Is democracy in Africa at risk?

August 22, 2024 - Carolyn Logan and Rorisang Lekalake

This article was originally published here: https://goodauthority.org/news/africa-democracy-elections-views-risks-afrobarometer/

Africa’s democratic project faces challenging times. Since 2020, soldiers have pushed out elected governments in six countries (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Sudan) in a spate of coups that sometimes appeared to enjoy a measure of public support. Presidents in Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and pre-coup Gabon have defied or circumvented constitutional limits to extend their tenure in office. And other leaders have used subtler means to erode democracy, weakening institutional checks on their authority, imposing media blackouts, harassing the opposition, and even, in Tunisia, suspending parliament.

These setbacks have often overshadowed the good-news stories. Amid a public outcry, in early 2024 Senegal’s Constitutional Council blocked former President Macky Sall’s effort to orchestrate a “constitutional coup.” High courts in Kenya (2017) and Malawi (2020) rejected flawed election results. And Zambians in 2021 reversed a slide toward authoritarianism by electing opposition candidate Hakainde Hichilema in a landslide.

Afrobarometer has documented the democratic aspirations and experiences of African citizens for the past 25 years. Our latest findings, from 53,444 interviews across 39 countries in 2021-2023, confirm that Africans still want more democratic governance than they’re getting. These surveys suggest that the “problem of democracy” in Africa is much more a lack of supply by Africa’s leaders, rather than a lack of popular demand.

But the latest data also reveal that the well of popular demand, though deep, is not bottomless. While support for democracy can withstand poor economic performance, it is vulnerable to poor political performance, including poor-quality elections, corruption (especially in local government), and failure to enforce the rule of law for both citizens and leaders. 

Demand for democracy still outpaces supply

Indicators of popular support for democracy offer reasons for both optimism and concern. Across 39 countries, most Africans prefer democracy to any other system of government (66%) and reject non-democratic alternatives, including military rule (66%). They also strongly endorse norms, institutions, and practices associated with democratic governance, such as choosing political leaders through the ballot box (75%) and limiting presidential tenure (72%). Remarkably for a continent with huge gaps in government services, a clear – and growing – majority say it is more important for a government to be accountable to the people than to “get things done” (60%).

Two key indicators, however, show signs of slippage, revealing potential threats to the continent’s democratic development. Across 30 countries tracked over the past decade, popular support for democracy has declined by 7 percentage points, led by sharp drops in South Africa (-29 points), Mali (-23 points), Malawi (-18 points), and Tunisia (-18 points), as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Preference for democracy | 39 African countries | 2011-2023

In addition, opposition to military rule has weakened by 11 points, including drops of 40 points in Mali and 37 points in Burkina Faso. And more than half of Africans (53%) express a willingness to tolerate military intervention “when elected leaders abuse power for their own ends,” even though two-thirds still reject institutionalized military rule.

Even so, Africans’ democratic aspirations continue to outpace their assessments of how much democracy they are getting. Fewer than half (45%) think their countries are mostly or completely democratic, and just 37% say they are “fairly satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the way democracy works in their countries. Across 30 countries tracked over the past decade, ratings of the extent of and satisfaction with democracy have declined by 8 and 11 percentage points, respectively.

Politics or economics: What drives democratic attitudes?

What is driving these trends? We report two key findings:

1. Satisfaction with democracy: 

Country-level changes in satisfaction with democracy are strongly associated with assessments of government performance across a wide range of both socioeconomic and political indicators (Figure 2). We see strong and positive correlations with changes in economic indicators, such as the overall direction of the country and government performance in creating jobs. Changes in satisfaction are also positively associated with improvements in election quality and enforcement of the rule of law. And these shifts are negatively correlated with perceptions of corruption. 

Figure 2: Drivers of change in democratic satisfaction | 30 African countries | 2011-2023

2. Support for democracy: 

In contrast, support for democracy is resilient in the face of poor socioeconomic performance. At the country level, there is no significant association between changes in support for democracy and changes in indicators of national economic conditions or of the government’s economic performance. Declines in support for democracy are instead linked to adverse changes in political performance, especially declining election quality, increasing levels of corruption in local government, and failure to promote the rule of law (Figure 3).

Figure 4 shows how corruption perceptions are correlated with democratic support: As the proportion of citizens who say that “most” or “all” local government councillors are corrupt goes up, support for democracy goes down. The finding that corruption in local government is particularly corrosive for democratic support is an important one, given the physical proximity, and thus high visibility, of local government to citizens.

Figure 3: Drivers of change in support for democracy | 30 African countries | 2011-2023

Figure 4: Changes in perceived corruption in local government and support for democracy | 30 African countries | 2011-2023

So is support for democracy now deeper – but more narrow? 

In 2005, Afrobarometer findings (from our first 12-country survey round) suggested that popular support for democracy was “wide but shallow.” Almost 20 years later, looking across 39 countries on the continent, our latest evidence seems to suggest that support for democracy has become “narrower but deeper.” Somewhat fewer Africans cite democracy as their preferred form of government. Yet more demand accountable governance, and solid majorities remain committed to the democratic norms of freedom, elections, competition, the rule of law, and checks on presidential power. 

But citizen support is essential to the survival of democracy, so declines in this key indicator, and in rejection of military rule, are cause for serious concern. Failure to deliver democratic and accountable governance threatens to undermine Africa’s democratic development and leave citizens increasingly disappointed in, and at odds with, political authorities in the coming years. 

These findings underscore the centrality of restoring faith in African governments’ ability to deliver accountable, democratic governance. What does that look like, exactly? The survey data suggest Africans are looking for clean elections, the rule of law, and an effective fight against corruption.

Carolyn Logan (@carolynjlogan) is director of analysis and capacity building for Afrobarometer and associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University.

Rorisang Lekalake is Afrobarometer’s senior analyst/methodologist.