the democratic process. How long some of the diverse coalitions for the
restoration of democracy can survive the enormous expectations of them is
a subject of much speculation. Elections in Mozambique, Kenya and Nepal
have introduced competitive party politics into inhospitable social and eco-
nomic environments. The African National Congress in South Africa
encompasses a broad spectrum of regional, racial, cultural, class and ideo-
logical positions. Elsewhere parties themselves constitute the greatest threat
to democracy, either because of their refusal to accept majority decisions
(such as Renamo in Mozambique, Unita in Angola or ZANU-PF in
Zimbabwe), or because of their inherent authoritarianism, contempt for
human rights or religious intolerance.
The apparent globalization of political values and institutions represented
by the dissolution of the communist regimes in the Second World and their
replacement by systems of government broadly subscribing to liberal dem-
ocratic beliefs and practices, has lent credence to the view that there is an
inevitable trend towards a universal form of government on which all soci-
eties will eventually converge. Such interpretations of recent world history
gain encouragement from the extent to which pluralist democracy has
replaced military regimes or single-party states in Latin America and Africa.
There would seem to be echoes of modernization theory in such predic-
tions and interpretations (Leftwich, 1993, p. 605). Assumptions about the
importance of the development of civil society as a counterbalance to the
power of the state are reminiscent of the importance attached by modern-
ization theory to the ‘organic solidarities’ which are a function of the
increased complexity and specialization of modernizing social structures.
Similarly ideas about ‘good governance’ which increasingly inform
Western aid policy and which prescribe the separation of powers, the
accountability and efficiency of public bureaucracy, and the rule of law as
indispensable components of a democratic polity and free society, find their
counterpart in the concept of structural differentiation that is central to polit-
ical functionalism. The development of differentiated and specialized polit-
ical structures serves to strengthen the extractive, regulative, distributive,
symbolic and responsive capabilities of governments, as well as preserving
the independence of different parts of the machinery of government, thus
inhibiting the concentration of power in a small and personalized executive
élite which is so often the hallmark of Third World politics.
However, as Leftwich reminds us, modernization theory, unlike much
contemporary Western political rhetoric, did not assume that democracy
could take root regardless of economic and social conditions. Rather it sees
economic development as preceding the modernization of politics – which
276 Understanding Third World Politics