$2.95 By Aristide R. Zolberg Revised Edition Mr. Zolberg's account of the rise of the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast is well informed and brilliant; it ranks among the best two or three studies yet published on African political change. / Martin Kilson, on the first edition, in African Forum Digitized by the Internet Archive 2012 in http://archive.org/details/onepartygovernmeOOzolb ONE-PARTY GOVERNMENT THE IN IVORY COAST -<%- ONE-PARTY GOVERNMENT THE IN IVORY COAST BY ARISTIDE R. ZOLBERG REVISED EDITION PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 1969 © Copyright 1964 by Princeton University Press Introduction to the Revised Edition" and "Appendix: The First Decade' Copyright © 1969 by Princeton University Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED L.C. Card 63-12673 Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey Revised Edition, 1969 First Princeton Paperback Printing, 1969 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher's consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published TO ^^ee/ MEMORIAM IN INTRODUCTION TO REVISED EDITION ^ LIKE many others ofmy generation, I was initially drawn to the study of non-Western politics, and particularly to Africa, by a desire to participate in two processes ofrevolution- arychange: The emancipationofnonwhite colonialpeoples and the emancipation of the study of politics in American Uni- versities. Africa was both a political cause and a social science laboratory. The cause of African freedom could be served by recording in an earnest and sympathetic manner the achieve- ments of African nationalist movements; the laboratory en- abled young scholars to experiment with new theories and new methods while minimizing the risk of interference from es- tablished academic authorities who were often indifferent to and almost always ignorant of political life in the Third World. The re-publication of this book provides an opportunity to reflect on the aftermath of both revolutions. As the original introduction and concluding chapter to this study suggest, by the time I conducted field work in the Ivory Coast in 1959 it had become obvious that the achievement of freedom from colonial rule did not necessarily coincide with the establishment of political liberty. The most striking fea- ture of Ivory Coast politics, as well as of West African politics more generally, was the emergence of authoritarian tendencies, especially in the form of a^nciparty^state. This phenomenon captivated my attention and overshadowed what had origi- nally been a more sociological interest in the relationships between society and politics during periods of rapid historical change. Many other observers shared a concern with the qual- ity of political life in the new African states, and the ensuing debate over democracy and one-party systems dominated the activities of political scientists interested in Africa at the be- ginning of the 1960's. That debate has since been superseded, but some of its im- vii INTRODUCTION TO REVISED EDITION plications remain interesting because they provide a link be- tween the study of politics in Africa and the study of political modernization more generally. For many of us who identified with various shades of the liberal left in the United States, the deplorable authoritarian features of some African regimes were redeemed by their commitment to racial equality, popu- lism, and economic justice. Some went so far as to argue that authoritarian rule was even necessary and hence justified in order to maintain freedom, to achieve equality, and to pro- mote economic development. It did not matter if governments were not democratic, since democracy was inherent in the characteristics of mass parties and since the policies carried out by some regimes would have eventual democratic con- sequences. The Ivory Coast occupied a special place in this debate. Since its spokesmen initially rejected independence and later eschewed Socialism, Negritude, Pan-Africanism, and Neutral- ism, they could not earn the label "democratic" on the basis of their policy orientation; furthermore, since the party had been dismantled after the period of militancy and later transformed into a political machine, it was no longer a "mass party," hence the regime could not be dubbed "democratic" on that ground. On the basis of this study, the Ivory Coast was eventually cate- gorized by others as an important example of the "pragmatic" as against the "revolutionary" version of the one-party state in Africa. But this provided little comfort. To study the Ivory Coast entailed removing oneself from the mainstream of what had initially been most attractive about studying Africa; the student who did not denounce the regime even risked facing the uncomfortable silent charge of being a conservativc-by- association. The only compensation was that to study the Ivory Coast helped overcome at an early time the temptations of romanticism which lay in wait for all of us wlio had par- ticipated vicariously in the African emancipation mo\'ement. In the Hght of later events, this was no mean advantage. via