Democracy in Africa: A Very Short History

When discussing governance in Africa, one must be circumspect when applying the term "democracy." One reason for doing so is because the term is imprecise. However, while differing in the attributes they posit and the qualifications they impose, those who write of democracy join in emphasizing its essential property: that it is a form of government in which political power is employed to serve the interests of the public rather than of those who govern. And it is this attribute that I take as defining good governance. In this essay, I argue that democracy, in this sense, has been reborn in Africa. The evidence, I argue, strongly suggests that its renaissance has been accompanied by changes in public policies and political practices - - ones that generate benefit for the people. But the evidence also suggests that political dangers remain: incumbent parties strive to suborn the electoral process and incumbent executives seek to prolong their terms in office. As elsewhere, to retain their political liberties, Africa's citizens must "remain vigilant." Paraphrasing John Adams at the Constitutional, Africa today may enjoy better governance, but "can [she] keep it?"


W^HEN DISCUSSING GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA, ONE MUST BE
circumspect when applying the term "democracy" (but see Sklar 1987).One reason for doing so is because the term is imprecise.As in the vmtings of Schumpeter (1950), "democracy" can refer to political competition and, in particular, open competition among rival political parties.Others, such as Dahl (1971), argue that to be democratic, such competition must take place vdthin a setting infused with attendant rights and freedoms-the right to association, for example, or to free speech-and such rights must be equally shared.Still others, such as Huntington (1991) or Przeworski, Alvarez et al. (2000), would insist that even were a polity to exhibit these attributes, it could not be labeled democratic until one party had surrendered power to another upon losing a national election.While differing in the attributes they posit and the qualifications they impose, those who v^n-ite of democracy join in emphasizing its essential property: that it is a form of government in which political power is employed to serve the interests of the public rather than of those who govern.
In this essay I argue that democracy, in this sense, has been reborn in Africa.The evidence, I argue, strongly suggests that its renaissance has been accompanied by changes in public policies and political practices that generate benefit for the people.But the evidence also suggests that political dangers remain: incumbent parties strive to suborn the electoral process and incumbent executives seek to prolong I wish to thank Befekadu Degefe for his comments and criticisms of earlier versions of this paper.their terms in office.As elsewhere, to retain their political liberties, Africa's citizens must "remain vigilant."Paraphrasing John Adams at the U.S. constitutional convention, Africa today may enjoy better governance, but "can [she] keep it?"

INDIGENOUS ROOTS
Without seeking to romanticize the past, we can note the democratic tendencies that infused precolonial societies in Africa.In his extraordinary series on the political history of precolonial Central Africa, for example, Jan Vansina emphasizes the radical republicanism of the lineage systems of govemment and the efforts they expended to elude domination by centralized states (Vansina 1966(Vansina ,1978(Vansina ,1990(Vansina ,1999(Vansina ,2005)).Even v\dthin centralized kingdoms, others stress, there existed prominent fora vdthin which citizens could challenge the royals and their bureaucrats.^In some, the office ofthe prime minister was reserved to the commoners.In others, commoner councils provided a check on the public administration.In still others, societies-some secret, others, like the asafo, fully public-organized a defense for commoner interests.FoUovwng a study ofthe precolonial political systems, one author concludes: The evidence suggests that, while there was inequality in the states of pre-colonial Africa, those who held positions of privilege had to assure that the benefits created by states were widely shared.For the bargaining power ofthe masses, relative to the elites, was strong... (Bates 1987:42).

FOREIGN OCCUPATION
When in the nineteenth century imperial powers occupied the continent, they imposed local rulers on societies that had long resisted pohtical authority.When they encountered societies that possessed chiefs, they either displaced these rulers and imposed rulers of their OWTI or forged opportunistic alliances with incumbent chiefs.As many have noted, chiefs and headmen found room to maneuver in the contested space between the occupier and their people; when they did so, however, it was often in pursuit of their own agendas (Gluckman 1955).The chiefs were able to exploit their political position to acquire-and sell-land; to extract-and divert-tax revenues; and to promote the fortunes of their kin within the new political order.They were able to evade many ofthe restraints that previously had limited their powers, for to oppose them was to risk provoking the wrath of the colonial occupier.
Follovwng the global conflicts ofthe twentieth century, the Soviet Union and United States moved to the center ofthe global stage.While the two great powers clashed ideologically and politically, they shared a disdain for Europe's political prétentions.And when local political forces rallied in resistance to colonial occupation, the great powers let Europe's empires collapse and new nations rise from the political rubble.

POLITICAL TRANSITION
A notable feature ofthe nationalist movements was the degree to which they targeted the chiefs.Few who did so opposed the institution ofthe chieftaincy per se; traditional political institutions still evoked respect even among the educated elite, and not only because a disproportion of its members came from chiefly families.Where the chiefs were attacked, it was because they occupied the firont ranks of the colonial order and because they had employed public office to secure private advantages.In this sense, the nationalist movements drew upon and renewed the democratic impulses that lay embedded in local pohtical institutions.
Ironically, in this period the imperial powers also began to promote the forces of democratization.Following World War II, they were no longer able to dominate the course of events outside of their European base and so sought to forge ways of shaping outcomes that they no longer could control.Whereas in the past, they could pick and impose local political leaders-that is, the chiefs-they now had to be satisfied with merely shaping the manner in which such leaders were chosen.Out of political necessify, they therefore began to introduce representative institutions.They permitted prominent locals to take office in legislative and executive councils and, after a decent interval, they permitted local citizens to choose who among them were to do so.The culmination of the process was "self-government": the assumption of full executive and legislative power by local politicians.
The administrative, coercive, and judicial arms of the colonial state exercised close oversight of this transition.These bodies treated local pohtical organizations as subversive^ and monitored the actions of pohtical activists, regulated the holding of meetings, and censored the content of local publications.The imperial powers introduced democracy as a means of disengaging from an enemy they could not defeat.The introduction of democratic institutions was thus the by-product of a search for an advantageous way of negotiating the terms of a pohtical surrender.
The colonial governments may have been forced to introduce electoral competition and representative institutions; but the apparatus they employed to shape these institutions was not one that sought to guarantee democratic rights and freedoms.Rather, it was one that sought to safeguard and protect the institutions that had secured foreign domination over the people of Africa (Young 1994).

INDEPENDENCE
It can come as no surprise, then, that the forces that took over the colonial state, while celebrating self-government and the end of imperial rule, failed to endorse open political competition and the attendant rights of political expression and public assembly.Symptomatic is the fate of opposition parties in the period immediately following political independence.Twenty-six sub-Saharan countries in Africa had gained independence by the late 1960s: the territories of the former French West and Equatorial Africa, British West and East Africa, and the Central African states of Malawi, Zambia, and Congo."By 1960, the year in which most of... Africa became independent," Ruth Collier writes, "nine countries had (formed) one-party regimes" (Colher 1982: 95).By the mid-1970s, seven more govemments imposed single-party mle.In the first wave of consohdation-much of which occurred prior to independence and during the period of self-government-the fold-ing of the opposition tended to be voluntary, or at least the product of negotiation, with opposition parties "crossing the fioor" and merging with the government.In the second wave, which occurred after independence, political consolidation tended to be involuntary: it was the product of rigged elections, the jailing of political opponents, and the outlawing of political parties.Then, Collier notes, came a wave of coups and the formation of mihtary regimes.Following the coups of the early 1960s, the military had handed power back to civilians.Subsequently, however, it chose to remain in office.And by the mid-1990s, authoritarian regimes had "become a dominant feature of African political life" (1982: 96).(See figures 1 and 2 online^ for depictions of the distribution of political regimes in post-independent Africa.)

POLICIES
In the postindependence period, governments sought to mobilize political power to promote economic development.As eloquently captured by Ndulu (2008), in part they did so because economic doctrines prescribed interventionist policies.Whether to break out of "poverty traps," to induce "backward and forward linkages," or to launch a "big push" toward economic development, economic theory advocated that governments invest in industries and intervene in markets so as to transform the structure of their economies.As Ndulu (2008) argues, political sentiment reinforced economic doctrines.By investing in firms that could produce at home what formerly had been imported from abroad, they sought to lessen their economic dependence on their former colonial masters.The power of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party's ability to expel the imperial powers provided further inspiration to those who sought to use the state to promote development.
Rather than letting market forces determine prices in the macroeconomy, many governments in Africa strove to regulate both the interest and exchange rates, keeping them artificially low: capital equipment could then be imported more cheaply.By imposing tariffs and licensing imports, governments sought to limit competition from abroad; and by licensing firms and restricting entry, they attempted to suppress competition in the domestic market as well.To promote industrial development, not only did governments thus seek to strengthen the incentives for private investment: they themselves also invested in the formation of firms or nationalized firms that had proven slow to invest.
Governments also intervened in the rural sector.By expelling private agents from agricultural markets, they gained the power to influence prices and employed that power to lower the price of farm products.In export markets, they purchased goods at low domestic prices and then sold them at prices prevailing in global markets, pocketing the difference in the form of public revenues.In food markets, they used their market power to lower the prices charged urban consumers, be they firms purchasing raw materials, such as cotton, or urban dwellers purchasing staple foods, such as maize.In their study of the political economy of Africa's development in the postindependence period, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) labels this mix of policies a "control regime" (Ndulu, O'Connell et al. 2008), a term I shall adopt for this essay.
As recognized by Schattschneider (1965), public policies bear testimony to the stmcture of power in a society; in his words, they institutionalize "patterns of bias."In postindependence Africa, the dominant political structure included the political elite, which chose public policies; a rapidly expanding public sector, charged with their implementation; and a nascent industrial sector, which was the intended beneficiary.The rural sector remained massive in size, generating over half the national income and employing three-quarters or more of the labor force, but it was excluded, economically and politically, from the new order.Those who had seized power and implemented control regimes mounted what amounted to a war of attrition against their rural populations.Note the incidence ofthe costs and benefits: appreciating the currency may have lowered the costs of importing capital equipment, but it also lowered the earnings of agricultural exporters and the price of food imported from abroad.Limiting imports of manufactured goods from abroad may have promoted the profitability of domestic firms; but it also enabled them to raise the prices they charged consumers, most of whom were farmers.And while intervention in agricul-tural markets enabled govemments to tax foreign earnings and contain pressures for higher prices for consumer staples, it lowered farm revenues.Control regimes were thus systematically biased in favor of the nascent urban sector (Bates 1981;Krueger, Schiffet aL 1992;Anderson and Masters 2009).(See figure 3 online for a depiction of how, in the 1970s and 1980s, this mix of policies had been adopted by a majority of Africa's regimes.)

CRACKS IN THE EDIFICE
Control regimes could not be sustained economically.Consider, for example, the market for foreign exchange.When the local currency increases in value, the prices of foreign goods fall and the demand for imports rises.By the same token, the value of exports falls: exporters receive fewer local "cedi" for each "dollar" they eam abroad.With an increase in imports and a decline in exports, the country begins to accumulate deficits; to remain solvent, it must borrow.But when Mexico defaulted in its external obligations, private bankers stopped lending abroad and called in their loans, and Africa's states could no longer borrow in order to cover their deficits.For Africa's citizens, the result was hardship.For lack of foreign exchange, drugs disappeared from hospitals and textbooks from schools.Trucks, tractors, and automobiles stood idle, for want of imported parts.So too factories whose machines had been purchased abroad.Because mechanical equipment could not be refurbished, the infrastmcture could not be maintained.The supply of electricity became even more erratic; roads crumbled, many becoming impassable during the rains; locomotives, ferries, and steamships decayed, rendering transport more expensive and less reliable.All whose quality of life depended on the quality of this infrastructure suffered as a result of its decline.In addition, Africa's people suffered from rising prices, as govemments printed money in an effort to finance their deficits.
In the midst of this decline, Africa's authoritarian polities remained in place.Indeed, the very interventions that weakened their economies added, in the short mn at least, to their political power.Consider once again the market for foreign exchange: as we have argued, an appreciation ofthe local currency leads to an increase in the demand for imports and a decrease in the supply of exports, thus generating a shortage of foreign exchange at official prices.In black markets, however, because ofthe excess demand, the price of foreign exchange rises.Those manning the national bank and finance ministries thus found themselves in command of a very precious resource.By controlling appointments to these bureaucracies, the president could control its allocation, conferring benefits on friends, denying them to enemies, and thereby building a loyal band of followers-one willing to defend him, politically, even while his policies crippled the economy.
By the same measure, however, the members of Aftica's political elite sacrificed their political legitimacy.Consider the vista that lay before Africa's citizens.Their economy lay in tatters, public services were in disarray, and public infrastructure in disrepair.And yet the favored few-that is, those in power-drove expensive cars, dressed in expensive apparel, and sent their family's children to expensive schools abroad.By laying hold to and manipulating prices in the economy, their mlers had, on the one hand, converted markets into political machines.But on the other, they had incited the wrath of their people, thereby preparing the ground for those who might wish to drive them from power.
Political criticism mounted not only from within but also mounted from those who held Africa's debts abroad.At first, foreign creditors sought changes in government policies.To increase their leverage, they gathered into blocs, which were organized and maintained by the international financial institutions.As coordinators of Aftica's creditors, these institutions then acquired great influence.At first, they entered into dialogue with the debtor govemments, pointing to alternative ways of securing their policy objectives.Increasingly, however, they spoke harshly, offering forbearance but in exchange for the governments' willingness to change their policies.Over time, the harsher tone prevailed, and Aftica's governments found themselves facing growing foreign pressure to alter their economic policies.
Subsequently, the staff of the international financial institutions and, in particular, the staff of the World Bank, began to call not only for policy but also for political reform.In part they did so because of the puzzle posed by the behavior of Africa's regimes: Why would govemments, they asked, choose policies that violated the economic interests of its people?They would do so, they reasoned, if their preferences were not aligned wdth those who owTied and managed the economies productive resources.From this reasoning emerged the outlines of a strategy: by rendering a government accountable, they could harness its pohtical ambitions.Should the citizens be able to dismiss a government that had harmed their interests, politicians would then possess an incentive to choose policies that strengthened rather than undermined the economy.In a series of publications (World Bank 1981, 1991a, 1991b, 1994), the managers of Africa's debt advocated political reform as means of attaining policy reform in Africa.
The clash between Africa's creditors and its governments appeared one-sided: the creditors were rich and powerful; Africa, poor and weak.But political as well as economic interests were in play; and the international agencies were public, not private institutions and under the control of governments.During the Cold War, Africa had become a theatre of the Cold War.Armies backed by the Soviet Union on the one side and the United States on the other clashed on the Horn and Kenya provided the United States harbor facilities and overfiight rights in the region.Liberia provided the United States an outpost for tracking satellites and a refueling base for its airplanes.And Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) provided a base for forces, financed by the United States, that fought movements backed by Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union.When an arap Moi, a Sergeant Doe, or a Mobutu Sese Seko came under pressure from the Intemational Monetary Fund or the World Bank to reform his economic pohcies, the State Department, the Foreign Office, or the Quai d'Orsay would step in to defend their political chent.Because they held a majority on the boards of the international financial institutions.Western govemments were well placed to temper the reformist zeal of their technocrats.For political reasons, the economic costs of bad policies were judged worth pajdng.
Those Africans who had scanned the political and economic terrain about them and been moved to demand pohtical change thus found themselves joined by reformers abroad.But both were checked by political forces at the global level.

POLITICAL REFORM
Following the fall ofthe Berlin Wall in 1989, the resistance that had originated in the foreign ministries of the West collapsed.Dictators that had once proved embarrassing but useful were now simply embarrassing and were set aside as qmically as they had once been employed.The result was a msh to reform.As depicted in table 1, the process began in French speaking West Africa: in Febmary 1990, in Benin, local reformers set up a national convention, which soon declared itself a constitutional assembly, thus arrogating to itself the power ofthe state; the assembly legalized opposition parties and called for open elections to fill executive positions and legislative offices.Inspired by events in Benin, reformers in other states then convened similar conventions; the practice spread through neighboring polities, then inland and southward, and penetrated into Central Africa.In concert with these domestic political forces, those in the international financial institutions renewed their push for political reform; this time their efforts met Uttle resistance from Westem govemments.
Not only did the new international realities loosen the restraints under which they labored; the collapse of communism strengthened their hand.For now the international financial institutions could point to, say, the U.S. Congress and credibly argue that without political reform, govemments in Aftica stood httle chance when competing for international aid with states just liberated ftom communism.
Under intense pressure ftom citizens at home and mounting pressures ftom creditors abroad, governments in Aftica rapidly changed their political institutions.The pace and extent of these reforms is vividly captured in figures 1 and 2 (available online).

THE AUTHORITARIAN REACTION
When govemments have been authoritarian, they have good reason to fear political competition and the possible loss of power.Authoritarian mlers commonly used public power to acquire private wealth, seiz- ing land, appropriating shares in firms and financial institutions, and extorting bribes from those they mle.Were they to be deprived of the defenses available to those in office-command of the pohce, the jails, and the office of the pubhc prosecutor-they would become vulnerable to reprisals.As democratic forces mobihzed, then, so too did efforts to repress them.In Kenya, opposition leaders were jailed and tortured; police broke up public rallies, on occasion shooting into the crowds; and prominent critics of the regime perished in mysterious circumstances.In Togo, the military government mobihzed its soldiers who, with bayonets and bullets, cleared the capital's streets of citizens rallying in support of pohtical reform.Mobutu, Mugabe, Habyarimana: each mobilized their regimes coercive powers in an eftort to suppress those demanding democracy.
As the incumbent elite became increasingly insecure, other politicians mobilized their own supporters, the better to defend their interests in the subsequent scramble for power.Some recruited thugs from the streets, who could be gathered quickly and quickly set aside; others assembled militias, which once formed remained under arms.
(See figures 4 and 5 online.Figure 4 shows the "average level of reform" and the percentage of countries reportedly harboring armed militias ftom 1970-1996; figure 5 shows the rise and decline of civil wars ftom 1960 to date.) The period of reform was thus also a period of political violence.But there was also a subsequent decline in the frequency of conflict.Widespread violence, it would appear, was a properfy of the transitional d5aiamics of political reform rather than ofthe new steady state.The new democracies appear to be no more prone to such conflict than did their authoritarian predecessors; it was the transition to democracy that was violent.
In the short term, reform proved costly: it precipitated an authoritarian reaction and political violence.But in the longer term, in many states, political order returned; and along with the blessings of peace came changes in economic policy.

POLICY CHANGE
Recall the incidence of the costs and benefits of control regimes: the benefits accrued to nascent manufacturing and the rapidly expanding public sector, both based in urban centers, while the costs fell upon consumers and the producers of agricultural products, most of whom live in the countryside.Given the nature of Aftica's economies, however, when politicians must campaign for votes in order to secure power, they then must compete for the votes of farmers.To win these votes, they need to champion policies that generate benefits for, rather than inflict costs upon, rural dwellers.The introduction of competitive elections thus empowered the mral majorify and the patterns of political bias embodied in govemment policies.
Two bits of evidence pertain.The first comes ftom the AERC study, which argues for an "elective affinify" between authoritarian politics and the maintenance of control regimes and found that govemments chosen in competitive elections were 20 percentage points less likely to adopt control regimes (Bates 2008: 196).Of more direct relevance is a World Bank study (Anderson forthcoming) of govemment policies toward agriculture.As an aggregate measure of these policies, the research team calculated the Relative Rate of Assistance (or RRA), which compares the degree to which govemment policies enable producers in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors to raise prices over and above those that would prevail in competitive markets (as benchmarked by prices in global markets).When govemment policies exhibit urban bias, then the measure turns negative; positive values indicate a bias toward farmers.(See figures 6 and 7 online for depictions of the greater degree of urban bias consistently exhibited by governments in Africa as compared to those in regions in the rest ofthe world, and the effect of the size of the mral electorate on discrimination against farming.) The recent revival of economic grov^h in Africa comes from several sources: the infusion of capital from South Africa, China, and migrants living abroad, and the demand for primary products from the growing economies of Asia surely play the dominant role.Before these forces impacted upon the economies of Africa, however, the AERC researchers had noted that the adoption of a control regime, all else being equal, was associated vnth a nearly 2 percentage point reduction in the rate of economic groM^h.Given that agriculture is the largest single industry in most African economies, it is thus possible that the abandonment of control regimes plays a significant part as well.

CONCLUSION
Political competition between organized political parties provides one means to render mlers accountable, thereby aligning their interests with the interests of those they rule.Insofar as private citizens own and control the productive resources of society, the result should be that govemments that are accountable will use public power with restraint: rather than using the power of the state to seize the wealth of those they mle, they will seek to protect its creation.
Further evidence ofthe relationship between political reform and the conduct of govemments comes from the work of Humphreys and Bates (2005).Governments that face political competition in upcoming elections, they find, are more likely to honor contracts and less likely to extract bribes.(The results parallel the data contained in figure 8 [available online], which captures the World Bank's summary ofthe ratings of govemments.For the African sample, authoritarian governments are rated as more corrupt, less respectful ofthe mle of law, and less effective than are nonauthoritarian regimes.)'' While we are still far from establishing cause and effect, the evidence is suggestive: differences in the institutions that govern Africa appear to go hand in hand wdth differences in the way in which govemments employ their powers.Political reform appears to have elicited political restraint and a higher quality of governance.
The question is, of course, whether the reformist impulse will endure or erode.The elections in Nigeria and Kenya in 2007 underscore the potential for backsliding; so too those in Sudan and Rwanda.Also indicative are the efforts to revoke the limits on the terms of presidents, as documented in figure 9, available online.
Political liberty is always in peril.As Adams proclaimed to the citizens of Philadelphia, so he might have exhorted those in modern Africa: Remain vigilant!NOTES 1. "You have eaten me": this wistful phrase-variously attributed to Yomba or Lunda kings, upon assuming office-confirms the monarch's recognition that he must subordinate his private needs to the obligation of public service.2. Indicative is that in the British colonial archives, the files on the nationalist parties bore the same label (SOC) as did those for armed insurgencies, nativist rebellions, and communist cells.3.All figures and the appendix accompanying this article are available online at <www.socres.org/appendices/774bates.htnil>.4. For the definition of an authoritarian and nonauthoritarian regime, see the appendix, available online.Applying a t-test to the difference between the means, the difference in the ratings in each ofthe four panels is highly significant.