Introduction
Modernity has been spreading around the world by way of mercantile capitalism, colonization, diffusion of religions and scientific knowledge, and imposition of and resistance to the rule of law in changing forms of state. Industrial capitalism has been spreading modernity since the 1800s, restructuring European societies into modern classes and creating various institutional forms and ideological justifications1 including nationalism, republicanism, and democracy to manage the conflicts and collaborations of social production and unequal reward. Exploitation of labor and resources in colonized territories also changed under industrial capitalism, which by 1885 had mopped up any remaining places and peoples that had previously escaped the mercantile, plantation, and slave-trading phases in the evolution of capitalism.
Expansion into regions beyond Europe was justified in terms of a “civilizing mission,” or racial entitlement, even though the expansion itself was driven by the competitive search for markets, raw materials, and strategic geographical assets.2
In time, the arguments among and between Europeans, North Americans, and, after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese over territory, patterns of trade in resources and industrial goods, credit and payment exchanges and approaches to government, and diplomacy and war themselves became diffused among subjected peoples. With some regional variations, such as Satyagraha in India and pan-Africanism in the Caribbean and Africa, the language of aspiration to self-determination and modernity in the polities and economies of the Global South was creolized from the Global North.3
Two themes in modernization—democracy and development—have persisted among others within this dialectic. Both have undergone mutations, individually and in relation to each other, in meaning and institutional expression. Indigenous intellectual production in the ex-colonized world has sought in recent decades to reinterpret and integrate democracy and development in engagement with and in response to formulations from the Global North.4 This paper is part of the effort to find a relevant conceptual synthesis and workable strategy of democratic development in the new Global South. Part I sets out pertinent questions, some of which are addressed in this paper, whereas others are part of the ongoing debate but cannot be exhausted here. Part I also offers a conceptualization of overlapping dynamic problems. Part II applies this conceptualization to analyze the parallel and connected dynamics in five country cases in Southern Africa. Part III integrates these case analyses and draws implications for application in development efforts and for theories of development and democracy.
1 Eric Williams argued that it was logistics, labor, and profits of slavery and the slave trade that triggered the leap from mercantile and artisan capitalism to industrial capitalism in Europe. Slavery continued to subsidize capitalism in some parts of the world, while in others the slave mode of capitalism became too costly for the emerging requirements of profitability. Thus, antislavery social forces and their ideologies could gain traction in Britain before they did in other colonizing capitals. See Williams 1949. In an adjacent line of reasoning, Sandra Halperin argues that it was regional and transregional trading links and cultural exchanges between cities that led to the eventual articulation of national economies and the discourses and practices of national development. Thus, in her view, mercantile trade created modern Europe, and in turn, an industrialized modern Europe was better placed to dominate world trade and foreign territories. See Halperin 2013.
2 There are, of course, different theories of imperialism and its ideological productions. Norman Etherington offers a useful treatment of the main ones. See Etherington 1984.
3 I expand on this point in Allen 2013. A helpful survey and analysis of hegemonic patterns and lines of accommodation and resistance across the Global South can be found in Carroll 2006.
4 Significant contributions in this regard include Yunus 2008, Girvan 2007, Max-Neef 1991, and Sen 1999.