Abstract

MODERN STATE STRUCTURE AND DEMOCRATIC DEFICITS IN AFRICA

Ogunrotifa Ayodeji Bayo

Volume: 2 Issue: 1 2012

Abstract:

Since the early 1990s when the trajectory of third wave of global democratisation was sweeping through most of Eastern Europe, former soviet colonies, Asia and African states, it was widely held among scholars that democratic regimes were found to be more reliable than the sit-tight dictators. However, few decades after the observations of scholars, the euphoria that characterised democratisation in Africa had since fizzled into thin air as electoral fraud, Violence and clamp down against the opposition, repression against Civil society and the press and political impunity of the ruling party to resort to force and fraud before, during, and after elections rather than relinquishing power, became more profound and thus, underscores a dangerous democratic deficits that pervaded contemporary African states. Yet, scholarly literature espousing the discourse of democratisation has been consigned to the backwaters of multipartyism (Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle 1997), transitions paradigm (Carothers, 2002) and Presentability hypothesis (Joseph, 1998) with little focus on how state structure affect democracy and contribute to its deficits in the 21st century. Although recent attempts by Shaoguang Wang (2003) appear to be the starting point of debate in identifying ‘state structure’ and ‘institutions’ as a potential problem to democracy. Despite the relevance of his work in addressing the problem of state weakness in the discourse of democratisation, Wang’s position though limited to Chinese state, failed to explain how state structure constitutes impediments to democratisation.

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