By Prof John Harbeson
The fifteen-year gradual but clear decline in democratic practice around the globe, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, has become common knowledge. Freedom House, in particular, has traced this democratic retreat since about 2005. Still, the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem) and the measurement protocols of other international non-governmental organizations have documented the same trendline. The critically important but too infrequently addressed questions are why has this worrisome downward trendline occurred, and how can it be reversed?
The heartening good news is that Afrobarometer’s comprehensive citizen surveys in nearly forty countries over the last two decades have recorded that African citizens, by margins of around 70%, have retained a belief in democracy as the best governmental system, preferring it to the available alternatives of one person autocracy and one party or military rule. Africans have retained a commitment to democracy notwithstanding their perception of serious, wide-ranging failings of democracy as they have experienced it in practice, especially pervasive, corrosive corruption.
At the same time, the most recent Afrobarometer surveys of citizens’ opinions in nearly forty countries suggest that because of corruption and other shortcomings, African citizens have begun to express reservations about the political legitimacy of state institutions erected in the name of democracy, including presidents and legislatures. One telling consequence of this trend in the sixth decade of African independence has been a visible tendency of African citizens to continue, or even increasingly, to identify with their residual ethnic identities that colonial rule perpetuated, as against the presumptively pan-ethnic nations their independence movements won them.
Only about ten sub-Saharan African countries have managed overall sustainable democracy throughout the last decade and a half. However, perhaps half of the others, including Kenya, have remained partly free to varying degrees by Freedom House measures. Indeed, Kenya offers an instructive case study of stalled, partial democratic practice, notwithstanding its model democratically approved 2010 Constitution. Capping more than two decades of costly, heroic civic energy, the achievement of this Constitution has yet to be completed and, at best, only partially effective in overcoming preceding decades of autocracy and corruption.
Recognizing the painful irony of continued African belief in the merits of democracy and, doubtless, numerous heroic efforts on its behalf across the continent, juxtaposed to pervasive receding democratic practice, one is tempted to affirm an unspoken but tacit acceptance that partial democracy has become a new normal across the continent and even within the international community of democracy promoting institutions. Instances of significant democratic renewal over the decade and a half of its decline in sub-Saharan Africa have been few and far between. Indeed, twelve years on, Kenya’s constitutional reform stands out as a notable example of continued partial democracy despite the passage of its model 2010 constitution.
So, what explains the region’s democratic decline, and why has there been so little evident countervailing momentum for democratic renewal across the continent? One of the more noteworthy efforts to address the question has come from Freedom House in a recently released special report entitled How Civic Mobilizations Grow in Authoritarian Contexts. Based on a study of recent reform mobilization initiatives in 21 countries worldwide, the Report identifies two fundamental keys to generating civic initiatives in authoritarian contexts, both of which seem to counsel oblique, perhaps even covert, rather than direct and explicit democratic initiatives to overcome authoritarian rule.
First, the Report hypothesizes that reform movements tend to gain strength to the extent that, while they rely on the expertise of established civil rights and democracy-promoting civic organizations, they are led by new and different leaders. The Report observes that “leaders of successful movements often come from outside established opposition groups, including entrepreneurs, artists, environmentalists and members of youth movements” because they are less likely to immediately provoke regime repression and because they are less likely to be “perceived as an ‘old guard’ seeking personal gain and disconnected from grassroots concerns.”
Second, the Report discerns that “while many authoritarian regimes use violence and propaganda to ensure compliance, they also care about constructing a narrative that legitimizes their rule” and do so by “connecting their leadership to societal values such as fairness or security and group identities including ethnic, religious or class ones.” It asserts that when a movement credibly calls into question whether the government has lived up to its ideals and presents an alternative vision of the future that speaks to the same societal values as the regime invokes, it is more likely to grow.
To the extent these findings are accurate, at best, they seem to authenticate a new normal of partial, flawed democracy rather than energize democratic renewal and reverse democratic decline. They sidestep the magnitude of what is required to democratize authoritarian regimes and deepen the legitimacy of fragile African states. Authoritarian, corrupt regimes have little to fear from the surprising findings of this Freedom House study.
Writer is professor of Political Science Emeritus, and a professorial lecturer for the African Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.
Email your news TIPS to Editor@nairobilawmonthly.com, and to advertise with us, call +254715061658 anytime of the day
