| | Radical Africanists, including those associated with this Review, have paid considerable attention to the nature, scope and impact of democratic struggle in Africa. This issue has been of concern to African scholars in particular for well over a decade, encouraged by organisations such as Codesria and OSSREA (Organisation of Social Science Research in East Africa), and has been linked by them to questions of development, class, human rights and security (see Agenda).
Mainstream contemporary interest in democratisation, however, has tended to diverge from such themes, rooted as it is in a process marked by the development of Multi-party systems and liberal institutions, the influence of external actors and the role of civil society. Parallels with processes in Eastern Europe have imported into the African debate aspects of anti-communism and post-cold war triumphalism, as well as an indifference to the growing power of 'donors' in African political change and to the limitations of the present democratisation process, |
