The downside of democratic legitimacy

THE term legitimacy attracts approval which is almost visceral. We believe that while legitimate states may sometimes make bad policies, they have a claim on the obedience of citizens precisely because they are legitimate.

By contrast, an illegitimate state cannot do anything right, not even when it does something which if done by a legitimate state would be accepted as right. Thus an African National Congress (ANC) leader once described a birth control programme conducted in apartheid South Africa as an act of genocide against the African people.

There is however a downside to the ethical surplus enjoyed by the legitimate state. Legitimacy not only permits governments to go about their business with a clear conscience, but also permits them to dismiss opposing views as illegitimate or trivial. Legitimate governments can impose greater hardships on their subjects than governments enjoying weak legitimacy. During World War II the British government imposed stricter rationing than the Nazis did in Germany.

The columnist Michael Prowse of the Financial Times recently suggested that the root cause of errors and incompetence in British government lay in a political system that gives governments with a large parliamentary majority near-dictatorial powers.

"This excessive power leads politicians to adopt a contemptuous view of their fellow citizens. Rather than seeking to consult, rather than taking differing points of view seriously and gradually building a consensus in favour of reforms, they try to dominate and control every part of civil society."

Beyond the majoritarian principle which defines democratic rule, the distinctive feature of the legitimacy of democratic states rests less on what they are than on what they do. Governments in democratic states are continuously active in making policies which will attract electoral support. They are highly interventionist in their search for policies which might bring them support, responding both to specific interests and to what they believe to be general interests.

The ANC has now won two general elections with comfortable majorities.

There is no political party in sight with a remote chance of defeating the ANC in an election so long as the ANC remains united and its two partners in the tripartite alliance, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), continue to accept the ANC's leadership. The ANC treats the parliamentary opposition parties with unconcealed contempt. The New National Party (NNP) is a dependent client, enjoying the ANC's patronage in return for delivering votes in the Western Cape. The Democratic Alliance (DA), with its long experience of parliamentary opposition, is isolated and ignored by the ANC.

The state president, Thabo Mbeki, recently warned opposition parties against "mobilising the minorities" as though minorities (however defined) had no legitimate interests separate from those of the majority which the ANC claims to represent. Ingeniously, he aligned this criticism (aimed mainly at the Democratic Alliance) with the critique on what he termed "ultra-left" elements in the SACP and Cosatu.

From time to time strains have appeared in the tripartite alliance but it has remained broadly committed to a common project. Recently, however, threats have appeared which could upset the alliance. The threat arises not because the SACP and Cosatu partners want to mount an alternative political project, but because the Mbeki presidency has attempted to impose its will on them over the government's privatisation policy, and more broadly, the government's pursuit of the interests of the new elite

occupying important positions in the public and private sector.

Some members of Cosatu and the SACP believed, along with this shift in policy, that the Mbeki presidency had changed its style of government from being "people-driven" to policies delivered from governmental positions.

A politician of Jeremy Cronin's calibre must have recognised that the ANC's entry into the regime of power in 1994 might limit the range of options available to radicals in the ANC and SACP. But the consequence for socialists would not necessarily mean that their efforts to work for the reform of the political economy would be halted. On the contrary, given the constitutional and political context of South Africa in the 1990s and 2000s, it was probably the only way for them to gain access to or influence over the policy-making process.

However, important conditions would need to have been met for the left to be effective participants in shaping policy and not simply make-weights there to legitimise the policy process. Cronin spoke of the need to keep the unions "mobilised and energetic and watching every move".

This suggests that he had assimilated the experience of social democratic movements elsewhere - that the potential for reform or reaction hinged on the balance of forces within the Alliance.

The recent developments in the Alliance are qualitatively different from the marginalisation of the parliamentary opposition, and possibly even more serious. The contempt displayed by the ANC towards the DA and the NNP gives fresh evidence of the emergence of a dominant party regime. The outcome of the struggles going on within the Alliance will dictate the character of that regime.

Finance Week hailed the (apparent) victory of the government over Cosatu after the strike of early October, paying Mbeki's government the dubious compliment that it had been tougher than the right-wing French government in confronting the unions. This triumphalism is not merely misplaced; it is laughing in the face of disaster. The defeat or marginalisation of these groups threatens to eviscerate elements which are important in building a lasting democracy in South Africa. Maintaining the conditions in which an independent union movement is able to participate co-operatively in policy-making is fundamental. If this is not done the relationship between capital and labour will revert to the intense conflicts which were displayed in the bad old days.