Abstract
In studying the evolution of democracy in Senegal, we attempted to systematically apply the main components of Tocquevillian analytics. Having done so, we concluded that the foundations for democracy have been strengthened in Senegal and that the prospects for democracy there look reasonably good. Rather than presenting Senegalese democracy as an ideal model to be exported to other African countries, following Tocqueville, we shall emphasize some of the main principles contributing to Senegal’s success. Building on Tocquevillian analytics, what can one say about the state of democracy in Africa today and its prospects for the future?
A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst; everybody sees it, but by no means everybody judges it in the same way.1
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Chapter Twelve The Future of Democracy in Africa
For a monumental study of the negative consequences of the colonial legacy, see Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
For examples, see James S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg, Jr. (eds.), Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964) and
Aristide R. Zolberg, “Patterns of National Integration,” Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December 1967), pp. 449–467.
For an excellent collection of essays on this theme, see Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan (eds.), The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988).
Michael Bratton, “Second Elections in Africa,” in Larry Diamond and Marc E Plattner (eds.), Democratization in Africa (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 22.
For of the oppressiveness of the regime in Rwanda preceding the 1994 genocide and a call for an alternative to the central state, see Timothy Longman, “Rwanda: Chaos from Above,” in Leonardo A. Villalôn and Phillip A. Huxtable (eds.), The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), pp. 75–91.
The original concept of patrimonialism comes from Max Weber. For a detailed discussion of this concept see, Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 329–384.
For a broad survey of indigenous African political institutions in precolonial Africa, see George B.N. Ayittey, Indigenous African Institutions (New York: Transnational Publications, 1991), pp. 1–272.
Crawford Young, “Itineraries of Freedom in Africa: Precolonial to Postcolonial,” in Robert H. Taylor (ed.), The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 12–15.
On this point, see Chisanga N. Siame, “Two Concepts of Liberty through African Eyes,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2000), pp. 53–67.
For analysis of the attributes of the inheritance elite, their inheritance that is, control over the institutions of the colonial state, and the inheritance situation, see J. P. Nettl and Roland Robertson, International Systems and the Modernization of Societies (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), pp. 63–127.
For examples of African success stories in building effective rural self-governing associations, see Pierre Pradervand, Listening to Africa: Developing Africa from the Grassroots (New York: Praeger, 1989).
Simon Fass and Gerrit M. Desloovere, “Chad: Governance by the Grassroots,” in Dole Olowu and James S. Wunsch (eds.), Local Governance in Africa: The Challenges of Democratic Decentralization (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004).
For the stances of Christian and Animist religious institutions vis-à-vis the colonial and postcolonial state, see Achille Mbembe, Afriques indociles: Christianisme, pouvoir et Etat en société postcoloniale (Paris: Karthala, 1988).
For Muslim-Christian relations in Sierra Leone, see Lamin Sanneh, Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996).
On this point, see Michael Bratton and Robert Mattes, “How People View Democracy: Africans’ Surprising Universalism,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 2001), pp. 108–111.
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© 2005 Sheldon Gellar
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Gellar, S. (2005). The Future of Democracy in Africa. In: Democracy in Senegal. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982162_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982162_12
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