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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Seeing Like a Democracy: Africa's Prospects for Transforming the North Atlantic Paradigm |
Author: | Boyte, Harry C. |
Year: | 2004 |
Periodical: | African Journal of Political Science |
Volume: | 9 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 104-124 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | political ideologies democracy popular participation Politics and Government international relations |
External links: | https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/ajps/article/view/1073/690 https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajps/article/view/27362 |
Abstract: | Africa holds the potential to successfully challenge the dominant technocratic, State-centred, market-oriented understanding of democracy that the US and European nations espouse. Despite prevalent 'Afro-pessimism', especially in the West, the growing stirrings of the centrality of 'the people' rather than 'the State' in African democracy discourse creates foundations for a robust participatory alternative to Western democracy. A new African paradigm of people-centred democracy and citizen-owned politics can energize a dynamic, people-oriented development project. The key is to inform the theory of participatory democracy and popular politics with insights from actual, real world experiences in such politics that have been spreading, largely out of public sight, in diverse settings in South Africa, Tanzania, and elsewhere. These nascent stirrings suggest a new paradigm that points toward democracy not mainly as economic growth and free elections but rather as a flourishing way of life, balancing public goods with private wealth, embedding the market in democratic values. If realized, this vision of democracy can help spark a rebirth of positive liberty in the 21st century across the world. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract] |