The Challenges of Democracy and Neo-Liberalism and its Implications to the Politico - Economic Development of Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper examines the nature, content, democratization process and challenges of the practice and institutionalization of democracy and its relationship to the political development of Africa. The paper also takes a cursory insight into how the transition process and the misapplication of democratic values have escalated the degree of poverty in African states. The greatest challenge to development in Africa is the ascendency of economic liberalization development option prescribed by World Bank and IMF to complement the consolidation of democracy in Africa, creating complex web of poverty and erosion of citizens' confidence in democracy. We discovered that in Africa, there are political institutions and elections but no democracy. The institutions of government are democratically organized, oligarchically controlled and authoritarianly enforced, creating the dynamics of sham democracy that stifles political and economic development. Also, the paper shows that the characterization of political development is often fused with the politics of modernist economic development strategy leading to the triumph of authoritarian methods of political control over democratic process. This paper concludes that the practice of democracy in Africa has led to the emergence of a new class of political elites who use state power for the actualization of self interests rather than for consolidation of the institutions and virtues of democracy. Therefore, we recommend that political leader should be educated on the virtues of democracy and the dangers of authoritarianism primarily to develop in them strong morals and habit of the heart with which to govern their countries democratically, so as to produce the instituitonal frameworks necesssary for the political and economic development of Third World countries.