Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses shifting ideas of legitimate political authority and accountability at a local level in Zambia.

Paper long abstract:

The capacity of Zambian local government has never been strong, but has been systematically weakened by the retreat of the state. There are, nonetheless, still systems in place for the allocation, licensing and taxing of market stalls, bus-ranks, taxis, bicycle porters, residential, agricultural and industrial plots. In many cases, they have been emptied of formality: they are run as protection rackets that make money for political parties and construct and supply networks of loyal cadres. This makes the process of securing an urban livelihood a negotiation of a set of politicized networks in which loyalty is a devalued currency.

The resulting systems function passably for elites, at least to the extent that reintroducing or deepening formality does not appeal. The argument made here leans less on cultural than material explanations: in resource poor settings (and in spite of high growth rates in many countries, including Zambia, that is still the only sensible description of most of Africa) the insulation of a political 'public sphere' or a form of civil market from contests over the distribution of wealth and life-opportunities is implausible. There just is not enough money to go around or a sufficiently dynamic capitalist market present for an emerging owning class to conclude that they could avoid conflict and stabilize their strategies of accumulation through the acceptance of a neutral 'policeman state'. In both economic and political life, many elite and non-elite actors thus seek not economic independence, or self-sufficiency, but forms of secure dependency.