ECAS 2013

A fair and well-functioning tax system is a fundamental element in building state capacity, power, and legitimacy. Given that effective taxation plays a redistributive role in society, the reform of fiscal institutions provides a critical means for fast-growing yet persistently underdeveloped countries such as Angola and Mozambique to address the disconnection between macroeconomic achievements and equitable growth.

This paper analyses institutional reforms adopted in Angola and Mozambique aimed at strengthening the tax system in the context of post-conflict statebuilding. In comparative perspective, it assesses the impacts of these reforms on state extractive capacity, as well as the extent to which they have promoted government accountability and wider institutional development. Despite demonstrable political will, both governments have struggled establish broad-based taxation, and the institutional reforms that have been adopted have not achieved their intended state-strengthening results.

In assessing the main challenges to fiscal reform, the paper challenges the dominant narrative - pervasive in both development policy and academic discourses - that the obstacles to institution-building lie in the nature of domestic politics. Rather, the paper argues that the main impediments to establishing effective taxation in Angola and Mozambique are rooted in their integration into the international market economy. This integration has engendered dependence on, respectively, foreign investment and development finance, which has provided the governments with autonomous revenue streams that disincentivise institutional reform. The paper argues that this has also disconnected state finances from society, with the effect of disrupting the link between the imperatives of revenue generation and redistribution.

Namibia has been widely praised for the success of its transition from a prolonged armed struggle to a democratic and peaceful period of transitional development. This transformation required a multidimensional national reconciliation policy toward previously warring factions and a multi-racial and multi-ethnic population that experienced a highly differentiated impact of colonialism and war.

This paper examines specific elements of institutional transformation and fresh social conflicts since 1990. Among the new state institutions those of decentralisation remain the least developed and most troublesome and after two decades of independence, a reversal of power seems underway with significant recentralisation reforms gathering momentum. A further dimension of state society interaction covered is the relationship between the state and traditional ethnic structures and authorities.

Article 141 of the Constitution guaranteed all public employees at the birth of the new nation protected status requiring clear "due process" procedures for their removal. At the same time, expansion of the state payroll provides most of the formal employment increases since independence. Public Service brings sectors of government effectively under ruling party control, provides a carrot and stick approach to potential rivals, and embodies the Affirmative Action policy in the Constitution. Namibia now faces a turning point between "struggle rewards" and a more technocratic performance trajectory in the Public Service. This study will utilise primarily a desk research and the 5th Round of the Afrobarometer Opinion Survey which will be available shortly before the Conference.

At the beginning of the 90's, South Africa initiated a democratic transition negotiated by the ruling party and the political parties and freedom movements in the opposition. The new institutions, or the reform of the current institutions under the settler oligarchy regime (Bratton and Van de Valle, 1994), were the key items on the negotiation table, particularly the reform of the electoral system.

The democratization in South Africa provides an exceptional opportunity to analyze the causes behind the institutional change under transition process. Following the rational choice approach, I argue that the main factor that explains the transformation of the electoral system under transition process is the strategic calculations of the actors engaged in the design of electoral system. The threat of new political parties and voters entrance in the electoral arena forms the strategic calculus of each actor involved in the process. If the threat level is low they will not change the electoral system, while if the threat level is high they will change the electoral system. The south african policymakers chose the electoral system that maximizes their electoral outcomes and reduce their level of threat.

As a result, South Africa moved from a low inclusive majority electoral system, "first past the post", with single-member constituencies under the settler oligarchy to a high inclusive proportional system under the new democracy system. The south african Constitution of 1996 opted for a maximum proportionality in the National Assembly (Lijphart, 1995).
 

This article uncovers the particular ways in which the Angolan state is re-establishing itself in rural areas where its sovereignty was often contested, by providing a case study of Caluquembe, which is situated on the southwestern edge of the Central High Plateau. UNITA occupied this town just before the 1992 elections, and remained in control until 1994 when government troops pushed out UNITA to the periphery. Caluquembe continuously remained in the frontline until the end of war in 2002.

Two interrelated questions guide this analysis: what particular configurations of public authority have emerged in Calquembe's post-war society, and where and how does the emergent local state carve out a position for itself? One argument put forward is that institution building and reform in the countryside are not technical or administrative problems but rather highly political processes. The African state is more deeply grounded in rural societies than the failed state accounts suggest.

Likewise, whereas the state has not yet achieved predominance in Caluquembe's political arena, it draws on the authority and legitimacy of a variety of actors who are operating there for carrying out state functions. These actors form part of historical and indigenous networks of authority that were reasserted in times of crisis. Not only is this a consequence of the poor penetration of state power in rural areas; the lack of criteria and conditions for the creation and development of state administrative units below the municipal state administrative level have facilitated the continuation of previous state structures.

Against the backdrop of colonialism, indirect rule and Apartheid, the resurgence and re-legitimation traditional authorities have accomplished in most countries of Southern Africa may seem astounding. This entails clearly diverging trajectories as well as convergencies concerning constitutional provisions and legal instruments. At the same time, the legal and more broadly, institutional pluralism implied engenders a number of tensions and contradictions concerning in particular constitutional provisions and human rights. The paper will map a comparative perspective for the analysis of such issues.

"Democracy" knows many interpretations and this is no less so in Mozambique. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2009, 2010 and 2012, the present paper discusses "democracy" as interpreted by inhabitants of Mozambique's Barue District and in connection with political praxis concerning hereditary leaders (the so-called "traditional authorities"), spirit mediums and party officials. Though these political leaders co-exist, it is the party-in-power (Frelimo) that dominates political life. The multi-party system in Mozambique is largely incapable of countering the monopolizing tendencies of the party-in-power. The paper argues that this is not due to some cultural inaptness of "democracy" for African situations, but the result of a successful application of certain strategies for the usurpation of political power, strategies that were alien to the political life of the precolonial kingdoms in Mozambique, specifically the Barue kingdom. Though multi-partyism as it exists in the world today may, in certain interpretations, be considered as foreign to Mozambique, it is nevertheless related to the present-day indigenous political reality in Mozambique, and for it to be successful it will have to be congruent with local conceptualizations of "democracy" that do exist locally.

Namibia's independence in 1990, awakened a resuscitation of kingships that were abolished decades ago by South African colonial occupation as well as a revival of old identities. This includes the reinstallation of the Kwanyama ouhamba kingship.

The paper examines institutional transformations of neotraditional rule in the process of democratisation in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and in Namibia. In contrast to modernist perceptions, democratisation does not necessarily lead to the fall of chieftaincy and neotraditional rulers are able to adapt to the changing political circumstances in different ways. The diversity of neotraditional legitimacy and power results from the creativity of chiefs in dealing with the political demands by national, international and transnational actors and institutions. The paper questions the validity of Mamdani's argument of "decentralised despotism" and argues instead that in the course of democratisation processes in the 1990s diverse types of neotraditional rule have come into existence. These types can be differentiated on the basis of their dependency on respectively autonomy from the post-apartheid state, the varying strength of local and supralocal power, and the different forms of legitimacy. Against the background of democratisation, neotraditional rule has developed beyond administrative chieftaincy.