Comparative democracy : issues of consolidation in South Africa and Zimbabwe

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Democracy is understood by many to be a government for the people by the people.As far as academic or scholarly traditions are concerned however, this is a ratherpopulist depiction of the concept. According to the intellectual tradition, democracy issuch when a system of governance meets several conditions. For the purpose of thisstudy, the institutionalist tradition or theory of democracy which sees democracy asbeing dependent on institutions of contestation (elections) and participation(parliament) as well as others, is an important variable.However, the very same theory on democracy is not limited to institutions as the solerequirements for democracy. For the economic determinists, the point is that whilstinstitutions are important for democracy, they are not sufficient. In order for there tobe such, favourable socio-economic conditions are important as well and theseinclude affluence amongst other issues.The scientific orientation of this study being comparative, it seeks to take both theinstitutionalist variable of elections and the economic determinist variable ofaffluence as operational measures of the state of democracy in South Africa andZimbabwe. As an additional operationalisation, the issue of civil and political libertiesas per Freedom House classifications is also investigated in a similar comparativemanner.The outcomes of the study show that at an electoral level, South Africa's model ofproportional representation in the seat allocation system gives minorities a voice asopposed to Zimbabwe's fast past the post system based on the winner takes allprinciple. It was also established that the electoral machinery in Zimbabwe is morechaotically arranged and thus susceptible to abuse than in South Africa.At a socio-economic level, conditions have also been found to be a lot morefavourable to the consolidation of democracy in South Africa than in Zimbabwebecause of a wide array of issues, the most serious one being the declining incomepatterns for the average Zimbabwean as compared to the South African. Though theissue of high income inequality in South Africa should be highlighted as a threat, itshould also be noted that in Zimbabwe, the apparent disrespect of the rule of law hasan added negative implication for Zimbabwe as Freedom House has highlighted the declining of the country from partly free of 3.4 in 1980 to a partly free of 6.5 in 2000.The overall analysis comes to the conclusion that given the findings above, it seemsSouth Africa's democracy can still hold stronger given an accelerated equitabledistribution of wealth whilst for Zimbabwe, the revitalisation of democracy needs tostart from the re-engineering of institutions to the regeneration of the concept ofrespect for the rule of law. Thus the comparison seems to show a democracy bettersuited for consolidation than the other.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University