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Revolutionising Local Politics? Radical Experiments in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda in the 1980s

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 122 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03056240903346137

1740-1720

J. Tyler Dickovick,

African history and culture studies

This article compares three African countries whose attempts to transform local governance in the 1980s were among the most dramatic, particularly in rural areas: Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara (1983–1987), Ghana in the early years of the Jerry Rawlings presidency (1981–1992), and Uganda under Yoweri Museveni (1985–present). Despite surface similarities, especially in the establishment of local ‘people's defence councils’ or ‘resistance councils’, the three experiments had quite different outcomes, as a function both of antecedent conditions in state–society relations and of regimes' choices. A structured comparative-historical argument highlights differing state strategies vis-à-vis important social forces, especially traditional chiefs. Regimes' choices between confrontation , coexistence , and the construction of new relations with social forces resulted in different degrees of local political change. The ‘revolutionary’ local experiments provide insight into a general theory of African politics, in which states' transformational powers in rural areas remain circumscribed by entrenched local forces.