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Affirming Democracy Amid Insecurity and Uncertainty | Africaplus Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty | AfricaPlus AFRICAPLUS Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty JUNE 6, 2017 / AFRICAPLUS “Until Nigerians find a way to create institutions which…can remain part of the state…and not become instruments susceptible to being captured by factions of civil society which win (temporary) control of the state, any hope for a constitutional democracy is likely to be regularly frustrated.” Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria , 1987 Follow https://africaplus.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/affirming-democracy-amid-insecurity-and-uncertainty/ [7/7/2017 10:51:41 AM] Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty | AfricaPlus “Nigeria must move to the forefront in the region, in the continent, and globally in interwoven ways: building effective state institutions, advancing democracy, and democratizing development. Why can Nigerians build and operate mega-churches but not quality public transport, public universities, public energy utilities and other service organizations?” “State, Governance, and Democratic Development: The Nigerian Challenge,” Guest Lecture, The Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy, 2016 We have entered a period of global insecurity and uncertainty. The certainties of the immediate post-Cold War years have dissipated. As champions of illiberalism gain prominence, democracy advocates are forced to respond to the challenge. In the United States, proponents of democratic construction can be found, as would be expected, among liberals and progressives, but moderate Republicans such as Condoleezza Rice and John McCain are also speaking out. The latter recently wrote: We are a country with a conscience. We have long believed moral conscience must be an essential part of our foreign policy, not a departure from it. We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values…More of humanity than ever before lives in freedom and out of poverty because of those rules. Our values are our strength and greatest treasure…an ideal of liberty is the inalienable right of all mankind. [1] Liberal policy scholars such as Jessica Mathews have expressed sentiments similar to those of Senator McCain: “The dominance of the West,” she writes, “has been driven as much by values, ideas, and political attraction as by economic and military power.” [2] Confidence in these values and ideas, however, has been shaken by post-Cold War geopolitical shifts, especially the resurgence of Russia, the economic expansion of China, and the resilience of illiberal political systems in these countries and post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Confronted by dysfunctional government and social distress in their own countries, exponents of western liberal democracy have grown cautious and rebalanced their critiques. [3] https://africaplus.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/affirming-democracy-amid-insecurity-and-uncertainty/[7/7/2017 10:51:41 AM] Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty | AfricaPlus A widening gap between advocacy and action in western foreign policies recalls the Cold War experiences. As a consequence, scholars such as Alexander Cooley suggest that “Western representatives charged with public diplomacy and regional engagement must resist the urge to decouple normative from geopolitical issues.” “If the West were to reduce its support,” he writes, “for liberal norms and a rule-based international order for the sake of political expediency, it would only hasten the erosion of its normative standing.” [4] Former president Barack Obama was a strong exponent of the views expressed by McCain and Mathews. As his presidency unfolded, however, the need to balance “normative” and “geopolitical” issues blurred his message. This was evident in July 2015 during a visit to Addis Ababa. On two occasions, Mr. Obama declared that the governing coalition in Ethiopia, having just swept 100% of parliamentary seats in national elections, was “democratically elected.” Such a declaration was not only contradicted by widely available commentaries but also by extensive documentation of human rights abuses and political repression in the annual reports of the U.S. State Department. At a conference on the Ethiopian crisis at Stanford University on January 21, 2017, the title of my presentation was the same as it is today: “Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty.” [5] Professor Larry Diamond, who shared the plenary panel at that conference, reminds us that “the affirmation of democratic principles” was given a different meaning by America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams. In a major address in 1821, then a congressman, Adams contended that the United States should abstain from “interference in the concerns of others” even when conflicts involve “principles to which she clings.” He continued: Whenever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s heart], her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. [6] https://africaplus.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/affirming-democracy-amid-insecurity-and-uncertainty/[7/7/2017 10:51:41 AM] Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty | AfricaPlus President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Guinea and African Union Chairman Alpha Conde, President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina, acting President of Nigeria Yemi Osinbajo, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn with US President Donald Trump at the May, 2017 G7 Summit. Photo: Reuters This view has echoed across two centuries in the positions now expressed by President Donald Trump, most notably during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. This debate will intensify. As authoritarian leaders such as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines are invited to the White House, John Quincey Adams’s version of “affirming democracy” is further diluted, marking a significant departure from the position taken by most American presidents since President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Affirming Democracy: The Nigerian Narrative As one of the largest constitutional democracies in the world, and by far the largest in Africa, the Nigerian experience is highly relevant to this debate. During a week of talks in four Nigerian cities – Abuja, Lagos, Ibadan, and Kano – various aspects of Nigeria’s democracy will be discussed. These engagements follow a forum series earlier this year on Democracy and Insecurity in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois. Commentaries from these events are available on the website AfricaPlus. Moreover, a large volume of my writings on Nigeria since March 1977 will be made available later this year by Arch Library, a new online entity of Northwestern https://africaplus.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/affirming-democracy-amid-insecurity-and-uncertainty/[7/7/2017 10:51:41 AM] Affirming Democracy amid Insecurity and Uncertainty | AfricaPlus University. These documents will contribute to collective reflections on “affirming” democracy, focusing on how the word is commonly understood to mean assertion as well as confirmation, endorsement, and encouragement. In one of my recently concluded classes, students read with interest a 1983 article entitled “The State and Ethnicity: Integrative Formulas in Africa,” by Henry S. Bienen. [7] Professor Bienen, a former president of Northwestern University, earlier taught at the Universities of Ibadan and Nairobi. His discussion of the importance of formulas and narratives devised by elites and governments in post-colonial Africa, and how these shape political behaviors, is particularly pertinent to today’s disordered world and security challenges. Alexander Cooley, mentioned earlier, reflects on the rise of an “authoritarian value system” and “how language about democracy is used to advance anti-democratic values.” This is an argument familiar to scholars of African democracy: the use of democratic formulas to justify the reversal or impeding of these very systems. In a 1998 essay, I showed how the Ethiopian government exemplified such actions and behaviors. [8] Following the American Constitutional Convention of 1787, a signatory to the new constitution, Benjamin Franklin, was asked whether the U.S. will be a republic or a monarchy. He replied, “a republic, if you can keep it”: simple yet profound words. They are relevant to our deliberations on Nigeria since the resumption of a constitutional government in 1999. While the designing of a constitutional republic is a major endeavor, defending and preserving it may be an even greater challenge. At the midway point in the fifth presidential term since Nigeria returned to constitutional rule in 1999, the question will be posed “Will the Fourth Republic endure?” While writing my 1987 book on Nigeria, it was doubtful that the Second Republic would survive. [9] The traumas of 1983 were reminiscent of 1965, when the country became engulfed in a paroxysm of political violence and electoral mayhem. These developments culminated in the first military seizure of power and a catastrophic civil war. On May 25, at the end of a lament about the ills confronting Nigeria, Prof. Ayo Olukotun declared: “To end on an optimistic note, there is the good fortune that in spite of all, democracy, however tattered, survives.” [10] Franklin’s seven words have morphed into Olukotun’s
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