The Democratization of Africa: Dynamics and Trends ed. by Alexius Amtaika (review)

The chapters in this edited work focus on the democratization experience in South Africa and Nigeria; although a few chapters address that process in Botswana, Lesotho, Ghana, and Nigeria. The authors conduct these discussions against a background of intellectual and philosophical concerns about culture, development, and democracy. Like the proverbial question of the hen and the egg, this book grapples with the question of whether democracy underpins development or development engenders democracy. It complicates this discussion with a look at the role of culture in that dynamic. In an attempt to address these issues, the book gravitates toward the view that there is an indisputable connection among these categories. Thus, the authors agree with the post–Cold War scholarly view that there is a causal and symbiotic relationship between democracy and development. Other issues the authors deal with include freedom, equality, rights, responsibility, participation, representation, and effective institutions within democratic efforts on the continent.

The authors in unison reiterate that democratization has become the clarion call in nearly all African countries and that it is the precondition for maintaining bilateral and multilateral relations with—and the attendant expectation of aid and loans from—the West. Quite tangentially, many so-called democracies on the continent have become distressed, raising critical questions and concerns about sustainability amid great uncertainties. These are the underlying factors that lead the authors to argue that the democratization process in Africa is “moving forward backwards” due to a general absence of the prerequisite condition for democracy (xv). In analyzing the woes of democracy in Africa, they point out that the major political parties are owned by the most powerful and rich individuals, who manipulate the alienated masses. They also envisage democratization on the continent as experiments in transplanting western values with a reckless disregard for that which is African. This superior-inferior dichotomy is dubbed as the sure “recipe for the conflict of values which ultimately will lead to the total collapse of democracy” on the continent (xvi).

Democratic values in principle are in turn woefully undermined by the dubious and sometimes aggressive behavior of leading western countries, which “often embroil themselves in conflict with some developing countries who need to be convinced rather than coerced to accept those values” (xvii). Some such occurrences, according to the authors, expose the irrationality and poor judgment of the West. Stopping short of giving an exhaustive list of these contradictions, the authors point out that the total effect has led to the undermining of “a great variety of quite viable traditional and transitional institutions in developing nations,” resulting in “chaos and [the] ruination of those countries which they ostensibly sought to avoid” (xix).

There is great unanimity among the authors that a deep knowledge of the preconditions and meaning of democracy should go hand in hand with the effort to understanding the process of democracy on the continent. In this book, the purview of democracy as a concept is broad to the extent that it is seen in relative terms. To this end, many of the authors carefully define what constitutes the term for them and for the respective national context within which they apply it in order to avoid the fallacy of over-generalization.

The book has eighteen chapters grouped into five parts that candidly engage the major themes of the rights and obligations of citizens, participation in elections, structures of governance, and government. A few of these chapters delve into the questions of practicability, sustainability, appropriateness, and impact of democracy on everyday life of the many people on the continent who unfortunately live below the poverty line. Much as this book succeeds in making a compelling reflection on the state of western democracy in Africa, it would have been far more insightful if the selection of papers had been carefully done to allow for a balanced and diverse picture of the continent. Be that as it may, this book is worth its weight in gold and adds to the growing scholarship on democracy...