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State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa: Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. by Pierre du Toit Review by: James R. Scarritt The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), p. 936 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945903 . Accessed: 19/12/2014 01:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Political Science Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 01:45:32 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa: Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.by Pierre du Toit

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State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa: Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. byPierre du ToitReview by: James R. ScarrittThe American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), p. 936Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945903 .

Accessed: 19/12/2014 01:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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American Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toThe American Political Science Review.

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This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 01:45:32 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Book Reviews: COMPARATIVE POLITICS December 1996

nomic system to another." This question lies at the heart of political science. The person who first comes up with a satisfactory answer should therefore be awarded the equiv- alent of a Nobel Prize in science-that is, a Nobel Prize in political science.

State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa: Bot- swana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. By Pierre du Toit. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995. 355p. $37.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.

James R. Scarritt, University of Colorado at Boulder

Utilizing a modified version of the state-society framework presented in Joel Migdal's (1988) Strong Societies and Weak States, Pierre du Toit analyzes the prospects for sustainable democracy in the divided societies of Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. His major modifications of Migdal's framework are distinguishing between state and regime (the latter being the rules that govern the ordering of power within and among state organizations), adding the concept of ethnically divided societies, and focusing explicitly on democratization. He argues that strong states in divided societies are either autonomous or ethnic, and that con- struction of the former must precede or be concurrent with democratization of regimes and the construction of strong and truly civil societies. Strong autonomous states can create economic growth by manipulating the country's position in the international economy, however unfavorable that may appear to be.

Utilizing this conceptual framework, du Toit correctly argues that none of these three states fits into Robert Kaplan's dismal portrait (Robert D. Kaplan, 1994, "The Anarchy," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994, p. 44) of the universal decay of African states, but that they vary considerably in state strength and autonomy and societal strength and civility, and thus in their potential for attaining the closely related goals of sustainable democracy and economic growth. Botswana is strongest in these regards and Zimbabwe is the weakest, with South Africa-where the pattern of change is most uncertain-falling somewhere in between. While this ranking and the complex and finely nuanced arguments on which it is based are generally well founded, there are several points in du Toit's analysis about which questions can be raised. Unfortunately, this has to be done by presenting only a small fraction of the points that he makes.

Botswana, which is described as a potentially rather than an actually divided society, has constructed a strong state and a strong society over a period of many decades, starting from a very weak base during the colonial period. It has more recently created a stable if imperfect democratic regime. Economic and educational backwardness in the years shortly before and after independence actually facil- itated these processes by allowing politically neutral expa- triate officials to strengthen the state in alliance with a biracial economic elite of large cattle farmers, beginning with the creation of the Botswana Meat Commission, and by allowing this strong state to promote substantial eco- nomic growth by maximizing the returns on its wholly dependent position in the world economy. The significance of income from diamond mining is acknowledged but not fully incorporated into du Toit's analysis; the same is true of the limits on effective democratic participation by the poor in a regime that largely isolates the state from popular control. He sees the major threats to democratic sustain-

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ability as environmental degradation and patronage, rather than inequality or revolt from below.-

Since most of the book was completed in late 1993, the 1994 elections in South Africa are covered only in an epilogue, events since those elections are not covered at all, and the analysis of the prospects for sustainable democracy in that country is slightly dated. Apartheid strengthened the South African state in some respects while weakening it in others; the state lost autonomy in the process, becoming an almost purely ethnic state. Society was further divided and weakened at the same time, a process that was continued by the struggle against apartheid, which also weakened the state. Du Toit thinks that it is not clear to what extent these changes have been reversed by the negotiations leading to democratization and the institutions emerging from them. The keys to democratic sustainability in South Africa, therefore, are strengthening the state in its relations with the black population, preventing future revolts modeled on the one against apartheid, providing abundant public goods in an equitable manner while maintaining state solvency through economic growth, and making South African soci- ety truly civil rather than divided.

Du Toit characterizes the Rhodesian state as an ethnic state that was weaker than its South African counterpart because of the relatively and absolutely smaller size of the dominant group. After independence the Zimbabwean state grew stronger but not more autonomous, confronted rather than worked with its dependency, and adopted an adversarial state ethos not conducive to civility in the society. It was thus unable to produce the levels of either democracy or economic growth that are found in Botswana and may be found in South Africa after a comparable period of independence. While the last part of this argu- ment is essentially correct, some of its premises can be questioned, especially Herbst's argument in State Politics in Zimbabwe (1990) that the next generation of whites will have no place in Zimbabwe (an uncivil outcome) and du Toit's implicit assumption that the initial overresponse to the disturbances in Matabeleland in the mid-1980s is pro- totypical of state policy. More effective policies to promote economic growth and the creation of greater political tolerance are seen as the keys to extending democracy in Zimbabwe.

Underlying this predominantly structuralist argument about the importance of strong and autonomous states and strong societies for sustainable democracy is a rationalist argument about the need for incentives to achieve civility (moderation) and for incentives of politically dominant groups and political parties to provide the former incentives for themselves as well as their opponents. The latter, according to du Toit, must be based in mutual perceptions of scarcity and opportunity to reduce that scarcity by manipulating a dependent position in the world economy. This combination of sophisticated macrotheory and solid microfoundations means that this book will make a signif- icant contribution to thinking about democratic sustainabil- ity in Africa, even for those who do not agree with every point made in it.

Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949-1989. By Mary Fulbrook. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 307p. $29.95.

Helga A. Welsh, Wake Forest University

The scholarly investigation of former dictatorships consti- tutes one of many attempts to understand the past and to

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