Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This book examines the interaction of law and politics in postcolonial Africa. The basic narrative emphasizes the continuities of contemporary legal practices with the jurisprudence of colonial government, grounded in what is known as 'imperial liberalism'. The analysis focuses on the production of specifically postcolonial forms of legality - understood as the empirical outcomes of the state legal system. Of particular interest is the evolution of legality in the core domain of the law of the state itself, that is, the constitution and subsidiary statute pertaining to the powers of the executive. It is argued, based on a number of detailed and interlinked case studies from Zambia, that the epoch of radical deregulation in the wake of the Cold War dismantled much of the post-independence party-state apparatus and thus turned a page in the formative processes of state formation. This transformation has been reflected in, and further amplified by, a radical reworking of the ways that state legality plays out. Central to this radical shift was a profound reorientation of the legal profession as lawyers, enriched and empowered by the novel opportunities of the liberalized market economy in the nineties, quite suddenly achieved unprecedented levels of financial and political autonomy from the state. A key motif in the book relates to the ways lawyers, and to some extent judges, have responded to their new-found autonomy, and how these concomitant resources have been deployed in the realm of politics.
Synopsis
This book interrogates the ideology and practices of liberal constitutionalism in the Zambian postcolony. The analysis focuses on the residual political and governmental effects of an Imperial form of power, embodied in the person of the Republican President, termed here Prerogativism. Through systematic, long-term ethnographic engagement with Zambian constitutionalist activists - lawyers, judges and civic leaders -- the study examines how Prerogativism has shaped the postcolonial political landscape, and limited the possibilities of constitutional liberalism. This is revealed in the ways that repeated efforts to reform the constitution have side-lined popular participation, and thus failed to address the deep divide between a small elite stratum (from which the constitutional activists are drawn) and the marginalized masses of the population. Along the way, the study documents the intimate interpenetration of political and legal action, and examines how Prerogativism delimits the political engagements of elite actors. Special attention is given to the reluctance of the legal activists to engage with popular politics, and to the conservative ethos that undermines efforts to pursue a jurisprudence of transformational constitutionalism in the findings of the Constitutional Court. The work contributes to the rising interest in applying socio-legal analysis to the statutory domain in postcolonial jurisdictions. It offers a pioneering attempt to deconstruct the amorphous and ambivalent assemblage of ideas and practices related to constitutionalism through detailed ethnographic interrogation. It will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners with an interest in theorizing challenges to political liberalism in postcolonial contexts, as well as in rethinking the methodological toolbox of socio-legal analysis.