No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
People and Power in an African Consensual Democracy
Abstract
Some African thinkers have argued that the governance system in traditional pre-colonial African societies were democratic, and the kind of democracy they practiced was consensual democracy (Wiredu, 2012; Wamala, 2004; Teffo, 2004). It was democratic, because it ensured the maximal participation of all members in the governance of the society; and it was consensual because it involved the rational deliberation of issues where decisions were primarily reached by consensus. The aim of this paper is to examine, on the one side, the nature of the demos and kratos in traditional African system of governance that warrants characterizing it as democratic; and, on the other side, the decision-making procedure that marks it as a distinctive form of democracy – consensual democracy. The question of democracy in relation to the traditional African system of governance should be pursued, I will argue, not from how it cherishes consensual decision making, but by how it uniquely conceptualizes the demos and kratos in the political experiences of African societies.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, political scientists have once again turned their attention to a critical examination of the state of democratic governance in their home countries. The trends of the last half century are troubling. In most Western democracies, citizen’s trust and interest in politicians and political institutions have declined. People increasingly see politics as a remote arena populated by powers beyond their control pursuing interests that do not reflect the needs of the public at large. Political cynicism is widespread and it is often accompanied by a withdrawal from politics. Where voting is not a legal requirement, rates of participation in elections have also declined. For both citizens and political scientists, this has raised concerns about the well-being and legitimacy of democratic governance in those countries where it is most firmly established (e.g. Pharr et al., 2000; Pharr and Putnam, 2000).
In his plea for consensual democracy in Africa, Kwasi Wiredu recommends unanimity about what is to be done, not what ought to be done, or unanimity on action rather than unanimity of values, beliefs and opinion. I caution the use of this procedural instrument by showing that some issues are so value-laden that a group decision cannot be value-neutral. It may sometimes be more productive to entertain value differences to keep them from going underground and becoming dangerous. However, the ability to locate some common interest or ground seems to be crucial for such value confrontation.
The question of what political system best suites post colonial/independentAfrican states remain alive and ever more pertinent particularly in the face offailed attempts at democratisation. Kwasi Wiredu notes that the adversarialnature of Western democratic practices along party political lines may not bewell suited for African politics. Instead he suggests that the practice of consensual democracy as practised in the traditional Ashanti society may bemore appropriate. Emmanuel Eze raises three objections against Wiredu’saccount of consensual democracy. This paper seeks to respond to Eze’s objections and argue that consensual democracy may have more appeal thanEze is prepared to concede.
Kwasi Wiredu has argued that democracy by consensus, unlike majoritarian democracy, posits a political system that is not characterised by competition for power between political parties. While majoritarian democracy vests political power in the party that has won a simple majority at the polls, hence proscribing losers to opposition, democracy by consensus seeks to avoid appropriation of power to winners on the basis of majority votes. Two of the most persuasive reasons advanced in favour of consensual democracy are that sectional appropriation of power to the majority party may lead to the tyranny of the majority at the exclusion of minority parties and that democracy by consensus provides maximal representation for the electorate. While I sympathise with most of the claims made on behalf of democracy by consensus I have some reservations about the theoretical outline of the role of the opposition in this polity. In this article I wish to present an outline of three serious difficulties that are attendant to Wiredu's formulation of the notion of party in democracy by consensus and the envisaged place and role of opposition parties in such a set up.
A political challenge facing constitutional democracies in Africa is the lack of adequate representation and participation of citizens in democratic processes and institutions. This challenge is manifest in the vesting of power solely in, and the exercise of this power by, a sectional group – the majority party – to the exclusion of others; as evinced in the liberal democratic systems extensively practised on the continent. Wiredu proposes as a solution to these challenges the adoption of consensual democracy; an indigenous, non-party democratic system rooted in the traditional African humanist and communitarian conceptions of the individual and the community, in which political decisions are characteristically reached by consensus. In this article, I present a critical exposition of Wiredu’s consensual democracy and defend it against liberal democracy on the one hand, and criticisms levelled against it on the other hand. I also offer some modifications to Wiredu’s theory in a bid to render it more suitable for practice in Africa.
In their introduction to this volume, Yves Mény and Yves Surel draw a distinction between ‘popular democracy’ and ‘constitutional democracy’, the two pillars on which the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic regimes rest. The popular democracy pillar is identified with an emphasis on the role of the demos that is, the free association of citizens, the maintenance of free elections, and the freedom of political expression. Popular democracy entails government by the people. The constitutional pillar, on the other hand, is identified with an emphasis on the institutional requirements for good governance—the establishment of rules and constraints limiting executive autonomy, the guaranteeing of individual and collective rights, and the maintenance of a system of checks and balances intended to prevent the abuse of power. The constitutional pillar may be associated with the defence of the public good, entailing government for the people. For Mény and Surel, an ideal democracy should aim to establish an equilibrium between both pillars.
The study of populism is, like the phenomenon itself, limited in scope and duration, and somewhat episodic. It seems that populism acquires a certain intellectual currency at irregular intervals but lacks staying power. In consequence, populism is one of the most widely used but poorly understood political concepts of our time. This is a deficiency because, as I shall argue, it provides us with a useful tool for understanding the pathology of representative politics. Populism is not a universal concept that, once unlocked, will enable us to decipher all other political debates, but it is a useful secondary concept that, if used sensitively and systematically, will enable us to understand populist movements, and which will, perhaps more importantly, allow us to understand essential elements in the politics of representation.
Although populist1 movements are usually sparked off by specific social and economic problems, their common feature is a political appeal to the people, and a claim to legitimacy that rests on the democratic ideology of popular sovereignty and majority rule. Analyses of populism often point to the tension within western democracy between this populist tradition and liberal constitutionalism. Certainly, there are difficulties in reconciling the project of giving power to the people with the drive to restrain power within constitutional limits, but concentration on this particular problem leaves unexplained the enduring strength of populist-democratic ideology and the ways in which it sustains populist movements. In this chapter I will argue that in order to understand populism we need to be aware of a complex and elusive paradox that lies at the heart of modern democracy. Crudely stated, the paradox is that democratic politics does not and cannot make sense to most of the people it aims to empower. The most inclusive and accessible form of politics ever achieved is also the most opaque. Precisely because it is the most inclusive form of politics, democracy needs the transparency that ideology can supply, and yet the ideology that should communicate politics to the people cannot avoid being systematically misleading.
Has the Weberian disenchantment with the world finally freed people from the illusion that democracy is a panacea? For the past decade, once the glory and triumph of the western model over the socialist regimes had evaporated, we have been able to observe the numerous manifestations of popular misgivings about political participation and democratic institutions. Democratic malaise (Dahl 1998), the politics of resentment (Betz 1994, 1998a, b), political anomie, and protest movements are among the most frequent manifestations of this disillusion in many western democracies. Both electoral turnout and opinion polls testify to the endurance and extension of the problem. Nor have the new democracies which emerged from the collapse of the socialist systems escaped this general phenomenon of disillusion as shown by the return to power—in sheep’s clothing—of former communist party officials. These challenges to democratic governance vary according to the specificity of each national polity, but share some common features such as the decline of electoral support for political incumbents, a marked increase in electoral abstentionism, the volatility of the electorate, the growing fragmentation of the party system, the emergence of ad hoc social movements unrepresented by traditional political organisations, and the emergence of single-issue and/or radical parties.
Before getting to the matter at hand, I want to say how moving it is to read a set of papers that are committed so deeply to both democratic hopes and rational inquiry. Democratic commitments have not led the contributors to back off from the implications of their research, and commitments to rational inquiry have not provoked cynicism about political values. Putting aside the important lessons about deliberative democracy, there is much to be learned from this volume about the marriage of rational inquiry and moral-political conviction.
This book offers philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. In their attempt to evolve ways of life appropriate to our modern world culture, African people and their society face a number of challenges; some stem from the values and practices of their traditions, while others rise from the legacy of European colonialism. Defending the cross-cultural applicability of philosophical concepts developed in Western culture, the book attempts to show the usefulness of such concepts in addressing a wide range of African problems. Among the issues are as follows: economic development, nation-building, evolution of viable and appropriate democratic political institutions, growth of appropriate and credible ideologies, political corruption, and crumbling of traditional moral standards in the wake of rapid social change. Throughout, the notion that modernity must be equated with Western values and institutions is challenged, arguing that modernity must be forged creatively within the furnace of Africa's multifaceted cultural experience.
Democracy is joint government of peoples. This book justifies principles of government for liberal democratic peoples who are willing to enhance the transnational rights of their citizens and accept institutional constraints in the pursuit of common goals. Unlike individualistic accounts of cosmopolitan democracy, this book constructs the design of a free political community of democracies from the perspective of the liberal democratic peoples. If liberal peoples want to govern by common institutions without forgoing their sovereignty--many have good reasons to do so--they should consider the conceptual and normative guidance offered in this book.
Political theorists do not in general pay much attention to populism; are there any good reasons why they should do so? This paper will consider a number of positive answers to this question. Most attention has so far been paid to issues of methodology—can we define ‘populism’? Recently there has also been some interest in the relation between populism and democracy, but there are two further topics that may be worth investigating, first the possibility of a distinctive political ideology that might be called ‘populist’, and second the meanings and significance of populism's core concept, the elusive ‘people’.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Democracy as a political system entailing multi-party competition for power is only one form of democracy. Given that democracy is government by consent, the question is whether a less adversarial system than the party system, which is bound up with majoritarian decision-making, cannot be devised. This paper contends that a system based on consensus as a decision procedure would be a democracy of just such a description. It is important to note that the kind of consensus envisaged here is not agreement regarding questions of truth and morality; it is concerned only with the question of what is to be done. And it is an important fact that reasonable human beings can come to an agreement about what is to be done by virtue of compromise without agreeing on issues of truth or morality. A consensual system will naturally be a non-party arrangement. However, as I explain, such a polity need not be one without parties.
IF THE ZOOLOGISTS ARE TO BE BELIEVED, THIS WORLD appears very different to members of different species of animals. Flowers conceal patterns and markings that are visible only to insects; dogs inhabit a world reeking with enticing scents; the bats' Lebenswelt echoes with highly significant squeaks. Something rather similar is true of political animals as well. The political world that faces the true-blue Tory has contours different from those that present themselves to the militant socialist, while what the liberal sees as the manifest data of politics is different again. Each of them, contemplating the common political world, has his attention caught and held by certain phenomena beside which others fade into insignificance. It is not surprising, therefore, that each has resort to a different key concept to sum up his experience. For the ideal-typical conservative, the basic datum of political experience is the totality of the historic political community, the nation. Like Rousseau's patriot, from the moment he opens his eyes he sees his country, and to the day of his death he never sees anything else. The socialist, by contrast, his attention held by a different range of experiences, wonders how anyone can fad to recognize the importance of social classes and the rift between them, while the liberal in his turn suspects the others of being deliberately obtuse when they refuse to see that distinct and different individuals are the basic components of political reality.
Populism, understood as an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values, should not be dismissed as a pathological form of politics of no interest to the political theorist, for its democratic pretensions raise important issues. Adapting Michael Oakeshott's distinction between ‘the politics of faith’ and ‘the politics of scepticism’, the paper offers an analysis of democracy in terms of two opposing faces, one ‘pragmatic’ and the other ‘redemptive’, and argues that it is the inescapable tension between them that makes populism a perennial possibility.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Good Governance in Ghana: The Traditional Akan Socio-Political Example
- M O Ajei
Ajei, M. O. 2001. Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Good Governance in Ghana: The
Traditional Akan Socio-Political Example. Accra: Institute of Economic Affairs.
In: Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa
- E I Ani
Ani, E. I. 2020. "Consensus and compromise." In: Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual
Democracy in Africa, edited by E. I. Ani and E. Etieyibo, 103-117. Delaware: Vernon Press.
In: The Search for Democracy in Ghana: A Case Study of Political Instability in Africa
- K Ansah-Koi
Ansah-Koi, K. 1987. "A historical outline of democracy in Ghana." In: The Search for Democracy
in Ghana: A Case Study of Political Instability in Africa, edited by K. A. Ninsin and F. K. Drah,
55-70. Accra: Asempa Publishers.
Bu me bɛ: Proverbs of the Akans
- P Appiah
- K A Appiah
- I Agyeman-Duah
Appiah, P., K. A. Appiah, and I. Agyeman-Duah. 2007. Bu me bɛ: Proverbs of the Akans. Oxford:
Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd.
Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi): with a Grammatical Introduction and Appendices on the Geography of the Gold Coast and other Subjects
- J G Christaller
Christaller, J. G. 1881. Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi):
with a Grammatical Introduction and Appendices on the Geography of the Gold Coast and other
Subjects. Basel: Evangelical Missionary Society
In: Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa
- E Etieyibo
Etieyibo, E. 2020. "African consensual democracy, dissensus and resistance." In: Deciding
in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa, edited by E. I. Ani and E. Etieyibo,
135-148. Wilmington: Vernon Press.
The role of chieftaincy in Ghana's democratic experiment
- S K Gyapong
Gyapong, S. K. 2006. "The role of chieftaincy in Ghana's democratic experiment." In: Chieftaincy
in Ghana: Culture, Governance and Development, edited by I. K. Odotei and A. K. Awedoba,
183-192. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers.
Reconsidering the case for consensual democracy in Africa
- B Hallen
Hallen, B. 2019. "Reconsidering the case for consensual democracy in Africa." Second Order: An
African Journal of Philosophy 3(1): 1-21.
Help! The populists are coming, appeals to the people in contemporary Swedish politics
- A Hellström
Hellström, A. 2013. "Help! The populists are coming, appeals to the people in contemporary
Swedish politics." MIM Working Papers Series 13(4): 1-27.
Subordinating speech
- I Maitra
Maitra, I. 2013. "Subordinating speech." In: Speech and Harm: Controversies over Free Speech,
edited by I. Maitra and M. K. McGowan, 94-120. New York: Oxford University Press.
Conceptualizing traditional consensus in modern Africa
- B Matolino
Matolino, B. 2020. "Conceptualizing traditional consensus in modern Africa." In: Deciding in
Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa, edited by E. I. Ani and E. Etieyibo, 69-85.
Wilmington: Vernon Press.
Ghana since the mid-twentieth century: Tribe or nation
- K A Ninsin
Ninsin, K. A. 2012. "Ghana since the mid-twentieth century: Tribe or nation." In: Reclaiming
the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives, edited by H. Lauer and K.
Anyidoho, 1116-1141. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers.
The African and democracy
- J Nyerere
Nyerere, J. 1961. "The African and democracy." In: Africa Speaks, edited by J. Duffy and R. A.
Manners, 28-34. Princeton: Van Nostrand.
Democracy, electoral and contestatory
- P Pettit
Pettit, P. 2000. "Democracy, electoral and contestatory." Nomos 42: 105-144.
Democracy, kingship, and consensus: A South African perspective
- J Teffo
Teffo, J. 2004. "Democracy, kingship, and consensus: A South African perspective." In: A
Companion to African Philosophy, edited by K. Wiredu, 443-449. Malden: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd.
Government by consensus: An analysis of a traditional form of democracy
- E Wamala
Wamala, E. 2004. "Government by consensus: An analysis of a traditional form of democracy."
In: A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by K. Wiredu, 435-442. Malden: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd.
Democracy and consensus in African traditional politics: A plea for a non-party polity
- K Wiredu
Wiredu, K. 1995. "Democracy and consensus in African traditional politics: A plea for a non-party
polity." The Centennial Review 39(1): 53-64.
State and civil society in Africa
- K Wiredu
Wiredu, K. 2011. "State and civil society in Africa." In: Reclaiming the Human Sciences and
Humanities through African Perspectives, edited by H. Lauer and K. Anyidoho 1055-1066.
Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers.
Power and the circuit of formal talk
- K Yankah
Yankah, K. 1991. "Power and the circuit of formal talk. Journal of Folklore Research 28(1): 1-22.
Received 22 September 2020; revised 24 July 2021; accepted 29 August 2021