The abrogation of the electorate: an emergent African phenomenon

Abstract

This paper captures an emerging African phenomenon in which the form of democracy is brazenly used to invalidate its very substance. Drawing on particulars from Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria, we articulate the re-ascendance and re-invigoration of anti-democratic forces across Africa, and weigh up the challenge that violent erasure of the electoral sovereignty of citizens constitutes to democratic theory and practice.

Keywords:

• democracy
• elections
• Africa
• Kenya
• Zimbabwe
• Nigeria

Acknowledgements

The original draft of this paper was presented at the Conference on ‘Democratization in Africa: Retrospective and Future Prospects’, 4–5 December 2009, Leeds University, UK. We thank the organizers of the conference and participants in the session on ‘Electoral Authoritarianism in Africa’ for their questions and comments. The authors are grateful to the University of California-Davis and the University of Kansas General Research Fund (GRF) respectively, for funding the research on which the paper is based.

Notes

Sadiki, Rethinking Arab Democratization.

Alamu, ‘The Ticking Time-bomb in Ekiti’.

See Bratton and van de Walle, ‘Democratic Experiments in Africa’, 1997; Bratton, ‘Second Elections in Africa’; Adejumobi, ‘Elections in Africa’; Brown, ‘Authoritarian Leaders and Multiparty Elections in Africa’; Golder and Wantchekon, ‘Africa: Dictatorial and Democratic Electoral Systems Since 1946’; Villalón and VonDoepp, ‘Elites, Institutions, and the Varied Trajectories of Africa's Third Wave of Democracies’.

Huntington, ‘The Third Wave’, 1991.

Ake, ‘Rethinking African Democracy’, 33.

Diamond, ‘Three Paradoxes of Democracy’, 48.

Villalón and VonDoepp, ‘Elites, Institutions, and the Varied Trajectories of Africa's Third Wave of Democracies’, 1.

Diamond, ‘Elections without Democracy’.

Find reference

Villalón and VonDoepp, ‘Elites, Institutions, and the Varied Trajectories of Africa's Third Wave of Democracies’, 1.

Schmitter and Karl, ‘What Democracy is…’, 7.

Cf. Sandbrook, ‘Liberal Democracy in Africa’, 241; and Cowen and Laakso, Multi-party Elections in Africa, 1.

Cf. Diamond, Developing Democracy, 3; Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy’, 22; Zakaria 1997; and Chege, ‘Democratic Governance in Africa’, 267.

For example, O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.

Brown, ‘Authoritarian Leaders and Multiparty Elections in Africa’, 325.

O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 19.

Brown, ‘Authoritarian Leaders and Multiparty Elections in Africa’.

Collier, ‘The Trouble With Elections’.

Woldermariam, The Rise of Elective Dictatorship and the Erosion of Social Capital, 3.

Cf. O'Donnel and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; Linz and Stephan, ‘Towards Consolidated Democracies’; and [0]Hewitt, ‘Elections and Elites in Africa’.

Aalen and Tronvoll, ‘The End of Democracy?’, 193.

Good, The Liberal Model and Africa, 6.

Schedler, ‘The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism’, 1.

See Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy’; Good, The Liberal Model and Africa; Lindberg, Democracy and Elections in Africa; Schedler, ‘The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism’; and Woldemariam, The Rise of Elective Dictatorship and the Erosion of Social Capital.

Collier and Vincente, ‘Violence, Bribery, and Fraud’, 2.

The few exceptions to this could include the July 1994 coup in The Gambia that brought in Col. Yahya Jammeh and the December 2008 coup in Guinea after the death of President Lansana Conté led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara.

Nyamnjoh, ‘2002 Cameroon: Over Twelve Years of Cosmetic Democracy’, 5.

Ake, ‘Rethinking African Democracy’, 34.

In his 1991 essay in the Journal of Democracy, Claude Ake argues that this position ‘stems from a confusion between the principles of democracy and their institutional manifestations’, Ake, ‘Rethinking African Democracy’, 34.

See Ake, The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa; Diamond, Developing Democracy; Saul, ‘Liberal Democracy vs. Popular Democracy in Southern Africa’; Shivji, ‘State and Constitutionalism', 1999.

Ake, ‘Rethinking African Democracy’.

Shivji, ‘Contradictory Class Perspectives’, 255.

Saul, ‘Liberal Democracy vs. Popular Democracy in Southern Africa’.

Ibid., 340.

Diamond, 1997, 341–2[0].

Di Palma, To Craft Democracies.

Ibid., 22–4.

Saul, ‘Liberal Democracy vs. Popular Democracy in Southern Africa’, 342[0].

Ibid.

Kew, Crafting the New Nigeria, 141.

Cf. Herskovits, 2007, 116[0].

Diamond, ‘Elections Without Democracy’, 28.

For instance, in spite of the widespread fraud reported by both local and foreign observers, President Thabo Mbeki quickly recognized the ‘victory’ of candidate Umaru Yar'Adua after Nigeria's 2007 presidential election.

Ndegwa, ‘Kenya Third Time Lucky?’, 145.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Wrong, It's Our Turn to Eat, 5.

Ibid.

See Ashforth, ‘Ethnic Violence and the Prospects for Democracy’.

See, Adebanwi, ‘The Age of the Coup Democrats’.

‘Kenya's Elections: Twilight Robbery, Daylight Murder’. The Economist, January 3, 2008.

Mutua, Kenya's Quest for Democracy, 5.

Bracking, ‘Development Denied’, 343.

See Kriger, ‘Robert Mugabe, Another Too-Long-Serving African Ruler’.

Chikhuwa, A Crisis of Governance: Zimbabwe, 137.[0]

Sylvester, ‘Whither Opposition in Zimbabwe?’, 406.[0]

Ibid., 403.

Laakso, ‘The Politics of International Election Observation’, 438[0].

Ibid., 448.

Ibid., 449.

Strategic Comments, ‘Zimbabwe's Pivotal Election’, 1; Makumbe 1998.

Maclean, ‘Mugabe at War’, 514–15.

Ibid.

Strategic Comments, ‘Zimbabwe's Pivotal Election’, 1.

Sunday Mail (Harare), February 245, 2008.

Solidarity Peace Trust, ‘Punishing Dissent, Silencing Citizens’, 1.

Dewa, ‘Factors Affecting Voting Behavior’, 491.

Raftopoulos and Eppel, ‘Desperately Seeking Sanity’, 372.

Stepan, 1993, 64[0].

Quoted in Raftopoulos and Eppel, ‘Desperately Seeking Sanity’, 369.

Odebode, ‘2007 Elections’.

Amuwo, ‘The Political Economy of Nigeria's Post-military Elections’, 38.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Alamu, ‘Looking Forward and Looking Beyond’, 2009, 3.

Smith, ‘A Squalid End to Empire’; New African, ‘How the British Undermined Democracy in Africa’; Oyedoyin[0], ‘Meeting Harold Smith Face-to-face’.

TMG, ‘Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the Burden of Legitimacy’.

TMG, Do the Votes Count?, 11.

TMG, ‘Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the Burden of Legitimacy’.

Tayo, ‘Big Men and Ballot Boxes’, 15; cf. Lewis[0], ‘Nigeria: Elections in a Fragile Regime’, 142.

Opeyemi[0], ‘PDP Will Not Rule for 60 Years’.

TMG, Do the Votes Count?, 9.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Rawlence and Albin-Lackey, ‘Nigeria's 2007 General Elections’, 498[0].

Lewis, ‘Nigeria: Elections in a Fragile Regime’, 131.

TMG, ‘Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the Burden of Legitimacy’.

Fayemi, ‘An Insider's View of Electoral Politics’.

Ibid., 6.

Omotola, ‘“Garrison” Democracy in Nigeria, 195.

Herskovits, ‘Nigeria's Rigged Democracy’, 115.

Adejumobi, 2007[0], 12.

Herskovits, ‘Nigeria's Rigged Democracy’, 115.

TMG, ‘Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the Burden of Legitimacy’.

Rawlence and Albin-Lackey, ‘Nigeria's 2007 General Elections’, 497.

Woldermariam, The Rise of Elective Dictatorship and the Erosion of Social Capital, 27.

Kaviraj 2003, quoted in Gupta, ‘Literacy, Bureaucratic Domination, and Democracy’, 181[0].

Basedau, Votes, Money and Violence.

Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa.

Agbaje and Adejumobi, [0]‘Do Votes Count?’.

Fawole, ‘Voting Without Choosing’.