In South Africa, cooperatives are the primary institutions through which delivery of governmental agricultural support programmes for rural communities is realised. Although these cooperatives are governed by clear national guidelines that encourage transparency and accountability to their membership, in reality their ability to realise this may be compromised by an imperative to achieve service delivery in an environment of limited governmental support. Drawing on empirical research undertaken at five agricultural cooperatives in the Elliot area of Eastern Cape Province, we examine the extent to which they are able to balance democratic function with effective programme delivery. We show that the limited capacity of local government to reach out to rural areas promotes heavy competition between cooperatives for government programmes, resulting in a highly skewed distribution of benefits determined primarily by how effectively each can ‘reach up’ to local service providers to secure them. This encourages cooperatives to elect powerful actors to represent them because they are perceived to have the greater political ‘connectedness’ required to access these benefits. However, these powerful actors are often less accountable to membership and therefore more likely to disburse benefits to suit their own vested interests. We suggest that, under current conditions, the process of creating effective and legitimate cooperatives must balance strong leadership with a high degree of accountability and transparency to ensure that benefits are disbursed as widely and appropriately as possible to members. Separating executive, judicial and legislative power structures associated with the securing and disbursement of resources to ensure processes are transparent, might be the most practical way of achieving this. Ultimately, if the capacity of the state is strengthened to enable them to ‘reach down’ to cooperatives more effectively, the need to vest leadership in powerful actors and risk compromising accountability and egalitarian service delivery, might be reduced.

中文翻译：

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在提供服务与民主之间取得平衡：在支持南非新兴畜牧业者的合作社中的权力关系，政治和责任制

在南非，合作社是实现向农村社区提供政府农业支持计划的主要机构。尽管这些合作社受到明确的国家指导原则的约束，这些指导原则鼓励对成员的透明度和问责制，但实际上，它们的实现能力可能受到在政府支持有限的环境中实现服务提供的当务之急。利用在东开普省埃利奥特地区的五个农业合作社进行的实证研究，我们研究了他们在何种程度上能够平衡民主职能与有效实施计划之间的平衡。我们表明，地方政府向农村地区延伸的能力有限，这导致合作社之间在竞争政府计划方面存在激烈的竞争，导致收益分配的高度偏差，主要取决于每个人如何“有效地”联系本地服务提供商以确保收益。这鼓励合作社选举强大的行为者代表他们，因为他们被认为拥有获得这些好处所需要的更大的政治“联系”。但是，这些有力的行为者通常对会员制不承担任何责任，因此更有可能根据自己的既得利益分配利益。我们建议，在当前条件下，建立有效且合法的合作社的过程必须在强大的领导力与高度的问责制和透明度之间取得平衡，以确保向会员尽可能广泛和适当地分配利益。独立执行人员 与确保资源透明有关的确保资源分配的司法和立法权力结构，可能是实现这一目标的最实际方法。最终，如果国家的能力得到增强，使他们能够更有效地“落入”合作社，则可以减少在有力的行为者中发挥领导作用以及危害问责制和平等服务的风险。