An Assessment of Africa’s Philosophy of Local Electoral Democracy and its Ideology of Centralism

This study promotes the belief that Africa’s local electoral democracy is rooted more in an ideology of centralism and hegemonic desires of the higher tiers’ political elites over local administration. In this study, we contend that the local electoral democracy across Africa is in a state of crisis, producing practices at variance with the philosophy of Western liberal democracy which the continent pretends to imitate. Utilizing the political culture theory, the study’s argument is anchored on the evidence that the process of local electoral democracy across Africa rather emanates from an espoused political culture dictated by a desired centralizing ethos and inclinations of dominance of the local government by the higher political authorities, especially the state/provincial level. Its methodological construct is akin to the descriptive phenomenological qualitative research design. By analyzing observed experiences and documentary data using the qualitative content analysis approach, we contemplate the ingrained philosophy behind local electoral democracy in Africa as different from the idealistic sense of the democratic theory. The study’s findings accentuate the thesis that the actual African philosophy of local electoral democracy is not rooted in the ethos of Western liberal democracy, and thus democracy is largely lacking in African local government areas.