The Afrobarometer is a survey tool which involves a model to study public opinions and attitudes towards democracy in Africa. Afrobarometer surveys have been conducted regularly in several sub-Saharan African countries since 1999 (Afrobarometer, 2009). The construction of the survey and the analysis of its findings use various competing political theories to test popular attitudes towards democracy. The survey also gathers data on the sociological features of respondents, their attitudes towards economic performance and perceptions of political change in order to measure Africans’ demand for democracy and their perceptions of the institutional supply of democracy (Mattes and Bratton, 2007, p. 193).
48
The Afrobarometer considers African political systems as being in a state of transition. In this context, popular demand for democracy (or legitimation) continues to involve a choice between competing regime types, which people have experienced since independence. To Mattes and Bratton (2007, p. 193), it is therefore not sufficient for committed democrats in Africa to merely prefer democracy; they should also be able to elaborate ideas of what democracy actually is and reject all alternatives. In this regard, the comparability of any two respondents’ attitudes to democracy is limited to the extent that their understandings of democracy coincide. The Afrobarometer therefore requires that respondents go beyond paying lip service to democracy; they must also reject real world alternative regimes. Therefore, a committed democrat is someone who is able to provide a valid definition of democracy, believes that democracy is always preferable and rejects forms of authoritarian rule.
The concept of supply of democracy is used in the survey not only as a proxy in lieu of conceivably better measures of institutionalisation, but also to measure citizens’ views as to whether political institutions deliver democracy to expected levels. This includes measuring the extent of democracy and how satisfied citizens are with the existing political system. The Afrobarometer looks at the supply of democracy with questions asking respondents to rate the freeness and fairness of elections and the performance of democracy in general (amongst others).
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been seeking a balance between external pressures for liberalisation and the continent’s culture and socio-economic level of development. As a result, Africans have experimented with their own versions of political competition and economic privatisation. Bratton et al (2005, p. 14) argue that reforms have been tentative, partial and incomplete, leaving the continent with hybrid regimes that mix old and new features of governance. Political and economic crises in various African countries continue to make reforms imperative: per capita income and basic literacy remain low, an independent middle class has not yet emerged enough to serve as the sponsor of further democratisation and marketisation, and at the same time ordinary people have been slow to make their views known on desirable political and economic reforms. The latter must be considered one of the effects of the shortfall in education, literacy and media exposure that limits popular awareness of issues at stake.
49
Conversely, the experience of the 1990s also shows that African citizens demand change, whereby students, workers and civil servants have been the first to take to the streets and insist on an end to mismanagement, corruption and repression. Bratton et al (2005, p. 15) take this experience as the leading path to the political opening resulting in a common type of modern African democracy which can be termed an institutionalised, competitive, electoral regime that is embedded in a matrix of civil liberties. However, most of these electoral regimes fall short of minimal democratic standards and have turned out to be either electoral authoritarian, competitive authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, thus indicating that there is still dictatorship in democracy in the newly ‘democratised’ regimes in Africa. Others are constitutional systems that meet minimal democratic standards such as legislature and executives chosen through competitive elections under universal suffrage.
3.4.1 Demand and supply of democracy and democratic consolidation
For the purpose of this study I concur with Bratton et al (2005) that a democracy is consolidated when the procedure for electing leaders and holding them accountable becomes ‘the tradition’ in a society. A consolidated democracy has two sides. It involves rules that codify a set of democratic political institutions, and it involves a normative consensus among individual political actors who agree to observe those rules. Thus, there are two different theoretical approaches towards studying democratic consolidation, i.e. the institutional approach and the culturalist approach. In the institutional approach, rules come first. It considers whether familiar macro-political structures like elections, the separation of power, and civilian control of the military, are being built in the foundation of laws (Bratton et al, 2005, p. 40; Haerpfer, 2009, p. 386). The cultural approach extends to the micro level of personal attitudes and values. It is based on the argument that democracy cannot take root without democrats, who support and sponsor the democratic project and are ready to defend it. Most culturalists emphasise the orientation of the masses, which is expected to be essential for the durability of democracy (Heywood, 1992; Bratton et al, 2005; Welzel, 2009, p. 75).
In Bratton’s terms, political institutions and political culture co-evolve and shape each other. The consolidation of political regimes is best understood as a process which mutually reinforces attitudes and behaviours of citizens. There are no doubts that political learning about democratic citizenship occurs better under the institutional conditions of an interactive state. Thus, formal institutions and popular support for democracy are both necessary conditions for regime consolidation, although they are not sufficient. For a democracy to take
50
root, popular demand for democracy must be accompanied by supply of democratic institutions. Concepts of demand/supply of democracy can therefore be understood in this sense.
Furthermore, in studying popular opinion in African countries, Bratton et al (2005) suggest that attitudes towards democracy and reforms are derived from popular learning. Thus, they argue that to the extent that Africans have gained awareness of the issues at stake, they choose among alternative courses of action. This led them to define public opinions not only in terms of values and attitudes but also with reference to related and reported behaviours. The support for democracy in Africa and citizen participation that enhances further democratisation can therefore be understood in terms of: extent of democracy; accountability; responsiveness; and demand for rights. These conceptualisations also underpin the construction of the Afrobarometer tool. The Afrobarometer collects data to analyse the relationship between institutional variables and support for democracy (compare section 5.4.2 below).