Abstract

This article examines how the Jerry Rawlings military government, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in Ghana, framed its political agenda using liberal tropes about participatory democracy as a strategy to manufacture legitimacy and mediate political-economic crisis. The People’s Defence Committees (PDCs) and Workers’ Defence Committees (WDCs), created in 1981 and dissolved in 1984, were presented by the PNDC as innovative programmes aimed at nurturing citizen participation representative of the highest form of democracy. However, the introduction of these reforms came at a time when the ruling PNDC faced critical problems of legitimacy, administrative incapability and popular opposition to austerity measures associated with structural adjustment programs (SAPs). We utilise primary source material from the University of Ghana National Reconciliation Commission collection to argue that the discourses and practice of the PDCs/WDCs functioned simultaneously to violently consolidate state power, depoliticise alternatives, and manufacture legitimacy to mediate political-economic crisis while simultaneously being a vehicle for illegitimacy by providing constrained opportunities for individual nepotism, grassroots empowerment and claim-making against the state.

摘要

本文考察了杰里·罗林斯军政府，即加纳临时国防委员会 (PNDC)，如何使用关于参与式民主的自由主义比喻作为制造合法性和调解政治经济危机的策略来制定其政治议程。人民国防委员会 (PDC) 和工人保卫委员会 (WDC) 成立于 1981 年，并于 1984 年解散，由 PNDC 提出，作为旨在培养代表最高民主形式的公民参与的创新计划。然而，这些改革的出台正值执政的 PNDC 面临合法性、行政无能以及民众反对与结构调整计划 (SAPs) 相关的紧缩措施等关键问题。