The feasibility of democracy in Africa

Abstract

Ake maintains that democratization in Africa is far from a fad, a reaction to political liberalization elsewhere or an expression of the contradictions of Westernization. It is more too than the expression of 'second independence' - from indigenous post-colonial leadership. The urge to democracy, he says, expresses a need for self-realization that is so deep that it elicits arduous and monumental risks. Democracy, Ake insists, should never be taken for granted and has to be defended in daily struggles. The book outlines, in a sweeping continental survey and with telling detail, how the democratic commitment has transformed Africa's legacy of dictatorship, military regimes and single-party rule. Yet, at the same time as 'we are all democratic message and subverted its promise. The danger of trivialising democracy into successive multi-party election, where one narrow elite succeeds another, is a real one in present day Africa, and the book spells out he hazards that lie ahead for...