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2 results

  • 4 - Default Pressures in Closed versus Electoral Autocracy: Zambia and Malaysia

  • Cameron Ballard-Rosa, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book:
    Democracy, Dictatorship, and Default
    Published online:
    31 July 2020
    Print publication:
    13 August 2020, pp 80-115

  • Summary

    This chapter begins with the case of Zambia under the rule of Kenneth Kaunda, a regime that became increasingly centered on urban consumers as a crucial base of support.As expected by my theory of urban bias in closed autocracies, the Zambian regime pursued a number of cheap food policies, particularly for maize, the staple crop.Yet, as the fiscal costs of these programs began to mount, the government repeatedly proved unwilling to remove such food subsidies, even under increasing pressure from the IMF, culminating in default on Zambia's debt after a major protest triggered by attempts to limit food subsidies.Yet, this over-riding concern for urban consumers is contrasted against the strong state support for rural agriculturalists in the Malaysian case, where the dominant UMNO regime relied on turnout of rural supermajorities to maintain rule in a system of electoral autocracy.While still sensitive to urban costs of living, at no point did Malaysian policy become overwhelmingly biased towards one geographic area; when faced with fiscal crisis in the 1980s, this also eased the ability of the government to reform a series of burdensome state programs and avoid default.

  • 4 - Colonial Origins of Parliaments in Kenya and Zambia

  • Ken Ochieng' Opalo, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book:
    Legislative Development in Africa
    Published online:
    17 June 2019
    Print publication:
    20 June 2019, pp 99-131

  • Summary

    To explore the mechanisms behind the observed variation in legislative institutionalization and strength in Africa, this chapter provides a comparative historical study of legislative development in Kenya and Zambia. Both countries’ colonial Legislative Councils (LegCo) had a common Westminster origin and were dominated by European immigrants. However, contingencies of political development in the late colonial period put the two countries’ postcolonial legislatures on different trajectories of institutional development. First, colonial restriction of cross-ethnic political mobilization in Kenya produced district-cum-ethnic parties. Its independence party (KANU) was therefore little more than a confederacy of ethnic parties. In Zambia, urbanization in the Copperbelt created the social infrastructure to support mass politics under UNIP. KANU’s weakness enabled the Kenyan legislature to function as the main arena for intra-elite politics and the sharing of governance rents. In Zambia, UNIP’s organizational strength crowded out the legislature, relegating it to a mere constitutional conveyor belt of the party’s policies. Second, the two countries differed on the nature of interracial politics. Interracial discord in Zambia resulted in extra-institutional nationalist politics. Kenya’s nationalist political development took place largely within the LegCo. As a result, independence brought institutional legislative discontinuity in Zambia and continuity in Kenya.