"we are "relatively" democratic.
every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote."
Ken,
Let me register my strong disagreement with the premise, logic, and sentiment of the quoted excerpt from your post. Most Africans do not care if the US is relatively or absolutely democratic or even if it is not democratic at all. That is the business of the US. The US should be free to develop and evolve its own type of representative government, governing technique, and architecture of state.
But it seems that the US is not willing to allow other countries to evolve their own systems of governance and democracy, and is bent on arrogantly dictating to them how to be democratic. Unfortunately it works because the US has the purse strings and the leverage to blackmail and pressure poor, dependent countries to uncritically adopt liberal democracy, neoliberal economic reforms, etc.
This global "democratic tyranny" has become such an axiomatic creed that even a distinguished Africanist scholar and usually self-critical liberal like the great Kenneth Harrow does not have a problem and does not have the self-reflexivity to see the arrogant ideological certitude in a statement such as "every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote."
Who gets to decide for Africans and their states whether a political unit is too big or too small for the kind of democracy that may work for them and that aligns better with their culture, society, and socioeconomic station?
How did you arrive at the false dichotomy that a critique of the calamitous failings of liberal democracy in Africa amounts to calling for a system of people sitting under a tree to give their opinion? And why do you presume, if not that you have been deeply socialized into the normative Western liberal mindset that the Western democratic tradition is the best, that voting is necessary for democracy to occur, and that people must vote in the sense of universal suffrage of one-man-one-vote in order to have the nomenclatural imprimatur of democracy?
As you must have surmised by now, what I'm calling for is a self-critical and deconstructive reevaluation of the terms, concepts, buzzwords, and assumptions we take for granted as starting points and baselines for our conversation on democracy in Africa. Africa needs a democratic autonomy that is unencumbered by assumptions such as the one inherent in your statement that "every nation must be like that"--that is, must mimic America's "relative democracy," a proposition which completely sidesteps the foundational question of what it means to be "democratic" as though that question is already settled.
On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 12:59 PM 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--The truth is that the official advocates of democracy are oftenhypocritical. They went against a democratic Mosaddeghgovernment in Iran in 1953 in favor of feudalism; a democraticallyelected government of Arbenz in Guatemala, 1954; Brazil in 1964;and more recently seemed to prefer the TPLF, by no means democratic, against ademocratically elected government in Ethiopia. It turns out thatdemocracy is often just a word.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 1:15 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?Please be cautious: **External Email**
there is a new issue of the African Studies Review out (64:3).in it they have an "African Studies Keyword" and the word is Democracy. It was written by Nic Cheesemand and Sishuwa Sishuwa.
maybe this would bear on your reading of liberal democracy, moses.
my impression is that africans have been fighting for democracy ever since colonialism came. but what is democracy? i think of it as the people being self-governing, regardless of the model. it could be parliamentary, direct, indirect, representative etc.i am angry at the failures in the united states since my vote counts less than people in smaller states, a system set up by slaveowning states to enable them to country free northern states' greater population and urban centers.we are "relatively" democratic.every nation must be like that since they are too large to enable people to sit under a tree and give their opinion and then vote.
are autocracies better? i believe autocracies can function only by theboss paying off his army police bigmen supporters, at the expense of the people. it is not just.gotta goken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2022 12:08 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Are coups back?--Toyin Adepoju:
In 2010 or thereabouts, there was a coup in Niger and Nigeriens trooped out to celebrate the coup. That was a shock to the "democratization" brigade, but some of us were not surprised.
Then it happened in Mali more recently and people celebrated.
It then happened in Guinea and the coup was celebrated with a massive street rally, the coup plotters mobbed as heroes.
The situation in Burkina Faso is fluid, and I haven't seen audiovisual evidence of how the people reacted, but I would not be surprised if there were/are celebrations there too.
Which means, we should pose the difficult question of why people in these countries are celebrating coups, which they should be protesting in an era of "democratization" and "democratic" normativity.
Could it be that the liberal democratic model uncritically adopted and implemented across Africa is dysfunctional and has failed to promote unity and security and to fulfill the cardinal promise the pro-democracy forces made in the era of democratization: that liberal democracy would produce economic development and accountability?
--On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 9:20 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Is it Africans generally welcoming these coups or armed men taking power by force whatever people think?
Toyin
--On Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 02:36 Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
Are coups back? That may not be the right question. The right question may be, what's souring Africans on Western style democracy and making coups attractive and popular again? That question deserves a truthful answer, not an answer that uncritically reiterates the Washington Consensus and it's associated talking points and buzzwords about the imperative of "democratization."--
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 24, 2022, at 7:00 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
--
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