Towards Enduring Democratic Polities in Africa: Prospects, Challenges and Trajectories

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume II, Issue VIII, August 2018 | ISSN 2454–6186

Towards Enduring Democratic Polities in Africa: Prospects, Challenges and Trajectories

Yahaya Yakubu, Abubakar Aliyu Maigari

Department of Political Science & Int’l Relations, Nile University of Nigeria

Abstract- The study explores the causal plausible mechanisms through which culture conditions institutional outcomes and design. Upon review of relevant literature, it opines the confounding role of culture on the nature of institutions cannot be downplayed. Building on Almond and Verba’s Participant Political Culture, it claims the inherent transplanted democracy as obtained in Africa is likely to remain unresponsive. In furtherance, it equates the plausible functionality of any political arrangement, when such political arrangement embodies socially adhered and accepted norms, values and beliefs. Hence, it contends that for democracy to function in Africa there abounds the utmost need for contextual domestication as opposed to the current system of transplantation. Consequently, the exploration and objective application of democratic values inherent in the dominant indigenous culture remains a likely solution to the crisis of governance in Africa and should not be dismissed. While the research does not assents a return to traditionalism, it propagates for the contextual domestication of democracy in tandem with prevailing norms and existential political and societal realities across the African continent.

Keywords: Post-Colonial Africa, Democracy, Culture, Institutions and Domesticating Democracy.

I. INTRODUCTION

Concentration of interest in the study of young democracies shifted from the ability of countries to achieve transitions to democracy to their ability to sustain and consolidate it. The demise of the cold war and waves of democratic transitions that swept the developing world, cemented democracy’s place as the popular denominator for political language in the 20th century and beyond. These new democracies vary contextually from each other as well as those obtainable in Western capitalist societies. For a better part of the developing world, periodic elections serve democratic prerequisites. If accepted that there is more to democracy than holding periodic elections, queries arise as to the degree to which governments are liable and responsive to public opinion, political inclusion, participation and representation for civil society, and the propensity to which power is balanced to deter arbitrary excise of authority. Hence, with a view to attaining threshold in line with global standard practices, the need to interrogate the interaction between state and society in democracies cannot be down played.

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