Democracy and The Nature Of African States: Towards an Institutional Reform For African Development (original) (raw)

DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA: A TRUISM OR A RUSE

Democracy is being projected as the best system of government, people oriented, strengthened by its participatory nature. In its best form, democracy is aimed at propelling the generality of the society to a better vision, that operates with majority participation and persuasion towards the general good of the society. Its very essence, is respect for rule of Law by all and to improve and transform the lives of the citizenry. This piece examines the origin of democracy, efforts by the colonial masters at introducing reforms leading eventual to independence, process of democratization and achievements of democracy. Democracy thrives on the pillars of people, democratic institutions, and rule of law, transparent electoral process, majority rule and the right of the minority. Democracy is the pride of nations. In Africa, whether the investment in democratic process has yielded quality dividend and expected developments is debatable. Also arguable, is whether considering the multiplicity of issues around its implementation in African and across the globe, Democracy will continue to stand the test of time. These and many others are what this paper seek to discuss.

Democracy and Democratization in Africa: Problems and Prospect

This paper examines the problematical impediment and the issues of democracy and democratization in Africa. Analysis of their future prospects especially in 21 st century. Liberal democracy and African democracy were discussed vividly. However the paper focuses on the conceptual and contextual notions of democracy and democratization in reference to Africa. There are inherent problems and contradictions in the nature of the domestic and the international political economy of African States, which may significantly vitiate or undermine democratic stability in Africa. Laying the foundation of the work with the introduction, statement of the problems, objectives of the study, scope and limitation, significance of the study and the theoretical framework. This paper also X ray the meaning of democracy, African democratization and universalism, both liberal and African democracy, problems and prospects of democracy and proper necessary solutions.

Democracy and Challenge of Good Governance in Africa

2020

The paper discusses the challenges of democratization in Africa. It considers the idea of democracy as a universal one, rather than an exclusive preserve of the West. However, it regards the attempt to foist the western liberal type of democracy on Africa as an ideological factor in contemporary African cultural dislocation by the West. It attributes the failure of this democracy in Africa, as manifested in the rampant political instability and bad governance, to the system’s neglect of the cultural roots of the African people. It calls for the revival and creative exploitation of valuable assets from the indigenous African democratic culture for the construction of authentic paradigm of democracy relevant to the conditions of Africa in the contemporary world. The paper concludes with the caveat that democracy in Africa may not succeed until such cultural adaptation is done.

Resurgence of Traditional Institutions of Governance: An Imperative for State-Building in Africa

2010

The question of the rights-based institutions of governance capable of facilitating the consolidation of state-building and democratic governance in Africa remains critical as most African countries continue to experience widespread disintegration of their institutions of governance despite the demise of colonialism and autocracy in the continent. While some scholars argue for selective application of some traditional African political models of governance as solution to African deepening crises, others however doubt the relevance of such models in the 21 st century demands of governance. By examining the traditional African system of state legitimacy and civil obedience, this paper argue that though the viability of institutions cannot be necessarily determined by whether they are imported or indigenous, the present African political and economic crisis is unlikely to be reversed under the existing mostly contradictory duality of institutions. It recommends among others, a dynamic interplay and harmonization of Africa's cultural ideological heritage and the agencies of the modern state.

The Role of Political Institutions in Africa In Building Democratic Governments

Al Hikmah International Journal of Islamic Studies and Human Sciences, 2021

The “third wave” of democratization, which saw the fall of old authoritarian regimes across Africa, as well as the introduction of multiparty elections and other significant new changes, has faded. Today, we are witnessing a reversal of democratic gains in favour of dictatorship, resulting in political instability and severe outbreaks of violence in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Kenya, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and elsewhere. This article seeks explanation for the failures of the democratization process in Africa, focusing on the challenging role of political institutions in determining the nature of transition trajectories, reviewing its significance, and justifying why this factor is important when analyzing the success or failure of democratization. The paper sought to provide a more robust understanding of Africa's democratization failure and the thorny issue of a transitional path toward good governance. The study found that the progress of the democratic transition process at any ...

State Building, States, and State Transformation in Africa: Introduction

Social Evolution & History, 2018

Postcolonial societies are a unique event in world history. Their emergence in the mid-twentieth century did not result from centuries-old internal social processes, but was directly determined by the formation and short-lived (by historical standards) existence and disintegration of the European colonial empires. The colonial borders reflected primarily the balance of forces between the metropolitan powers in this or that region, but not the preceding course of the region's own political, social, economic, and cultural history. With rare exceptions, many different peoples were forcibly united within a colony. Not only kinship but also cultural affinity among those peoples was often absent. At the same time, the colonial borders would divide one people or break the historically established regional systems of economic and cultural ties not less infrequently. Likewise, the colonialists would forcibly unite peoples that had never formed regional political and economic systems; moreover, had different levels of sociocultural complexity, and sometimes did not even know about each other or were historical enemies. At the same time, the colonial borders would often separate historically and economically connected peoples and societies. These features were supplemented by stadial and civilizational heterogeneity of the colonial societies. The elements of capitalism, implanted by the Europeans in different spheres, did not synthesize with a set of pre-capitalist features of the local societies. There was also a little intersection between the autochthonous and new sec