Labour, neoliberalism and democratic politics in Nigeria and South Africa: a comparative overview

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Periodical article

Title:	Labour, neoliberalism and democratic politics in Nigeria and South Africa: a comparative overview
Author:	Barchiesi, Franco
Year:	1997
Periodical:	Labour, Capital and Society
Volume:	30
Issue:	2
Pages:	171-225
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Nigeria South Africa
Subjects:	democracy labour
Abstract:	In comparing labour adaptation and resistance in democratic transitions hegemonized by free-market economic orientations in South Africa and Nigeria, the author differentiates the impact of structural adjustment on labour as a set of formal organizations and as a movement capable of relating with broader processes of identity construction and social mobilization. In South Africa, the democratic electoral transition was successful, labour played a decisive role in popular mobilization and its influence is now increasingly institutionalized in the political system and structures of social mediation, which provide opportunities to challenge a rising free-market hegemony in economic policy. In Nigeria, conversely, a long-standing tradition of aborted democratic transitions and the uncertainty surrounding the prospects of the current phase have seen labour's role in resistance subject to State repression or subordinate co-optation. Here an authoritarian political system was facilitated by the convergence of IMF-World Bank prescriptions with the strategies for the self-reproduction of domestic elites. Bibliogr., sum. in French (p. 170).