The Analysis of Social Class, Political Participation and Public Policy in Zambia

Abstract

In the last few years there have been a number of studies dealing with the processes of class formation and conflict in Zambia and the interaction between these processes and both political participation and public policy. This body of literature is now sufficiently large and diverse that it merits a detailed examination to acquaint readers with its scope, to determine the significance of the theoretical and empirical disagreements within it, and to pinpoint specific topics which need further research. After a brief theoretical introduction, this article will survey first the different conceptions of class structure and processes in Zambia which have been presented in recent studies, and then, more briefly, the findings of these studies on the interaction among class, political participation, and public policy. Stating the most important theoretical issues involved in conceptualizing class processes and in specifying the relationships among class, participation, and policy in Zambia at the outset will provide a useful structure for the discussion which follows. First, there is the nature of class, involving several more specific issues. There is a widespread consensus that a potentially dominant class is in the process of formation in Zambia, but there is less agreement on the social base of this class. Although classes have traditionally been identified with economic production relationships and the distribution of wealth, some recent class analyses of Zambia and other African countries have emphasized the primacy of power and the polity as the basis of the emerging dominant class in economically dependent African societies.1 There is further disagreement over how exactly the Zambian class structure can be specified at this time. Since this structure is not fully formed and is changing relatively rapidly, it is sometimes suggested that sec-