Of cabbages and King Cobra: Populist politics and Zambia's 2006 election

Larmer, Miles; Fraser, Alastair

doi:10.1093/afraf/adm058

Cited by 122 publications

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“…17 Ghana's macro-economic performance is classified by Adam and O'Connell within the 'pre-stabilisation' category, with inflation over 20% at the beginning of the 2000s (Adam and O'Connell 2006, table 5.1) 18 One important factor causing deterioration of governance after 2002 was fragmentation of authority within the National Rainbow Coalition (now Party of National Unity or PNU) elite. Well before the catastrophic 2007 election, rival ministers within (PNU) were sponsoring vigilante gangs, two of them known as the 'Taliban' and the 'Baghdad Boys' with the objective of intimidating other factions within the party (Branch and Cheeseman, 2008: 15) 2006 and 2008 elections were substantially cleaner than those of the 1990s and early 2000s (Larmer and Fraser, 2007;Cheeseman and Hinfelaar, 2009: 69-70). As interparty competition became more intense, so, as in Ghana, both parties found themselves seeking to transcend the existing ethnic base of their parties by competing for the support of uncommitted groups -the principal battleground, in Zambia, being urban workers on the Copperbelt.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

Mosley

Chiripanhura

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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Abstract:We seek to understand both the incidence and the impact of the African political business cycle in the light of a literature which has argued that, with major extensions of democracy since the 1990s, the cycle has both become more intense and has made African political systems more fragile. With the help of country-case studies, we argue, first, that the African political business cycle is not homogeneous, and is rarely encountered in so-called 'dominant-party systems' where a pre-election stimulus confers little political advantage. Secondly, we show that, in those countries where a political cycle does occur, it does not necessarily cause institutional damage. Whether it does or not depends not so much on whether there is an electoral cycle as on whether this calms or exacerbates fears of an unjust allocation of resources. In other words, the composition of the pre-election stimulus, in terms of its allocation between different categories of voter, is as important as its size.1 Our thanks to Helene Ehrhart, Victor Lledo, Vera Troeger, Paul Whiteley and other participants at seminars at the University of Essex and the Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford (March 2010) for most valuable comments on an early version. The paper derives from work done under research contract 156/25/0016, The Political Economy of Pro-Poor Adjustment and Growth, within the ESRC's World Economy and Finance Programme, and we are grateful to the ESRC for their support and encouragement. 2The African political business cycle: varieties of experience 1.IntroductionFor well over a century, the economies of industrialised countries have been subject to systematic economic fluctuations, often known as business cycles. No amount of macroeconomic management has been able to get rid of these cycles, and many have claimed that governments within a democratic system have an incentive to stimulate rather than restrain a pattern of 'stop-go' in their policies. It is tempting, for example, to buy popularity by boosting the economy before an election, for example through tax cuts or monetary expansion, knowing that the costs of doing this, for example, in terms of increased inflation, may not be foreseen by voters 2 , and in any case do not have to be paid until after the election has been won. At that point, the government may well choose to deflate the economy, both in order to pay for the preelection boost and possibly also to restrain wage claims by making the workforce fear for their jobs 3 . Thus, the political process may of itself tend to augment rather than restrain the business cycle -as observed in a number of Western industrialised countries and analysed by, for example, Kalecki (1943), Nordhaus (1975), one of the present authors (Mosley, 1978) 4 , and Rogoff (1990). And the now firmly embedded global economic environment of open capital markets may, as many have discovered to their cost during the recent global recession, amplify the ease with which such shocks once administered can be passed on to other countri...

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

Mosley

Chiripanhura

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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“…For example, in Egypt in 2012, companies such as the Pew Global Attitudes Survey sampled respondents only from the greater Cairo area, which may have been one of the reasons why virtually all polls predicted a run-off between two candidates who both did not make it to the final round. 10 Similarly, in Zambia in 2006, polls conducted mainly in urban areas predicted a landslide victory for the opposition challenger, prompting incredulity among his supporters when the incumbent president was declared the winner (Larmer & Fraser, 2007). Representative sampling may also be complicated by armed conflict, political unrest, or poor infrastructure, which makes regions inaccessible for pollsters.…”

Section: Formation Of Electoral Prospects In Different Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Confidence and Political Budget Cycles in Non-OECD Countries

Eibl

Lynge-Mangueira

2016

St Comp Int Dev

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“…Sata's attacks on foreign investors, particularly those from China, for their abuse of the mining workforce and their supposedly corrupt relationship with the MMD resonated with urban Zambians, who were already angered by the negative impact of economic liberalization. PF won 29 percent of the vote followed by an even stronger showing in the 2008 by-election when the party received 38 percent of the popular vote (Larmer and Fraser, 2007;Cheeseman and Hinfelaar, 2010;Resnick, 2012). While some saw the political developments before and after the 2006 election as sign of the increasing importance of ethnic appeals in Zambian politics (Posner, 2005;Erdmann, 2007), others argued that the rise of particularly the PF should be considered a combination of ethnic appeals in the countryside with issue-based, non-ethnic politics in the urban centers (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar, 2010;Gould, 2007;Larmer and Fraser, 2007).…”

Section: The 2006 Campaignmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Despite the increased copper prices, the effective marginal tax rate was by 2004 zero percent (World Bank, 2004: 14). This provided the opposition with an opportunity to focus on issues of taxation in the 2006 election (Larmer and Fraser, 2007;Mwambwa et al, 2010).…”

Section: The 2006 Campaignmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tax bargains in unlikely places: The politics of Zambian mining taxes

Rakner

2017

The Extractive Industries and Society

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A B S T R A C TIn developed nations, issues of taxation rank high on the agendas of political parties. In Africa's new democracies taxation does not figure as a central campaign issue. Lack of attention to issues of taxation reflects the limited emphasis on policy issues in election campaigns generally, and the fact that only a limited part of the population is covered by the tax net. Many African countries rely on revenues from unearned incomes such as natural resources, further weakening the fiscal contract between government and its citizens. The case of Zambia tests these general perspectives. The issue of taxation À and in particular mining taxes-has featured centrally in election campaigns since 2001 and the main political parties display distinct variances in their approach to taxing the extractive industries. Election campaigns have also influenced the tax policies of the incoming governments. Contrary to common perceptions on party politics in Sub Sahara Africa, the paper argues that in a political setting of competitive elections and where several different sources of information are present, election campaigns may reflect issue based politics. Challenging mainstream fiscal contract theory, the political battle over mining taxes in Zambia suggests that "unearned taxes" may induce tax bargains between the government and its citizens.

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Of cabbages and King Cobra: Populist politics and Zambia's 2006 election

Cited by 122 publications

References 0 publications

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

Electoral Confidence and Political Budget Cycles in Non-OECD Countries

Tax bargains in unlikely places: The politics of Zambian mining taxes

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