Afrobarometer’s inaugural flagship report shows that Africans remain strongly committed to democracy, its norms, and institutions, but there are also causes for concern. Over the past decade, popular support for democracy has declined sharply in several countries, and opposition to military rule has weakened. Meanwhile, satisfaction with the way democracy works has continued to decline.
While popular satisfaction with democracy is highly susceptible to economic, social, and political performance, support for democracy is resilient against economic factors such as poverty and poor economic management. Instead, the evidence points to political factors, including rising corruption in local government, poor-quality elections, and a lack of presidential accountability, as factors that tend to undermine popular faith in democracy.
Nurturing support for democracy will therefore require strengthening integrity in local government and improved official accountability.
The report, the first in what will be an annual series on high-priority topics, distils findings from data spanning more than a decade, including the latest round of nationally representative surveys in 39 African countries, representing the views of more than three-fourths of the continent’s population. The full report can be found here.
The findings, based on 53,444 face-to-face interviews, show that most Africans prefer democracy to any other system of government and reject non-democratic alternatives, including military rule. They also strongly endorse norms, institutions, and practices associated with democratic governance, such as choosing political leaders through the ballot box, constitutional limits on presidential tenure, presidential compliance with court rulings, parliamentary oversight of the executive, media freedom, and multiparty competition.
Remarkably for a continent with huge gaps in government services, a clear – and growing – majority say it is more important for a government to be accountable to the people than to “get things done.”
But other trends portend danger for the continent’s democratic development. Opposition to military rule has weakened: More than half of Africans express a willingness to tolerate military intervention “when elected leaders abuse power for their own ends,” even though two-thirds reject institutionalised military rule. While Africa’s youth differ little from their elders in their support for democracy, they express a greater willingness to tolerate military intervention.
Worryingly, perceptions of important democratic governance practices have either been declining over time, as in the case of presidential respect for the courts and Parliament, or have remained stagnant at very low levels, as in the case of equal treatment before the law.
The report also includes country democracy scorecards that present graphic illustrations of Afrobarometer findings on the most critical indicators of democratic demand and supply for each of the countries surveyed.
This article was first published on Afrobarometer.
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