 2).

(35) The relevance of Weber's work to the study of millenarian movements is normally taken to rest on his analysis of the relation between religious beliefs and social change (as implied by Talmon, Yonina, “Pursuit of the Millennium: the Relation between Religion and Social Change”, European Journal of Sociology, III (1962), p. 148)Google Scholar. However, it is perhaps worth suggesting that Weber's treatment of charismatic movements is at least as relevant. The messianic utopianism of pre-political or proto-political movements can be looked at as both an instance and a cause of a situation of unstable charismatic obedience to a leader promising fulfilment of frustrated or recently heightened expectations.

(36) Parl Debates, vol. XVI, no. 25 (1959), cols. 348–9.Google Scholar

(37) The two Trades Union Congresses which had jointly existed up to 1952 were amalgamated at Nkrumah's insistence (Autobiography, p. 178)Google Scholar. The Gold Coast ex-Servicemen's Union (the more radical of the two ex-servicemen's organizations) played a considerable part in the events before and after the 1948 disturbances, which may be regarded as the starting-point of the accelerating constitutional reforms which led ultimately to independence. See no. 231, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Disturbances in the Gold Coast, 1948, pp. 7, 20–23.Google Scholar

(38) It is worth noting that this also fits closely with Weber's analysis in his discussion of bureaucracy: see e.g. Theory, pp. 224–5Google Scholar and cf. p. 163 and elsewhere.

(39) The present leader of the Opposition (now called the “Minority Group”), Mr. Dombo, directly accused the Government in the debate on the bill of intending to abolish chieftaincy; see Parl. Debates, vol. XVI, no. 35 (1959), col. 1682Google Scholar. This is denied by the Government, however.

(40) Report of a Commission appointed, to enquire into the Affairs of the Kumasi State Council and the Asanteman Council, 1958, para. 121Google Scholar; Report of a Commission appointed to enquire into the Affairs of the Akim Abuakwa State, 1958, para. 66.Google Scholar

(41) Such a threat might come at some later date from the army, although this topic raises separate issues which I shall not pursue here. It could, however, be argued that a potentially dissatisfied generation of young officers may have been created by the abnormally rapid promotion of the party-favoured candidates chosen to replace the departing expatriates. For such promotions, see the Ghana Gazette, 13 10 1961, p. 724.Google Scholar

(42) I have here relied largely on Karpat, Kemel H., Turkey's Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System (Princeton, 1959).Google Scholar

(43) Professor Duverger makes the crucial point in his observation that “The Turkish single party had a bad conscience” (Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties (London, 1959), p. 277)Google Scholar. The same does not seem true of the CPP.

(44) The figure for 1958 is taken from the Annual Report of the Ministry of Labour 1957–8 (1960)Google Scholar, which was the latest available at the time of writing. On the 1951 figures, see Sutherland, D. A., Memorandum on Mining in the Gold Coast (Accra, 1951), p. 26Google Scholar. It is, however, worth noting that in the mines the African labour force has shrunk from 41,270 in 1951 to 29,945 in 1960; see Report of the Mines Labour Enquiry Committee, 1953, p. 43Google Scholar and Report of the Mines Department for the Period 1st April 1959Google Scholar – 31st March 1960, p. 13.Google Scholar

(45) Annual Report of the Ministry of Labour 1957–8, p. 94Google Scholar, Table IX (b).

(46) Survey of High-Level Manpower in Ghana, 1960, p. 11Google Scholar. This calculation assumes an annual population growth of 3% and economic growth of 5% (ibid. p. 10).

(47) Ghana Information Services, Tema (1961), p. 51.Google Scholar

(48) Already in 1952, the Seers-Ross report estimated a labour force increase of 10,000 per annum if the project started in 1952 or 1953. See Seers, D. and Ross, C. R., Report on Financial and Physical Problems of Development in the Gold Coast (1952), p. 93.Google Scholar

(49) Seers, and Ross, (op. cit. p. 7)Google Scholar comment on the even greater increase in “luxury” than “semi-luxury” imports between 1938 and 1950. This has led Boyon, J., Le Ghana (Paris, 1958), p. 94Google Scholar, to speak of the evolution of an “haute bourgeoisie”, but the phrase needs to be treated with care; a high status-group, in Weber's sense, would be a safer term.

* I am indebted to the Smuts Memorial Fund for a grant which enabled me to spend several weeks in Ghana in the winter of 1961–2. I should also like to express my thanks to members of the staff of the Ghana Government Archivist and Government Statistician for their help.