Week 21: Nyererism and the incubation of the policy moments in Africa

Many African political independence luminaries and social transformers such as Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sékou Touré, and Julius Nyerere— believed in a distinctly African brand of socialism that fused indigenous African values and traditions with elements of the Marxist-Leninist ideology of socialism

In this African brand the social transformers pointed to indigenous African values and traditions laying emphasis on the irreducible influence of social identity in designing acceptable political spaces for decision making.

Most African systems are circular – all inclusive with deeply embedded participation at all levels and all spheres of life. For this, Nyerereism advocated for a political organization centered in a market place of active consultation and concensus building. This marketplace was seen as a crucial element in political debate of who gets what when and how of the common good. The mantra then was "winner protect it all" where all voices were presented on the table and heard. With progressive deliberations then a minority voice could become the consensus.

Over the last 50 years, this Nyererism brand of a market place for consensus building has been iteratively revisited and re-imagined in the reality of the discontent and disillusionment with the misfit of competitive "winner take it all" brand of politics that has created dialectic right – wrong, good-bad, normal-not normal, rational - irrational with every change of a winner leading to a near 180 degrees turn in the promoted policy direction.

Strong African bred think tanks have emerged refreshing Nyererism to present day and rebranding the consensus table moderated by rigorous evidence to guide decision making.

This well-meaning indigenous bred think-tanks however get quickly disillusioned with the reality that rigorous evidence and the consensus table falls short in enabling the transformation desired. They fall short in realizing the policy moments or policy windows of opportunity which they as policy entrepreneurs can seize to initiate action.

image source: https://tinyurl.com/2esbzpcm

A possible theory to explain this, help identify the gap and provide a solution is John Kingdon's multiple stream theory which is arguably the most popular lens in studying the policy process. This theory attempts to shed light on why some policy issues are considered and acted upon and others are not. John Kingdon argues for the coupling of three streams: The problem stream - defining the problem and generating evidence to understand the problem, its indicators and root causes; The policy stream - that serves the "soup" of ideas that combine value accessibility and technical feasibility to generate competitively alternatives for considerate by policy makers; and the political stream - capturing the national mood, campaigns from pressure groups, election outcomes bringing in the winning party ideology as well as the public administration setup.

Coupling of the three streams takes place in policy window moments. But this are not automatic, they are catalyzed by policy entrepreneurs who apply their strategies of framing, "salami tactics" and affect priming to broker problem preferences and attract political support.

A pretty neat package.

The gap (disillusionment) can be understood by observing what happens after the consensus table to look out for any decoupling that then hinders the policy uptake.

If the political stream decouples from the problem and policy stream (creating a weak political backing to the change) then we have a weak often slow bottom up community lead implementation drive.

If the problem stream [the why] decouples from the political and policy stream often due to significant changes or a passage of time, we have a coercive implementation with the political actors pushing for policies disconnected to the needs of the people

The solution to the disillusionment can then be expressed as strategies for preventing decoupling in implementation. In the case of political stream decoupling, Riu Mu (2018) suggests favorable institutional arrangement (the arrangements that define responsibilities) can play a decisive role in facilitating performance. For instance, for the complex intractable case of poverty and social security, a strategy to safeguard the policy window could be the promotion of a centralized institutional arrangement preventing the disintegration of implementation to multiple institutions with multiple influences. This could be the missing puzzle piece in generating the policy window for social security in Africa that is germane to realizing development and transformation.