Megawatts and manifestos: political elite perceptions of social development in urban Zanzibar in dialogue with Chinese developmentalism

How political elites view social development is a key question in comparative sociology. Elite perceptions bridge development doctrines and the policies shaping citizens’ well-being, yet the two main evidence bases research on China’s party-state and studies of competitive Global South politics rarely engage each other. This article bridges them through a qualitative study of urban political elites in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous, multi-party state with six decades of Chinese development cooperation. Using an exploratory approach with 22 key informants from Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM (10), Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo (8), and Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA (4). The study applied a thematic approach to analyse interviews and focus group discussions. Utility services, employment, good governance and democracy, and political manifesto shape elite perceptions of development. Read against modernisation theory and the capability approach, the findings show Zanzibari elites understand development in a performance-based way. A modernisation-influenced way, where services and employment mainly signal governing competence. Participation and freedom function chiefly as tools for electoral gain rather than ends in themselves. This resembles the ‘performance legitimacy’ documented among Chinese cadres but differs in accountability. Zanzibari politicians answer voters intermittently through manifestos, while Chinese cadres answer superiors continuously through evaluation targets. The comparison suggests that elite perceptions of development are shaped less by development theories than by the accountability arrangements through which such claims support political survival, with wider implications for elite-mass (mis)alignment in China, Africa, and beyond.