Chapter 3—
System Goals, Decision-Making Rules, and Collective Choices

Our previous chapters focus on a political economy approach to decision-making by public authorities. In deciding on public policies, these officials make use of changing institutional resources in order to cope with resource scarcity. It is now appropriate to turn to the patterns of choice within the context of such scarcity. A number of questions will be raised: What collective goals can be identified generally as common to the African scene? What factors (information, values, beliefs, analytic capacity, and bureaucratic organization) condition governmental decision-making? What decision rules have leaders set for themselves in determining choices? What types of strategy of choice have different leadership elites arrived at in mobilizing and allocating scarce resources? And finally, what are the effects of the selection of these strategies? In our view, desirable choices are those that expand alternatives: they provide relatively more resources, and they lead to the allocation of given resources efficiently and to the distribution of output equitably. We recognize that situations might arise wherein these desirable ends are, to some extent at least, mutually exclusive. Our analysis keeps in mind the necessity of making trade-off choices among these ends.

The particular factors in each society that condition governmental decision-making and apply decision-making rules cause varying patterns of choice to emerge. Such patterns of choice entail different consequences. Thus, as shown here and more fully in the concluding chapter, each of these strategies of choice can be expected to involve a different calculation of costs and benefits when determining the appropriate mix of system goals: see, in particular, Figures 16 and 17.

Identifying System Goals:
The Role of the State

We perceive the state as an action agency geared to coping with tasks which the people pose for it through the vehicle of a leadership elite. It engages in purposeful behavior aimed at furthering systemic "self-determination."^[1] Self-determination" encompasses both economic and poltical dimensions. The former includes the expansion, efficient allocation, and equitable distribution of resources. The latter involves an increase in political innovativeness to achieve systemic goals. "If we define the core area of politics as the area of enforceable decisions or, more accurately, of all decisions backed by some combination of a significant probability of enforcement," remarks Karl W. Deutsch, "then politics becomes the method par excellence for securing preferential treatment for messages and commands and for the reallocation of human or material resources. Politics thus appears as a major instrument for either retarding or accelerating social learning and innovation."^[2]

Viewing the state as a goal-securing and problem-solving mechanism, how is one to evaluate its achievements? We rate the performance of states primarily in terms of their ability to set realizable goals as well as to select the alternatives that will achieve these multiple goals at the lowest possible cost.^[3] As for the first task, a distinguished Zambian has stressed the critical

[1] Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 250.

[2] Ibid., p. 254.

[3] James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971), p. 36.

need to select goals imaginatively and realistically. "Leaders," writes Foreign Minister Vernon J. Mwaanga, "must have a clear perception of what constitutes progress, they must embody an element of rationality in their behaviour, they must have an appreciation of priorities and above all must have integrity which transcends mere rhetoric and sloganeering."^[4] In addition to great skill in goal formulation, leaders must display considerable capacity in fulfilling these tasks. Systemic performance (i.e., the ability to achieve goals in an efficient manner) provides the basis for regime legitimacy and stability. It is the central challenge encountered by all African statesmen and planners—irrespective of the particular policy-making style they have adopted. Thus Knud Erik Svendsen's remark that "the worst enemy of a socialist policy in any African country is bad economic performance" applies to capitalist-oriented and socialist-oriented states alike.^[5]

In the remainder of this section, we concentrate on the first aspect of collective (or state) problem-solving—the task of formulating acceptable system goals. It is evident that certain critical tasks of state building and maintenance are common to the African states as a whole; our problem is to deduce these tasks from general experience. A measure of assistance is given us by the efforts of some members of the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council to identify the six "crises" of political development which "may be met in different sequences but all of which must be successfully dealt with for a society to become a modern nationstate ."^[6] According to these analysts, a state must cope with the following list of "critical system-development problems or crises" in the process of modernizing: (1) the identity crisis: the achievement of a conmmon sense of territorial identity; (2) the legitimacy crisis: the need to arrive at a consensus on the valid

[4] Vernon J. Mwaanga, "Zambia Heads for the Big Poll," Sunday Times of Zambia (Ndola), October 14, 1973, p. 7.

[5] Quoted in William Tordoff and Ali A. Mazrui, "The Left and the Super-Left in Tanzania," Journal of Modern African Studies 10, no. 3 (October 1972): 439.

[6] Lucian W. Pye, Aspects of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966), p. 63. (Our italics.)

exercise of authority by political elites and structures; (3) the penetration crisis: the securing of an effective central governmental presence throughout the territory under control; (4) the participation crisis: the channeling of various public demands for inclusion in the decision-making process into legitimate institutional outlets; (5) the integration crisis: the establishment of a coherent system of interactional relationships among the many groups and interests making up the society; and (6) the distribution crisis: the ability of political elites to reconcile the demands for particular goods and services with collective needs for economic growth, resource mobilization, and collective goods (for example, national defense or pollution abatement) that are available to all members of the community.^[7]

This listing represents a useful delineation of certain problems at hand. However, it seems less than complete and not always balanced in the way that issues are emphasized. It enumerates modernization tasks, but it does not compile the broader challenges and objectives implicit in systemic self-determination—particularly from an African point of view. Whereas the categories assume the survival of the state, African leaders (especially those whose countries border on the white states of southern Africa, as well as Kenya and Tanzania, which lie adjacent to President Idi Amin's Uganda, Ghana with respect to the Volta Region, and Ethiopia with regard to Eritrea) remain profoundly anxious over the question of territorial integrity. Moreover, the categories take little or no account of the exogenous variable, when African spokesmen evince great concern over continuing evidences of external control (i.e., neocolonialism).^[8] In general, the political modernization ap-

[7] Ibid., pp. 63–67; James S. Coleman, "Modernization: Political Aspects," International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Co. and the Free Press, 1968), pp. 395–402; Anthony H. Rweyemamu, "Some Reflection on Contemporary African Political Institutions and their Capacity to Generate Socio-Economic Development," African Review 1, no. 2 (September 1971): 33–34; and Leonard Binder et al., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 110–11, 136–37, 187, 279–81.

[8] In subsequent writings, however, some modernization analysts have shown great subtlety in discussing exogenous causation in developmental episodes. See Gabriel A. Almond, "Approaches to DevelopmentalCausation," in Gabriel A. Almond, Scott C. Flanagan, and Robert J. Mundt, Crisis, Choice and Change (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973), pp. 28–30.

proach can be said to suffer grievously from a Western-based ethnocentrism. As Naomi Caiden and Aaron Wildavsky argue:

Modernization assumes transformation from a traditional to a modern state, but it gives little indication how this journey may be achieved; it is static, not dynamic. It assumes a dichotomy between traditional and modern without considering the stages in between and patterns of behavior that may even prevent modernization taking place as worthy of discussion in their own right. It equates modernization with Westernization, and current Western society as the ultimate goal for development of other nations. . . . Worst of all modernization theory was culture-bound, seeing economic growth not only as the most important aim, but stipulating that its attainment was irrevocably intertwined with Western organizational forms and values.^[9]

Nevertheless, molernization theory presents a guide to our immediate concern with setting system goals in most African circumstances. Regarding modifications, Lucian Pye's suggestion on collapsing categories is worth recording. Pye remarks that integration relates popular political activity to governmental performance, thereby offering an "effective and compatible solution of both the penetration and the participation crises."^[10]

Furthermore, we note the need for two additional categories: ensuring the survival of the nation as constituted at independence; and securing freedom from external control. Although both variables relate to the international environment, they differ significanly in that the first refers primarily to possible threats against territorial integrity (for example, South Africa vis-à-vis Zambia, Botswana, and Mozambique), while the second applies to the political, economic, and social penetration of political systems.^[11] Postindependence Third World countries

[9] Naomi Caiden and Aaron Wildavsky, Planning and Budgeting in Poor Countries (New York: John Wiley, 1974), pp. 27–28.

[10] Pye, Aspects of Political Development, p. 65.

[11] "A penetrated political system," states James N. Rosenau, "is one in which nonmembers of a national society participate directly and authoritatively, through actions taken jointly with the society's members, in either the allocation of its values or the mobilization of support onbehalf of its goals." "Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy," in R. Barry Farrell (ed.), Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 65.

are often fragile in both geo-specific and task-specific terms. The low capabilities of such states expose them to various external manipulations and influences. However, it is in the political, economic, and social (not the military) spheres that the greatest of their number are vulnerable to continuing outside pressures. No doubt this sensitivity to the prevailing threat of the international environment explains the skepticism and suspicion of the leaders of poorer countries toward such seemingly supportive activities as multinational corporate investment and foreign aid.

At least one other major modification seems necessary in terms of our immediate purposes: to recognize explicitly the need to expand economic and social opportunities throughout Africa. To be sure, the concept of distribution subsumes a category on mobilizing resources within it. Even so, we regard the enhancement of economic and social capacity to be a challenge of such pressing magnitude as to require full and equal recognition along with the allocative process. An effective and equity-oriented distribution mechanism obviously means little unless it is buttressed by an ability to produce. And even then, the aggregate demands on productiveness are so staggering as to defy easy assumptions about the future. Thus the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that, given a continuation of current population trends, the demand for grain in the developing countries will rise from 600 million tons in 1970 to 900 million tons in 1985. The implications of this situation are enormous, for the FAO report estimates that over time the LDCs will have shortages of 85 million tons, a measurement which could easily prove to be on the short side in the event of serious crop failures (such as in the Sahelian area of West Africa during the early 1970s). In order to make up for this 10 percent gap in their needs, the LDCs will have to increase imports—valued, at current prices, at some $17 billion per annum.^[12] The solution to this insufficiency of grain in the LDCs, argued the FAO report, is to increase the amount of

[12] New York Times, June 3, 1974, p. 2.

grain raised in these countries. But this only underscores the critical link between productivity and allocation, a connection which we feel deserves explicit recognition when a list of system goals is formulated.

The crises and problems of political development can now be reformulated into system goals as modified by the above additions and substitutions. To this end, the following collective tasks seem paramount: (1) ensuring systemic survival: maintaining the capacity for collective action; (2) establishing a national identity: fostering an awareness of common ties on the part of the inhabitants of a territorial unit; (3) integrating societies: facilitating the growth, of community-wide interaction and exchange, primarily through an expansion of central institutions and activities; (4) creating an acceptable authority system: acquiring public acceptance of an authoritative and effective legal and political structure; (5) mobilizing and distributing resources efficiently: increasing productive capacity and sharing the output equitably among the members of the community; (6) securing freedom from external control: reducing economic, political, and social dependence on any external actor or set of actors so as to maximize a country's capacity for achieving its collective purposes.

In achieving these collective tasks, decision-makers in each state play a critical role in the determination of priorities. The tasks outlined above are burdensome in themselves, and the fact that they occur simultaneously in the LDCs places a heavy "load" on policy-makers in these countries.^[13] By definition, underdevelopment means an overburdening situation, one in which the claims on the system outpace the capacity of institutions to absorb legitimate demands. In an environment of strain brought on by this capabilities imbalance, choice becomes formidable. Since different opportunity costs (the costs of forgoing another benefit or set of benefits) are involved, the choice as to priorities necessarily entails broad and important implications for patterns of production and consumption in the society

[13] James S. Coleman, "The Development Syndrome: Differentiation-Equality-Capacity," in Leonard Binder et al., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 86.

as a whole.^[14] An understanding of the decision process, then, requires that considerable attention be given to the preferences and predispositions of those engaged in policy-making. And this leads to a wider issue, which we now turn to; namely, the factors conditioning choice.

Decision-Making Factors:
The Pursuit of System Goals

We recognize that choice does not take place in a vacuum. In real-life behavior, choice cannot fully conform to a "rational-choice" model where a unified and purposeful actor calculates the costs and benefits of each course of action as it arises. Instead, "rationality refers to consistent, value-maximizing choice within specified constraints."^[15] As a consequence, an understanding of the process by which policy-makers select and order alternatives requires that some attention be paid to the factors constricting and conditioning decision-making.

In choosing among alternative courses of action, it is necessary not to minimize the importance of the political elite's "perception of interests" or the manner in which it "articulat[es] specific values."^[16] But if the political actors remain at center stage in the decision process, it is nonetheless important to recognize the extent to which their maneuverability is circumscribed. The policy analyst therefore gains a useful perspective on the broader process of decision-making by paying heed simultaneously to the conditioning factors as well as to the alternatives at hand. What, then, are the main limitations in the real world upon a model of rational choice as set out in the appendix to Chapter 1? Leaving aside the important but highly variegated area of personal predilections and prefer-

[14] L. L. Wade and R. L. Curry, Jr., A Logic of Public Policy (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1970), p. 35. Also see David Feldman, "The Economics of Ideology," in Colin Leys (ed.), Politics and Change in Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 91, 96.

[15] Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971), p. 30. (Italics deleted.)

[16] Ernst B. Haas, The Uniting of Europe (London: Steven & Sons, 1958), p. 13.

ences, the decision process is influenced by five general factors: information, values, belief systems, analytic capacity, and bureaucratic organization. Each of these will be examined briefly below.

Information

Where policy-makers are unable to secure sufficient and reliable information, their evaluation of the costs and the benefits of pursuing various lines of action will be limited and will involve a degree of risk and uncertainty.^[17] In many African countries, basic data are scanty, and few qualified analysts are available to make use of what data do exist. In the absence of reliable data on human and physical resources, climates, agriculture, industry, and so forth, it is difficult in the extreme for analysts to arrive at realistic and creative policies. ^[18] The inputs simply do not exist on which to base the most desirable output policies.

Paradoxically, those who suffer least in terms of information resources are most aware of the need for improved information systems. Thus Kenya's Mwai Kibaki, the minister for finance and economic planning, told a seminar of government finance officers from all ministries of the need for increased data on which to base decisions.^[19] And if such data were imperative in the maximizing of comprehensive planning objectives, they were equally important in the attaining of day-to-day administrative aims. The complications arising from inadequate information in carrying on ordinary administrative activities are apparent from a reading of David K. Leonard's description of Kenya's (relatively efficient) bureaucracy. He writes, "In several ministries the central filing system is no longer adequate to the demands being made upon it, and senior civil servants are resorting to informal communication, personal files, and private searches for lost documents in order to meet their information needs. It is not uncommon for letters from one civil servant to another to receive delayed replies—or no answer at all."^[20] And

[17] Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1957), pp. 39–41.

[18] Yehezkel Dror, Public Policymaking Reexamined (Scranton: Chandler Publishing Co., 1968), p. 116.

[19] East African Standard (Nairobi), April 13, 1973, p. 9.

[20] David K. Leonard "Communications and Deconcentration," in Goran Hyden, Robert Jackson, and John Okumu (eds.), DevelopmentAdministration: The Kenyan Experience (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 101.

what is known about relatively developed Kenya is an indication of even greater problems in some of the less developed countries which lack the technical and manpower resources readily available in that country. Even so, Kenya's information needs are likely to mount rapidly as industrialization occurs in years to come.^[21] Unlike their predecessors, industrial societies are complex and fragile; they require a high degree of information in order to function effectively. Hence, the more progress Kenya achieves in fulfilling its firmly established goal of enhanced productiveness the more urgent its need for knowledge is likely to be. And any failure to secure the necessary information will have increasingly grave consequences for efficient decision-making and plan implementation.

Values

By their ability to set basic policy directions, collective values constitute an important aspect in the decision process. They are distinguishable from system goals in the following manner: "Values," observes Talcott Parsons "are . . . deliberately defined at a level of generality higher than that of goals—they are directions of action rather than specific objectives, the latter depending on the particular character of the situation in which the system is placed as well as on its values and its structure as a system."^[22]

By channeling actions along certain lines, socially shared values can act to inhibit rational choice-making. A look at some of the key values held by African opinion-formers reveals large discontinuities. Widely shared values on equity (in regard to taxation, education, incomes, employment, management, business ownership, and so forth) come into conflict with other, strong commitments on the need for rapid economic growth. ^[23]

[21] David E. Apter, Choice and the Politics of Allocation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 42. Also see Robert C. North and Richard Lagerstrom, War and Domination: A Theory of Lateral Pressure (New York: General Learning Press, 1971), p. 2. Given weak bureaucracies in many of the African states, high information could become terribly costly, leading, in certain circumstances, to immobilisme.

[22] Quoted in Seymour M. Lipset, The First New Nation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1967), p. 4.

[23] For a discussion of this conflict of values with respect toAfricanization policies, see Donald Rothchild, "Kenya's Africanization Program: Priorities of Development and Equity," American Political Science Review 64, no. 3 (September 1970): 737–53.

Populist values on participation, recruitment, and distribution are at cross-purposes with entrenched elitist values and practices. Gaps between subregional claims and system integrity as well as between the values of legal sovereignty and genuine independence are as striking as they are commonplace.

The cumulative effect of these discontinuities is to place policy-makers at a difficult vantage point. They must simultaneously balance such needs as equity, economic growth, participation, elite incentive, subregional opportunity, central integrity, legal sovereignty, and full independence.^[24] In an environment frequently higher on demands and expectations than on fiscal, material, and trained manpower resources, it becomes difficult in the extreme for them to establish meaningful and acceptable value priorities. And to the extent that decision elites engage in a process of value trade-off, the ambiguity of direction that may result adds considerably to the tasks of rational choice-making.

Belief Systems

Many strong (and often persuasive) appeals have been made to systematize and act on Africa's body of shared beliefs. In a well-known statement on the subject, Frantz Fanon pointed to an absence of ideology as the "great danger" threatening Africa;^[25] inspired by this argument, Maina Kagombe went on to contend that "an ideology is necessary to create a frame of reference and a common denominator of beliefs and values with which to carry on the political and social revolution vital for all African peoples."^[26] African ideologies are sought after, then, because of their (assumed) capacity to

[24] Ira Sharkansky, The Politics of Taxing and Spending (Indianapolis: Bobbs, Merrill, 1969), p. 11.

[25] Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, trans. by Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p. 186. For a rejection of the notion that ideologies are indispensable to African self-fulfillment, see B. D. G. Folson, "Ideology and African Politics," Transition 8, no. 6 (1973): 17.

[26] Maina Kagombe, "Revolutionary Theory and Models for Guerrilla Action in the Non-Liberated Territories of Africa," Pan-African Journal 4, no. 1 (Winter 1971): 9.

inspire the action consequences desired by decision elites. Such systematized sets of ideas, whether implicitly or explicitly formulated, are viewed as an asset in giving purpose and continuity to state-building activities. They compensate in part for the fragility of institutions, they provide a base for regime legitimacy, they act as guidelines to choice, and they assist policymakers in mobilizing and allocating resources.^[27] In Ethiopia, the motto of "Ethiopia Tikdem," which puts the interest of the people before those of the individual, attempts to rally mass support for the new regime as well as for its program of socialism. In brief, ideologies, by constructing a particular view of reality, can be a major factor in conditioning decision-making—influencing the manner in which goals are specified, resources assembled, policies determined, and programs implemented. Thus, Ethiopia's program of "Zemetcha," the national work campaign for development through cooperation, seeks to mobilize a staff of 56,000 people to "carry the torch of knowledge to the masses in rural areas living in utter darkness."^[28]

But if ideologies are resources at the disposal of decision-makers,^[29] they also act at times to thwart the selection of optimal choices. They present a particular view of reality—not necessarily a rational one. "Ideology arises, not by applying truths to real problems, but by uniting universal theory (which may or may not have relevance for real problems) and concrete practice (which may or may not be determined by the truths)."^[30] In doing so, ideology twists the facts as necessary to conform to its view of the world. Such a (liscrepancy between fact and reality gives rise to "incorrect learning feedback."^[31]

[27] On the substantial but not conclusive evidence of a correlation between ideology and action consequences, see Alexander J. Groth, Major Ideologies (New York: John Wiley, 1971), pp. 11–17.

[28] Ethiopia Herald (Addis Ababa), December 23, 1975, pp. 1,2,4.

[29] For one observer, an ideology is a "non-material 'currency'" which may be substituted where regimes lack readily distributable amounts of goods and services to purchase behavior. See John R. Nellis, A Theory of Ideology: The Tanzanian Example (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 14.

[30] Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), p. 29.

[31] Dror, Public Policymaking Reexamined, p. 107.

Decision-makers are unable to secure reliable information on which to make efficient policy calculations, causing a gap to emerge between theory and practice; the end product of this distortion of reality could be a legitimacy crisis—that is, unless the situation is corrected by a return to an accurate interpretation of the facts. In any case, to the extent that belief systems twist reality, they can be said to complicate and encumber rational choice processes.

Analytic Capacity

In the' section above on information as a conditioning factor in decision-making, we noted Mwai Kibaki's reference to the need for increased data as a means of improving politico-economic calculations. Greater budgetary information would help, he contended, to introduce modern management techniques, facilitate financial control, enable planners to come to more desirable decisions, and provide parliament with the facts for debate.^[32] "As we become more effective in linking objectives to expenditures," he asserted, "we will begin to challenge the pattern of expenditure which has been uncritically accepted in the past."^[33] Increased knowledge and the analytic skills to make efficient use of that knowledge thus became inextricably linked to one another. A failure in either direction would entail severe limitations on the achievement of system goals—at least in terms of the lowest possible costs. By analytic skills in policy-making, we mean the capacity to make effective use of whatever technology is necessary to set collective tasks, establish value priorities, determine costs and benefits of alternative lines of action, execute policies, evaluate the impact of policies, and redesign policies on the basis of learning feedback. As the decisional process gains in efficiency, and as policy analysts develop improved strategies for realizing the best possible alternative in a given context, they will bring a high level of analytic capacity to the problem at hand. Anything less than this will necessarily be short of true rational choice.

Bureaucratic Organization

Finally, optimal policy-making is constrained by the bureaucratic environment in which analysts must operate. They are not free to determine lines of action as they wish, that is, to set rational policies in terms of

[32] East African Standard (Nairobi), April 13, 1973. p. 9

[33] Ibid.

the most efficient calculation of costs and benefits availing. Instead, they must engage in a ceaseless process of bargaining and conciliation to establish programs that are minimally satisfactory to the group as a whole. And outward appearances of harmony and consensus notwithstanding, these factional struggles can be both bitter and productive of less than desirable consequences. Bureaucratic organizations in fact only thinly conceal deep divisions based on agency interest, status, subregion, ethnic identity, ideological commitment, and policy-making style. As Fritz Morstein Marx puts the matter so well: "In this internal process . . . idea battles idea without imposition of control. The value of agreement among the participants is reduced to minimal operational necessity, to the need for hammering out proposed solutions."^[34]

Even if bureaucratic organizations are at times deeply divided and conflictive, this does not in itself explain why the organizational actors are reduced to minimal operational requirements. It is not conflict as such but the need to reconcile diverse interests which explains such bureaucratic behavior. As the decision-making group is enlarged in size, collective agreement becomes more difficult and, therefore, bargaining activities become increasingly necessary. "To establish a group agreement or organization will nonetheless always tend to be more difficult the larger the size of the group, for the larger the group the more difficult it will be to locate and organize even a subset of the group, and those in the subset will have an incentive to continue bargaining with the others in the group until the burden is widely shared, thereby adding to the expense of bargaining."^[35] Not only is the bargaining process an organizational cost but it helps to explain the acceptance of policies that are minimally satisfactory in nature. And in addition to the costs of expanding the decision group there are the questions of participant equity; the bargaining process cannot ensure that all

[34] F. M. Marx, "The Higher Civil Service as an Action Group in Western Political Development," in Joseph LaPalombara (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 89.

[35] Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 46.

actors have equal access to the deliberative group, are equally persuasive or equally able to define which options are most relevant to organization purposes.^[36] Hence bureaucratic behavior structures the way in which organization priorities and perceptions become accepted, thereby acting itself as a major constraint on optimal decision-making.

No doubt some additional factors could well be deserving of the attention given to the five major constraints on rational choice discussed above. Such aspects as drive and energy, time horizons, equipment, expectations, and external pressures all come immediately to mind. However, the overriding point seems clear: in light of the conditioning factors already examined, a frontal assault upon system goals cannot automatically be anticipated—no matter how logical or urgent these collective tasks may be. Rather, the decision process is limited by a number of factors which, when taken together, go far in showing why in real-life situations it can be extremely difficult to maximize the values widely held in the society.

Decision-Making Rules and System Goals

Before looking at decision outputs and outcomes in Africa, it is necessary to describe briefly some of the procedures that frequently predetermine public-policy decisions. A full appreciation of these guides to collective action, or decision rules, indicates in advance the kinds of policy outputs for which leaders are likely to opt. To exemplify this phenomenon at the individual level, a person whose guides to decision lead him or her to live by community political "rules" is predisposed to work through the existing system to effect desired policy changes; by contrast, a person whose guides to action are based primarily on a universal moral value may be more disposed toward working outside the political system in order to transform public policy. Thus the procedures for choice can

[36] Morton H. Halperin and Arnold Kanter, "Introduction," in Morton H. Halperin and Arnold Kanter (eds.), Readings in American Foreign Policy: A Bureaucratic Perspective (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973), pp. 27–28.

"dominate the decisions made.^[37] As a consequence, decision rules are a central part of the larger process of decision-making and must be identified and comprehended before the strategies for goal maximization are analyzed.

Decision rules are evident at all major stages in the decision process: the assemblage of information, the specification of the problem, the determination of problem-solving alternatives, the choice of alternatives, and the implementation of the chosen policy.^[38] At this point, the primary concern is with the determination of the alternative courses of action and the selection of a problem-solving strategy from among these options. There are decision rules for the various steps in the decision process, and a distinction can be drawn as to formal rules (constitutions, laws, etc.)^[39] and informal rules (the rules of thumb). In addition, there are differences between behavioral and normative decision rules. Whereas behavioral rules apply to standard operating procedures, normative rules are a critical aspect in the procedures of choice-making "in both the sense of trying to improve performances and judging values in relation to each other."^[40] We recognize that in real-world contexts these different types of rules often overlap one another, but nonetheless we find them useful in a heuristic sense.

Let us look more closely at decision rules in terms of the behavioral-normative distinction. A wide array of normative (and behavioral) guides to policy exist, but we concentrate on rules that we see as central to such key political economy goals as the efficient mobilization and allocation of resources, and trade-offs between them. In adopting a strategy on setting

[37] Richard M. Cyert and James G. March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 113. Joseph D. Cooper's description of decision-rules as "govern[ing] final selection of an alternative" seems even stronger on this question. The Art of Decision-making (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), p. 58.

[38] Max D. Richards and Paul S. Greenlaw, Management Decision Making (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1966), pp. 27, 30.

[39] Robert L. Curry, Jr., and Larry Wade, A Theory of Political Exchange (Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 35–36; and Buchanan and Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (n. 3 above), passim.

[40] Warren F. Ilchman, "Decision Rules and Decision Roles," African Review 2, no. 2 (1972): 237.

priorities between an expansion of resources and an equal distribution of the resulting output among individuals, we note that some useful procedures for choice-making can be appropriated from the general corpus of economic analysis in this regard. In particular, a decision-maker must not forgo the opportunity of choosing an option that carries a more favorable net benefit than those resulting from other opportunities. But this guide to policy is incomplete unless heed is paid to another possible decision rule—the "Pareto Optimum." The Pareto Optimum would justify a change only if no individuals were made worse off by the change and that some individuals were better off because of it.^[41] But is the test of Pareto's construction sufficient in regard to equity considerations? E. J. Mishan, among others, cautions that this is not necessarily the case:

Any adopted criterion of a cost-benefit analysis, that is, requires inter alia that all benefits exceed costs, and therefore can be vindicated by a social judgement that an economic rearrangement which can make everyone better off is an economic improvement. The reader's attention is drawn to the fact that such a judgement does not require that everyone is actually made better off, or even that nobody is actually worse off. The likelihood—which, in practice, is a virtual certainty—that some people, occasionally most people, will be worse off by introducing the investment project in question is tacitly acknowledged. A project that is adjudged feasible by reference to a cost-benefit analysis is, therefore, quite consistent with an economic arrangement that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. It is also consistent with manifest inequity, for an enterprise that is an attractive proposition by the lights of a cost-benefit calculation may be one that offers opportunities for greater profits and pleasure to one group, in the pursuit of which substantial damages and suffering may be endured by other groups. In order, then, for a mootecl enterprise to be socially approved, it is not enough that the outcome of an ideal cost-benefit analysis is positive. It must also be shown that the resulting distributional changes are not regressive, and no gross inequities are perpetrated.^[42]

The policy-maker's problem, then, is to select an appropriate set of criteria as choice-making guides for using the community's scarce resources in a way that would tend to

[41] Buchanan and Tullock, p. 172.

[42] E. J. Mishan, Economics for Social Decisions (New York: Praeger, 1973), p. 13.

maximize collective values on the output of goods and services and their distribution. The key to appropriate policy is not that the new institutional structures resemble a preconceived set of "acceptable" ones. Rather, it is whether these institutions and processes can adequately measure up to an appropriate set of criteria. Change that facilitates resource expansion, allocative efficiency, and equity in distribution is what matters. The particular structures and processes that come about "ought" to facilitate these goals, and that is their test.

Efficiency in the mobilization and allocation of resources is also affected by normative (as well as behavioral) decision rules regarding the extent of participant consent necessary to establish policies. Clearly the manner in which resources will be expended is affected by the organizational procedures on reaching agreements. Because a rule of unanimity usually involves an overinvestment of decision-making resources, societies adopt procedures that reduce interdependence costs to the minimum consonant with their needs and expectations.^[43] "Since decision-making costs increase as the group grows larger, and since there seems to be no reason to expect that external costs will decrease, the total costs expected to arise from collective organization of activity, under any given rules for legislative decision-making, will tend to be higher in large groups than in small groups."^[44] Consequently, if a unanimity rule is likely to prove exceedingly costly, some other rule of collective agreement which involves a lower investment of resources is essential: one-person, simple majority, or some alternative formula, such as three-fifths, two-thirds, three-fourths, and so forth. Each of these procedures entails different consequences for the use of resources. As William A. Niskanen, Jr., demonstrates so effectively in one social context, a change in the decision-making rule from simple majority to two-thirds consent, results in somewhat less public services generally, but, paradoxically, also improves the relative position of lower-income groups. Under a nonprogressive but proportionate tax system, the low and middle groups will receive slightly lower net benefits, and

[43] Buchanan and Tullock, pp. 110, 213.

[44] Ibid., pp. 216–17.

the economically advantaged group will now obtain distinctly higher net benefits inasmuch as the marginal costs to pay for public (indivisible) goods are greater among the poor than among the rich.^[45] Hence the shift in agreement rules directly affects distributive outcomes.

We turn now to behavioral decision rules. Although the final selection of alternatives is left to the decision-maker (or makers), it is assumed that these rules facilitate the proper choosing of alternatives, thereby maximizing goal achievement at the lowest possible decision-making cost. Not only do these behavioral rules establish the necessary procedures for making and implementing policies, but they aid the process of choice by setting priorities in advance. "The objective," states Ilchman, "is to improve performance, to minimize the negative consequences to values from action."^[46]

With respect to mobilizational and distributive objectives, the number of guides to policy are so extensive that a few instances suffice. Basic principles for these procedural rules of thumb as laid down by Richard M. Cyert and James G. March are that they avoid uncertainty, that the rules be maintained, and that simple rules be used.^[47] In conformity with these basic principles, Albert O. Hirschman sets a number of procedures for choice-making which seek to maximize productionist ends. Among Hirschman's many decision rules are the following: "Since we necessarily underestimate our creativity, it is desirable that we underestimate to a roughly similar extent the difficulties of the tasks we face so as to be tricked by these two offsetting underestimates into undertaking tasks that we can, but otherwise would not dare, tackle" (the principle of the Hiding Hand); ". . . adding a highly technical dimension to a project will be useful in giving it some protection from political interference"; "the risk of excess capacity is lowest when the project's output is widely spread as an input over many sectors (and regions) or when output goes overwhelmingly to final mass

[45] W. A. Niskanen, Jr., Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971), pp. 169–186, 222.

[46] Ilchman, "Decision Rules and Decision Roles," p. 236.

[47] Cyert and March, Behavioral Theory of the Firm, p. 102.

consumption demand; and the risk is the bigger the greater is the concentration of the project's output on a few final consumers or on a few cells of the interindustry matrix."^[48]

The annual budgetary process, an important aspect in both mobilizing and distributing resources, is replete with behavioral decision rules. For Aaron Wildavsky, decision rules are aids in calculating how much to ask for, deciding how much to recommend, and determining how much to give; in their role as guides to action, they assist budget officials by reducing complexity and uncertainty.^[49] Perhaps the most widely accepted rule of budgetary practice around the world is the "incremental" one. Accordingly, most of an agency's current budget (and also its development budget) are the products of past decisions; if an item remains substantially unaltered, it will probably be repeated in the following year's budget, with adjustments made for inflation.^[50] This practice is precisely what we found in Zambia. There, despite a commitment to a full-scale restructuring of the economy, the ministries were, in practice, much influenced by previous budgetary allocations when establishing the next year's expenditure patterns. Nevertheless, the prior year's performance was also a critical factor in allocating new funds for developmental purposes. In interviews with public officials in 1971, it became evident that housing funds tended to be distributed in large amounts to those districts which made full use of the previous year's distributions. The more they used, the more they received; districts that were slow to utilize their funds because of administrative inefficiency were penalized when the following year's review occurred.^[51] Thus two guides to policy- incrementalism and performance—operated side by side and contributed significantly to Zambia's real-life budgetary choices.

[48] Albert O. Hirschman, Development Projects Observed (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1967), pp. 13, 54, 73, 88.

[49] Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), pp., 6–12. Also see Otto A. Davis, M. A. H. Dempster, and Aaron Wildavsky, "A Theory of the Budgetary Process," American Political Science Review 60, no. 3 (September 1966): 529–47.

[50] Wildavsky, Politics of the Budgetary Process, pp. 13–16.

[51] See Donald Rothchild, "Rural-Urban Inequities and ResourceAllocation in Zambia," Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 10, no. 3 (1972): 237–38.

The adoption of incremental decision rules can also be understood with respect to the environment in which the budgetary process occurs. In many African countries there is a severe shortage of trained accountants and administrators, faulty systems for classifying budget accounts, inadequate accounting practices, and insufficient means of control. "Because all budgetary systems are limited by deficiencies of discipline in formulating and executing a budget," observes Albert Waterston, "the achievement of these goals [developing appropriate information on the public sector transactions and improving the efficiency of budget management technique and procedure] is a precondition to effective budgeting."^[52] " There is neither the manpower nor the organization for a careful examination of each item of the budget on an annual basis. Hence, in a large number of situations, incrementalist decision rules seem likely to continue indefinitely as a matter of course.

Similarly, other rules of budgeting are being utilized which reflect policy-making requirements on simplicity and flexibility. For example, rather than insisting on the achievement of optimum objectives, the decision elites in many African states seek merely to satisfy and suffice.^[53] " Moreover, incremental types of calculations are evident in two additional guides to policy: the "base" and "fair share." Whereas the base involves an expectation that agency programs will normally be continued at existing levels of expenditure, the fair share "means not only the base an agency has established but also the expectation that it will receive some proportion of funds, if any, which are to be increased over or decreased below the base of the various governmental agencies."^[54]

In brief, then, budgetary procedures more often than not represent continuation of past practices of improvisation, limited objectives, and marginal adjustments. Claims to rationality

[52] Albert Waterston,Development Planning: Lessons of Experience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), pp. 243–44.

[53] Referred to in Ilchman, "Decision Rules and Decision Roles," p. 239, as "to 'satisfice.' "

[54] Wildavsky, Politics of the Budgetary Process, p. 17.

notwithstanding, their actual practices come closer to "muddling through" than to well-planned input-output analysis. Such incrementalist decision rules are of enormous consequence, for they act to circumscribe the efforts of policy-makers intent on a fundamental restructuring of African political and economic institutions.

Patterns of Choice:
Specifying Goals and Strategies of Choice

If decision rules could predetermine optimum choices in every instance, the determination of policy by elites would become unnecessary. Real-world problems arise which necessitate decisions because the performance of administrative agencies does not meet system goals or because the objectives themselves are inappropriate.^[55] Since systemic goals are multiple in nature, choice-making inevitably involves the difficult task of setting priorities among goals. Decision rules can facilitate choice where the alternatives of action are already known and the priorities firmly established, but choice-making becomes inescapable where policy-makers must form judgments as to the relative importance of the goals of the system.

At heart, then, choice-making involves the setting of goal priorities and subpriorities. Although the range of choice open to African policy-makers may be limited by lack of productive resources and by such factors as information and management deficiencies as well as structural and cultural dependencies, we nonetheless see a dimension existing for the determination of collective actions. In brief, we recognize that environmental conditions go far in defining the choice as to policies, but, even within these limits, we see scope for political actors to influence the state's decision on regulating multinational corporations (MNCs), rates of Africanization, adoption of labor intensive techniques for production, diversification of economic and military assistance, and so forth. The current variances in policy outputs and outcomes among African states cannot be explained by environmental differences alone and therefore must

[55] Richards and Greenlaw, Management Decision Making (n. 38 above), p. 29; and Simon, Administrative Behavior (n. 17 above), p. 39.

be attributed, in part at least, to the policy preferences of leaders.

Differing "clusters" of choice are apparent for five of the six strategies for achieving system goals. In the sixth case, ensuring survival, the states adopting a transformation strategy evidenced the least cormmitment to the maintenance of national sovereignty when the alternative of continental African federation was in the offing (see Table 1). Even though Table 1 shows the three strategies (or series of decisions) to be significantly different on the policies to be pursued in maximizing most of the system goals, we plan to emphasize the choices made with respect to goals five and six above - mobilizing and distributing resources efficiently, and securing freedom from external control. An eclectic (six-goal) approach would no doubt produce different, and equally valid, criteria for differentiating choice patterns, stressing, as noted above, such important categories as political party organization, central-subregional relations, leadership patterns, or ideological commitments.^[56] But our overall concentration on the political economy elements at hand seems useful. In so concentrating, we take into account the international as well as the domestic ramifications of policy, and we focus thereby on what we feel to be perhaps the most critical aspects of choice availing in developing Africa at this juncture.

In accord with the political economy approach, we see three basic strategies manifested under current circumstances: accommodation, reorganization, and transformation. To be sure, as indicated in the classification scheme presented in Table 1, very real overlaps are found among these lines of decision; yet their general characteristics seem sufficiently different to deserve separate attention. We concentrate here upon strategies of choice and leave an assessment of their costs and benefits mainly to the concluding chapter.

[56] On the need for an eclectic approach, see Immanuel Wallerstein, "Left and Right in Africa," Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 1 (May 1971): 9. In subsequent writings, however, Wallerstein has come to stress the area of political-economic choice almost exclusively. See his article, "Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation Within the Capitalist World Economy," African Studies Review 17, no. 1 (April 1974): 9–23.

The Accommodation Strategy

Because of a host of historical and environmental factors (for example, colonial neglect; rapid population increase; inadequate capital, skills, and enterprise; insufficient resources; and so forth), a number of African lands (Chad, Upper Volta, Niger, Malawi, Lesotho, and others listed in the appendix to this chapter, pp. 147–48), have come to independence poor, weak, and lacking in opportunity. The burdens on government far outweigh the capabilities in evidence. Therefore, with little room for maneuver, leaders in many of the least advantaged (or "Fourth World") countries feel compelled by circumstances to accept the international order much as they inherited it. To be sure, they may bridle over inequitable or humiliating linkages with the racist states in particular or with foreign capitalism generally. Nevertheless, what distinguishes the accommodationalist states from some of the transformationalist states (equally overburdened economically and fiscally) is that the latter "intend to bring about a revolution,"^[57] whereas their accommodationalist counterparts, less optimistic and less comprehensive in their objectives, are disinclined to challenge the existing international system in any of its essentials.

Such a strategy of accommodation to international capitalism results in a series of decisions. For one thing, these states lay a heavy stress on productionist goals; this desire for rapid economic growth rates leads in turn to a variety of subsidiary decisions: the acceptance of inequitable income patterns, of the emergence of islands of urban privilege amidst extensive rural poverty, of relatively slow rates of Africanization (especially at the upper levels of the private sector), and of low public-sector expenditures on social welfare activities. For another thing, the accommodationalist states, in a related act of will, exhibit a strong preference for private cnterprise over public initiative. Only in a special situation where a state such as Mali has moved from a transformation to an accommodation strategy does one encounter serious resistance to the dismantling of state enterprises. And the evidence of French pressure on the regime of

[57] The Arusha Declaration and TANU's Policy on Socialism and Self-Reliance (Dar es Salaam: Publicity Section, TANU, 1967), p. 4.

Moussa Traoré to end subsidies to unprofitable public enterprises is an indication of the broad nature of external involvement in the economy of an accommodationalist-oriented polity.^[58]

This predilection for capitalism has internal as well as external implications. It leads to the adoption of various policies geared to make private investment attractive: low taxes, easy remittance of funds abroad, a docile labor force, a commitment against nationalizing enterprises (and a promise of full and quick compensation where public ownership is deemed essential), and the acceptance of an international division of labor which relegates them to the exportation of commodities and the importation of manufactured goods.^[59] Such economies become "integrated into the very structure of the developed capitalist economies," and succumb to full structural dependence on the Western capitalist system.^[60] To be sure, this policy of accommodation involves certain short-term benefits. Although long showing annual budgetary deficits and dependence upon French Treasury subventions,^[61] Togo's economic performance did improve noticeably in 1974; in that year, phosphate production and exportation expanded greatly to take advantage of a temporary rise in international market prices. However, the world price for phosphate receded by 1976, leaving unclear the extent to which such mining activities will

[58] Valerie Plave Bennett, "Military Government in Mali," Journal of Modern African Studies 13, no. 2 (June 1975): 256–57.

[59] For an important essay arguing "the appropriateness of a gradualist strategy for small countries at early stages of development" (p. 192), see Elliot J. Berg, "Structural Transformation versus Gradualism: Recent Economic Development in Ghana and The Ivory Coast," in Philip Foster and Aristide R. Zolberg (eds.), Ghana and The Ivory Coast: Perspectives on Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 187–230.

[60] Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1972), p. 34.

[61] The CFA-Franc countries are "those independent states that have established monetary arrangements with France through so-called Operations Accounts with the French Treasury." African Department Study Group, "Financial Arrangements of Countries Using the CFA Franc," International Monetary Fund Staff Papers 26, no. 2 (July 1969): 289.

be able both to inject new energy into the declining agricultural sector and to create additional industrial opportunities. Moreover, by allowing the free importation of foreign goods, Togo attracts significant numbers of tourists from neighboring Ghana who use their precious foreign exchange holdings to buy consumer goods that are scarce in their country of residence. As a result, Togo's externally owned and managed restaurants, hotels and supermarkets flourish, but this prosperity is of limited advantage to the average Togolese citizen. In fact, little real economic benefit trickles down, and the social disruption is costly indeed. For example, direct economic allocations to tourism are relatively high. Of the Frs. CFA250.6 million earmarked for development projects under the 1976–80 Development Plan, some Frs. CFA16.5 million have been set aside for direct investments in tourist-related projects (hotels, parks, forests, etc.). The enormity of such an outlay will be understood when it is realized that this expenditure nearly equals the total amount (Frs. CFA20.1 million) allotted to the social-cultural sector (hospitals, nutrition, hygiene, sanitary education, pharmacies, laboratories, schools, youth centers, radio, television, press, sports).^[62]

Finally, the accommodationalist states are characterized by their political alignment with the West. In this case, structural dependence is so complete and so accepted that the client states openly identify with their patrons. Two examples of this tendency will suffice. T he accommodationalist countries exhibit a low level of pan-African militancy. This caution is particularly evident on the issue of isolating the Union of South Africa. On this salient question, the African "realists" along the border with the "south" (such as Malawi's President Kamuzu Banda) tend to shun policies involving effective sanctions or military intervention in preference to maximizing values on trade and investment. Even in Zambia, a "pragmatic" element can be detected in the wings, urging a change in foreign policy direction toward more "cordial" relations with white-led neighbors

[62] See Ministère du Plan, République Togolaise, Le Troisième Plan Quinquennal de Développement Economique et Social 1976–1980 (en chiffres) (Lomé Direction Générale du Plan et du Développement, 1976), pp. 21–24, 38–52. $1.00 = CFA 231.

to the south.^[63] In addition, the accommodationalists often display a decided lack of commitment to nonalignment doctrines. In 1970, for example, the Mauritius foreign minister, Gaetan Duval, declared that his country had abandoned a policy of nonalignment and would welcome the establishment of a British naval base on its territory. His reasoning was instructive. "On the issue of non-alignment," Gaetan said, "feeding and giving jobs to Mauritians is more important for me."^[64] In other words, the realist response to the lack of economic and military capacity involved a playing down of legalistic and moralistic considerations in foreign policy.

The Reorganization Strategy

States which adopt a reorganization strategy, such as Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, and, in some respects, Zaire, accept their structural dependency on the Western capitalist economy; at the same time, they manifest a predilection for reformist policies that attempt to humanize and rationalize the existing domestic and international orders. As such they fall midway between the poles of accommodation and transformation, seeking the advantages of the former in the uninterrupted inflow of skill, capital, and enterprise from the Western world, and seeking the advantages of the latter in the achievement of self-fulfilling values on rapid Africanization, pan-Africanism, nonalignment, and limited nationalization of foreign-owned industries. Having accomplished rapid economic growth through their association with the West, their leaders wish to avert any rupture in this basic relationship—only to liberalize it. Thus they hope to harness the strengths of the current international order to their immediate benefit, and leave open until later the possibility of more fundamental adjustments.

At the heart of the reorganizational world-view is a high priority on productionist objectives. As Kenya leader Tom Mboya once put the matter, "We offer no apology for empha-

[63] In 1971, Harry Nkumbula, the Opposition leader, called for realism toward the south, arguing that such a policy would save foreign exchange by permitting her to import from the cheapest source. Noting that Zambia was purchasing goods and supplies from the southern African countries anyway, Nkumbula urged an improvement of relations for the sake of Zambia's national interest. Times of Zambia (Ndola), May 15, 1971, p. 1; and Zambia Daily Mail (Lusaka), June 29, 1971, p. 7.

[64] Times of Zambia (Ndola), November 11, 1970, p. 3.

sizing the crucial importance of economic growth."^[65] It is central to the solution of other pressing problems such as employment, Africanization, income redistribution, agricultural and rural modernization, education reform, and the promotion of small-scale enterprises.^[66] And the results have been most impressive. Kenya's Gross Domestic Product rose from K£ 328 million in 1964 to K£ 554 million in 1972 (a cumulative rate of 6.8 percent measured at constant prices.^[67] In Zambia, the First National Development Plan set a projected growth rate of 11.7 percent per annum for the years 1966 through 1970 and, in spite of curtailments brought on by the Mufulira Mine disaster and the restrictive impact of the 1969 budget, achieved an annual rate of GNP growth of 10.6 percent during the Plan period as a whole.^[68] For the five-year period from 1972 to 1976, Zambia's Second National Development Plan, after discounting the continuation of the fortuitous price boom for copper throughout the period, envisages an annual growth rate of 6.8 percent per annum of GDP.^[69] Nigeria realized a 12 percent growth rate in 1971–72, although it is important to note that petroleum earnings accounted for 5.7 percent, or nearly half.^[70] In other words, the states adopting a reorganizational approach tend to diverge from the accommodationalist and transformationalist states in terms of overall growth performance; this results in greater optimism regarding their ability to develop the capacity to exercise meaningful choice.

As a consequence of their relative success in gaining their immediate economic growth objectives, the reorganizationalist

[65] Tom Mboya, "Sessional Paper No. 10—It Is African and It Is Socialism," East Africa Journal 6 no. 5 (May 1969): 15.

[66] Donald Rothchild, Racial Bargaining in Independent Kenya: A Study of Minorities and Decolonization (London: Oxford University Press, for the Institute of Race Relations, 1973), p. 436; and Republic of Kenya, Development Plan 1974–1978, Part I (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1974), p. 91.

[67] Development Plan 1974–1978, Part I, p. 47.

[68] Republic of Zambia, Second National Development Plan January, 1972–December, 1976 (Lusaka: Ministry of Development Planning and National Guidance, 1971), p. 2.

[69] Ibid., p. 34.

[70] Suzanne Cronje, "Has Oil Become Nigeria's Crutch?" African Development 6, no. 8 (August 1972), p. 13.

states are highly pragmatic in their approach to economic development questions generally. The Guidelines for Nigeria's Third National Development Plan are quite explicit on this point: "Industrial development planning in Nigeria has been pragmatic rather than doctrinaire. The advantage of this pragmatism is that it implicitly takes into account almost as a matter of routine certain leverages and constraint factors [environmental and resource] which impinge on the choice of goals and strategies."^[71] Being heavily committed to rapid economic growth through private enterprise and close ties with the world economy, these states seek to put the capitalist order to work for their purposes. Such continuing linkages are not without domestic consequences. The indigenous elite must bargain with foreign management and capital to ensure a steady inflow of the factors of production; they must offer the multinational corporations easy access, low taxes, protections from hasty nationalization schemes, extensive opportunity to remit funds, and so forth, or the foreign investor will be tempted to explore opportunities elsewhere. In brief, pragmatism entails an explicit recognition that economic growth remains fundamentally dependent on the maintenance of intimate links with the foreign capitalist system.

In what ways, then, are the reorganizationalist states reformist? The answer, by comparison with the accommodationalists, is largely a matter of degree. Although the reorganizers accept and work within the inherited world capitalist economy, they take greater pains to revise the basis of their relationship than do the accommodators. This may in part be explained by their relatively greater economic dynamism, but the end result is more extensive restrictions on the operations of foreign corporations, increased pressures to Africanize staffs, improved wages and working conditions, enhanced tax revenues, and, in a number of cases, limited nationalizations of the commanding heights of the economies. Despite their profound commitment to productionist goals, these states are inclined to press equity objectives so long as they are fully reconcilable with growth

[71] Federal Republic of Nigeria, Guidelines for the Third National Development Plan 1975–1980 (Lagos: Central Planning Office, 1973), p. 17.

objectives. In 1973, President Mobutu Sese Seko announced specific measures to ensure the replacement of foreigners with Zairean nationals; meanwhile Nigerians began to implement the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1972 under which a minimum of 40 percent of the shares in a long list of enterprises would have to be transferred to Nigerian citizens before April 1, 1974. The Kenya government, which regards the transfer of economic and social control to citizen hands as "a primary objective," has reduced the number of non-citizens in wage employment from 49,300 in 1967 to 25,800 in 1972.^[72] The Development Plan 1974–1978 comments further on this process of Kenyanization: "Not surprisingly, the public sector is now much more fully Kenyanized at the high- and middle-levels—83 percent compared with 68 percent for the private sector. Five years earlier, these figures were 73 and 53 percent, respectively. While it is recognized that the skills of non-Kenyans will continue to be required for some time, it is the intention of the Government to reduce their number in wage-paid jobs to no more than a handful by 1982."^[73] Thus, in all the reorganizational states, indigenization of posts has moved rapidly. But such a program, desirable as it may be, is not inherently at odds with continuing close ties to international capitalism. Rather, indigenization can be viewed as reconciling the nationalist demand for African opportunity with the continuation of the capitalistic system. It is a reformist policy to the extent that it Africanizes capitalism, rather than moving directly to a socialist program.^[74]

Although all the countries adopting a reorganization strategy agree on the need to equalize the opportunities between the urban and rural areas,, none has been more explicit than Zambia on the need for a redistributive rule of action. "From now on,"

[72] West Africa, December 10, 1973, p. 1719, and April 1, 1974 p. 362; and Federal Republic of Nigeria, Official Gazette 59, no. 10 (February 28, 1972): A11–21.

[73] Development Plan 1974–1978, pp. 10, 38.

[74] For an analysis of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion (Indigenisation) Decree of 1972, see Paul Collins, "The State and Dependent Capitalist Development: The Nigerian Experience," a paper presented to the Department of Political Science Seminar, University of Ghana, Legon, February 12, 1976.

contended President Kenneth Kaunda in 1969, "our priority is rural development." Fearing the possibility of "an explosion in the rural areas" should the current imbalance among provinces be allowed to persist, Kaunda urged the adoption of new priorities with respect to interunit economic planning and resource allocation:

Up to now regional development has been the privilege of the line-of-rail provinces. This we can no longer accept for now we have a People's Government. The basis for the creation of a genuine and balanced regional development is the decision to spread economic activity and to give considerably more weight to the development of the under-developed areas within the country.^[75]

This promise to reform the inherited subregional inequalities of the past has actually come to pass slowly. Constrained by dependence on copper and by the world market price for this mineral as well as by such interrelated factors as high production costs, urban drift, rapid population increase, Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, isolation from world markets, heavy transportation expenses, and so forth, it has not been possible for the Kaunda regime to allocate sufficient revenues to overcome stubbornly persistent rural-urban gaps. Even though the 1971 estimates showed the government to be faithful to its redistributive doctrine (see Table 2), actual expenditure patterns have made manifest the fact that reallocative equity is considerably more of a promise than a reality. Not only does the international environment restrict the achievement of economic transformation, but rural development has encountered difficulties with respect to administrative effectiveness and absorptive capacity (in the particular case of the Northern Province, for example, ZK7,149,360 was allotted for development projects under the first development plan but only ZK4,229,700 was actually spent).^[76] Whether, under pressure from rural and urban interests, the Zambian leadership will be able to follow the heavily compromised middle course implied in the reorganization strategy remains an open question.

[75] Rothchild, "Rural-Urban Inequities," p. 228. On the ideology of Humanism, see Kenneth D. Kaunda, Humanism in Zambia and a Guide to its Implementation: Part I (Lusaka: Zambia Information Services, 1968), and Part II (Lusaka: Government Printer, 1974).

[76] Rothchild, "Rural-Urban Inequities," pp. 238–39.

In Ghana, the regime of General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong has taken a strong policy position on righting past imbalances in north-south relations. As in the case of Zambia, the need for a reallocative policy arose from the colonial administration's lack of concern over transforming the north during its period of rule."^[77] In addition to socio-cultural diversities, a number of other factors contributed to the north's general isolation from the centers of "modern" activity: its physical distance from key decision-making centers; its geographical (savannah type) uniqueness; its lack of industrial and commercial contact with Western business interests; its general lack of social amenities; and its tendency to avoid contact with Christian missionaries (with all that this implied for educational development in a formal, Western sense). Typical of hinterland regions elsewhere in Africa, the dominant bureaucracy showed little sense of urgency over the development of agriculture and

[77] For some, this inattention represents a "deliberate policy" on the part of the colonial power, aimed at "keep[ing] the area as a reservoir for the 'reserve army of labor.' " Kwesi Prah, "The Northern Minorities in the Gold Coast and Ghana," Race and Class 16, no. 3 (January 1975): 307. Also see David Kimble, A Political History of Ghana: The Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism 1850–1928 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 534.

industry, transportation and communications networks, piped water, health facilities, schools, technical colleges and institutions of higher learning, and so forth. The diminutive size of their budgets is in itself a good indication of colonial priorities. Thus in the 1930–31 fiscal year, revenues (mainly fines, fees and rents) amounted to £24,574 and expenditures to £140,132 in the north.^[78]

As part of its "revolutionary" program, the Acheampong regime has given great emphasis to its reallocative objectives. The Charter of the National Redemption Council seeks to transform Ghana into a "just society," based, among other things, upon "equal opportunity for all" and "equitable distribution of our resources."^[79] And subsequent policy statements are in a similar vein, referring specifically to the need to correct existing "inequalities of educational facilities as between regions, and schools"^[80] as well as "to provide social amenities and spread health needs to every part of the country."^[81] And if the appeal of equity and social justice were not sufficient, a policy of reallocation could be viewed as in Ghana's economic interests as well. The development of agriculture in the north, the rice bowl of the country, not only meant national self-sufficiency in this critically important crop but created new possibilities for a diversification of export earnings.

But a country adopting a reorganization strategy finds itself limited in implementing a policy of reallocation among subregions. Despite the logical appeals of reallocative equity, it is constrained from acting in a bold manner by the related pressure of resource scarcity and demands on the part of the relatively privileged. The more advantaged urban centers are loath to see any slowing of their development; not surprisingly, therefore, they continue to claim their fair share of the expendi-

[78] Martin Staniland, The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 44–45.

[79] (Accra: Ghana Publishing Corp., n.d.), p. 5.

[80] Republic of Ghana. Guidelines for the Five- Year Development Plan 1975–80 (Accra: Ghana Publishing Corp., 1975), p. 27.

[81] Republic of Ghana. Third Year in Office of Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong (Accra: Press Secretary to the National Redemption Council, 1975), p. 117.

tures made by governmental authorities. Thus increasing subsidies of petroleum, mainly consumed in the privileged regions, mean less resources remaining for the development of vitally needed feeder roads in northern and upper regions. And as shown in Table 3, the heavy public expenditures on defense, internal and foreign affairs, and fiscal and financial services leaves all too little for investments in agriculture, rural development, and feeder roads, all required in large amounts for the development of the northern parts of the country. These expenditures by function represent a triumph of incrementalism over comprehensive planning. Thus despite all the promises involved in Operation Feed Yourself, the commitment to agriculture remained little affected in the period 1970–1975, and that for rural development and transporation declined significantly. Again the contrast between outputs and outcomes was noticeable.

The reorganization strategy tends to integrate the society by accommodating pluralistic claims, and creates something akin to a "bargaining culture," which places constraints on the application of egalitarian policies.^[82] The problem of revenue allocation in Nigeria is a case in point. Nigeria's independence constitution was a remarkable combination of centralized financial and taxing authority and decentralized administrative responsibility.^[83] The federal government had exclusive power to impose excise duties as well as taxes on imports and exports, corporation profits, and mining rents and royalties. The only subregional taxes of significance were on individual incomes,

[82] See Gabriel A. Almond's foreword to Myron Weiner, The Politics of Scarcity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. ix. Also see Carl G. Rosberg, "National Identity in African States," African Review 1, no. 1 (March 1971): 85–87; and B. J. Dudley, Instability and Political Order: Politics and Crisis in Nigeria (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1973), p. 43.

[83] For a fuller account of revenue allocation and Nigerian federalism, see Donald Rothchild, "African Federations and the Diplomacy of Decolonization," Journal of Developing Areas 4, no. 4 (July 1970): 520–22. Also see John F. Due, Taxation and Economic Development in Tropical Africa (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1963), pp. 127–33; and P. N. C. Okigbo, Nigerian Public Finance (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), pp. 50–66.

produce, and motor vehicles, leaving the subregional treasuries dependent on federal grants for two-thirds of their recurrent revenues. The relations between Nigerian governments at and within each level were strained over the states' lack of financial independence and over the allocation of federally collected revenues. It seems likely that future increases in property and personal income taxes as well as increased payments under the distributable pool arrangement would have narrowed the gap between revenues and expenditures. However, federal unwillingness to make major concessions on this question remained evident to the end.^[84]

The refusal of federal officials to allocate any further revenue to the subregions contributed directly to interunit conflicts over both principles and interests. Distribution of federally collected revenues was based on the two principles of derivation and need. Derivation was favored from the inception of genuine federalism in 1954 until the implementation of the Raisman Commission recommendations in 1958. At that time, it was the eastern regional government, not its more affluent partners, which urged the Raisman Commission to support the principle of subregional need. The commission compromised between these two principles, applying derivation to revenues whose source could be estimated with some degree of accuracy, and applying need to the remaining revenues; henceforth the latter were to be allocated by means of a distributable pool arrangement. Subregional attitudes changed with the discovery of commercial quantities of oil in the east. From then on, eastern government spokesmen campaigned with increasing vigor to be permitted to retain revenues raised in the area. The government of eastern Nigeria submitted a memorandum on revenue allocation to the 1964 fiscal review commissioner stating that the system of revenue allocation then operating had proved "extremely unreasonable, unfair and inequitable" and

[84] Federal Republic of Nigeria, Report of the Fiscal Review Commission, by K. J. Binns, Commissioner (Lagos: Federal Ministry of Information, 1965), p. 11; Adebayo Adedeji, Nigerian Federal Finance (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1969), chap. 6; and T. O. Ilugbuhi, "The Future of Government Revenue in Nigeria," Nigerian Opinion 4, no. 4–6 (April–June 1968): 331–33.

that all revenue from royalties and rents on mineral oil should be returned to the unit of origin.^[85] Two years later, at the resumed conference on the Nigerian constitution, the eastern regional government maintained that "the Central Authority shall have no fiscal or taxing powers. All fiscal or taxing powers shall be vested in the Regions."^[86]

Implementing a revenue allocation system based largely on the principle of need rather than derivation has always seemed compelling. The attitudes expressed by the magazine Nigerian Opinion on this issue are widely held:

The main criterion for revenue allocation was the derivation principle which since 1952 has been a constant and endless source of friction. It intensified inter-regional rivalry and antagonism. Most important, resource allocation was not related to needs and the most needy region was invariably also the region that received least under a system of revenue allocation based primarily on derivation.^[87]

Even so, it has proved extremely difficult to put the revenue allocation principle of need into effect in a reorganizational polity such as Nigeria. With the military coups of 1966, the new regime gained an excellent opportunity for decisive action in constitutional matters. It used its new position to create the twelve-state (later nineteen) federal system,^[88] thereby reducing the autonomy of the old subregional governments. However, it did not act swiftly -to make any serious modification in the principle of derivation, as reportedly recommended by the commission under the chairmanship of Chief I. O. Dina in 1968.^[89] 'The result of the federal military government's recon-

[85] Binns, Report of the Fiscal Review Commission, p. 13.

[86] The Ad Hoc Conference on the Nigerian Constitution (Enugu: Government Printer, 1966), p. 85.

[87] Vol. 2, no. 2 (February 1966), p. 20.

[88] In February 1976, General Murtala Muhammed, Nigeria's head of state, announced plans to create seven additional states. Moreover, all nineteen states were to be given new names in order to erase old memories and attachments.

[89] The Dina report, never published, is said to have proposed that the oil-producing regions should derive 10 percent, rather than 50 percent, of royalties and rents. The Dina report's recommendations were subsequently rejected in 1969 by the Nigerian finance commissioners who contended that the Dina commission had "exceeded its powers andignored its terms of reference." Africa Confidential 15, no. 10 (May 17, 1974): 6.

ciliation strategy was a status quo stance at a time when the inequities and inadequacies in interunit allocations continued to worsen. As shown in Table 4, the oil-producing Mid-Western and Rivers states were heavily favored under the revenue allocation system then being administered. But the disparities caused by this formula led to new dissatisfactions in intergovernmental relationships. For example, the New Nigerian, published in the less-advantaged north, observed that the revenue allocation system then in effect "threaten [ed] to create a new imbalance" since "allocation to individual states reveal[ed] wide disparities because the derivation principle puts the 'oil states' at an enhanced advantage."^[90] To some extent these dissatisfactions were dealt with by the military government in 1974 when a new revenue allocation formula was announced; this formula deemphasized the derivation principle by allocating money to state governments, 50 percent on the basis of population and 50 percent on the basis of equality. Such a revision of priorities

[90] Ibid., pp. 5–6.

goes far toward promoting the interests of the non-oilproducing states, and no doubt it will be closely scrutinized by any future Constituent Assembly.

Another important area of pragmatism on the part of those states adopting a reorganization strategy is their policy on the nationalization of the "commanding heights" of the economy. These states are more inclined to pursue nationalization policies than their critics are prepared to acknowledge. In Zaire, Gecamines, the state corporation, had produced 51 percent and 32 percent of all budgetary resources in 1970 and 1971, respectively;^[91] the following year, President Mobutu Sese Seko announced a further extension of the public domain to include plantations, livestock, and a 50 percent ownership in the remaining mining companies.^[92] Kenya acquired a 51.4 percent shareholding in East African Power and Lighting Co. Ltd., a 50 percent shareholding in the Mombasa Oil Refinery, and a 60 percent shareholding in two new banks formed from the assets of the National and Grindlays Bank in Kenya.^[93] As of April 1, 1973, the Nigerian government acquired a 35 percent equity in Shell-BP and several other oil-producing firms, rising to a majority holding by 1982.^[94] Perhaps the most thoroughgoing program of nationalization among the reorganization polities was carried out by the Zambian government. In the period from 1968 to 1970, President Kaunda announced a sweeping series of economic reforms, which included the partial or total nationalization of such fields as mining, transportation, contracting, insurance, and so forth.^[95] By 1971, the Kaunda

[91] Alan Rake, "Waiting for the Copper Dividends," African Development 7, no. 6 (June 1973): Z5.

[92] West Africa, December 10, 1973, p. 1719.

[93] Rothchild, Racial Bargaining, p. 437.

[94] West Africa, June 18, 1973, p. 818.

[95] Zambia's program of state participation in business activities is outlined in three addresses by Dr. K. D. Kaunda: Republic of Zambia, Zambia's Economic Revolution, Mulungushi, April 19, 1968 (Lusaka: Zambia Information Services, n.d.); Republic of Zambia, Towards Complete Independence, Matero, August 11, 1969 (Lusaka: Zambia Information Services, n.d.); and This Completes Economic Reforms: "Now Zambia Is Ours," Mulungushi, November 10, 1970 (Lusaka: Zambia Information Services, n.d.).

administration had assumed control over eighty major or minor business firms. The costs of compensation involved in taking over the copper mines gives some insight into the fiscal burdens brought on by a restructuring of the economy. The cost of purchasing 51 percent of the shares of Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines is K125 million, and the amount of the Roan Consolidated Mines shares comes to K84 million.^[96] Payment is being made from future dividends, covering a twelve-year period in the case of NCCM and an eight-year period for RCM.

Yet the nationalization of major industries in these countries should not be interpreted as a rejection of foreign capital investment. As the background note to Dr. Kaunda's Mulungushi address of 1968 explained, the measures announced in the president's speech fell "far short of nationalisation as conventionally known."^[97] Rather than precluding foreign investment, nationalization, pragmatically applied, may facilitate external participation by removing many of the uncertainties associated with investment in Third World countries. Surely all of the states adopting a reorganization strategy have gone far, some contend too far, in reaching accommodations with international capitalism. A dramatic case in point is the agreement on the nationalization of the Zambian mining industry. In exchange for continued operation of the industry, the mining companies or their local subsidiaries were paid compensation for the value of the shares acquired (through the medium of Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation Limited 6% Guaranteed Dollar bonds),^[98] permitted to remain as minority shareholders and, to the extent called on to do so, to contribute from funds not subject to Zambian exchange control a 36 3/4 percent share of the capital finance for the development of existing or new mining ventures, and granted contracts to undertake management, consultancy, and marketing services. Such arrangements for provision of services, set up for a minimum of five years, gave management handsome rewards for minimal risks. In making such concessions to investor demands, the government was

[96] Times of Zambia (Ndola) Business Review, June 25, 1971, p. 2.

[97] Zambia's Economic Revolution, p. V.

[98] In 1973, the Zambian government redeemed the ZIMCO bonds with over ZK114m. Eurodollar and other loans.

emphasizing economic stability at a possible price in reallocative equity.

Finally, in keeping with their reformist posture, the states adopting a reorganization strategy have generally taken strong foreign policy positions on issues of nonalignment and panAfricanism. On questions of colonialism or white racism, there is little to differentiate their policies from those put forth by the states adopting a transformationalist strategy. However, in other areas, perhaps as a consequence of their intimate ties with the world economic system, one can detect a note of caution.

Using Kenya as a prime example of pragmatism in foreign affairs matters, one can start with the words of the former minister of foreign affairs himself to illustrate the country's "low profile" stance.^[99] Thus Dr. Njoroge Mungai asserted: "The Government does not set for itself hastily exaggerated objectives in foreign policy which are unrealistic and incapable of being fulfilled. Political fulmination and adoption of extreme policies which are later abandoned or withdrawn or reversed by force of circumstances is not Kenya Government practice in foreign policy." ^[100] In line with this cautious approach, Mungai outlined the four tenets on which his country's external policy is based: nonalignment; support for the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter; promotion of African unity, independence, and cooperation; and disarmament. Kenya, in other words, does not seek a radical restructuring of the world order, but seeks rather the more limited objectives of advancing her "national interest" through the promotion of trade, economic assistance, foreign investment, links with neighboring countries through the East African Community, and the securing of her territorial integrity. ^[101] To be sure, Kenya did pay a substantive cost when forbidding commercial dealings in South

[99] John J. Okumu, "Some Thoughts on Kenya's Foreign Policy," African Review 3, no. 2 (June 1973): 263. On this, Foreign Minister N. Mungai declared: "Kenya today enjoys a position of international esteem and importance because of the pragmatic policies that have been followed under dynamic leadership. Avoiding emotional reactions to given situations, Kenya has placed the welfare of her people above dogmatic ideologies," Daily Nation (Nairobi), December 12, 1973, p. XVI.

[100] East African Standard (Nairobi), December 13, 1971, p. 6.

[101] On Kenya's role in forging East African Community links, seeDonald Rothchild, Politics of Integration: An East African Documentary (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968).

African goods as well as exports to the Union in the mid-1960s. Particularly hard hit by this action was the Magadi Soda Company, which had exported one-half of its total sales of soda ash (110,899 tons) to South Africa in the 1962–63 fiscal year. As a result of the boycott, the Magadi plant worked in 1965 at 40 percent of capacity and its African staff was cut from 405 to 240. ^[102] Moreover, Dr. Mungai can validly claim "never [to have] minced words" on such critical issues as Rhodesia, apartheid, Portuguese fascism, Namibia, the sale of arms to South Africa, sovereignty over natural resources, disarmament, and "sea-bed questions." Even so, these are not stances that challenge the basic international order that Kenya seeks to remain a part of; rather, a strong stand on these issues is easily reconciled with (and even furthers) a pragmatic diplomatic policy. Thus on the central question of nonalignment itself, one able observer has commented on the country's decidedly cautious contacts with the Eastern bloc countries. "Although she maintains smooth diplomatic relations with East Europe and the People's Republic of China," declares John J. Okumu, "she has consistently been very reluctant to receive substantial economic or technical assistance from these countries." ^[103] Okumu's conclusion pretty well sums up the basic feature explaining foreign policy pragmatism in all of the reorganization states: "Thus if the general pattern of external private and public capital inflows is in part an indicator of the general ideological preference of Kenya's governing elite, then Western capitalism has a lot to do with its pragmatic orientation to the practice of non-alignment. Kenya's position seems to be that it is possible to be economically aligned but ideologically non-committed on cold-war issues." ^[104]

The Transformation Strategy

In contrast to the strategies of accommodation and reorganization, the transformation strategy has at its essence a commitment to break the inherited pattern of structural dependency and to reconvert the society

[102] Reporter (Nairobi), December 3, 1965, p. 17.

[103] East African Standard (Nairobi), December 13, 1971, p. 6.

[104] Okumu, "Some Thoughts on Kenya's Foreign Policy," p. 289.

to certain traditional ideas, values, and life-styles. As noted above, the difference between the states using a transformation strategy (Tanzania, Guinea, and Somalia, and newly independent Angola and Mozambique) and the others, however, does not lie in the objective economic and social welfare conditions currently prevailing. For instance, the lack of product diversification and proportion of physicians to the population as a whole in the states tending to use a transformation strategy are not unlike many of the states adopting an accommodation strategy. And in the category of below-average earnings per head Tanzania ($74 per head in 1969) is in a group with such states as Mali ($85), Guinea ($77), Ethiopia ($62), Benin ($71), Upper Volta ($50), Niger ($95), Chad ($78), Rwanda ($45), Burundi ($53), Somalia ($62), Uganda ($96), Malawi ($69), Lesotho ($75), and others.^[105] Thus the states adopting a transformation strategy are unique not in their environmental circumstances but in their determination to end their dependency on the Western-dominated economic system. They abhor the competitiveness and acquisitiveness that they view as inherent in a capitalist life-style and wish to substitute in its stead a "communocratic" tradition, one which emphasizes collective living and social solidarity.^[106] While specifically rejecting such concepts as the class struggle, transformationalist spokesmen find certain Marxist theories attractive precisely because they carry with them a rejection of Western capitalism on the one hand and a collectivist inspiration on the other. As Brian Crozier remarks with respect to Guinea's president, Sékou Touré: "Marxism has contracted an emotional and intellectual marriage within him to a dimly felt awareness of African communal

[105] By contrast the states with above average earnings per head of population shows Senegal ($225); Ivory Coast ($304); Gabon ($550); Congo (Brazzaville) ($201); Zaire ($280); Ghana ($288); Kenya ($127); Sierra Leone ($177); Zambia ($345); and so forth Timothy Curtin, "Africa and The European Common Market," Africa: South of the Sahara (London: Europa Publications Ltd., 1974), pp. 53–55; and United Nations, Statistical Yearbook 1972 (New York: United Nations, 1973), Table 187.

[106] L. Gray Cowan, "Guinea," in Gwendolen M. Carter (ed.) African One-Party States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), p. 193. Also see Sékou Touré, The Doctrine and Methods of the Democratic Party of Guinea, Part I (Conakry: Democratic Party of Guinea, n.d.), p. 51.

traditions."^[107] Sékou Touré, the inspiration leader par excellence, makes extensive use of ideology in an effort to overcome the contaminations of the past and to forge a new Guinean man.

Even though the transformationalist states came to independence with environmental constraints basically similar to those in the other countries (and most particularly the less advantaged ones), they do differ from the more prosperous reorganization-oriented states in certain critical ways. These divergencies help to explain some variances in policy-making styles that would otherwise be difficult to account for. Trade statistics, albeit partial in nature, show Zambia to be more dependent on exports and imports to the nine European Common Market countries than is its neighbor, Tanzania (see Table 5). And because Zambians consider their country to be more dependent and intertwined with the world economy than its more rural and agriculturally based neighbor, they are more cautious in redefining their relationship to the multinational corporations in their midst. In addition, such caution carries with it an implicit acceptance of an element of privilege for the modern sector during the transition toward extensive equalization. Thus Zambia's strategy of reorganization, geared to local needs and conditions, is less drastic in its objectives, costs, and regulations than that assumed in Tanzania. The Zambian doctrine of reorganization has entailed a heavy emphasis on Zambianization and nationalization (total as well as partial) in the industrial sector and on the establishment of small industries and workshops; large-scale expenditure on marketing and storage facilities, feeder roads, and social services; and the encouragement of cooperative societies and credit unions in the rural areas. Yet Zambia's inevitable reliance on the production of copper for export rather than agriculture as the mainstay of

[107] Quoted in Cowan, "Guinea," p. 189. Also see Ali A. Mazrui, "The Soldier, the Socialist, and the Soul of Development: Amin and Nyerere in Comparative Perspective," a paper presented to the Conference on "Dependence and Development in Africa," Ottawa, February 16–18, 1973, pp. 19–22. On President Syaad Barre's assertion of "scientific socialism," see Philippe Decraene, "Somalia Goes It Alone," Manchester Guardian Weekly 112, no. 15 (April 12, 1975): 13.

national revenues tends to make the system reformist rather than revolutionary. By contrast, Tanzania, with lower levels of industralization and urbanization, is less dependent on the Western capitalist world in terms of economic activity. Other environmental factors enabling the Tanzanian leadership to implement, in part at least, a transformation strategy include the unity of the Tanzanian people behind their leaders (attributable largely to the success of the Tanzanian African National Union in mobilizing the people in the struggle against British colonial rule), the country's assured access to world commerce, and its relative insulation from Rhodesian and South African power.

In principle at least, the transformation model involves a complete rejection of exploitative and humiliating links to the capitalist (and once the colonialist) economy. Under current conditions of poverty and national weakness, argues Tanzania's president, Julius K. Nyerere, socialism is the "only rational choice" in the African countries.^[108] "In practice," contends Nyerere, "Third World nations cannot become developed capitalist societies without surrendering the reality of their freedom and without accepting a degree of inequality between their citizens which would deny the moral validity of our independence struggle."^[109] Why does capitalism entail a loss of freedom for countries in the Third World? Nyerere answers this

[108] Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Development (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 382.

[109] Ibid., p. 381.

query by observing that "Third World capitalism would have no choice except to co-operate with external capitalism, as a very junior partner."^[110] Development through capitalism would mean a reliance on foreign money, skill, and enterprise; decisions would be made externally on such important questions as taxation, plant location, production priorities, and employment opportunities. Countries such as Tanzania would, as a consequence, remain structurally dependent on the former colonial power (or alliance of powers), losing the value of independence in the process. The alternative model of development, socialism, would surmount many of these difficulties by severing its ties with international capitalism.

The vital point is that the basis of socialist organization is the meeting of people's needs, not the making of profit. The decision to devote the nation's resources to the production of one thing rather than another is made in the light of what is needed, not what is most profitable. Furthermore, such decisions are made by the people through their responsible institutions—their own government, their own industrial corporations, their own commercial institutions. They are not made by a small group of capitalists, either local or foreign—and the question of foreign domination through economic ownership is thus excluded.^[111]

Although Nyerere does not deny that an African state adopting a socialist model of development will encounter difficulties along the way, he does deny that any of these problems (exploitative management contracts, inherited structural linkages, dynamism of capitalist initiative and techniques) are inherent for socialism. Socialism, then, is the prime means at the disposal of Third World countries for transforming their societies in an egalitarian, self-reliant, indigenously manned and controlled, and productive direction.

As noted above, Nyerere places a high priority on expanding productivity within a socialist context (the GDP increased by 5 percent in 1972—4 percent in 1971—at constant prices);^[112] however, social welfare and "equity" objectives always receive at least an equal emphasis in his formulation of

[110] Ibid., p. 384.

[111] Ibid., pp. 388–89.

[112] Edwin Mtei, "Third Plan: Call for Increased Investment and Productivity," African Development 7, no. 12 (December 1973): T27.

developmental programs. Thus in contrast with the growth-oriented states, transformationalist Tanzania stresses simultaneous multiple goals: social equality, Ujamaa (familyhood), self-reliance, economic and social transformation, and African economic integration.^[113] Nyerere is willing, if necessary, to accept a slowing in the rate of economic expansion in order to assure a broad sharing of increased opportunity among the populace at large as well as freedom from the hold that Western capitalism might otherwise exercise. Nyerere maintains that a policy of economic self-reliance produces genuine progress,^[114] not a distorted type of growth which benefits the bourgeosie alone:

Despite our great need for economic development, it is not the only thing our people and our nation need. We do need it. We need it because only when we increase the amount of wealth we produce in Tanzania will there be any chance of the mass of our people living decent lives, free from the threat of hunger, or want of clothing, and free from ignorance, or disease. But we also need other things too. We need to live harmoniously among ourselves; we need to safeguard our society, we need to respect ourselves and deserve the respect of others. These things are equally important.^[115] [Our italics.]

President Nyerere seeks a transformation of the rural areas, the establishment of Ujamaa villages, the de-emphasis of urban privilege and wealth, a complete overhaul of the educational system, and a variety of puritanical measures aimed at eliminating luxury and ostentation. He and his supporters ridicule what they describe as "perverse growth," namely, economic expansion on African soil which benefits international capitalism more than the local economy of the developing state.^[116]

[113] The United Republic of Tanzania, Tanzania Second Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, 1st July, 1969–30th June, 1974, vol. I (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1969), p. 1.

[114] Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 272.

[115] Ibid., p. 199.

[116] Giovanni Arrighi and John Saul, "Socialism and Economic Development," Journal of Modern African Studies 6, no. 2 (August 1968): 150–51. Also see Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Range of Choice" in Michael F. Lofchie (ed.), The State of the Nations: Constraints on Development in Independent Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 28–29.

Yet even while rejecting industrial development based essentially on foreign initiative, Tanzanians continue to welcome foreign capital and skills that are willingly contributed toward fulfilling the government's objectives of building a socialist economy. Thus of the total development expenditure of Sh 800 million spent in 1971–72, Sh 330 million (or 41 percent) were foreign in origin.^[117] Not only does the private sector remain of critical importance in such areas as housing and road transport and construction, but foreign private and public shareholding is still evident in a variety of National Development Corporation activities.^[118]

With regard to the goal of securing freedom from external control, a strategy of socialist self-reliance creates a number of foreign policy options. Nyerere's commitment to self-reliance springs in part from his doubts about attracting sufficient foreign resources for rapid industrialization.

Quite apart from the problems of unacceptable political conditions which possible donors have tried to attach to capital assistance, and which have caused us to receive less than we at one time hoped, there are hard facts to be faced about the amount of international aid likely to be available. . . . In terms of goods, aid has decreased—and there is no sign that this trend will suddenly change.

There is no choice for us. We shall be thankful for any outside assistance we receive, but we must not expect it. The only people we can rely upon are ourselves.^[119]

Self-reliance increases foreign policy options by reducing a sense of urgency over foreign aid. A country pursuing such a line of action accepts whatever is offered generously and fits with local needs, but it does not gear its development efforts to the liberality of other countries. In addition, a lack of economic dependency enabled Tanzania to take radical and socialist-oriented stances on foreign policy issues, to champion nonalignment, and to take militant pan-African positions. In 1966, for example, the Tanzanian government broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain over her handling of the Rhodesian

[117] Mtei, "Third Plan," p. T27.

[118] See Issa G. Shivji, "Tanzania—The Silent Class Struggle," in Lionel Cliffe and John S. Saul (eds.), Socialism in Tanzania, vol. 2 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1973), pp. 304–30.

[119] Freedom and Socialism, pp. 166–67.

crisis. Tanzania felt it necessary to take an uncompromising position on NIBMAR ("no independence before majority African rule"), because it feared the possibility of a British sellout to the minority European community in Rhodesia. But the severing of relations with the former metropolitan country was not without costs. Although Tanzanians could not make an overall assessment of the economic costs of this action, they did note that the freezing of a loan of £7.5 million had created difficulties in fulfilling the Development Plan. Moreover, the refusal to bow to West German pressures to bar the opening of an East German consulate general's office in Dar es Salaam in 1964 led to a unilateral termination of a West German training and aid agreement. For Nyerere the choice was again clear: "We could either accept dictation from West Germany and continue to receive economic aid until the next time we proposed to do something they did not like, or we could maintain our policies and lose the aid immediately."^[120] The Tanzanians were in a position to select the latter alternative because the strategy of socialist self-reliance had already reduced the costs of external dependence to a low level; self-reliance had expanded policy options by playing down the role of foreign economic participation at the outset.

Of course, each strategy—accommodation, reorganization, and transformation—entails different trade-offs (see Figures 16 and 17, p. 323). Nyerere is keenly aware of the fact that a radical domestic and foreign policy stance inevitably involves costs in terms of external investments, skills, initiative, and markets. Foreign investment declined from a proposed 78 percent during the first five-year plan to a mere 31 percent of the reduced total—a drop largely attributed to Tanzania's then somewhat hesitant moves toward a socialist orientation.^[121] In addition, an emphasis on equity may well incur costs with respect to urban industrialization and rapid economic growth. But the alternative strategies, with their reliance on international capitalist initiative, seem morally repugnant to the transformationalists for reasons of equity, dignity,

[120] Ibid., p. 190.

[121] Phil Raikes, "Tanzania Blazes Its Own Trail," African Development 7, no. 12 (December 1973): T11.

and self-determination. On the other hand, the accommodationalists and the reorganizationalists feel they have no alternative but to maintain close linkages with the external capitalist economy. Nevertheless, whereas the accommodationalists, such as Togo, Botswana, and Burundi, are too weak to bargain meaningfully with the international environment, the states adopting a reorganization strategy can set certain conditions on the relationship. In the larger perspective, to be sure, the reorganizationalists are structurally dependent on international capitalism; even so, they are in a position to modify some of the most irritating and demeaning aspects of their relationship through the enactment of measures of regulation, progressive taxation, and participation (i.e., partial or total nationalization). Being more central to the world economy, and therefore having more capital and skills at their disposal as well as greater access to international markets, the reorganizationalists are at the best vantage point to demand concessions from powerful states as well as transnational actors such as the multinational corporations. But irrespective of these concessions, the exchange remains an unequal one, and the African political system, which preserves its ties with the world capitalistic economy in order to maximize its economic advantages, shapes its choice on a variety of basic internal and external issues to adjust to the demands of international actors. Hence an intimate relationship with international capitalism involves certain intended and unintended consequences which need not be assumed by the states adopting a strategy of socialist self-reliance.

Goals, Rules, and Collective Choice to Cope with Scarcity

The appendix to Chapter 1 indicated that a community's capacity to produce items is limited by the scarcity of resources and by the state of industrial technology. The production possibility frontier is a depiction of the more complicated reality posed against each society in its quest to reach some "more preferred" situation—an indifference curve positioned farther from the zero-intercept. That is, transitive preferences mean that the society will attempt to reach the highest attain-

able community indifference curve. Scarcity in Africa is an imposing problem; its limensions require effective policies to cope with the persistent pressures that scarcity puts on African decision-makers and their peoples.

A political economy approach to analyzing rules, procedures, and national goals cannot overlook the fundamental necessity to make economic choices because of scarcities of physical resources as well as other elements required to produce goods and services. Producing and distributing outputs are key factors in attaining the system goals posited in the previous chapters. In this regard, an extremely poor country finds it more difficult to bear the consequences of inefficiency than one possessing more ample capabilities. Clearly, poorer countries lack the same margin for error: they cannot afford the same level of misuse in the allocation of scarce productive factors to investment and consumption. In effect, equitable distribution and efficient productive processes are necessary to enhance the standards of material well-being of the society at large.

Resources must be allocated to purposes which maximize the greatest possible good—that is, to where they lead to outputs of items that the community feels are most important or necessary. Resources must be used efficiently so as to increase the availability of the items desired or needed by people. When relatively poor countries make mistakes in resource allocations, their peoples have to pay very high "opportunity costs." By opportunity cost we mean that in order to produce a quantity of one consumable (X) the cost is the lost opportunity to produce a quantity of an alternative product (Y). And if resources are inefficiently used to produce (X), more of (Y) will be forgone to consumers. Wasted or misused resources do not lead to the maximum production of items that people—require perhaps desperately. Since people can consume more items in a richer (albeit somewhat inefficient) country, waste may be more tolerable. However, many African countries presently are among the world's lowest per capita income earners. As producers and consumers of material goods and services, their main economic difficulties derive from limited utilizable resources and productive technology. This economic frailty gives rise to low per capita incomes and low levels of per capita output. For

example, fifteen African countries (all classified above as adopting accommodation or transformation strategies) have per capita incomes so low that the United Nations depicts them as among the twenty-five least developed of the developing countries. Only the crudest of estimates exist on recent levels of national income and gross domestic product. The data show, for example, that in 1970 Botswana's national income approximated $50 million (gross domestic product was $55 million, and between 1970 and 1973, each measure seems likely to have grown by about $5 million). On the basis of current population estimates, the 1973 level of national income would indicate a per capita income of some $90 to $100 annually. The classification of least developed is based on United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 2768 (XXVI), and the African countries so described include Botswana as well as Burundi, Chad, Dahomey (Benin), Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Upper Volta.

Although the above-mentioned are the poorest of African countries, all states on the continent face situations of resource scarcity. The following chapters focus on three major policy options for coping with resource limitations. The first is more effective bargaining with multinational corporations. Such a process seeks to improve the terms on which African host countries grant concessions to foreign-based corporations. The power and flexibility of the companies indeed makes this a difficult task. Yet an overly pessimistic view in this respect can lead African governments to assume that they have fewer bargaining advantages than they actually have. There is some sign that bargaining can be an effective way to acquire added resources for development; for example, technology more appropriate to African resource endowments, improved revenuecollection potentials for the governments, better financial agreements with respect to foreign-exchange acquisitions;^[122] and more favorable climates for local income and formal employment opportunities for Africans.^[123] In the concluding

[122] See, for example, Robert L. Curry, Jr., "Problems in Exportbased Public Revenue Collections in Zambia and Liberia," Journal of World Trade Law 9, no. 6 (November/December 1975): 678–90.

[123] It has been argued that African governments have become improved bargainers. See F. E. Banks, "Multinational Firms in AfricanEconomic Development," Journal of World Trade Law 9, no. 3 (May/June 1975): 347–54. This does not imply that more effective bargaining is not needed, and we feel that improvements in bargaining terms are possible. See our "On Economic Bargaining between African Governments and Multinational Companies," Journal of Modern African Studies 12, no. 2 (June 1974): 173–90. Theodore Moran makes the point that bargaining terms are not made strictly by omnipotent multinational giants or single decision-makers called "host countries." In many cases they are conditioned by elements of the international environment—international market factors and dimensions of foreign economic policy. See his Multinational Corporations and the Politics of Dependence: Copper in Chile (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).

chapter we shall develop the concept of asymmetrical bargaining, applying it to relations between producer cartels and global consumers as well as between multinational companies and African host countries.

The second policy option involves improved methods of economic cooperation or integration. The newly formed Economic Community of West African states employs a minimalist strategy to secure cooperation,among member states on matters of mutual interest and on issues for which there are reasonable chances for success. The Lomé agreement is another aspect of a more minimalist approach to cooperation on a program of limited objectives.^[124] An important aspect of the agreement is to make increased financial resources available to African nations. And the third of our three options.—which by no means exhausts the range of strategies for resource expansion—deals with foreign economic assistance which is appropriate to economic development but which avoids the extremes of economic dependency.^[125]

Each of the three policy options is designed to increase the

[124] It has been argued that the Lomé agreement is a new stage in relations between the EEC and the nations that are to be the beneficiaries to the agreement's provisions, including the members of the Yaoundé and Arusha groups. The Lomé arrangement presents new innovations on trade and export earning provisions, industrial cooperation, and stabilization of commodity export earnings. See Alfred S. Friedeberg, "The Lomé Agreement: Co-operation Rather than Confrontation," Journal of World Trade Law 9, no. 6 (November/December 1975): 691–700.

[125] See Paul Streeten, Aid to Africa: A Policy Outline for the 1970's, (New York, Praeger: 1972); and Jacob Meerman, "The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid," Journal of Modern African Studies 10, no. 2 (July 1972): 290–94.

income and resource level available to African states. As such, each is an effort designed to move a community to a conceptually higher level of satisfaction; that is, from indifference curve I₁ to I₂ , as in the appendix to the first chapter. This is permitted by an expansion in production possibilities (P₁ to P₂ ), and added income (to B₂ ), as shown in the appendix. In effect, more resources and income are required because of policy options undertaken within dependency situations. Our focus is on what can be done within such constraints, as well as what can be done about them.^[126] Given this focus, our effort is pertinent to those situations where policy-makers on the continent act on behalf of African people, but not to those where a decision-making elite acts in its own economic, political, and social interests while ignoring the plight of people generally.^[127] However, we feel that this is essentially an African matter, and we agree with the contention that the responsibility for new policy directions rests with African leaders.^[128]

[126] For an analysis of the need to continue refining dependency theory for policy purposes, see Patrick J. McGowan, "Economic Performance and Economic Dependence in Black Africa," Journal of Modern African Studies 14, no. 1 (March 1976): 25–40.

[127] For example, the expansion of MNCs has been seen as essentially fitting the interests of foreign-home and African-host country elites in economic class terms. See Richard L. Sklar, "Postimperialism: A Class Analysis of Multinational Corporate Expansion," Comparative Politics 9, no. 1 (October 1976): 75–92.

[128] See G. K. Helleiner, "Beyond Growth Rates and Planned Volumes—Planning for Africa in the 1970s,"Journal of Modern African Studies 10, no. 3 (October 1972): 356.

Appendix