THE STEEP PATHS OF DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA
Legitimacy of the State and ethnic solidarities

By THIERRY MICHALON*

[Article published in Le Monde Diplomatique, November 1993 p. 26. I t was translated and
reproduced without the French magazine?s consent only in order to pursue the debate the magazine
ordered it for. Thierry Michalon is Lecturer at the Faculty of Economy, Law and Management,
University of Pau, Faculty of Law - AV Poplawski Senior, 64000 PAU Tel.. 59 80 75 80
Fax/Télécopie: 59 80 75 90, E-mail: daleas@univ-pau.fr. The Article by an African proposing an
African model of State, to which Michalon armed the following vigorous counterattack, was never
published by Le Monde Diplomatique. That article will be published soon on this column to give the
reader a complete view of how Africans are manipulated by European rings, including organized
intellectual rings.]

AFRICA is engaged on the steep paths of democracy. But it is not a simple task to safeguard the
republican values supposed to have embodied themselves in the post-colonial power while enriching the
State with an authentic legitimacy. For this purpose, the parliamentary system, if it wants to be really
representative of the society, must take into account the ethnic and clanic solidarities: a choice which by no
means obliges to question the unitarian State,...
For a few years in sub-Saharan Africa a page seems to have been turned, an unhealthy charm has been
broken, a perverse consensus has been ruined. The postcolonial State appears to have lost what ensured it,
more effectively than any repression, three decades of institutional stability: a certain form of legitimacy,
denied too for a long time. And the current stake, cardinal for the future of the continent, precisely consists
in substituting the now dislocated legitimacy of the African postcolonial State for new bases. Reinventing the
republic and the democracy -- ex nihilo or quite so-- is not a small matter. And the sudden proliferation of
tens of micro-partis on a field where, as lately as yesterday, the "unanimitarian democracy reigned" could
disappoint the hopes, always well sharp, for a "correction" of the Western model. The simple transposition
of the constitutional requirements in force in industrialized societies will probably appear as a trap. It would
be necessary to have the clarity of making something new, starting with an analysis without make-up of the
African political culture in its current state.
After long decades of authoritative colonial administration, the "overseas territories" born from the French
Constitution of 1946 were finally equipped with elected territorial assemblies assisting the head of territory
named by Paris. But their election, according to the iniquitous system of "double college", ensured the
majority to the few thousands, even hundreds of metropolitan residents, and their role was especially limited
to formulate opinions for the head of territory. Nevertheless, political trade unions and parties were
authorized. A political life was outlined and then was developed during the 1950s: its catalyst -- the
European domination -- caused a claim of dignity really uniting people beyond ethnic cleavages? and thus
threw the bases of a national sentiment.
June 23, 1956, the Defferre framework law (Loi Cadre) will authorize the government to organize the
"évolution" of the territories of Africa: the decrees of April 1957 will then equip them with a moderated
decentralization, inspired by that which was in force in the French departments. The territorial assemblies,
from now on resulting from a more equitable poll with a "single college" -- not ensuring any more the
domination of the "White" -- will receive a decision-making power in certain fields. But these
second-manner territorial assemblies will be in place only a few months after the Constitution of Ve
République allows in late 1958 these territories to become autonomous Republics, equipped with their own
Parliament and their own government, but inside the quasi federal "Community" totally dominated by
France. One year and a half later, in 1960, these Republics will obtain the transfer in their favour of the
"Community"?s competences, thus reaching sovereignty.
Swept by the fascination that the capital exerted and by the power and privileges of the "White" which were
attached to it, the stammering representative democracy will in a few months yield the place to authoritative
regimes in  a hope to regularize access to these privileges and to modernize the country at high speed. Itself
kneaded of an ultracentralisator Jacobinism and concerned of political stability above all, France will for a
long time grant to these regimes the benefit of the doubt? and its support.
It should be said that no real popular opposition was drawn up against these "soft dictatorships". The
constant swelling of the public office as public (State-owned) companies ensured graduates their
transformation into "White" - "You will be my White", said the peasant to his student son, taking back the
hoe from his hands - thus alleviating frustrations and humiliations of whole villages? Consequently, depicting
these postcolonial regimes as illegitimate and resting completely on repression (which African intellectuals
too often get busy at) is excessive and makes it possible to elites to evacuate their responsibility too easily
by stigmatizing exclusively these "dictatorships supported by France".
One knows well the factors which have ruined the African States during the 1980s. But one does not want
to understand that, at the same time, these genuine machines to manufacture "Whites" called postcolonial
States broke down and their unhealthy legitimacy was thus destroyed, which threw in the streets desperate
populations they could not buy the assent of any more. The democratic claim (the request for freedom)
could consequently be indeed expressed: it will lead - starting with Benin, the first ruined State - to the
national conferences, to which are still opposed some potentates and clans embedded with their privileges.
Did these national conferences throw the bases of a new legitimacy of the power in Africa? It is lacking
some much, and the illusion according to which the free flowering of parties and their participation in free
elections are enough to creating democracy is likely well to be dissipated bitterly.
To the reverse of what Europe of the XIXe century experienced, no industrial revolution came in Africa to
disaggregate the Community bonds characteristic of the rural world -- based on clanic relationship and
disciplines -- to substitute to them, in the cities, very new solidarities centered on common
socio-professional interests: social classes. And while the State-nation in Europe was formed parallel to
industrialization, while the representative democracy was built there around social classes, the African State
results from a simple transposition of institutions worked out in Europe -- by and for an urban society
laminated in classes and centered on individual competition -- on a deeply rural and communal society.
After a quarter century of illusion maintained as much by postcolonial regimes as by the old metropolis, the
fiction of an accelerated implant of the State-nation broke down, and all is to be rebuilt over again.
It is probably essential to return to the bases of the so-called "parliamentary" regime, elaborated throughout
centuries by the British since they put an end to the monarch?s arbitrary with the Big Charter of 1215.
Thoroughly sophisticated in Western Europe, this regime proved to be reliable, and it can be adapted. In
the same way, rediscovering the republican idea and the mechanisms of the representative democracy is
essential. Some proposals can be formulated.
The first would be to resolutely give up the election of the head of the State by universal suffrage. This
technique, transposed from the American and French regimes, answered the traditional desire to obtain a
chief. "What we need is a lit dictator", many African intellectuals leak with semi-voice ? But yet, the
designation by universal suffrage of a great man, whom some will admire and others will hate, completely
turns the back on republican values. By principle the Republic excludes the existence of great men towards
whom the citizens would draw up emotional, sentimental, in a word irrational relationship. It is on the
contrary founded on institutions, i.e. wheels, mechanisms elaborate carefully so as to function correctly even
when they are animated by these average men who are our representatives?
A head of republican State is not a father, loved or hated. Elected through indirect suffrage, for example by
members of Parliament and by local councillors, he/she should not concentrate on his/her head a too strong
legitimacy, which would unbalance the institutions to his/her profit -- the French example is unfortunately
edifying on this point -- and must be confined to a representative task.
The executive power must be entrusted to a team of ministers emanating from the majority at the Parliament
and directed by a head of government. Itself and its team must be responsible for their management before
the Parliament, which must be able under certain conditions to put an end to their functions and to replace
them. The power must thus proceed of the Parliament, and not of the charisma of a man or the force of a
clan.
While thus rediscovering, resolutely, the mechanisms of the "parliamentary" regime, the African societies
would be forced to break with the desire of a chief who maintains them under authoritarianism and is
opposed to the formation of a republican culture.
Second suggestion is returning to the roots of the representative democracy. For that, giving up the illusion
according to which the current proliferation of political small groups on the ruins of the single party would be
pluripartism. This one indeed was, in Europe, the natural, spontaneous emanation of a society that
industrialization and urbanization had laminated into a series of social classes aware of themselves and
defending quite distinct socio-professional interests: each party was ? quite schematizing it -- carrying a
program of government with answers to the interests of given social levels in their vision of the world.
Nothing like it for the moment exists in Africa, where the principal solidarity remains that of ethnic and clanic
order, inapt to generate parties carrying technically different programs, because socially rooted. But yet, it is
necessary to organize the representation of the society, to confer their essential legitimacy on the institutions
?
This one could be sought by two distinct modes of Parliament member nomination in two distinct
assemblies, or two categories of deputies within the same assembly. Part of the members of Parliament,
indeed, could represent current solidarity -- those which one refuses to officialize but which however is
essential at every moment, namely the "ethnos groups" -- either on an equal basis (ethnic groups delegating
an identical number of representatives) or in proportion of their demographic weight or according to an
intermediate formula. One second category of members of Parliament, constituting or not a second
chamber, could on the contrary represent socio-professional, transethnic, "horizontal" solidarity, and thus
would embody really differentiated interests likely to express authentic, different programs of government.
These members of Parliament could be designated by various professions? associative and trade-union
organizations. There would thus be representatives of the stockbreeders, farmers, craftsmen, tradesmen,
teachers, civil servants, etc.
The first group of members of Parliament would represent the ethnic, vertical bonds still most long-lived
today, but which Africans wish to be shaded off. The second group, on the contrary, would reflect the
horizontal, socio-economic solidarity currently in process of emergence but still masked by ethnic cleavages.
A Parliament composed this way would at the same time embody old solidarity (always powerful) and that
of the future (still stammering). In its centre, more concrete collective interests would be better expressed
than the very vague programmes of tens of micro-parties? which nevertheless would leave any freedom of
expression closer to the citizens. The Parliament would thus be what it must be: the place of the peaceful
development of a compromise between antagonistic interests present in the social body, in other words the
center of the political life.  
Third suggestion is establishing institutions that guarantee the effective respect of the legal provisions?
hierarchy. A State of rights exists only if the citizen can really ask to a judge the cancellation of the acts of
the administrative and governmental authorities for violation of the law, and if the opposition members of
Parliament (and, in certain circumstances, the one to be tried) can request from a really independent body
the cancellation of the laws contrary to the Constitution. With this condition only, the Constitution ceases to
be a piece of paper to truly become the keystone of the whole of the institutions, the source of all rules, the
basis of the respect owed those who enact them.

The dangers of federalism

IN ADDITION TO the organization of the authorities, another so essential question arises: that of the form
of the State.
Since the accession of African States to independence, the embryonic character of the national sentiment
was certainly one of the determining factors of their incapacity to run a polity, in particular in the field of
development. Ceaseless interethnic competitions partition the apparatus of State; Community oppositions
mobilize and sterilize individual energies and competences at every moment. Far from facilitating the
formation of an essential national sentiment, the centralizing authoritarianism on the contrary exasperated the
Community competitions which it claimed to choke, worsening the impotence of the institutions.
As opposed to this obvious failure of the Jacobin model, the federal idea allows to reconciling the
institutional diagram with that of solidarity? By preserving at the capital only the powers and the modest
means of a federal capital, while assigning the main part of competences and means relating to everyday life
and development to regional capitals placed at the head of ethnicly homogeneous administrations, wouldn?t
one put an end to the poisoned cohabitation of communities charged with mutual distrust? Wouldn't one
thus pose the bases of a progressive national construction? This reflexion must be carried out.
But it is from the start obvious that this ethnic federalism would encounter a whole series of obstacles: an
increasing share of the population is concentrated in the capital ; the main towns of provinces themselves are
the theatre of significant ethnic mixings ; the interethnic marriages multiplied; moreover, withdrawing a big
part of current capitals? administrations and resources -- of which they live -- would cause insuperable
social crises. Lastly, traditional Community solidarity appears more and more -- in the eyes of the Africans
themselves -- as choking yokes repressing any will of individual assertion, whereas the emergence of the
person, heart of the Western values, is perceived by many as an irreversible asset of humanity. The large
city and the centralized State are thus looked at as a historical progress to which it would be inconceivable
to give up, and besides that one expects of it this anonymity which liberates the person and melts a
republican culture. Consequently, the ethnic federalism is generally isolated as regressive.
Thus remains the more or less decentralized unitarian State.... The installation of local Communities
managed by elected bodies raises the same questions indeed: are the power of traditional solidarity and the
archaism of the old sociocultural hierarchies compatible with a rational management of local affairs? Can
one expect decentralization once this republican pedagogy so necessary is solved, or must one fear a
regression of it towards antiquated logics from which all wish to be liberated? A basic reflexion must, there
too, be carried out.
In this end of XXe century neither the secular hierarchies, neither the constraint exerted by a man or a clan,
nor the buying of consciences with emoluments can durably constitute the basis of the collective order. This
one can rest only on legitimate institutions, anonymous mechanisms temporarily entrusted to elected
representatives of the antagonistic interests which compose the social body. This fundamental principle
should inspire the total political reflexion, in which part of Africa is finally engaged.

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