51 Chapter 5. Conclusions. As we stated at the beginning, surveys may produce somewhat different results to case studies and other types of qualitative investigation, and it would seem that this is the case where the attitudes of Zimbabweans to democracy is concerned. The various studies conducted by the Afrobarometer, using the survey data from Zimbabwe in 1999 and 2004, reach a number of conclusions, and, by implication, lead to a number of views about the possible futures for Zimbabwe. To be sure there are methodological and theoretical matters to be resolved when the findings from quantitative and qualitative research on the same population are contrasted, especially when marked differences are found, but this is beyond the scope of this monograph. The Afrobarometer surveys show a declining belief in democracy amongst Zimbabweans, an increasing accommodation to autocracy or single-party rule, a reluctance to express their views, a reluctance to affiliate to a political party, and a wish for negotiation amongst the political forces in the country. The more analytic studies, using this data, further support these views. Wonbin Cho, examining the way that political institutions affect citizens’ views of democracy, concludes generally that these have a significant effect, and, in Zimbabwe’s case, supporters of the political party in power are more likely to approve of the Zimbabwean form of democracy than those whose parties are not in power95. Additionally, Cho argues that, it is not merely a case of “winners” and “losers “, but also that citizens living in stable, multi-party systems are more likely to be satisfied than those in predominantly one-party states, what Bratton has termed “liberalized autocracies”96, and Carothers has alternatively termed “dominant power politics”97. In Zimbabwean terms, the existence of a highly autocratic state, determined to hold on to political power, both by repression and the unfair influencing of elections, will explain the decline in support for democracy by ordinary Zimbabweans. These are views that are supported in the main by Zimbabwean commentators, who generally share a pessimistic view of the immediate future. Masunungure, for example, argues that little will change in the short term: Given the political culture and history of authoritarianism, that was reinforced by the liberation war culture, and given that culture changes slowly through the process of political socialization, we can only conclude that for the foreseeable future the life of opposition politics in Zimbabwe will be dark.98 This pessimism is enhanced by another Afrobarometer study. John Gay, examining Sen’s basic thesis, that development depends on freedom, argues that it will be possible to predict “virtuous” and “vicious” circles in the life of African democracies99. As was pointed out in the introductory chapter, a lack in the basic freedoms, as is so evident in the Zimbabwean case, should lead to exactly the kinds of findings reported in the Afrobarometer surveys on Zimbabwe. This analysis would predict that things would continue to fall apart in Zimbabwe before they got better, and, furthermore, that the anti-democratic attitudes of the “vicious” circle would continue to harden in the absence of the basic freedoms identified by the Sen model. 95 See Wonbin Cho (2004), Political Institutions and satisfaction with democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, Working Paper No. 39, AFROBAROMETER. 96 See Carothers, T (2002), The End of the Transition Paradigm, Journal of Democracy, 13:1, 5-21. See Bratton, M (2004), State building and democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Forwards, backwards, or together? Working Paper No.43, AFROBAROMETER. 98 See Masunungure, E (2004), Travails of opposition politics in Zimbabwe since Independence, in D. Harold-Barry (ed), Zimbabwe: the Past is the Future. Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis, HARARE: WEAVER PRESS. 99 See here Gay, J (2003), Development as freedom: A Virtuous Circle? Afrobarometer Paper No.29. 97 IDASA: Zimbabwe at the Cross-Roads: Views of Zimbabwean citizens on democracy and transitional justice.