Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qlrfm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T21:41:27.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reform Politics and the Democratization Process in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Julius E. Nyang'Oro
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. For a very long time the native devotes his energies to ending certain definite abuses: forced labor, corporal punishment, inequality of salaries, and limitation of political rights. This fight for democracy against the oppression of mankind will slowly leave the confusion of neoliberal universalism to emerge, sometimes laboriously, as a claim to nationhood. It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps (Fanon 1963, 148).

Frantz Fanon's worries when he first published his book Les damnés de la terre in 1961 have been realized in Africa with a vengeance. Soon after political independence was won, most African countries degenerated into one-party authoritarianism and/or dictatorships and military rule. In many instances, one-party rule was justified or rationalized on the basis of the need for national unity or the need to devote national energies to economic development. In other instances, one party rule was said to reflect African traditional forms of democracy of consensus building, unlike western type democracy which encouraged opposition for its own sake, as reflected in the sharp divisions, class and otherwise, under capitalism (Nabudere 1989, 1-24). In some cases, one-party rule had been achieved due to the weakness of opposition parties at independence, and the ruling parties took advantage of their predominance either to legislate opposition parties out of existence, or simply make life difficult for the opposition.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 133 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Africa News, Durham NC. Various issues.Google Scholar
Amin, Samir. 1987. “Preface: The State and the Question of ‘Development.’” In Popular Struggles for Democracy in Africa, edited by Nyong'o, Peter Anyang', 1–13. London: United Nations University and Zed.Google Scholar
Amin, . 1991. “The Issue of Democracy in the Contemporary Third World,” Socialism and Democracy 12 (January): 83–104.Google Scholar
Beckman, Bjorn. 1989. “Whose Democracy? Bourgeois versus Popular Democracy.” Review of African Political Economy 45/46: 84–97.Google Scholar
Bienefeld, Manfred. 1988. “Dependency Theory and the Political Economy of Africa's Crisis.” Review of African Political Economy 43:67–87.Google Scholar
Bienen, Henry. 1974. Kenya: The Politics of Participation and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chabal, Patrick ed. 1986. Political Domination in Africa: Reflections on the Limits of Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chazan, Naomi. 1992. “Africa's Democratic Challenge.” World Policy journal 9/2 (Spring): 279–305.Google Scholar
Chazan, Naomi and Rothchild, Donald. 1989. “Corporatism and Political Transactions: Some Ruminations on the Ghanaian Experience.” In Corporatism in Africa: Comparative Analysis and Practice, edited by Nyang'oro, Julius E. and Shaw, Timothy M., 167–93. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jean L. and Arato, Andrew. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Crook, Richard. 1990. “State, Society and Political Institutions in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.” IDS Bulletin 21/4 (October): 24–34.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Di, Palma Giuseppe. 1990. To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, Larry, et al, eds. 1988. Democracy in Developing Countries, Volume 2: Africa. Boulder: Lynne Reinner.Google Scholar
Economic Commission for Africa. 1989. African Alternative to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation. Addis Ababa: The United Nations.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Fatton, Robert Jr. 1990. “Liberal Democracy in Africa.” Political Science Quarterly 105/3:455-73.Google Scholar
Gregor, A. James. 1979. Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Howard, Rhoda. 1986. Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa. Totowa NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Hughes, Arnold and May, Roy. 1988. “Politics of Succession in Black Africa.” Third World Quarterly 10/1 (January): 1–22.Google Scholar
Hyden, Goran. 1969. Political Development in Rural Tanzania: A West Lake Study. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.Google Scholar
Ibrahim, Jibrin. 1986. “The Political Debate and the Struggle for Democracy in Nigeria.” Review of African Political Economy 37 (December): 38–48.Google Scholar
Ikoku, S. G. 1985. Nigeria's Fourth Coup D'Etat: Options for Modern Statehood. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension.Google Scholar
Lipset Seymour, M. 1964. “Political Cleavages in ‘Developed’ and ‘Emerging’ Polities.” In Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems, edited by Allardt, Erik and Littunen, Yrjö. Helsinki: Academic Bookstore.Google Scholar
New York Times. Various issues.Google Scholar
Nabudere, Dani Wadada. 1989. “The One-Party State in Africa and its Assumed Philosophical Roots.” In Democracy and the One-Party-State in Africa, edited by Meyns, Peter and Wadada Nabudere, Dani, 1–24. Hamburg: Institut fur Afrika-Kunde.Google Scholar
Nyang'oro, Julius E. 1989. The State and Capitalist Development in Africa: Declining Political Economies. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Nyang'oro, . 1992. “Building Pluralist Democracy in Africa.” Midsouth Political Science Journal 13 (Spring).Google Scholar
Nyang'oro, Julius|E. and Shaw, Timothy M. (eds.) 1989. Corporatism in Africa: Comparative Analysis and Practice. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Nyang'oro, 1992. Beyond Structural Adjustment in Africa: The Political Economy of Sustainable and Democratic Development. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Onimode, Bade ed. 1989. The IMF, the World Bank and the African Debt, 2 vols. London: Zed. Peter, Chris Maina. 1990. Human Rights in Africa. New York: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Poggi, Gianfranco. 1978. The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Post, Ken. 1991. “The State, Civil Society, and Democracy in Africa.” In Democracy and Socialism in Africa, edited by Cohen, Robin and Gouldbourne, Harry, 34–52. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Ravenhill, John. 1986. Africa in Economic Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Pearl. Forthcoming. “The National Conference Phenomenon in Francophone Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society and History.Google Scholar
Rothchild, Doneld and Chazan, Neomi eds. 1988. The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Sangmpam, S. N. 1992. “The Overpoliticized State and Democratization: A Theoretical Model.” Comparative Politics 24/4 (July): 401–17.Google Scholar
Samoff, Joel. 1974. Tanzania: Local Politics and the Structure of Power. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Sandbrook, Richard. 1988. “Liberal Democracy in Africa: A Socialist-Revisionist Perspective.” Canadian journal of African Studies 22/2: 240–67.Google Scholar
Shaw, Timothy M. 1992. “Revisionism in African Political Economy in the 1990s.” In Beyond Structural Adjustment in Africa: The Political Economy of Sustainable and Democratic Development, edited by Nyang'oro, Julius E. and Shaw, Timothy M., 49–70. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Shivji, Issa G. 1989. The Concept of Human Rights in Africa. London: Codesria Book Series.Google Scholar
Shivji, . 1991. “Contradictory Class Perspectives in the Debate on Democracy.” In State and Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Democracy, edited by Shivji, Issa G., 253–60. Harare: SAPES.Google Scholar
Shivji, , Issa, G. ed. 1991. State and Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Democracy. Harare: SAPES.Google Scholar
Sklar, Richard. 1987. “Developmental Democracy.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29/4 (October): 686–714.Google Scholar
Sorensen, Georg. 1991. Democracy and the Developmental State. Aarhus. Denmark: Institute of Political Science.Google Scholar
Thomas, Clive Y. 1984. The Rise of the Authoritarian State in Peripheral Societies. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Welch, Claude E. 1987. No Farewell to Arms? Military Disengagement from Politics in Africa and Latin America. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Welch, Claude|E. and Meitzer, Roneld I., eds. 1984. Human Rights and Development in Africa. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. 1990. “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Civil Society.’” Socialist Register. London: Merlin Press, 60–84.Google Scholar
World Bank. 1989. Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, A Long-Term Perspective Study. Washington DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Young, Crawford. 1982. Ideology and Development in Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar