Cooperatives for bringing democracy in Ethiopia
By De Birhan Media
12 May 2012
“I hear many say we need to bring a democratic government in Ethiopia, we may but we can’t realise it lest we also change our bad socio-cultural underneath” anonymous in a social forum.
1. Introduction
In a very literal sense, cooperation means working together for a mutual benefit then are derived the adjective, adverb, noun and so on forms of the word i.e. cooperative, cooperatively, cooperativeness and cooperation. Some aspects of the Gada Syetem, Edir, Mehaber and Equib are indigenous and typical examples of cooperation of societies in the Ethiopian case. I would here now focus on cooperative, not on its linguistic meaning but on its business/organisational model and idea. A Cooperative/coop is a self help business owned and democratically controlled by the people who use its services and share its benefits (Briscoe and Ward, 2005). The International Cooperative Alliance defines coops as “A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.” Cooperatives in Ethiopia today are mainly agricultural and at times serve as “controlling local populace and teaching party policies”. Elections are done unfairly and the most broad members and heads are stooges of the regime.
It is also an idea of any form of organisation formed under these concepts of member controlled, owned and benefiting organisations. We can use the Amharic equivalent of cooperatives- Ye Hebret Sera Mehaberat, hereafter. The cooperative movement has been instrumental in fighting poverty, deprivation, creating social cohesion and promulgating progress. Cooperatives had negative fame too for they were used as political instruments by socialist and communist regimes such as Mao Zedong of China, Mengistu Hailemariam of Ethiopia, Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania and few others. Thus, when one talks about cooperatives, what comes to the mind of many first is communism. As every farm, business, land and wealth was coopertivised; entrepreneurship, capitalism, competition and “development” were prohibited in many of these communist nations. Although, the idea of cooperatives is grand, if they are fall in the hands dictators and ideological regimes and leaders then become less rosy. In this short piece, I hypothesise that “if people are free, then cooperatives can be used to build and nurture democracy in poor/developing countries”.
Cooperatives are best categorized according to four best main types based on their user/member such as consumer–retailing, financial services, utilities and housing; Producer –agriculture (processing), farmers markets and taxi; Workers– owned and run companies by workers; Community– community radio, heritage, community development and infrastructure, and Multistakeholder– cross-owned by the above coops such as producers and consumers and so on, cooperatives. There are few more types of cooperatives that have begun to develop recently. In 2005, the most recent year for which detailed data is available; there were 1,066 societies with approximately 270,000 members and sales/income of €3.8 billion. According to the International Cooperatives Union, currently, over 800 million people are members of cooperatives worldwide and in the United Stated 4 in 10 individuals are members of a cooperative (25%).
Before forming cooperatives the first step to be taken is pointing the real problem or task which in our case could be summarised as democratisation inclusive of justice, good governance and human rights. The next step is making sure that a coop is the right organisation. Followed by : calling a meeting, forming an investigation/steering committee of 5 to 7 people that help the maturity of the project with a chairperson, secretary, and treasurer.
Democratisation
S.W.R. de A. Samarasinghe on a paper titled “Democracy and Democratization in Developing Countries” 1994 says
The concept of democracy, in its simplest form, can be defined using the two Greek words demos (people) and kratos (rule) that combine to make the word democracy, meaning “rule bythe people”. Theories of democracy attempt to make this basic concept operational by prescribing how democracy might be realized, in what institutional form, and the content of democracy.
And states that there was no general agreement as to the issues bringing two main questions such as “the debate whether democracy should be extended beyond the political sphere to include the social and economic spheres and secondly is the question of the adequacy of a theory of democracy that addresses only the procedural or input side of the political process ignoring the output side.” Jennifer Franco in a 2008 paper entitled “Rural Democratisation: (Re) Framing rural poor political action” states that democratisation could be either changing regimes or political processes within the regime. Jennifer also says that in order to consider regimes democratic it must provide: free and fair electoral competition, civilian control over the military and guaranteed respect for basic political rights and freedoms.
Democratization can generally be translated as the transition to a more democratic political regime. Democratisation can be affected due to different reasons that may help propel or curtail its growth. Wealth is arguably one of the major causes cited to affect democratisation. The argument is that it at times has been found out to be irrelevant in democratisation processes. Education or information is the second; better informed and knowledgeable people make informed choices and act “morally”. Market economy, social and economic equality- democracy is more stable in egalitarian and intermediate societies. Civil societies and civic culture are also important in that when civil societies that build social networks are existing and a certain common civic culture exists, democracy improves. As contentious as the others though, culture is considered as important, some argue Western culture as being conducive although there are cases within non Western cultures. Free and fair election, political parties (opposition), independent election board and vibrant media are the other essentials.
From there very democratic principles, cooperatives enshrine their enlightening second principle: democratic member controls, Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. Primarily, co-operative members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives are also organised in a democratic manner.
In addition to this, the main cooperative values such as self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity and belief in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others make cooperative peculiar forms of organization/enterprise. These main values and beliefs are all pertinent to democratic behaviour. It is possible to assume that coops are then by their very nature suitable for any democratisation activity, purpose or role.
Conclusively, it boils down to the point that democratisation is a process to be built from the grassroots than top-down as is the case in Ethiopia and most authoritarian countries. The process aspect of democratisation, the building up, nurturing and maintaining of institutions, culture and human development that instils democraticness within the society is the prerequisite.
Human Empowerment and Emancipative Values are considered to be one of the important aspects in democratisation. Some theorists assume democratization as the result of a broader process of human development. Briscoe et al say cooperatives take people as origins meaning their philosophy is based on the assumption that creativity and the ability to make meaningful decisions are widely distributed talents.
Here to solidify my premises I would offer two empirical cases of CSOs that could be used by Ethiopians or all those that are interested in establishing cooperatives for the sake of developing democratisation. The types of coops that I am going to explain may fall within the category of community cooperatives. Local Economic Trading System (LETS), single cause advocacy coops, time banks, Work Integrated Social Enterprises (WISE) and heritage business coops are good examples in this case. They all in common are not for profit, are self help, have reciprocity- every member gives and receives, offers payment, service and solidarity based incentives.
Journalism Cooperatives
Principle number six of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) on Education, Training and Information stresses the need of information (communication) within and outside cooperatives. The role of mass media and cooperative journalism specifically, in achieving this principle is of the essence. Veerakumaran (2007) says the journalist in the cooperative sector should have faith in the philosophy and principles of cooperation and skill in selecting the suitable media as well as skill in the treatment of the message. According to a 2009 news report of SavetheNews.org, as applied to the news, this alternative (cooperative journalism) ownership structure can liberate news production from the predatory commercial pressures that have contributed to journalism’s current predicament. Verma, an Indian Researcher of cooperatives says mainstream media containing the virtual components of print, electronic and radio acts as a strong catalyst of enhancing the image of any organisation as it portrays the popular mood of the masses. Conventionally, the media that we know of today are either owned by corporations, governments or PLCs. I am challenging this type of media ownership as a thing that is against the basic ideals of journalism. When owned under the conventional form of business, media becomes highly manipulated and serves the interests of few owners than the public/ community interest. To amend this, cooperative media; owned, controlled and benefiting the members should proliferate.
One good example here is the New Internationalist magazine that has over 30 years of publishing history under its belt, and more than 55,000 subscribers worldwide, the New Internationalist is renowned for its radical, campaigning stance on a range of world issues, from the cynical marketing of baby milk in the Majority World to human rights in Burma. Publications from the New Internationalist are produced by an independent trust working as a not-for-profit cooperative. Originally the group was sponsored by Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Cadbury and Rowntree Trusts, but since the early 1980s sponsorship has no longer been needed. According to the official website of the publication, Newint.org, because the New Internationalist operates as a not-for-profit, income from sales of publications and gifts goes into the production of its titles and to spread its aims and ideals, not “into a rich media tycoon’s pocket!”
Structural Details
The New Internationalist communications co-operative is based in Oxford with editorial and sales offices in Toronto, Canada; Adelaide, Australia;Christchurch, Aotearoa /New Zealand; and Tokyo, Japan. NI adheres to the core co-operative values of self-help, responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. NI states that it exists to inform, educate and communicate its message and ideals in an accessible style through the New Internationalistmagazine, books, internet and other media.
NI is a financially independent company. It does not distribute profits to its members. If profits are earned they are retained and used to further the aims as set out in its statement. NI maintains a democratic, co-operative and non-hierarchical structure and operates an equal opportunity policy. Equality of worth, equality of opportunity and equality of voice are central tenets of co-operative membership and aims to maintain a safe, healthy and non-discriminatory work environment. Staff members earn their income through the various forms stated in the benefit distribution ways of cooperatives. The Chicago, USA based Cooperative Media is another example of the few.
Cooperative media as in the above cases have no financial dependence on shareholders as other big media, thus the neutrality of the publications is not in question mark as they would be less partial from the owners’ bias but would be biased to the interests of their diverse public and community that are their members and audience. Ownership of a media is important. Herman and Chomsky (1988) argue that the sheer size, concentrated ownership, immense owner wealth, and profit seeking imperative of the dominant media corporations could hardly yield any other result.
Currently, there are ongoing debates about the future of the print media as online media is “replacing” it. Many argue that most papers are closing as a result of this and that press may die out soon. However, I very much disagree with them. The closure of most newspapers has not come due to the emergence of online media but as a result of the economic rescission that came due to the capitalist economic model’s failure. Most papers in the world are owned by few individuals who run a chain of newspapers as conglomerates thus as they were hit by the recession they closed their papers. But those which followed the cooperative model like the New Interenationalist survived and continue to do so.
Additionally, if media organisations apply the cooperative business model they would by default apply the main media ethics such as fairness, objectivity, impartiality, balance, accountability, transparency, public interest and the like.
CSO cooperatives
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play huge role in the democratisation process. Especially, CSOs that work on human rights, democracy and justice are necessary for any democracy. The usual model of such CSOs is that they are formed as charities that derive their finance from external funders putting their accountability soley on the interest of their funders. There are almost none NGOs/CSOs that take the cooperative organisational/business model. However, it is possible for CSOs modelled under the cooperative models that are member owned, controlled and benefiting to be formed. Similar to the cooperative media, the cooperative CSOs and NGOs would be voluntary, open membership, and member benefiting.
For example let’s take an ideal coop X. Coop X is located in southern part of Ethiopia, Shashemne city. The Coop was established in 2011 with a single cause of teaching and helping its members and the community about their legal and constitutional rights and entitlements. It has around 100 members who paid 5 Ethiopian birr each as an initial capital to establish the coop. The background of the members ranges from carpenters, farmers, lawyers, students, and business people to local government members. The services that the coop offers are village level seminars, house to house teaching, outreach and drop in service. As most members of the coop are not knowledgeable of the legal issues, they are given aprior training that enables them to have the basic knowledge of the issues that their coop would work on provided that they may represent the coop. When a coop member is assisted or assists a community member legally, he will be charge/d a minimum price of 5birr or he may pay/ed in goods or voluntary service such as helping the housing construction or farming another member’s. In such a manner, the coop consolidates the legal, justice, human rights and democratic know how and culture of the local community. At the end of the year, members will benefit from the cooperative in proportion to their use and members’ capital could recive at most a strictly limited rate of interest. In addition to these benefit, members will benefit from the educations offered, openness, and participation in decision making which would always be “one member one vote”, social capital and ownership.
Jennifer Franco (2008) has also used some country cases of rural areas to study democratisation in a rural context. For instance, one CSO project in the Mexico focuses on rural people’s efforts to promote greater state transparency through a ‘right to know’ campaign in the state of Guerrero. It does this by working with a local NGO in studying the campaign strategies and implementing them.
Similarly, political parties are being established under the principles of cooperatives. One of such oldest political parties is the Cooperative Party in the United Kingdom. The Co-operative Party is the fourth largest political party in Parliament, and the political arm of the Co-operative Movement. The Party on its website says “We believe that the only way to create a just and fair society is through power being spread evenly throughout society, and not arbitrarily based on wealth, class, gender or race.”
The purpose of the Party is to promote co-operative and mutual forms of economic, social and voluntary organisation, which are based on the principles of mutual ownership and democratic control, and to support political action in pursuance of the Values and Principles of the Cooperative Movement in the UK and internationally as defined from time to time by the International Co-operative Alliance.
It works in partnership with the Labour Party as its sister party to achieve these ends. There are currently 29 Labour Co-operative MPs and representation in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and hundreds of councillors around the country.
Conclusion
As quoted at the start of this piece, dictatorships cannot be fixed by simply removing dictatorial regimes and making them the last. Dictatorialness lives within the society and community as a culture. Therefore, a grassroots level culture building and nurturing of democracy is important in order to have a sustainable democracy. Long used as party machines by communist regimes worldwide, cooperatives as I analysed throughout, are the ultimate forms of organisation to bring about democraticness in countries such as Ethiopia thus ensuring stability, development and peace. The cooperative model importantly contributes to alleviating the problem and a worker cooperative might be helpful in specificity. Taking various steps such as increasing the solidarity among workers, ongoing process of education and training in many areascould establish a greater cooperative pressure in the selected area.
Cooperatives are people centred than profit orientated. They focus on collective growth than self interest and they make regimes responsive to the needs of grassroots community. There are policy level debates at the moment if cooperatives are the best alternatives in such a time when capitalist economy has proved to be ”a failure”. In Ethiopia political power, decision-making and planning are centralised in all forms. Participation and empowerment are the crucial genres of democratisation and they are the building blocks of cooperatives too giving evidence why they are suitable places of nurturing democraticness.
The above cases of free media, CSOs and political parties as applied in the cooperative model and implemented at the grassroots level do best describe that cooperatives can be used as ways/ organisations of drying dictatorships and building democratisation from the bottom up.
Bibliography
Aldrich, Howard, and Robert Stern. “Resource Mobilization and the Creation of US Producer Cooperatives, 1835-1935
Briscoe, R. and Ward, M.(2005) ‘Helping ourselves :Success stories in Cooperative Business and Social Enterprise, Cork: OAK Tree Press
Journalism Co-ops, SaveTheNews.org, 2007, USA
Lull,J(2000) Media, Communication, Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press
Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky (1988) Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.
Sanjay Kumer Verma: Cooperatives and community culture -The Role of Media, National Cooperative Union India,Delhi
Shoemaker, P.& Reese,S.(1996) Mediating the Message. Theories of Influences on the Mass Media Content. NY.Longman
Veerakumaran, G., Ethiopian Cooperative Movement-An Explorative Study, 2007, Mekele University
Rothschild-Whitt, Joyce. “Conditions Facilitating Participatory- Democratic Organizations,” Sociological Inquiry, 46, 1976,
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ihsg/publications/pdf/No-7-1.PDF<<< accessed on 12 May 2012
www.cooperativemedia.org/ <<<<<< accessed on 12 May 2012
http://www.party.coop/files/2011/06/The-Rule-Book-Section-A-Rules-of-the-Co-operative-Party-Ltd.-FSA.pdf<<< accessed on 12 May 2012
© De Birhan Media May 2012
The issue of journlaim coopertive is new for many people and i thnk that should be developed upon. Coppertaives are only ideas for many people and can not be impelemnet because human needs are not limited. we humans are capitalistic and want to get more grow and proposer. Copertaitives give back little and are only useful as secondray eocnomies not as primary economy. thans
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