African democracy – still disciplined after all these years?
| Author | Rita Abrahamsen |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117813489655c |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: democracy and world order |
Kurki et al. 241
African democracy – still disciplined after all these
years?
Rita Abrahamsen
University of Ottawa
Africa is undoubtedly more democratic today than it was 20 years ago when the ‘third
wave’ reached the continent. Yet, democratic progress and consolidation appear to have
stalled, and although elections are now a routine in most countries, observers speak of
hybrid regimes, electoral dictatorships, continued presidentialism and democracy with
adjectives.1 What is more, the poor remain poor and excluded, and despite recent spec-
tacular growth rates, democracy has done little to deliver on its promise of a better life
for the majority. From the perspective of Disciplining Democracy, this was in many
ways predictable, but at the same time, it must be acknowledged that much has changed
in the last decade of democracy promotion, and the conceptualization of democracy
within development discourse is now very different from the 1990s. Most importantly,
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other donors have aban-
doned Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), and political conditionality is a thing
of the past. In their place, we have a discourse of partnership and a new emphasis on
poverty reduction. In revisiting the arguments of Disciplining Democracy, I nevertheless
suggest that African democracy remains disciplined, but in different ways and through
different technologies.2
The discipline of the 1990s
Disciplining Democracy deals with Africa’s transition to democracy in the 1990s and
particularly with the manner in which democracy was promoted and constructed within
development discourse and the good governance agenda of the World Bank. The analysis
proceeds from an understanding of democracy as an essentially contested concept and
shows how this contestability was entirely invisible within development discourse and
mainstream analyses of democratic transitions. Instead, democracy was presented as an
unquestionable ‘good’ about which there was little or no difference of opinion. The
emphasis was on political rights, not economic and social rights, and the image promoted
was of one worldwide democracy movement with shared goals and aspirations, with
donors and creditors joining hands with the African poor against oppressive and authori-
tarian leaders. Democracy was also intimately linked to continued economic liberaliza-
tion, and the two were presented as the two sides of the same coin. Not only was
democracy perceived as a precondition for economic growth and development, but the
discourse constructed a binary opposition between state intervention and democracy,
whereby the state was associated with the development failures and authoritarianism of
the past, and further curtailment of the state and its activities came to be seen as a people-
friendly, democratic venture.
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