Industrial Participatory Democracy: A ‘Paper Tiger’ of the Zambian One-Party State and Its Transnational Entanglements

Abstract This chapter investigates ‘industrial participatory democracy’ in Zambia and asks how claims to workplace democracy were articulated and institutionalised within a post-colonial, one-party, African state. Offering a longue durée account, it traces the 1970s Industrial Relations Act and works councils, 1980s corporatist experiments, and the late-1980s pilot ‘self-management’ schemes. The research advances the state of the art on workers’ democracy during the Cold War by showing how workers participation—as an integral part of Zambian ‘Humanism’ and ‘one-party participatory democracy’—evolved dynamically albeit cyclically as a political discourse but remained a largely ‘paper tiger’ in its achievements on the ground. The chapter explores international entanglements of Zambian debates about workplace democracy, combining transnational circulation of knowledge with local political actors. The research relies on archival work in Lusaka, Belgrade, and Bonn, considering legislation drafts, embassy reports, conference proceedings, newspapers, and the union paper Workers’ Voice. The chapter demonstrates how Yugoslav workers’ self-management, West German worker co-determination, and international expertise on industrial relations were selectively appropriated, reframing industrial democracy as a contested vision of governance under state capitalism and decolonization, while positioning Zambia’s Humanist project within the wider socialist-inspired visions of democracy.