Business and the State in Southern Africa: The Politics of Economic Reform
by Scott D. Taylor. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007; pp. 267. £38.99 (hb). ISBN 9781588264985; Trade Unions and Workplace Democracy in Africa, by Gérard Kester. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007; pp. 329. £65.00 (hb). ISBN 9780754649977. Reviewed by Miles Larmer, University of Sheffield. ©Miles Larmer, 2008.
Each of these books provides valuable empirical information on their subjects, (respectively, domestic African business relations with states and experiments with workplace democracy) which will be of relevance to many researchers. Both are, however, weakened by their narrow focus on conceptual frameworks of business and labour relations which have little practical reality in the societies under examination.
Scott Taylor investigates an important and neglected question, namely, why is the indigenous business community so lacking in political influence in its relations with African states? It is unquestionably true that most African governments are unsupportive of their domestic business constituencies, even after the implementation of economic liberalisation programmes ostensibly designed to promote business interests and a market‐driven approach to economic development. Taylor investigates this question through well researched case studies on Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Taylor claims that ‘Two decades of comparative research clearly demonstrates the potential benefits of business‐state coalitions in the developing world.’ (p.2) Little evidence exists, however, that such coalitions have led to economic growth or development in Africa. Indeed, the evidence provided here suggests that temporarily strong state‐business relations in Zambia and Zimbabwe in the early 1990s resulted in the implementation of liberalisation programmes that presaged significant economic decline. Despite being initially supported by domestic businesses, economic liberalisation proved in practice to be against their interests; exposed to the full force of international competition, many were unable to compete and were forced to close down and/or cut jobs. Taylor blames such problems on the faulty implementation of liberalisation, for which states are responsible. He largely disregards the role of donor con‐ditionality and the international financial institutions for forcing liberalisation on Zambia (although, admittedly, not Zimbabwe). Although he admits that actual liberalisation is not always beneficial, Taylor assumes that ‘a strong dose of neo‐liberal orthodoxy … should be considered a vital component of a late‐late developing state in an overwhelmingly capitalist global environment’ (p. 220).
Taylor's binary analysis of ‘strong’ states and weak domestic business interests neglects the role of both international business and the international financial institutions. Although Taylor acknowledges that ‘the prevailing international environment further disadvantages African business actors …’ (p.208), this is not central to the case studies. The evidence presented suggests, however, that domestic business is marginal because it plays a negligible role in economic development, job creation and government revenue, relative to these international actors. Taylor admits as much with regard to Zambia: ‘The specific needs of the independent business community are not widely sympathized with or shared by the general populace’ (p.89). In such a context, it is rational for state actors to disregard domestic business, which has yet to prove that it can significantly contribute to Africa's development.
Taylor fails to offer a single example of effective pro‐reform state relations with an indigenous African business community; Zimbabwe and South Africa are the partial exceptions which prove this rule. In each, Taylor suggests that it was white‐dominated business which provided the basis for strong post‐colonial state‐business relations (p. 29). This is an ongoing process in South Africa, but the Zimbabwean honeymoon came to a halt with economic decline in the mid‐1990s and Mugabe's subsequent populist turn. South Africa's current strong business‐state coalition may be, Taylor admits, prone to similar political pressures if it fails to benefit the wider African population.
More generally, Taylor fails to prove his claim that ‘… the lack of business‐state cooperation was a significant factor in problems such as the rapid de‐industrialization, the failure to advance commercial agricultural potential, and rising unemployment across all economic sectors that accelerated in the 1990’ (p.5). It could certainly be argued that the lack of such cooperation, reflecting as it does the marginality of domestic business, was/ is symptomatic of a wider malaise in which economic liberalisation was implemented in the interests of narrow national elites and their cooperating partners in international business and donor institutions, but it can hardly be said to be a major cause of such problems.
Kester examines the equally elusive concept of workplace democracy in Africa. It reflects two decades of research in ten countries and, in its case studies, provides a wealth of useful detail regarding experiments in worker participation in company decision‐making that will help address the relative dearth of post‐colonial labour studies at the workplace level. Of significant importance are the opinion surveys of workers and trade union representatives, which reflect a convincingly bleak picture of the generalised decline in working conditions and living standards since the 1970s.
However, Kester's longitudinal approach is also his weakness – as the author makes clear, experiments in worker participation were introduced in the period of state‐led economic nationalism in the 1970s, and have virtually disappeared since the late 1980s. Although this is therefore largely a historical study of such projects, the presentation of data does not generally follow a historical structure in the individual country case studies. Insufficient contextualisation is provided of the widely differing post‐colonial political and economic frameworks within which the many examples of worker participation occurred.
The study also suffers from a limited analysis of state motivations for introducing worker participation schemes. Kester contrasts the first decade after independence (c. 1960–70), during which ‘progressive’ governments (Zambia, for example) planned worker consultation (drawing on Western European and/or Yugoslav models) based on ‘well‐intended lofty ideals of co‐operation’, with a period of implementation during which ‘the corporatist complex started to more and more confiscate all power and wealth, and the trade unions, who might have been willing to assume government‐friendly roles in the beginning, became prisoners of increasingly authoritarian regimes’ (pp. 6–7) Insufficient explanation is offered for why such a shift occurred, and little evidence is provided indicating why such a positive view should be adopted regarding the motivations of rulers, nor why their good intentions were overturned. Given the lack of positive outcomes of worker participation in the cases under examination, an alternative reading of the evidence presented is that post‐colonial governments, concerned with the disruptive power of organised labour, sought to introduce state‐dominated corporatism to contain unrest and the potential political threat of independent trade unionism. It is evident that in the overwhelming majority of cases in which workers’ committees or councils were introduced, workers did not regard them as having improved labour relations, with most seeking to defend their independent trade union representation.
In the 1990s, liberalisation effectively dismantled such participatory structures (again, a symptom of a wider malaise rather than its cause). In a context of economic decline, effective worker representation has declined, with correlative declines in wages, living standards and levels of employment. Whilst Kester is right to argue for improved worker rights and representation, there is little to indicate that the types of workplace democracy examined here are relevant to addressing these problems in practice.