of production were nationalised. It is this philosophy that guided Tanzania on a path of peace and stability, and provided social infrastructure and equitable economic development until the mid-1980s. 58. Following the Arusha Declaration, the scope of the state expanded rapidly into virtually every sector. Government experimented with several approaches to agricultural and rural transformation (Wangwe, 2011). The state controlled the economy and owned all major enterprises. Tanzania also made considerable strides towards human capital development during that period but progress along this path seems to have been stretched to its limits towards the end of the 1970s. 59. Efforts aimed at promoting self-reliance through Ujamaa encountered numerous economic challenges. Although macroeconomic balances were reasonably sustainable during the 1976-78 period, major deteriorations had already emerged during the last two years of the decade. Towards the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s, Tanzania experienced a deep economic crisis. This crisis was a reflection of the disintegration of the postindependence Ujamaa developmentalist and welfare-bestowing state. The Government ultimately yielded to pressures to adopt the World Bank led-policy reforms, generally referred to as structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). The adoption of SAP detonated a major paradigm shift in the political economy of Tanzania, resulting in a move away from a socialist regime to a market-oriented economic system. This marked the beginning of the third phase of Tanzania’s political and economic transformation. Political transformation 60. The politics of democracy in Tanzania underwent a considerable evolution from the one-party political system - in which major groups in society are subordinate to the supremacy of the ruling party - to multipartism, from 1992, bringing greater freedom to various groups in society and enabling them to express their interests outside the ambit of the single party. 61. After independence in 1961, the immediate challenge for the Party was to redefine its role from that of an opposition to a ruling party (Ibid.). The TANU Government inherited the highly centralised bureaucratic structures of the colonial state, with its attendant restrictions on political freedoms and civil society involvement, all based on the politics of social exclusion. In the process of transforming itself to a ruling political party, TANU slowly eroded some of the basic democratic principles it had been fighting for. 62. By the end of 1970s, the Party had established the institutions and structures for it to assert itself as the supreme organ of the state. Democratic institutions were weakened as the ruling party took steps to reduce the power of local councils and cooperatives as well as eroding locally based development initiatives such as selfhelp schemes (Wangwe, 2011). In 1972, TANU endorsed a decentralisation exercise, which replaced the district councils with a centrally-controlled administrative apparatus. 63. The introduction of the one-party state further consolidated and centralised power within the ruling party. President Nyerere proceeded to merge TANU with the ruling ASP of Zanzibar to form the Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). To further his aim for national unity, Nyerere established ki-Swahili as the national language. On 5 February 1977, the union of the two parties was ratified in a new constitution. The merger was reinforced by principles enunciated in the 1982 Union Constitution and reaffirmed in the Constitution of 1984. 64. As the sole legal political party for all of Tanzania, CCM had the role of directing the country in all significant political and economic activities. In practice, party and state were one. However, the economic crisis and the Economy Recovery Programme (ERP) – Tanzania’s structural adjustment programme – eroded some of the ruling party’s powers. Indeed, as Meena (2008) observes, the signing of the structural adjustment agreement between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Tanzania in 1986 was a major landmark in the country’s political history. 65. The second set of reforms from the international financial institutions (IFIs) included ‘liberalising’ politics, in line with the market-driven economy (Meena, 2008; Wangwe, 2011). IMF/World Bank conditions included, among other things, a liberal political system to reflect the redefined role of the state in creating a regulatory and legal environment supportive of a market-driven economy. Pluralist politics were favoured as they were considered to be supportive of a free market economy doctrine. 35