Africans express growing attachment to democracy according to citizen attitude surveys conducted by the Afrobarometer in 34 countries. Seven out of ten Africans prefer democracy to other political regimes, and the proportion of deeply committed democrats (that is, those who also reject authoritarian alternatives) has risen steadily over the past decade.
This Afrobarometer policy paper points to the gap in many countries between popular demand for democracy and the supply of democracy actually delivered by ruling elites. While ordinary Africans clamour for high-quality elections and leadership accountability, too many political leaders continue to manipulate the polls, challenge term limits, and even seize power by coup. In the most common pattern across African countries, popular demand for democracy exceeds the available supply, producing a deficit of democracy.
The mismatch between popular aspirations and elite retrenchment also reveals a diversity of political regimes and political trajectories in Africa. While democratization is driven from below in some countries, it is resisted from above in others. Not surprisingly, the perceived level of democracy is low among citizens in North Africa, where a surplus of authority prevails. But in other countries across the sub-Saharan sub-continent – like Ghana in West Africa, Mauritius in East Africa, and Zambia in Southern Africa – an institutionalized form of electoral democracy is gradually taking root.
Key findings:
- A majority of Africans say they want democracy (71%) but, at the same time, only a minority (46%) also rejects all alternative forms of autocratic rule.
- More than half of all survey respondents in 16 African countries now evince a deep commitment to democratic rule: the composite index of demand for democracy climbed 15 percentage points, from 36% in 2002 to 51% in 2012.
- But people don’t always think they are getting democracy. A composite index of supply of democracy reveals that fewer than half (43%) consider their country a democracy and, at the same time, say they are satisfied with the way democracy works.
- Rightly or wrongly, people think that the consolidation of democracy, while partial everywhere, is most advanced in East Africa and least advanced in North Africa. Other regions fall in between, with democratic demand being greatest in West Africa. Regimes in this region may be particularly susceptible to mass mobilization from below as citizens exert pressure for more democracy.
- Several African countries – notably Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe – continue to experience a deficit of democracy in which popular demand for democracy greatly exceeds the amount of democracy that political elites are willing or able to supply.
- People increasingly believe that the quality of elections is the best sign of a democratic regime. Thus, popular attachment to institutions is slowly but surely displacing mass loyalty to dominant personalities.
