Democratisation Flashcards
What is the difference between Thin and Thick conceptions of Democracy? How could these two stances be described? (T Young)
- Thin conceptions see elections as an arggregator but essentially the pursuit of private interest
- Thick conceptions suggest that a democratic society cannot flourish if citizens pursue their own narrow interest
- One stance is more structural in terms of which kind of politics appear where, looking at the preconditions of democracy, whether these are structural or cultural/behavioural
- Thick conception is more action-orintated, asserting that as political action and judgement make a difference, there can be more or less strategies of democratisation
what are regime transitions shaped by? (T Young)
-They are shaped by the institutional legacies of preceding political regimes
What does Englund suggest the scope of the political should be broadened to? (T Young)
-The scope of the political must be enlarged to include practises and institutions that have no obvious place in the liberal political sphere
What did colonialism do to vertical accountability? (Brown & Kaiser)
-it reduced it
Colonialism was never inteded to be…., it was…. (Brown & Kaiser)
Colonialism was never intended to be a school of democracy, it was extractive
Examples of companies where multiparty democracy lasted for more than a handful of years (Brown & Kaiser)
- Gambia
- Botswana
- Mauritius
Botswana case study (Brown & Kaiser)
- Positive aspects with decades of stable, competitive multiparty politics
- Sklar warns of domination by elite and prosperous civil servants who have co-opted the traditional authorities of Tswana society and rule in conjunction with the leaders of the dominant political class
Benin Case study (Brown & Kaiser)
- 1972 Officer Kerekou seized power and declared a single-party system
- Late 80s bankrupted economy so kerekou convened a national conference to discuss future course
- conference in 1990 declared itself sovereign, redefined powers of president to figurehead and appointed former world bank staff member to prime minister
- 1991 Soglo democratically elected president
Kenya Case Study (Brown & Kaiser)
- 1963-1991 one party state led by Kenyatta’s KANU
- 1980s creeping autocracy leads to pressure from law society and mainstream churches whose profession afforded them some protection
- Late 1991 donors suspended all new aid to Kenya until a number of reforms adopted, Kenya returned to multi party
- 1992 and 1997 saw illegitimate strategies like skewed distribution of constituencies and irregularities in voter regestries
- 2002 election much fairer removing Kanu from power
What Impediments are there for democratisation in Africa (Brown & Kaiser)
-The State and civil soc both tend to be weak
What’s a common mistake in Africanist literature (Schatzberg)
confusing longevity with legitimacy
What are the three perspectives on democracy? (Eyoh)
- Universalist
- popular democratic
- nativist
What is the universalist perspective? (Eyoh)
- It regards multipartyism as a pillar of democracy, combined with a vigorous defence of the universality of individual rights as conceived by liberal tradition
- Criticism that they appear oblivious to the fact that competitive electoral politics are no guarantee for damping the politics of clientelism and ethno-regional competition
What is the popular democratic perspective? (Eyoh)
-Objection to the conflation of democracy with multipartyism and government accountability
What is the Nativist perspective? (Eyoh)
-discomfort with the conflation of multipartyism and democracy. Nativists have a conviction that rural soceities remain repositories of democratic values from which to build culturally germane, participatory forms of democracy at nation state level
