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Building democracy in Africa's weak states
Michael Bratton
Extracted from Democracy at large, Volume1 No. 3
2005
http://www.democracyatlarge.org/
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What
are the prospects for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa? Due to the
continent's diversity, the only sensible answer is "It depends."
In any given African country, democracy's future depends significantly
on whether citizens share a sense of national identity and whether
the economy generates wealth that is distributed equitably. But
beyond these usual social and economic suspects, key features of
African states influence their chances for achieving democracy.
In this article, I draw attention to two political dimensions of
African states: their size and their strength. In terms of population,
Africa's diverse states range from giants to midgets; in terms of
capacity, African states run the gamut from relatively strong to
extremely weak. Putting these factors together, I argue that the
biggest challenges for democracy building lie in the important states
that are both large and weak. I conclude by offering
policy makers advice as to how to incorporate these insights into
democracy promotion.
Democracy
in Africa
Some may doubt that democracy is feasible anywhere in Africa. But
since 1990, civilian, constitutional systems have become common
across the continent, effectively eclipsing the military and single
party dictatorships that came before. These new regimes are founded
and refreshed by elections that observers, monitors, and even losing
candidates judge as fundamentally free and fair. Strikingly, in
a few of Africa's leading democracies - like Benin, Ghana, Mali,
Mauritius, and Senegal - post-transition elections have already
brought about a peaceful turnover of ruling parties. Moreover, among
the more than 23,000 ordinary Africans interviewed in the 15-country
Afrobarometer survey, almost two thirds say they prefer democracy
to other forms of government.1 In a few places, the rules of the
democratic game are beginning to take root.
  Having
established the continent's democratic potential, however, it is
essential to sound a note of caution. Amid fragile new democracies
and despite high popular hopes, Africa still possesses more than
its fair share of autocratic and hybrid regimes. Combining indicators
of civil liberties and political rights, Freedom House's 2004 review
of the "status of freedom" divides sub-Saharan Africa's
48 countries as follows: 11 are "free," functioning democracies,
21 are "partly free," hybrid regimes, and 16 are unreformed,
"not free" autocracies. The countries in each category
are listed in Table 1.2
Democratic regimes
are a minority, present in just 23% of sub-Saharan countries. Instead,
the most common political arrangement (in 44% of countries) is a
partially reformed semi-democracy or semi-autocracy. To be sure,
such hybrid systems feature competitive elections, but these often
involve a dominant political party that always wins (as in Tanzania
and Mozambique) or occasionally no parties at all (as in Uganda).
Elections are typically marred by dubious voter registers, intimidation
or vote-buying, questionable ballot counts, and challenges to the
results by disillusioned losers. Limits are commonly placed on the
independent press and, in the extreme, challengers may find that
they are barred from electoral participation (as in Ivory Coast
and Zambia). As Larry Diamond notes, "more regimes than ever
before are adopting the form of electoral democracy…but
fail to meet the substantive test."3
Finally, unreformed
autocracies persist where governments make no pretence of seeking
legitimacy through competitive elections. Some leaders still come
to power through heredity (Swaziland), military coup (Togo), or
armed insurgency (Eritrea or Rwanda). In other cases (Sudan), sham
elections are held in the parts of the country that the government
controls, but major segments of the electorate are excluded. These
countries are often embroiled in extended internal conflicts that
preoccupy governments and can lead to the collapse of central state
authority (Somalia and Congo-Kinshasa). As weapons flood society,
people are increasingly exposed to violence and extortion at the
hands of local warlords and armed gangs. In these countries, political
reform is rarely even attempted.
State size
and democracy
What explains this variety of African political regimes? From the
time of ancient Athens onwards, democracy has seemed to fl ourish
best in small states. With reference to population, African countries
range from super- to micro-states. At one end of the spectrum, Nigeria's
2004 population of 133 million accounts for one of every five Africans.
At the opposite pole lie Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles,
and São Tomé and Príncipe, each with populations
of half a million or fewer. Indeed, the 48 sub-Saharan nation-states
can be conveniently divided into three groups of 14 small countries
(under 2 million), 27 medium countries (2 to 29 million), and 7
large countries (over 30 million).4
The great diversity
of African countries- both in the size of their populations and
the nature of their political regimes-offers an opportunity to explore
whether state size matters for democracy. As Figure 1 indicates,
small African states are three times more likely than medium or
large ones to attain the status of a fully "free" democracy
(43% versus 14%).5 Whereas
six small states have achieved a democratic status (Botswana, Cape
Verde, Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia and São Tomé) just
one large state (South Africa) has done so. Instead, most large
states are either "partly free" (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia
and Nigeria) or "not free" at all (Congo-Kinshasa and
Sudan).
The finding
that democracy thrives in Africa's small states must be qualifi
ed. First, the record remains mixed: many small countries are still
only "partly free"; and medium-sized states are most likely
to be "not free." Second, democracy in contemporary Africa
may be less widespread than originally thought. While 23% of the
sub-continent's countries may be considered "free," only
15% of its people (who live predominantly in small countries) enjoy
the liberties associated with democracy. And if South Africa is
excluded, which contains nearly half of the "free" people
in Africa, then a mere 8% of Africans had won their freedom by 2004.
Nevertheless,
there are many reasons why small may be politically beautiful. Although
no African state is as tiny as a Greek city-state, opportunities
still exist there for direct communication between rulers and ruled.
Thereby smallness not only helps leaders project authority, but
it also helps citizens demand accountability. Moreover, small countries
are likely to be socially and culturally homogenous (like Botswana
and Lesotho), thus preempting ethnic confl ict. Finally, half of
Africa's small democracies are islands (Cape Verde, Mauritius, and
São Tomé), a geographical advantage that affords protection
from secessionists and irredentists.
Africa's large
states suffer an inverse battery of shortcomings. The rulers of
vast domains find it diffi cult to control all people and territory
within their boundaries. Citizens on the far periphery regard state
offi cials, and even elected representatives, as remote from their
daily lives. In Africa, large states are also always multi-ethnic
and, as such, are prey to communal political conflict. And because
they share borders with many other countries (nine in Congo-Kinshasa!),
large states are vulnerable to incursions from hostile neighbors.
The strength
of African states
This discussion redirects our attention from the mere size of the
state to the state's capacity for effective governance. As leading
theorists argue, successful democratization requires a basic level
of "stateness." Linz and Stepan stake out the defi nitive
position: "No modern polity can become democratically consolidated
unless it is fi rst a state."6
Yet, as Rose and Shin suggest, new democracies are developing
"backwards" by introducing mass elections without benefit
of modern state institutions, including a rule of law and a working
bureaucracy.7 Finally, with
attention to political accountability, Hadenius contends that democratization
requires "an interactive state…(that) is open for intercourse
in regulated ways with its citizens."8
Fortunately,
data have recently been collected that allow us to begin to measure
state capacities in Africa and thereby to evaluate the claims of
these theorists. The World Bank Institute's (WBI) governance indicators
for 1996-2002 make estimates along five dimensions: political stability,
government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control
of corruption. Taken together in an average scale, these indicators
provide a quick glimpse of state strength across countries.9
Even though
African states are generally weak, diversity again prevails. Compared
with countries on other continents, the median African state (represented
by Tanzania and Eritrea) scores negatively (-0.67) on the average
scale of state capacity (+2.0 to -2.0) calculated from WBI data.
But, within Africa, the range of state capacities is wide, from
Somalia's -1.84 to Botswana's +0.78. At the top of the heap, Botswana
stands out in terms of the effectiveness and probity of its civil
service and Somalia brings up the rear with its extremely low performance
on the rule of law and the displacement of economic policy by looting.
For simplicity's sake, we can divide the African sample at the median
and label the top half as "stronger" states and the bottom
half as "weaker" states.
State strength
and democracy
Is the strength of Africa's states related in any systematic way
to their democratic achievements? Figure 2 provides a compelling
answer. "Free" democracies have only arisen in Africa's
stronger states.10
In other words, the continent's 11 current democracies, from Benin
to South Africa, are all erected on the foundation of states that
enjoy above average capacities to create political order, govern
through legal means, and control corruption.
Note, however,
that the possession of a "stronger" state is no ironclad
guarantee that an African country will become politically "free."
Take four counterexamples: by the end of 2004, Eritrea, Mauritania,
Swaziland, and Togo - all relatively strong states-had failed to
undertake any meaningful measure of democratic reform. Thus, while
state capacity is a necessary requisite for democracy, it is requisite
for democracy, it is not a sufficient condition.
On the other
side of the coin, a functioning democracy has never emerged
in any emerged in any of Africa's weaker states. For their part,
weaker states seem capable of nurturing only "partly free"
or "un-free" political regimes, and then in roughly equal
proportions. By odds of three to one, weaker states are more likely
than stronger states to end up as autocratic or hybrid political
systems.
Why might this
be? Political disorder - whether from domestic social conflicts,
armed intervention from abroad, or the unhappy conjunction of internal
and external forces - invites political repression. An embattled
government that cannot control its own people or territory is much
more likely to crack down than to invite democratic accountability.
At least at the outset, the outbreak of war - either with neighboring
countries or, especially, civil war - prompts governments to try
to forge authority with iron and steel. Faced with the choice between
holding together a weak state or introducing democratic reforms,
rulers usually choose the former.
Africa's
weak giants
In Africa, autocratic regimes and weak states are especially likely
to coincide in large countries. As Figure 3 shows, state size and
state strength are negatively related.11
Large countries are less than half as likely as small countries
to be counted among Africa's stronger states. Specifically, Africa's
giants - like Nigeria, Sudan, Congo-Kinshasa, and Ethiopia-confront
unstable societies with feeble administrations. Their political
authorities are largely ineffective in the face of endemic conflict,
lawlessness and corruption.
In the first
place, warfare has undermined Africa's large states. During the
1990s, Ethiopia's conventional inter-state war with Eritrea over
a desert borderland eviscerated the government's development budget,
leading to renewed threats of famine. The Nigerian civil war of
1967-70 denuded one of the most entrepreneurial regions of the country.
The Sudanese civil war of 1983-2005 led to massive refugee outfl
ows.
And the deadly
combination of external interventions and regional insurgencies
has rendered Congo-Kinshasa essentially ungovernable for the last
fi ve decades. The country's present official name - the Democratic
Republic of the Congo - makes a mockery of the fact that, throughout
its history, the central state has never succeeded in convening
a free and fair election.
Second, without
political order, it is difficult to establish a rule of law. While
there has been a recent flurry of constitutional reform in Africa,
most new laws remain untested (as in Sudan and Ethiopia) or circumvented
(as in Nigeria and Congo-Kinshasa). It is unclear, for example,
whether Ethiopia's constitution, which allows for secession by regional
minorities, will ameliorate or provoke future conflicts.
Third, in the
absence of constitutionalism - that is, respect by leaders for the
law of the land-corruption will continue to flourish. In 2004, Africa's
three most populous countries ranked at the bottom of Transparency
International's 145-country Corruption Perception Index: Ethiopia
at 114, Congo-Kinshasa at 133, and Nigeria at 144.12
In the absence of democratic accountability, a narrow political
elite has been able to seize the state and turn it to private economic
advantage.
There is one
bright spot amid this woeful record. South Africa, with the subcontinent's
fourth largest population, possesses the happy combination of a
strong state and an emergent democracy. Since the historic transition
election of 1994 that ended apartheid, the country has remained
largely peaceful and resisted major foreign military entanglements.
While corruption is apparently rising among some top leaders of
the African National Congress, the country's Constitutional Court
has protected the sanctity of the law and has occasionally ruled
against the government. Offsetting this institutional progress,
however, public opinion falls short on key democratic qualities.
According to the latest Afrobarometer survey, more than half of
all adult citizens (58%) would be willing to "give up regular
elections…if a non-elected leader could deliver houses and
jobs."13
In its foreign
policy, too, South Africa is no paragon. President Thabo Mbeki has
served as a chief apologist for the autocratic regime in Zimbabwe.
Comparing Africa's two wealthiest giants - South Africa and Nigeria
- therefore reveals a paradox. On one hand, Nigeria's internal democracy
falls far short of universal standards; yet the government of President
Olusegun Obasanjo has intervened decisively on the side of democrats
in the West African countries of Liberia and Togo. On the other
hand, South Africa's democratic credentials far exceed those of
Nigeria; yet it has been a less effective ambassador for democracy
in its own region and in the rest of the continent.
Policy implications
I have argued that the extent of democracy in contemporary Africa
is related in important ways to the size and the strength of its
states. Between them, these two factors explain almost half of the
variance in the extent of democracy attained by African countries
in 2004.14 To improve the
promotion of democracy in Africa, policy makers should therefore
pay attention to the characteristics of African states.
But to clarify
policy choice we need a final probe: Which matters more? Size or
strength? Figure 4 clearly suggests the latter.15
Not only is a strong state a much more convincing predictor of the
emergence of democracy, but when both size and strength are considered
simultaneously the size of the state is not statistically significant.
This outcome
is just as well. After all, there is little that policy makers can
do - short of reconfiguring state boundaries or introducing punitive
methods of birth control, neither of which are desirable - to change
existing distributions of population. The tendency for democracy
to work better in small entities, however, does suggest that greater
attention should be paid to programs that decentralize power and
breathe life into local governments.
But before power
is divided and shared - a defining characteristic of democracy-policy
makers must first ensure the consolidation of a state. In Africa,
where states are generally weak, a good part of the challenge of
democracy building is actually a matter of state construction. At
the heart of the matter is the rehabilitation of Africa's run-down
systems of civilian administration. What Africa's large states need
- and what some of its small states like Botswana, Cape Verde and
Mauritius have begun to achieve - are effective and egalitarian
public bureaucracies.
One implication
is that the Bush Administration's strategy to reward only "good
performers" under the Millennium Challenge Account may be misplaced.
Simply to prevent conflicts and humanitarian disasters, aid resources
should be directed to shoring up weak states in Africa's partial
democracies, especially those in large, strategic countries.
One helpful
sequence of governance reforms would be the following: the constitutional
enforcement of separation of powers (with special attention to the
subordination of military forces to civilian legislative control);
the education and training of a new generation of civil servants
(including the recruitment of women); and the aggressive investigation
and punishment of offi cial corruption at all levels of the state.
These are no small tasks, but without the strengthening of the African
state under a rule of law, democracy is unlikely to survive, let
alone flourish.
*Michael
Bratton is Professor of Political Science and African Studies at
Michigan State University. His latest book, with Robert Mattes and
E. Gyimah-Boadi, is Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform
in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
1. Afrobarometer
Network, "Afrobarometer Round 2: Compendium of Comparative
Results," Afrobarometer Working Paper No. 34 (March 2004),
www.afrobarometer.org
2. Arch Puddington and Aili Piano, "The 2004 Freedom House
Survey: Worrisome Signs, Modest Shifts," Journal of Democracy
16:1 (January 2005), 103-8.
3. Larry Diamond, "Thinking About Hybrid Regimes," Journal
of Democracy 13:2 (2002), 22.
4. All population fi gures are from World Bank, African Development
Indicators, 2004 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2004).
5. While not linear, this relationship is reasonably strong (r =.249).
6. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition
and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist
Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 7.
7. Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin, "Democratization Backwards:
The Problem of Third-Wave Democracies," British Journal
of Political Science 31 (2001), 336.
8. Axel Hadenius, Institutions and Democratic Citizenship
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 131.
9. Because I see "voice and accountability" as political
regime characteristics, I drop this WBI indicator when analyzing
the state. It is based centrally on Freedom House (FH) scores, which
are usually taken as indicators of democracy, as in this article.
10. This relationship is very strong (r =-.533).
11. This roughly linear relationship is strong (r =-.291).
12. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index, 2004,
www.transparency.org
13. Robert Mattes, Annie Chikwana, and Alex Magezi, "South
Africa: After a Decade of Democracy," March 2005, www.afrobarometer.org
14. In a simple regression analysis, adjusted r squared = .481
15. In an ordinary least squares regression, with FH scores inverted,
state strength is strongly related to democracy (b = .732, p<.001)
whereas state size is not (b = -.141, p=.202). Regression is an
appropriate statistical test since raw source data, measured on
interval scales, are used for all variables.
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