Cities and Dominance: Urban Strategies for Political Settlement Maintenance and Change – Zambia Case Study

Abstract

This paper tracks how the Patriotic Front (PF)-Zambia's main opposition from 2006 to 2011, when the party won power-shifted its strategies of dealing with the urban poor, civil society and the middle class, in order to manage its vulnerability. While all three groups fully supported the PF in 2011, they are now in a more ambivalent position, thereby creating insecurity for the ruling regime. We contextualise these dynamics vis-à-vis Zambia's broader political landscape, from 2001 to date, relying on historical processing tracing, in-depth interviews with key elite actors and a survey with informal traders. Using the case study of the PF, the paper demonstrates how political settlements can deepen the analysis of how and why particular strategies for dominance emerge in a given context, where the threats to this dominance emerge, and why governing elites target particular groups for co-optive or coercive interventions. It concludes that, due to its size and influence, the PF's hold on Lusaka is crucial to its survival past the 2021 elections. Consequently, it is anticipated the party will continue to exert repressive pressure on sources of countervailing power and opposition and co-opt poorer but numerically large support bases (e.g. marketeers and vendors)

The political economy of urban party switching in African elections: Evidence from Zambia

“…The PF came to power promising to address the economic concerns of urban Zambians who were disillusioned with the failures of economic growth to translate into improved living conditions for the majority (Cheeseman et al 2014). Most PF urban supporters were informal economy workers who make up 81% of the urban labour force (Hinfelaar et al 2020). This includes market traders, bus and taxi drivers, street vendors, and hawkers who expected policy adjustments to serve their interests.…”

“…University students at public institutions benefited from a 100% increment in the monthly living allowances paid for by the government. The government also lifted restrictions on street vending and hawking, which were imposed by the previous administration (Hinfelaar et al 2020).…”

“…Infrastructure investments were meant to create semi-skilled jobs for the unemployed, contribute to economic growth, and, in turn, generate revenues to repay debts. Instead, it contributed to spiralling foreign debt and was generally used as a form of patronage for PF elites without many benefits to local urban economies (Hinfelaar et al 2020).…”

The politics of urban governance in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Other types of informal governance also exist in the form of political party youth wings that operate with relative impunity. One example can be found in Zambia where members of the ruling Patriotic Front, known as party cadres, often extort money from vulnerable market traders and street vendors in the capital of Lusaka in exchange for security (Hinfelaar, Resnick, and Sishuwa 2020).…”

The Winning Party Platform: Voter Perceptions of Party Positions and Voting in Urban Africa

“…Some recent studies of electoral strategies in Africa argue that political parties sometimes campaign on non-valence (positional) issues to attract voter support. For instance, Cheeseman and Hinfelaar (2010), Resnick (2012), and Hinfelaar et al (2020) find that the Patriotic Front (PF), Zambia’s current incumbent party, has mobilised a cross-ethnic support base of the urban poor, informal-sector workers, and the middle class, and established a policy platform ideologically distinctive from opposition parties, to win votes from these groups. Other studies have demonstrated a trend among African parties of taking distinctive policy positions as an electoral strategy (Elischer, 2013; Nugent, 2007; Osei, 2013; Whitfield, 2009).…”