Book Review

Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform, 2015

Političke perspektive

This paper argues that we must look to the politics of popular sovereignty,‎ and in particular its unfolding in the period after the Second World War, for ‎the origin of the postcolonial condition, its specific vulgarity and temporality.‎ Following Arendt, the paper proposes that as a democratic practice popular‎ sovereignty transforms the ’people’ into absolutist subject, one that is necessarily ‎simple, at one with itself and exercising supreme authority over its territory.‎ Where such a people cannot be convened or institutionalised, democracy‎ tends either towards dictatorship or oligarchy or society itself fragments and ‎is at risk of dissolution. This has especially been the case on the African continent‎ where the new states that emerged after independence from European ‎Empires (and from settler-colonialism) were home to multitudes of great and ‎wide heterogeneity, without long histories of living together in common and‎ without, therefore, traditions and institutions of col...

(...) This essay seeks to revisit some of the fundamental issues regarding democracy and democracy promotion in Africa. A distinction is made between people’s political and material expectations—a capacity to influence government to improve their material conditions—on the one hand, and the Western-led and -defined ideal of the procedural liberal democracy agenda on the other. Rather than giving an empirical account of the state of democracy in Africa by focusing on failed or failing states frameworks, corruption, rent-seeking and neo-patrimonialism or institutional incapacity, this text focuses on the problematics of democratization in Africa that might arise from the externally imported nature of its agenda. The essay does this by proposing a decolonial approach to our understanding of what democracy should look like in Africa. The contention is that the idea of democracy in Africa, like many other elements of state- and nation-building on the continent (in education and the judiciary to name but a few), has to a large extent failed to be truly decolonized, in spite of the formal end of colonialism in the 1960s. Building on interviews from fieldwork in several sub-Saharan African countries in the last five years, the text aims at treating some of the insights from post-colonial, decolonial and African political theorists, including Claude Ake, in our Western thinking about democracy in Africa.

CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research - Zenodo, 2022

During colonialism, African countries were exposed to severe living circumstances and human rights abuses. African nations earned their independence and transitioned to democracy in the post-colonial period. Democracy was touted as a method of creating security, stability, and wealth in African countries, as well as demonstrating Africa's independence. The transition to democratic states was viewed as a necessary step for African countries in order to meet the needs of citizens who had previously been enslaved and whose rights had been violated by colonizers. This article examines the current position of democracy in African States post colonialization. This article argues that African leaders have failed to deliver on their promises of democracy, as evidenced by the fact that African countries are characterized by political instability, corruption, poverty, poor public service delivery, inequality, and low economic growth. Only the political elites in Africa have reaped the benefits of democracy, while the rest of the population has fared less favorably. The authors contend that the process of democratization has not afforded democratic African states the opportunity to acquire solutions. The authors acknowledge the progress, made by democratic states; nevertheless, in spite of this progress, a greater number of Africans continue to live below the poverty line. Those who are elected to positions of power have the appearance of being there to serve the people, but in reality, they only serve themselves and their own interests.

The surprise presidential win of a real estate agent and political novice over Gambia’s leader of 22 years has the country, and many on the continent, celebrating. Gambia’s long-time leader, Yahya Jammeh, who once promised to rule for ‘one billion years’, conceded the presidency to Adama Barrow, but later on changed his mind. More than a hundred and ten successful coup d’états and counter coups have taken been recorded in Africa since the independence efforts in the 60s. Regardless of how they came to power, many leaders are regarded as the worst dictators in Africa, their regime marked by horror, terror, chaos and bloodshed. The lecture delves into the political transition process in Africa since independence, military coups that haunted the continent and presents the analytical limitations in current perspectives of the transition to sustainable democracy and development in Africa; with the distinction between concepts and processes of political openness and political participation. It draws conceptual distinction between political openness and democracy and the political agencies and ideologies at play; distinguishing between strategic and processual dimensions of the political change.

Perspectives on Politics

African Affairs, 2006

African Studies Review, 2016

Compared to political developments in Eastern Europe and Latin America, democratization in sub-Saharan Africa has been more problematic and uneven. Looking at the performance in four subregions-central Africa, East Africa, southern Africa, and West Africa-yields no convincing evidence of a "wave" of democratization; countries next to each other differ considerably with regard to their Freedom House scores. This does not mean that democratization has necessarily stalled, but it does demonstrate that the prevailing vertical cleavages along ethnic, racial, or religious lines can make such a transition volatile, as suggested by the cases of Burundi, Mali, and even Kenya. While political competition in mature democracies, typically divided along horizontal group or class lines, tends to generate positive-sum outcomes, such competition in Africa easily turns into "prisoner's dilemma" games. The uncertainty about the value of cooperation in such situations usually produces political "truces" that are easily abandoned if the costs of adherence exceed the benefits. Against the background of this prevailing political logic, this article calls for a new approach to conceptualizing notions of "institution" and "power" in the analysis of politics in the region.

Identity Culture and Politics an Afro Asian Dialogue, 2004

The hegemonic conception of opposition politics in Africa today is still concerned with elitist notions of acquiring state power or state posts in order to provide an alternative management to that of current politicians. But oppressive and corrupt leaders succeed each other with monotonous regularity with the backing of Western interests. The popular disappointment with this form of politics is evident as politicians simply reproduce oppressive state-power over the African population and provide tighter and tighter links with the West. Today a form of liberalism reduced to managerialist and militaristic thinking seems dominant among this political elite and has become hegemonic at the global level, contradicting an explicitly expressed concern with a culture of human rights. Alternative forms of politics, especially emancipatory politics, have not been much debated in Africa so far and have been excluded from a state domain of politics. The weakness of an alternative African popular-democratic nationalism in particular is striking, as is the weakness of a politics of peace in Africa, although the latter is growing in the global public sphere. In order to attempt to strengthen this alternative, this paper examines some new issues thrown up by recent political thinking and its applicability to the context of Africa. This new thinking argues that a new emancipatory mode of politics should not be so much concerned with the attainment of state power as such, but with transforming state-society relations, and thus power relations themselves in a popular democratic direction. Politics is thus to be understood as founded on political distance from the state, not because the state is necessarily the enemy, but because it is fundamentally apolitical in the sense that it cannot possibly think human emancipation.