Björn Beckman

Professor emeritus

E-mail: bb@statsvet.su.se

Introduction

Born in 1938, I was originally trained in the Stockholm Department but spent much of my professional life outside, first in University of Ghana, Legon (1967-1971), Department of Political Science, Uppsala University (1973-78), and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria (1978-87). I did a Fil.lic. degree at Stockholm on British colonial ideology of "indirect rule" (1966), defended my thesis on Ghana in Uppsala (1976), and was appointed Honorary Reader (Docent) at Stockholm in 1978. Returning to Stockholm in 1987 I became engaged in developing the Politics of Development profile in teaching and research jointly with colleagues and students at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. PODSU, the Politics of Development Group, was established in 1995.My position in the department was at first funded by Sida/SAREC. My main work in recent years has been on African trade unions.

Doctoral dissertation: Organising the Farmers: Cocoa Politics and National Development in Ghana. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1976.

Current research interests:

The politics of development: State and class formation, civil society and democratisation in Africa and the Third World, with special focus on the trade union involvement with state and politics.

Research projects:

a) Politics of Development: Citizens, Interests and Civil Society

This is the umbrella programme for the Politics of Development Group (PODSU), which I am co-ordinating. It began in 1995 under the rubric "Citizenship and organised interests: Individual and collective rights in Third World democratisation", with funding from SAREC (Swedish Agency for Research Co-operation with Developing Countries, which was later incorporated by Sida as the Department for Research Co-operation), under a special programme for research milieus concerned with Third World democratisation. PODSU was selected as one of five such Swedish milieus and funding was granted for two times three years with an extension for a seventh year (1995-2003). For the second period of the grant the focus was shifted towards civil society and the two themes, citizenship and civil society, were further integrated. The programme supports both joint activities and individual research, including doctoral projects primarily supervised by me. Three major international conferences and book projects have been organised, a first on "Gender, religion and democracy" (1997), a second on "Civil society and authoritarianism" (1998), and a third on "Group rights and differentiated citizenship" (2001). I have spent one to two months per annum on co-ordination and administration, including PODSU's joint programme with CRD (see b, below). For individual projects, see Ishtiaq Ahmed, Henrik Berglund, Eva Hansson, Magnus Lembke, Lasse Lindström, Merrick Tabor, Mats Wärn. Emmanuel Akwetey and Nelli Kopola, who both contributed actively to the PODSU programme, have left the department. My own individual projects in the programme have primarily concerned trade unions and the civil society debate (see below).

PODSU has received fresh institutional support from Sida/SAREC for 2003-2000.

Publications

Björn Beckman, Eva Hansson, Anders Sjögren (eds), Civil Society and Authoritarianism in the Third World. Stockholm: PODSU, 2001. 282 pp.

Politics of Development at Stockholm University. A Programme Review. Stockholm: PODSU, 2003 (forthcoming).

Citizenship, Interests and Civil Society: Individual and Collective Rights in Third World Democratisation. PODSU 6/1999. 45 pp.

Citizenship and Organised Interests: Individual and Collective Rights in Third World Democratisation. PODSU 1/1995. 27 pp.

b) Democracy and Human Rights in Nigeria in a Comparative Perspective- the PODSU-CRD programme

As PODSU was selected for long-term institutional support, it was simultaneously invited by SAREC to seek funding for "co-operation with research institutions in developing countries". A joint application was submitted with the Centre for Research and Documentation (CRD), Kano, Nigeria, established by a group of scholars with whom I had been closely involved while teaching in Nigerian universities (1978-87), and where I served in an advisory capacity. The programme was granted funding by Sida/SAREC and extended to the end of 2003. The bulk of the funds went direct to CRD, while a smaller amount was allocated for joint activities, including visiting researchers, joint workshops, and participation in each others' conferences. The focus of the programme has been on the development of democratic forces during military rule. Two joint workshops were held on trade unions (1999, 2000) and one on the student movement (2002). A third is planned on the women's movement (2003). (See these projects below). CRD has published a Nigerian edition of the Andrae & Beckman book Union Power (1999) (For details see c, below).

c) The Nigerian Labour Movement

This has been my major area of research during the past decade and continues to be so, beginning with a close involvement with the textile workers' union in the 1980s, while simultaneously studying the wider labour movement and its central body, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). The work on the textile sector was undertaken jointly with Gunilla Andrae of the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University. The focus has been the promotion of union rights, a union-based labour regime, and the union's active participation in the restructuring of the textile industry in the face of economic and political crises. My work on the NLC concerns its involvement in economic and political reforms, including the politics of structural adjustment and democratisation.

Publications

With Gunilla Andrae, Union Power in the Nigerian Textile Industry. Labour Regime and Adjustment. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998; Transaction Publishers. Somerset, NJ, 1999; CRD, Kano, 1999. 317 pp. (right).

Background:
Nigeria, once a promising and resourceful regional power, has been caught in a spiral of economic and political decay. The focus is on the trade unions, their role in industrial restructuring and their ability to dedfend workers' interests and rights. The book points to the successful institutionalization of a union-based labour regime, defying global trends to the contrary. It explores the origins of union power in the national and local politcal economy, pointing to the mediation between the militant self-organization of the workers and the strategies of state and capital.

"The Politics of Labour and Adjustment: The Experience of the Nigeria Labour Congress", in T. Mkandawire and A. Olukoshi (eds), Between Liberalisation and Oppression: The Politics of Structural Adjustment in Africa, Dakar: Codesria Books, 1995.

d) The Civil Society Debate

As a student of the politics of "associational life" both in agrarian societies (e.g. Organising the Farmers: Cocoa Politics and National Development in Ghana, Uppsala 1976) and an urban and industrial context I was at an early point pulled into the debate on civil society, which was precipitated by the formidable rise in the 1990s of this notion in arguments over democratisation. My point of entry was critical, emphasising the weak theoretical basis of the term and its ideological overload. As groups with widely differing agenda increasingly defined themselves in civil society terms I became particularly interested in civil society as a concept of strategy, concerned with laying the foundation for alliance politics.

Publications

"Civil Society and Alliance Politics". In B.Beckman, E.Hansson, and A.Sjögren (eds), Civil Society and Authoritarianism in the Third World. Stockholm: PODSU, 2001. Pp. 49-68.

"Whose Civil Society? Trade Unions and Capacity Building in the Nigerian Textile Industry". In B.Beckman and L.M.Sachikonye (eds), Labour Regimes and Liberalization. The Restructuring of State-Society Relations in Africa. Harare: Zimbabwe University Publications, 2001. pp. 72-89.

"The Liberation of Civil Society: Neo-liberal Ideology and Political Theory in an African Context". In M.Mhohanty, P.N. Mukherji and O.Törnquist (eds), People's Rights. Social Movements and the State in the Third World. New Delhi/London: Sage, 1998. Pp. 45-62.

"Interest Groups and the Construction of Democratic Space", in Jibrin Ibrahim (ed), Expanding Nigerian Democratic Space, Dakar: Codesria Books, 1996.

"Explaining Democratization: Notes of the Concept of the Civil Society". In E.Özdalga and S.Persson (eds), Civil Society, Democracy and the Muslim World. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 1997.

e) Comparing trade unions: The politics of reform

My current frontier of research is in the field of comparative trade union studies, with the point of departure in findings at the Nigerian end, both in relation to the preconditions for the development of a union-based labour regime and union influence on the direction of economic and political reforms. With Lloyd Sachikonye of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Zimbabwe, I have co-ordinated a study on the way in which the relations between states and trade unions in Africa have been restructured as a result of the policies of structural adjustment, with case studies from seven countries, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. I am preparing a new comparative project, partly in co-operation with IDS, focusing on the role of unions in the politics of reform, including union struggles for political power. Another comparative project has been initiated in co-operation with UNRISD (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development), Geneva, involving colleagues at the Stockholm end. It is hoped that our report to UNRISD will be expanded to a book.

Publications

With L.M. Sachikonye (eds), Labour Regimes and Liberalization. The Restructuring of State-Society Relations in Africa. Harare: Zimbabwe University Publications, 2001. 190 pp.

With E.O.Akwetey and L.Lindström, Labour Unions, Social Pacts and Democratization. Background paper to UNRISD, Visible Hands. Geneva: UNRISD, 2000.

"Trade Unions and Institutional Reform. Nigerian Experiences with South African and Ugandan Comparisons". Transformation. Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa. No.48, 2002.

"Defending the National Project: Trade Unions and the Politics of Reform". In F.Hendricks and E.Sall (eds), Post Conflict Reconstruction in Africa (Prel.title). Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (forthcoming).

f) Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union(SACTWU)

This study is partly an imput into the comparative trade union project above. It is also, however, a monographic study of its own, following up on the study of the Nigerian textile union, with which SACTWU has close relations. The focus is on the restructuring of the post-apartheid economy and how unions seek to influence the direction of both sectoral and macro-economic policies. I have a long-standing involvement with South African trade unions as part of union solidarity work during the apartheid years, when at one point I chaired the Trade Union Committee of the "Africa Groups", the Swedish anti-apartheid movement. I have attended congresses of SACTWU and COSATU. I did preliminary field work in conjunction with the SACTWU Congress in August 2001.

g) The Nigerian Student Movement

This project is part of the CRD-PODSU programme discussed under b, above. A workshop on this theme was held in Kano in February 2002, co-ordinated by Y.Z.Ya'u and myself. A joint background paper was prepared in June 2001and the editing of revised papers was done in Stockholm in October 2002. The focus is on explaining the rise of a radical and politically highly influential student movement in the late 1970s and its suppression and disintegration in the 1990s. A book, jointly published by CRD and PODSU, is expected in 2003. An earlier contribution in this field was written with Attahiru Jega, a CRD founding member when a visiting fellow in the Stockholm department.

Publications

With Attahiru Jega, "Scholars and Democratic Politics in Nigeria", in Inge Amundsen (ed), Knowledge and Development. Tromsö: SEMUT, 1994. Also in Review of African Political Economy, 64, 1995.

h) Nigerian Women Organisations: Women in Nigeria(WIN)

This project is also part of the joint CRD-PODSU programme. It is co-ordinated by Amina Salihu amd Jibrin Ibrahim and my own role is as a facilitator and as a contributor. The focus is on a radical feminist women's organisation, Women in Nigeria (WIN), which was established in the early 1980s and which later passed through factional turbulence. Just as in the case of the student movement, the central question concerns "What went wrong", looking also looking into the preconditions for progress. A first workshop is planned in Nigeria in 2003.