Liberal Democracy in Africa: A Socialist-Revisionist Perspective

From a democratic-socialist perspective, the author contends that liberal democracy is a defensible goal in sub-Saharan African countries. Despite its well-known limitations, this sort of democracy confers benefits upon currently excluded citizens; it can also constitute an important stage in the socialist quest to extend democratic control to the social and economic, as well as political, spheres. A direct socialist transition is not a realistic alternative. Although the objective conditions – precolonial and colonial political traditions, capitalism and class relations, the centrality of the State, the instabilities engendered by the world market economy, global geopolitics and imperialism, tribalism – are generally unfavourable to ‘bourgeois’ democracy, they are vastly more hostile to revolutionary socialism. The options for progressive change are highly constrained. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French.