Mattes and Bratton (2007, p. 200) argue that as people become more aware of the world around them, they increase their ability to form opinions on the political and economic issues of the day. With every additional level of education, people learn to comprehend the manifold ways in which their lives are affected by decisions made by distant power-holders. Thus, increasing cognitive awareness of politics, by means of an individual’s education, media exposure, access to information, interest, and sense of personal efficacy, is expected to have important effects on the expression of public opinion (see also Shivji, 1993; Cloete et al, 1999). Conversely Mattes and Bratton (2007, p. 202) also suggest that the lack of education of many Africans results in them being poorly informed about public affairs and thus unable to engage in making effective demands on their own behalf.
Low levels of information about democracy and governance are therefore considered to decrease peoples’ ability to connect their interests with larger political and economic reforms. Accordingly, people who are best informed about public affairs are the strongest reform advocates, as reported by The World Bank (2005), Janiunaite and Gudaityte (2007, p. 216) and Mamdani (2008, p. 6). The standard of education, or access to education and exposure to media, make a person much more sceptical about the quality of democracy that a government or political institutions deliver. Mattes and Bratton (2007, p. 198) give evidence that despite a more general passive acceptance of politics, there are pockets of critical citizenship emerging in Africa.
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The notion of cognitive awareness therefore links education to related factors like access to news media, understanding governing policies, rules, and regulations, which enable a person to know how democracy works, acquire democratic values and processes, and empower them to behave democratically (see sections 3.2 and 3.3 below). In other words, it is expected that graduates’ awareness of public affairs would enable them to conceptualise and practice democracy, and have positive attitudes towards democracy and associated features (like majority rule, rule by the people, regular elections, multiparty system, equality etc) in several ways (Mattes and Bratton, 2007). Now, if education induces support for democracy, it does so presumably at the expense of attachments to non-democratic alternatives. Mattes and Bratton (2007) therefore argue that as individuals gain formal education, they disengage themselves from allegiances to old and authoritarian types of political regimes and become adherents of democracy.
The latter point is important for my study in several respects. In countries like Tanzania where the level of higher education is still thinly spread, the educated people tend to serve as opinion leaders5 who diffuse vital information to their neighbours about civil liberties, political rights, importance of voting and representation, and the operations of a multiparty system (see Luhanga, 1994; Evans and Rose, 2007b). As some authors indicate, the educated African elite have been the first to criticize the imperfect quality of some of Africa’s ‘single- party democracies’ and ‘hybrid democracies’ (Shivji, 1986, p. 11; Mattes and Bratton, 2007; Mamdani, 2008, p. 6). In this respect history has also shown that the relationship between education and political attitude is not as straightforward as perhaps expected. Thus (and contrary to some of the arguments reviewed above) under a hierarchical/authoritarian style of schooling, education still has the potential to sharpen the critical faculties, which – in a context of non-democratic or ‘hybrid democratic’ rule – leads to a recognition that to date, fully-fledged liberal democracy has rarely been realised in the context of developing countries, and may produce a sense of dissatisfaction with the way politics actually works.6
5
Higher education has at times been at odds with the single party system and military governments of Africa. In many countries higher education institutions and the educated elite found themselves in opposition to certain features of authoritarian government as they believed in freedom of speech and the right to criticise the existing regime. Students followed suit of their lecturers by boycotting or protesting bad policies imposed by the government. (Hinton 2002; Mbwette and Ishumi 2000)
6
Altbach (1991) and Byaruhanga (2006) also give a contrary example where students opted to support undemocratic regimes like in Germany and Italy in the inter-war period when student organisations were among the first groups to support Hitler and Mussolini regimes. These political attitudes may be explained as due to the
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In summary, higher education institutions have been assigned greater roles in the development of democratisation and citizenship. The way people can be made aware of democracy, make demands for democracy, learn theories and democratic practices and analyse them, is achieved through formal education, especially at a higher level. This study is expected to establish more evidence on the studies by Evans and Rose (2007a and b) and Mattes and Mughogho (2009) on African democracy and peoples’ attitude towards it, putting more emphasis on the performance of the (emerging) educated elite in democratisation.
Studies regarding citizens’ attitudes towards democracy have been conducted in many countries all over the world. In Africa, the Afrobarometer surveys have been studying people’s attitudes towards democracy and economic performance. Bratton et al (2005) were the first to provide a general analysis of Africans’ attitudes towards democracy. Then, Mattes and Bratton (2007) and many others followed suit. From what has been found before, this study expects to provide more insight regarding the attitudes towards politics of higher education students.