The Architecture of Political Monopoly: Challangeing the Hegemon in Zambia and Zimbabwe

Abstract: Zambia and Zimbabwe share a common postcolonial political history. Both countries have for many years been dominated politically by the former liberation movements UNIP and ZANU (PF). This thesis attempts to account for why, despite their similar political hegemony, UNIP was overthrown by the opposition though democratic elections but ZANU (PF) was not. Central to the study is the theoretical attempt to integrate agency and structure by conceptionalizing structures as resources and agents as capable of reflexive action. Political hegemony in Zambia and Zimbabwe is argued to be based on the availability and exploitation of both formal and informal structural resources. Such resources provide actors with a finite repertoire of tools which they are capable of employing according to their choices and convictions. The different political outcomes in Zambia and Zimbabwe are therefore explained by the variations in available structural resources as well as the different choices that UNIP and ZANU (PF) made when it came to deploying those resources.