with Prof. John Harbeson
Freedom House recently published its findings on the state of democracy in the world in 2022 together with detailed scores on each of over 200 countries. This year, for the first time since about 2005, Freedom House found some evidence to suggest that perhaps the gradual decline of democracy may have begun to bottom out. On the one hand, it noted that freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year: it found that 35 countries experienced declines in their observance of political rights and civil liberties, while 34 countries witnessed improved scores. On the other hand, it noted that this balance between the countries with declining scores and those with improved ones was the narrowest since the overall decline began.
While this is a welcome bit of good news, it is not necessarily a harbinger of democratic revival. This hypothesis may become more persuasive when it can be shown that there is some noteworthy set of factors common to the improved countries but lacking in those continuing to decline. Freedom House has offered no such explanation. In fact, however, Freedom House’s own scores for 2022 offer more surprising, if still unexplained, good news, that I downloaded twice to double check.
Average total scores for all countries. and for each of the seven subcategories Freedom House measures, were identical between 2021 and 2022. On a scale of 0-100, the worldwide average total score for all countries was 56 in both years. Scores for each of the seven subcategories of democracy and freedom were also identical, expressed in percentage terms: quality of electoral process (58), political pluralism and ability to participate in politics(58), governmental transparency (48), freedom of expression (63), associational freedom(58), rule of law(48) and personal freedoms like freedom to travel and own property (57). In short, democracy and freedom remained unchanged between 2001 and 2002 rather than continuing the unbroken decline of the previous years.
This surprising two-year pattern of democratic continuity was not reflected to the same degree in all world regions. The unsurprising news is that for sub-Saharan Africa, the 17-year pattern of gradual democratic decline continued. True, eleven countries recorded gains, including Kenya (48 to 52), while only nine suffered losses, led by Burkina Faso, (53 to 30) although a majority were unchanged. The average overall total score for the region’s 49 countries declined slightly from 42.1 to 40.8.along with slight losses in the subcategories of pluralism, governmental transparency, freedom of expression and associational freedom.
The reasons for sub-Saharan Africa’s continued gradual decline while the world as a whole remained unchanged can be attributed to an imbalance between, on the one hand, the capacity of the region’s elected as well as unelected leaders to subvert without actually eliminating democracy and, on the other hand, the weakness of civil society’s capacity to push back against corrupting leaders. At the same time, the big democratic gains occurred in the halcyon post- Cold War decade when active Western-led support for democracy was unchallenged.
The chances that a continuing gradual decline in the quality of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa will be reversed are likely to depend ultimately as much on citizen opinion in sub-Saharan Africa and other world regions as on expert opinion by monitoring organizations like Freedom House, as capable as they are. In the case of sub-Sahara Africa, the evidence from Afrobarometer’s contemporary surveys of citizen opinion on democracy in over thirty countries is mixed.
In its most recent survey of 34 countries between 2019 and 2021, the good news was that, for the preceding decade, African support for democracy remained fairly robust at 68% combined with rejection of the alternatives of one party (77%), and one person(82%) rule. Rejection of military rule stood at 74% ranging from only 44% in Burkina Faso to 91% in monarchical Eswatini. But Africans’ experience with democracy as actually practiced revealed significant levels of dissatisfaction inhibiting possibilities for improved quality. Citizens who were fairly or very satisfied with how their democracy works in their countries averaged only 41%, ranging from Tanzania (84%) to Angola (17%)
A fundamental reason appeared to be that citizens have continued to feel politically disempowered rather than enabled by the practice of democracy in their countries. Despite strong (77%) and increasing support for two term limits, to date sixteen countries have weakened or eliminated its promised implementation. Meanwhile, 55% of citizens reported engaging with others to raise an issue with their leaders at least once in the previous year, but only 17% felt local leaders and only 12% felt members of parliament often or always actively listened to their entreaties. Only 44% felt elections enabled them to remove poorly performing leaders, and only 27% of citizens felt they could report suspected corruption by their leaders without risking retaliation.
Resilient and/or strengthened democracy is unlikely until African citizens feel more significantly empowered to practice it effectively. (
— Prof Harbeson is a professor of Political Science Emeritus and a professorial lecturer for the African Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University
Email your news TIPS to Editor@nairobilawmonthly.com, and to advertise with us, call +254715061658 anytime of the day
