Democracy 3 Africa Free Download [Extra Quality]

When the Cold War ended, much of Africa was plunged into a decade of political and economic uncertainty. As democracy spread in Eastern Europe, some African authoritarian rulers were also driven out of office; meanwhile, economic trouble in Africa deepened as Northern Hemisphere countries cut financial support. Many African countries sought loans from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As a condition for these loans, the lenders required African governments to institute painful market reforms.

Sixty-seven percent of people living in the solidifying democracies said that democracy was their preferred form of governance. But 55 percent of people in the countries now ruled by juntas also said they preferred democracy, nearly triple the amount who preferred nondemocratic rule. The finding that African citizens still have faith in democracy was supported by another recent major survey, this one conducted by the Open Society Foundation. Aggregating the views of 36,000 people worldwide, it found particularly strong support for democracy as a mode of governance among African respondents.

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Authoritarian and semi-authoritarian rulers, mindful of foreign opinion, have dressed their regimes with the forms of democracy, such as regular (if rigged) elections and de jure (not de facto) separation of powers. Presidential term limits, where in place, have been frequently circumvented through so-called constitutional coups. Heads of state have deftly manipulated social cleavages and played up fears of malevolent foreign interference to deflect popular pressure away from their illiberal rule.

Although LGBTQI+ rights violations remain a particular challenge in Africa, some governments have recognized LGBTQI+ rights by reversing colonial-era sodomy laws that barred same-sex conduct. In 2019, for example, the Angolan government decriminalized such conduct by adopting a new penal code with nondiscrimination provisions. Cabo Verde, a stable democracy, has also decriminalized same-sex activity. In Botswana, a country with a historically robust democratic tradition, the Court of Appeal upheld a 2019 lower-court ruling decriminalizing same-sex relations.

Until the end of the 1980s, most observers believed that democratic prospects in Africa were limited, given the low level of economic development, the absence of strong nation-states, and the inexistence of a long history of social and political pluralism. However, beginning in 1989, a wave of popular protests demanding democratic reforms swept the continent. Within a couple of years, virtually all the countries liberalized their political systems. Since then, Africans have shown consistently that they strongly prefer and support democratic rule. At the same time, democratic institutions such as electoral commissions and constitutional courts have taken root on the continent. These developments suggest that the question of the feasibility of democracy in Africa is no longer relevant. Nonetheless, the existence of democratic demands, support, and institutions does not mean that democracy is easy to establish and consolidate. In many African countries, democratic gains are reversible and face several hindering factors, including state weakness, autocratic mindset, unstable and divided civic and political organizations, and widespread identity politics. This is why the level and quality of democracy on the African continent vary dramatically from country to country and from one region to another.

Arguments that tend to limit the feasibility of democracy in some parts of the world do not stand historical scrutiny. In Western Europe, in effect, the minimal preconditions supposedly necessary for democratic opening were not met when it happened.

Democracy and the institutional forms it takes in the world today are the product of a specific historical experience. Representative democracy in particular, defined in procedural terms as a method of selection, through elections, of the people entitled to govern (Schumpeter, 1942), is an English model that became Europeanized and universalized either by diffusion or by imposition. Until the end of the 1960s, democratic institutions were generally found only in Western countries. Because these countries share some characteristics such as a high level of economic development, the consolidation of a strong nation-state, and a long tradition of social and political pluralism, it seemed obvious to scholars at the time that democracy was possible only in advanced industrial countries where national unity and other socioeconomic and cultural conditions were already met (Dahl, 1971; Lipset, 1959; Rustow, 1970).

It is true that the founding literature posits that transitions in Southern Europe and Latin America were primarily internal and elite-driven processes. Nonetheless, on the one hand, a fair number of studies concentrate on mass mobilization as the key factor explaining political opening. Paul Collier (1999), analyzing 27 cases of transitions with a focus on labor movements, agrees with Samuel Valenzuela (1989) that these movements frequently serve as proxy political actors for banned opposition parties or international actors. They can also open the floor to public protest for other sectors of civil society or provide channels for ordinary citizens to express their dissatisfaction with the regime. In the same vein, Elisabeth Wood (2000) claims that mobilization by subordinate social actors in some circumstances may be crucial to the success of democratic transitions. Her analysis of El Salvador and South Africa found that mobilization by the economically and socially marginalized impelled the transition to democracy by transforming key interests of the economic elites. This led to pressure on the government to compromise with the opposition, thereby strengthening regime moderates over hardliners and forcing the initial liberalization of the regime.

As in England, frustrations remain important to understand the 1990 wave of mobilizations (Riley & Parfitt, 1994). Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2009) echoed Haggard and Kaufman (1995) when they found that increased economic inequality is a central factor in democratization because it fuels the risk of rebellion on the part of the population. In Africa, poor governance has been a source of weakness for authoritarian governments. One of the most recent examples is Tunisia, where the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, an itinerant trader whose merchandise had been taken away by the police, prompted a revolution in the small city of Sidi Bouzid. Bouazizi set free the frustrations of a population crushed by poverty, inequality, and oppression. So, rather than being obstacles to democratic opening, poverty and economic crisis have rather precipitated democratic demands coming from various groups in many African countries that lack the so-called prerequisites for democracy.

There are many reasons to believe that democracy has a good chance to endure in Africa. We explore two strategic factors here. The first is the opening of the public space and the proliferation, following the liberalization of the 1990s, of numerous non-governmental and civil society organizations. The second is the transformation of African societies which, in several countries, are more democratic than the political superstructure.

The democratization of African societies is the second strategic reason to believe in the future of democracy on the continent. Any evaluation of the prospects of democracy in Africa must distinguish between two levels of democracy: that of the state and that of the society. African societies are much more democratic than their institutions, and this gap cannot be maintained in the long run.

Africa has for long been considered as one of the thick frontiers democracy cannot cross. However, in 1990 in most of the sub-Saharan countries, and in 2010 in the Arab countries, mass mobilizations demanding freedom were organized. The political picture in Africa in the early 21st century is very different from what it was prior to these demands. On the one hand, regimes now range from free to partly free to not free, according to Freedom House ratings. On the other hand, African societies value and support democratic values and ideals in huge proportions according to Afrobarometer surveys. In addition, many countries are now strongly institutionalized, respect the rule of law, organize free and fair elections, and witness power alternations. However, almost all of these countries, democratic or not, continue to face several constraining factors. What lessons can we draw from this multifaceted situation?

The integration of democracy in Africa is a topic some academic scholars place to have occurred in fairly recent history, as a result of historical processes like decolonization and the collapse of communism.[3] Doorenspleet and Nijzink (2014) discuss the democratisation processes in African states like Ghana, emphasising how democratisation occurred in African states like Ghana, when governments were democratically elected through party systems, which they present to be a hallmark of gauging democracy.[4] There is a variety of explanations throughout the scholarly discourse on what prompted democratisation in Africa. Adejumobi (2015) articulates that one key indicator of democracy being introduced to Africa was "the introduction of multiparty elections in most African countries during the 1990s", which will be discussed later in this article in the title 'Measures of Democracy'.[5]

Adejumobi is a proponent of the idea that, before the advent of democracy, most post-colonial states were authoritarian due to "internal and external factors" including volatile circumstances socially and economically.[5] According to his account, stark divisions of "ethnicity, religion, class, and region" across African states were a key impediment to the democratic management of a state's affairs, which has since been overcome to an extent, with numerous states being identified as 'free' by Freedom House (2018).[5] 006ab0faaa