Download or read book Africa and the Democratic Option written by Austin Ogunsuyi and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2004-05-29 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prospect for democracy in Africa is the central concern of this study. The factors that contribute to the existence of undemocratic or autocratic governments in most of Africa, therefore, become our major focus for evaluation.An analysis of the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial political history of Africa attribute autocracy in Africa to irreconcilable differences between the African traditional institutions and the imposed colonial political and economic systems. This socioeconomic and political disharmony, orchestrated by the colonial economics of exploitation, set the tone for neocolonial African states fraught with economic and political instability.Our research strategy involved a qualitative technique of collecting and analyzing a significant body of data relating to the political history of African states. Through an Afrocentric prism, the flaws of the African political and economic systems are traced to underlying deficiencies in the nature of its states. For a second and perhaps authentic emancipation of Africa, the components of the state structure must be realigned giving priority to the values, customs, and traditions of African people. This should form the base for a democratic environment that will usher in effectiveness and legitimacy in governance in those states.A democratization front, comprising of Africans in Africa and the Diaspora, is advocated to design and monitor the democratization movement in the continent. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) should serve as the supervisory body to the democratization front. The philosophy of the democratization front would include a pan- African mobilization against the forces of political, economic, and social exploitation of the continent.
Download or read book Democracy in Africa written by Nic Cheeseman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.
Download or read book The Paradox of Traditional Chiefs in Democratic Africa written by Kate Baldwin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows that powerful hereditary chiefs do not undermine democracy in Africa but, on some level, facilitate it.
Download or read book Whites and Democracy in South Africa written by Roger Southall and published by African Sun Media. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the place and role of whites in South African political life today? Are whites genuinely willing participants in a ‘non-racial democracy’, willing to forego the racial privileges of the past or, despite legal equality, have they proved reluctant to relinquish power and continue, as black activists assert, to dominate many aspects of South African society? Building upon the burgeoning body of work on whiteness, this book focuses on how whites have adapted politically to the arrival of democracy and sweeping political change in South Africa. Outlining a variety of responses in how white South Africans have sought to grapple with apartheid’s brutal history, the author shows how their memories of the past have shaped their reactions to political equality. Although the majority feared the coming of democracy, only a right-wing minority actively resisted its arrival. Others chose (and are still choosing) to emigrate, used democracy to defend ‘minority rights’ or have withdrawn into psychologically or physically demarcated social enclaves. Challenging much current thinking, Southall argues that many whites have chosen to embrace the freedoms that democracy has offered, or to adapt to its often disconcerting realities pragmatically. Examining this crucial issue against the historical context of minority rule and its defeat, the author presents a new dynamic to the continuing debate on whiteness in Africa and globally.
Download or read book Democratization in Africa written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1992-02-01 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global movement toward democracy, spurred in part by the ending of the cold war, has created opportunities for democratization not only in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also in Africa. This book is based on workshops held in Benin, Ethiopia, and Namibia to better understand the dynamics of contemporary democratic movements in Africa. Key issues in the democratization process range from its institutional and political requirements to specific problems such as ethnic conflict, corruption, and role of donors in promoting democracy. By focusing on the opinion and views of African intellectuals, academics, writers, and political activists and observers, the book provides a unique perspective regarding the dynamics and problems of democratization in Africa.
Download or read book Democratic Experiments in Africa written by Michael Bratton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appendix: The Data Set.
Download or read book Africa s First Democrats written by Abdi Ismail Samatar and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abdi Ismail Samatar provides a clear and foundational history of Somalia at the dawn of the country's independence when Africa's first democrats appeared. While many African countries were dominated by authoritarian rulers when they entered the postcolonial era—and scholars have assumed this as a standard feature of political leadership on the continent—Somalia had an authentic democratic leadership. Samatar's political biography of Aden A. Osman and Abdirazak H. Hussen breaks the stereotype of brutal African tyranny. Samatar discusses the framing of democracy in Somalia following the years of control by fascist Italy, the formation of democratic organizations during the political struggle, and the establishment of democratic foundations in the new nation. Even though this early state of affairs did not last, these leaders left behind a strong democratic legacy that may provide a model of good governance for the rest of the continent.
Download or read book Democracy Good Governance and Development in Africa written by Mawere, Munyaradzi and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2015-10-24 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.
Download or read book The Democratic Coup D tat written by Ozan O. Varol and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term coup d'état--French for stroke of the state--brings to mind coups staged by power-hungry generals who overthrow the existing regime, not to democratize, but to concentrate power in their own hands as dictators. We assume all coups look the same, smell the same, and present the same threats to democracy. It's a powerful, concise, and self-reinforcing idea. It's also wrong. In The Democratic Coup d'État, Ozan Varol advances a simple, yet controversial, argument: Sometimes, a democracy is established through a military coup. Covering events from the Athenian Navy's stance in 411 B.C. against a tyrannical home government, to coups in the American colonies that ousted corrupt British governors, to twentieth-century coups that toppled dictators and established democracy in countries as diverse as Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, and Colombia, the book takes the reader on a gripping journey. Connecting the dots between these neglected events, Varol weaves a balanced narrative that challenges everything we thought we knew about military coups. In so doing, he tackles several baffling questions: How can an event as undemocratic as a military coup lead to democracy? Why would imposing generals-armed with tanks and guns and all-voluntarily surrender power to civilian politicians? What distinguishes militaries that help build democracies from those that destroy them? Varol's arguments made headlines across the globe in major media outlets and were cited critically in a public speech by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Written for a general audience, this book will entertain, challenge, and provoke, but more importantly, serve as a reminder of the imperative to question the standard narratives about our world and engage with all ideas, no matter how controversial.
Download or read book Democratization in Africa Challenges and Prospects written by Gordon Crawford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is two decades since the ‘third wave’ of democratization began to roll across sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s. This book provides a very timely investigation into the progress and setbacks over that period, the challenges that remain and the prospects for future democratization in Africa. It commences with an overall assessment of the (lack of) progress made from 1990 to 2010, exploring positive developments with reasons for caution. Based on original research, subsequent contributions examine various themes through country case-studies, inclusive of: the routinisation of elections, accompanied by democratic rollback and the rise of hybrid regimes; the tenacity of presidential powers; the dilemmas of power-sharing; ethnic voting and rise of a violent politics of belonging; the role of ‘donors’ and the ambiguities of ‘democracy promotion’. Overall, the book concludes that steps forward remain greater than reversals and that typically, though not universally, sub-Saharan African countries are more democratic today than in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, the book also calls for more meaningful processes of democratization that aim not only at securing civil and political rights, but also socio-economic rights and the physical security of African citizens. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization
Download or read book Democratization in Africa written by Larry Jay Diamond and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The country-specific chapters serve to underline the differences between African democracy and liberal democracy, yet some authors are at pains to emphasize that whatever their limitations, African democracies are an advance over what had gone before." -- African Studies Review
Download or read book Electoral Politics in South Africa written by J. Piombo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-12-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten years into the 'new' South Africa, how does democracy function? This volume provides a retrospective on a decade of elections and democracy in South Africa. The book analyzes the evolution of the party system and electoral campaigns; tracks changes in public opinion and voter motivations; assesses the political implications of socioeconomic change; depicts the evolution of parliament and the electoral system; probes the often-tense relationship between media and government; analyzes the institutionalization the Independent Electoral Commission; and, finally, argues that South Africa is witnessing a 'normalization' of politics. The book speaks to a broad range of topics, all linked through the electoral theme, which get to the heart of many issues in contemporary South African politics.
Download or read book Democracy as Death written by Jason Hickel and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revolution that brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa was fractured by internal conflict.Ê Migrant workers from rural Zululand rejected many of the egalitarian values and policies fundamental to the ANCÕs liberal democratic platform and organized themselves in an attempt to sabotage the movement. This anti-democracy stance, which persists today as a direct critique of ÒfreedomÓ in neoliberal South Africa, hinges on an idealized vision of the rural home and a hierarchical social order crafted in part by the technologies of colonial governance over the past century.Ê In analyzing this conflict, Jason Hickel contributes to broad theoretical debates about liberalism and democratization in the postcolonial world. Democracy as Death interrogates the Western ideals of individual freedom and agency from the perspective of those who oppose such ideals, and questions the assumptions underpinning theories of anti-liberal movements. The book argues that both democracy and the political science that attempts to explain resistance to it presuppose a model of personhood native to Western capitalism, which may not operate cross-culturally.
Download or read book The Black and White Rainbow written by Carolyn Holmes and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation-building imperatives compel citizens to focus on what makes them similar and what binds them together, forgetting what makes them different. Democratic institution building, on the other hand, requires fostering opposition through conducting multiparty elections and encouraging debate. Leaders of democratic factions, like parties or interest groups, can consolidate their power by emphasizing difference. But when held in tension, these two impulses—toward remembering difference and forgetting it, between focusing on unity and encouraging division—are mutually constitutive of sustainable democracy. ?Based on ethnographic and interview-based fieldwork conducted in 2012–13, The Black and White Rainbow: Reconciliation, Opposition, and Nation-Building in Democratic South Africa explores various themes of nation- and democracy-building, including the emotional and banal content of symbols of the post-apartheid state, the ways that gender and race condition nascent nationalism, the public performance of nationalism and other group-based identities, integration and sharing of space, language diversity, and the role of democratic functioning including party politics and modes of opposition. Each of these thematic chapters aims to explicate a feature of the multifaceted nature of identity-building, and link the South African case to broader literatures on both nationalism and democracy.
Download or read book Consolidation of Democracy in Africa written by Hussein Solomon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2000: The continent of Africa is undergoing great change. While on the one hand there is talk of a re-awakening of Africa or Renaissance various countries in Africa are still plagued by poverty, intra- and interstate violence. In some countries the legacy of neo-colonialism and under development contributed to social strife and the potential criminalization of the State. This book addresses the topic of democratization and sustainable democracy in Africa against this background.
Download or read book Oromo Democracy written by Asmarom Legesse and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book reveals the many creative solutions an African society found for problems that people encounter when they try to establish a democratic system of governing their affairs. In much of what has been written about Africa ... Little is ever shown of indigenous African democratic systems, under which there is distribution of authority and responsibility across various strata of society, and where warriors are subordinated to deliberative assemblies, customary laws are revised periodically by a national convention, and elected leaders are limited to a single eight-year terms of office and subjected to public review in the middle of their term. All these ideals and more are enshrined in the five-century old constitution of the Oromo of Ethiopia, which is the subject matter of this book. In this book, Legesse brings into sharp focus the polycephalous or "multi-headed" system of government of the Oromo, which is based on clearly defined division of labor and checks and balances between different institutions. Revealing the inherent dynamism and sophistication of this indigenous African political system, Legasse also shows in clear and lucid language that the system has had a long and distinguished history, during which the institutions changed by deliberate legislation, and evolved and adapted with time."--Amazon.com.
Download or read book The Fate of Africa s Democratic Experiments written by Leonardo A. VillalÃ3n and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does Western-style democracy make sense in the various geographic, economic, and social settings of the continent? How far toward democracy have recent liberalization movements gone? In The Fate of Africa's Democratic Experiments, Leonardo A. VillalÃ3n, Peter VonDoepp, and an international group of contributors consider the aftermath, success, failure, and future of the wave of democracy that swept Africa in the early 1990s. In some countries, democratic movements flourished, while in others, democratic success was more circumscribed. This detailed analysis of key political events in countries at the forefront of democratic change -- Benin, Central African Republic, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, and Zambia -- provides for broadly representative continental and linguistic coverage of directions and prospects for Africa's democracies. The contributors are Michael Chege, John F. Clark, Joshua B. Forrest, Abdourahmane Idrissa, Bruce Magnusson, Carrie Manning, Richard R. Marcus, Andreas Mehler, David J. Simon, Leonardo A. VillalÃ3n, and Peter VonDoepp.
