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Essay On Democracy In Africa

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The concept of democracy has many definitions. It has always been a challenge to attribute a universally acceptable meaning to democracy as many scholars have different views of what democracy means and what is required for a state to be democratic. This due to scholars’ “philosophical, ideological, political, cultural, social, and economic perspectives”.

According to Dahl, for state to be regarded as democratic, there must be in existence, civil liberties, political pluralism, and public participation in the political decision making that allows citizens elect their choice of representatives in a free and fair election. Diamond writes that, for a country to be regarded as democratic, certain essential necessities must be present. He argues …show more content…

The democratization process in Africa is debated between those who owe the spread of democracy in Africa to internal factors and those who advocate that democracy in Africa is due to external factors. Chabal writes that those who argue the spread of democracy in Africa was internally motivated, highlights five main factors: (1) the erosion in the legitimacy of the one-party state; (2) the decline in all aspects of state capacity; (3) the failure of development; (4) the depth of the economic crisis; and (5) the strength of political protest and/or pro-democracy movements. He further writes that, those who advocate for external influence as reason of for Africa’s political liberation argue that the spread of democracy is because of three reasons: (1) a more conservative outlook on North-South relations in the West; (2) the widespread imposition of structural adjustment programmes because of the failing economic reforms in Africa; and (3) the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. With these highlighted reasons, it can be adjudged that the widespread of democracy in Africa is a combination of both the internal and external

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