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Armed Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa and the Democratic Peace Theory

Ubong Essien Umoh Department of History & International Studies

University of Uyo, Nigeria ubongessienumoh@yahoo.com

Abstract

The Democratic Peace theory argues in part that democracies hardly go to war against each other. This western normative logic has been one of the strong arguments for the spread and consolidation of democracy in the African continent and elsewhere. Democracy as argued by the democratic peace proponents holds the ace for peace everywhere since institutional constraints and periodic elections checkmate the excessive use and abuse of military power by elected leaders. Does the democratic peace theory hold sway for African states? Is democracy a necessary precondition for peace in Africa? Leaning on the normative lessons of this theory, most western states have made it a part of their foreign policy thrust and strategy to clothe African states with democracy in an attempt to ensure peace in the continent. The legacy such strategy leaves behind is that such states neither evolve into full democracies nor stable autocracies. The paper argues that peace based on democratic consolidation in Africa has increasingly made the continent more conflict prone as democratising states have shown greater tendency to experience armed conflicts than stable autocracies.

Introduction The end of the Cold War in a way marked a symbol for the victory of democracy over

other alternative forms of government.1 The post-cold war period witnessed the export of

democracy and democratic structures to undemocratic regions of the world of which Africa

was a part. This export of Western liberal democracy to various parts of the globe has been

driven by the desire to secure a more peaceful world by the West. This has been the central

position of the democratic peace theory which argues that liberal democracies are inherently

peaceful (monadic assumption) and hardly go to war with each other (dyadic and systemic

assumption). Democratic states as argued by the proponents of this theory are said to often

resolve their differences on the bargaining table rather than the battle field. Norms of

compromise and cooperation prevent their conflicts of interest from escalating into armed

conflict. Moreover, complex political mobilisation processes impose institutional constraints

on leaders of two democracies confronting each other to prevent armed conflicts.

1 This position has been given credence by Francis Fukuyama who sees democracy as the end point of mankind's

ideological evolution and the ‘universalisation’ of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: The Free Press, 1992.

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Furthermore, democratic countries are argued to be linked economically and conflicts

between them are often solved by third parties or international organisations. Based upon

these arguments, democracy for African states appears to be one of the ways out of the

malaise of armed conflict in Africa and a necessary precondition for peace.

An Analysis of Armed Conflicts in Africa Conflict can be seen as a pursuit of incompatible goals marked by varied degrees of

disagreement through which the parties involved perceive a threat to their needs, interest or

concerns. Conflict can be categorised as non-violent and violent. Non-violent conflict is

expressed without the use of force and is seen by many as a natural element in human society

and an essential driving force for social change.2 Violent conflict, on the other hand, is

expressed with the use of force. Such force is mostly projected through the resort to arms in

the form of manufactured weapons or sticks, stones, fire, water etc. Violent conflict can

include one-sided violence such as genocide against civilians and can range from a single

attack on a civilian to full-scale war.3 Armed conflicts fall into the category of violent

conflicts. Armed conflicts are regarded as organised open violent clashes involving the use of

arms by the parties. Essentially, it is a contested incompatibility which concerns government

and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the

government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths.4 Some scholars have

classified armed conflicts into four broad categories according to the participants and

location: 1) extra-systemic armed conflicts (essentially colonial or imperialist wars); 2)

interstate armed conflicts; 3) intrastate armed conflicts and 4) internationalised intrastate

armed conflicts.5 However, in Africa, armed conflicts, predicated mostly on the struggle for

economic and political advantages, have taken different dimensions such as intraethnic,

interethnic, secessionist, interstate, intrastate and regional.

2Lilah Fearnely and Lyn Chiwandamira, ‘Understanding Armed Conflict and Peace-Building in Africa’,

http://www.idasa.org/media/uploads/outputs/files/governancenew.pdf, p. 2.

3H. Maill, O. Ramsbotham and T. Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflict, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.

4See Paul Collier, V. L. Elliott, Håvard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, Nicholas Sambanis, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy, London: Oxford University Press, 2003. See also Tor G. Jakobsen (ed.), War: An Introduction to Theories and Research on Collective Violence, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc, 2011.

5 N. P. Gleditsch, P. Wallensteen, M. Eriksson, M. Sollenberg and H. Strand, ‘Armed Conflict, 1946- 2001: A

New Dataset,’Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 39, pp.615-637.

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Despite the fact that instability in African states has remained fairly constant since the

decolonisation period began in the 1960s, interstate war has not been a major factor in

African armed conflicts.6 As at 1999, Africa was described as the most conflict ridden region

of the world and the only region in which the number of armed conflicts was on the increase.7

Between 1960 and 2000, Africa witnessed 56 wars out of a total of 141 wars fought world-

wide.8 Between 1990 and 2005, 23 African nations were involved in armed conflict and

between 1992 and 2007 over 38% of the world’s armed confrontations took place in Africa.9

As at 2010, Africa and Asia experienced three-quarters of the world’s conflict. Europe, the

Americas and the Middle East experienced only one-quarter of the world’s conflict.10 Indeed

the frequency of armed conflicts in Africa since the granting of independence to most states

in the 1960s seems to portray Africa as a continent in retreat.11

The basic issue field of armed conflicts in Africa revolve around the struggle and

competition for natural resources such as oil, diamond, gold, land etc marked by varying

degrees of insurgencies. Unarguably, violation of territorial integrity is often used as a

legitimate pretext for the use of force in international relations.12 Even the most barren piece

of territory in international relations is regarded as a sacred part of the national patrimony,

and seldom does a border move a hundred yards in any direction without the spilling of

human blood.13 Considering the inherited debated colonial boundaries resting on a fragile

post-independence agreement known as uti possidetis, issues of nationalism, separatism,

6Conflict Trends in Africa, 1946-2004: A Macro-Comparative Perspective, Report prepared for the Africa Conflict

Prevention Pool (ACPP), 2006, pp. 41-44. 7Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmaments,

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 20.

8Harvard Strand, Lars Wilhelmsen and Nils P. Gleitsch, Armed Conflict Dataset, Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 2003.

9Africa’s Missing Billions: International Arms Flows and the Cost of Conflict,’ Briefing Paper 107, http://www.oxfam.org/files/africas_missing_billion.pdf. (Date accessed: 3 April 2012).

10Armed Conflict Report, 2011, http://www.ploughshares.ca/content/2011-armed-conflicts-report. (Date accessed: 5 February 2012)

11Toyin Falola and Raphael C. Njoku (eds.), War and Peace in Africa, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 2010, p. xix.

12Peter Calvert, Terrorism, Civil War, and Revolution: Revolution and International Politics, New York & London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010, p. 36.

13Walter S. Jones, The Logic of International Relations, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985, p. 404.

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irredentism and resource struggle have mostly been part of the issue field of armed conflicts

in Africa.

The Democratic Peace Theory

The Democratic Peace Theory rests on two contested foundations: the normative and

the structural. The normative approach suggests that democracies do not fight each other

because norms of compromise and cooperation prevent their conflicts of interests from

escalating into violent clashes. The structural approach asserts that complex political

mobilisation processes impose institutional constraints on the leaders of two democracies

confronting each other to prevent violent conflicts.14 The normative approach argues further

that democratic states to the extent possible, externalise the norms of behaviour that are

developed within and characterise their domestic processes and institutions. Different norms

of democratic political conduct are often expressed in terms of different patterns of

international behaviour. Democratic regimes are based on political norms that emphasize

regulated political competition through peaceful means. At the domestic level of analysis

and operationalisation, winning does not require elimination of the opponent, and losing

does not prohibit the loser from trying again. As such, political conflicts in democracies as

argued by some of its ardent proponents such as Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett are resolved

through compromise rather than through elimination of opponents.1515

These democratic norms allows for an atmosphere of ‘live and let live’ that results in

a fundamental sense of stability at the personal, communal, and national level.16 These norms

are greatly sustained by strong institutions which provide the structural foundations in

democracies. Such institutions provide the structural constraints on the executive’s ability to

use force in the management of foreign policy and international relations. Derivative upon

this position is the understanding that when two democracies confront one another in

conflicts of interest, they are able to effectively apply democratic norms and institutional

constrains in their interaction, thereby preventing conflicts from escalating to a militarised

level, involving threat, display, use of military force, or an all out war. According to Larry

Diamond:

14Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986’, The

American Political Science Review, No. 87, Vol. 3, 1993, p. 624. 15Ibid., p. 625. 16Ibid.

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Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbours to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically ‘‘cleanse’’ their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honour international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.17

While neo-liberal theories project the importance of government type as an influence

on the probability of war and peace, realist and especially neo-realist theories discount such

argument. The liberal tradition assigns great weight to the kinds of political institutions that

states create to make policy decisions, and it predicts that the spread of ‘free’ democratically

ruled governments will promote peaceful interstate relations. Immanuel Kant arguing in his

masterpiece Perpetual Peace opined that when citizens are given basic human rights such as

choosing their leaders through ballots as well as civil liberties such as free speech and a free

press, these democracies would be far less likely to initiate wars than would countries ruled

by dictators and kings.18 The thrust of this understanding is the assumption that an elected

government accountable to the people would in many ways than not, be constrained by public

opinion from the use of force to resolve conflicts. The liberal as well as the neo-liberal

argument is further projected by the belief that a growing community of liberal democracies

would cluster to form an ‘empire of liberty’ freed from the curse of war. And if democratic

institutions spread through the world (either through acceptance or enforcement), the

17Larry Diamond, ‘Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives,’ A Report

to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict Carnegie Corporation of New York (December 1995), p. 18.

18Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, in Lewis White Beck (ed.), New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957.

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bellicose nature of international relations would be replaced by peaceful relations and

interdependence.

It is also argued that democracies do not make war with each other since they resolve

their differences with one another at the bargaining table rather than the battlefield.19 This

patterned line of thought provides the basis and the cornerstone for the democratic peace

theory as argued by Russett:

Democracies are unlikely to engage in any kind of militarised dispute with each other or let any such dispute escalate into war. They are rarely even skirmish. Pairs of democratic states have been only one-eight as likely as other kinds of states to threaten to use force against each other, and only one-tenth as likely actually to do so. Established democracies fought no wars against one another during the early twentieth century…. Careful statistical analysis of countries’ behaviour have shown that democracies’ relatively peaceful relations towards each other are not spuriously caused by some other influences such as sharing high levels of wealth, or rapid growth, or ties of alliance. It was not maintained simply by pressure from a common adversary in the Cold War, and it has outlasted that threat.20

Arguing further, Russet submits that:

…Democracies are more likely to employ ‘democratic’ means of peaceful conflict resolution. They are readier to reciprocate each other’s behaviour, to accept third-party mediation or good offices in settling disputes, and to accept binding third-party arbitration and adjudication.21

In all, the Democratic Peace argument supports any or all of the following assumptions:

1. Countries with democratic institutions are less likely to engage in war with other

countries with such institutions;

19Ajin Choi, ‘Democratic Synergy and Victory in War, 1816–1992.’ International Studies Quarterly Vol. 48, No.

3, 2004, pp. 663-682. See also Mark Souva, ‘Institutional Similarity and Interstate Conflict’, International Interactions Vol. 30, No. 3, 2004, pp. 263–280

20Bruce M. Russett, ‘Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace’ International Studies Perspective, Vol. 6, No.4, 2005, p. 235.

21Ibid.

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2. free countries are less likely to engage in war with other free countries;

3. democracies do not fight democracies in their home region;

4. as states become more democratic, they intervene militarily in the affairs of others

less often;

5. increasing dyadic trade reduces the likelihood of militarized conflict and war; and

6. when states share alliance membership they are less likely to war with each other.

Gowa argues that democracies are able to achieve these ‘assumed’ realities since:

1. the political culture of democratic states embodies a norm of peaceful conflict resolution

established domestically which will prevail in foreign policy;

2. trade or cosmopolitan law forces states to calculate the costs of trade disruption as a

disincentive to militarized conflict; and

3. the restricted autonomy of leaders by institution checks the exercise of force.22

While the first point above captures the essence of the normative argument of the

democratic peace theory, the second and third point captures the structural argument of the

theory. In all, democratic peace arises because of shared norms23, restraint on democratic

leaders24, more credible communication through transparency25 or domestic audience costs26,

greater capacity to reach stable bargains27, and other possible causal pathways. Although

democracies are about as conflict prone as non-democracies, they rarely clash with one

another in militarised disputes and almost never fight one another in full-scale war.28

22Joanne Gowa, Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 23Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986’, The

American Political Science Review, 1993, Vol. 3, No. 87.

24Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace”, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 4, 1999, pp. 791–807.\

25Kenneth A. Schultz, ‘Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises’, American Political Science

Review, Vol. 92, No. 4, 1998, pp. 829–844. 26James D. Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’, The American

Political Science Review, 1994, Vol. 88, No. 3, pp. 577–592. See also Michael Tomz, ‘Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach’, International Organization, 2007, Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 821–840. See also Jessica Lea Weeks, ‘Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve’, International Organization, Vol. 62, 2008, pp.35–64.

27Charles Lipson, Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace, Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 2003. 28Zeev Maoz, Untangling the Level of Analysis Puzzle of the Democratic Peace: A Social Networks Analysis,

California: Department of Political Science, University of California, 2006.

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Moreover, it is argued that democratic leaders are socialised into accepting norms of

compromise and nonviolent conflict resolution, and, as a result, the foreign policies of

democracies are likely to be nonviolent and reflect the spirit of compromise and peace when

interacting with other democracies.29

Critique of the Democratic Peace Argument The Democratic Peace Theory has been argued to be one of the most thoroughly

established empirical theory in international relations.30 However, the contested nature of the

twin concept of peace and democracy makes the argument of the democratic peace theorist

tenuous. The concept of peace itself is ontologically unstable and essentially contested.31 As a

result of the difficulty in giving an all-embracing and satisfactory definition of peace,

scholars in the field have come to understand peace by working with adjectives. Scholars

recognise, through adjectives, that there is a range of peaceful relationships.32 The use of the

term ‘democratic peace’ is but a reflection of the widening use of peace adjectives by peace

scholars. Current peace literature display a wide range of peace adjectives such as

‘technological peace’ (the belief that technology is a necessary tool towards the attainment of

peace in societies); ‘capitalist peace’ (the belief that capitalism holds the ace in promoting

peace and cooperation among states); ‘Westphalian Peace’ (the belief that non-intervention in

the domestic affairs of states is vital for preserving international peace and stability),

Carthaginian Peace (the belief the peace could only be attained by the complete

annihilation/destruction of the enemy) etc. The use of such peace adjectives to categorise

peace is only but an attempt to describe the various levels of peaceful relations and not peace

itself.33

It is important to distinguish between peace and peaceful conditions. Peace manifests

itself in the form of a peaceful state, a peaceful relationship or peaceful trade, all representing

29Benjamin E. Goldsmith and Baogang He, ‘Letting Go Without a Fight: Decolonization, Democracy and War,

1900-94’, Journal of Peace Research, 2008, Vol. 45, No. 5, pp. 587-611. 30Jack S. Levy, ‘Domestic Politics and War’, in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (eds.), The Origin and

Prevention of Major Wars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 88. 31Oliver P. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 32James P. Klein, Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, ‘The Peace Scale: Conceptualising and Operationalizing Non-

rivalry and Peace’, Journal of the Peace Science Society, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2008, pp. 67-80. 33Ubong E. Umoh and Idara G. Udoh, ‘The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and the Conceptualisation of

Peace Using Adjectives’, Journal of Conflictology, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011, p.12.

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different things but sharing a common quality which is peace itself. Peace itself should never

involve violence, whereas, peaceful trade could become violent. On several occasions, there

have been extended conflicts in the peaceful trade relations between the United States and the

European Union, but they have been settled through institutional means for the non-violent

management of conflicts, such as World Trade Organisation (WTO), without recourse to

military means.34 Moreover, peaceful commercial relations can contain the seeds of armed

conflict, as between the British and Dutch in the 18th century and Japan and the United States

in the 1930s.35 Peaceful relationships can also break down and become violent. Even trade is

not always peaceful as rivalries, arms races, and crises can ensue.36 In the long run economic

interdependence which liberal and capitalist peace proponent project could be either a path to

peace or a source of conflict.37

Democracy also bears the same burden of conceptual disagreement. Democracy like

peace is still undergoing a thorough introspection into its core assumptions by the scholarly

community. It bears emphasising that as a form of government, democracy is subject to

various degrees of measurement and comparison. Bruce Russett (an ardent proponent of the

democratic peace theory) argues that ‘the more democratic each state is, the more peaceful

their relations are likely to be.’38 Russett’s use of the phrase ‘the more democratic’ suggests

that some democracies are more democratic than others. If that is so, then to what extent can

a state be democratic and thereby satisfy the fundamental assumption of the democratic peace

theory? Theoretically, democracy is a dichotomous concept i.e a state is either democratic or

not. However in practice, this is not so as there seems to be varying degrees of democracy.

Most African countries flaunt the glamorous reputation of being democratic but in practice

they are anocracies (i.e midway between democracy and autocracy). Examples of such

34Ibid 35Brian M. Pollins, ‘Globalisation and Armed Conflict Among Nations’ Conflict Management and

Peace Science, 2008, Vol. 25, No. 3, p. 193. 36Brian M. Pollins, ‘Globalisation and Armed Conflict Among Nations’ Conflict Management and

Peace Science, Vol. 25, No. 3. 2008, pp. 191-205. See also K. Barbieri, The Liberal Illusion: Does Trade Promote Peace? Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

37Edward D. Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins, Economic interdependence and International Conflict:

New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003. See also K. Barbieri, ‘Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or a Source of Conflict?’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 33, No. 3, 1996, pp. 29-49.

38Bruce M. Russett, ‘Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace’, International Studies Perspective, Vol. 6,

No.4, 2005, p. 235.

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countries in Africa include Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Senegal, Liberia, Uganda,

Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Burundi. Most democracies (especially in Third

World countries) are immersed in periodic instability. Perceptions of such instability may be

based on the recency and immaturity of experience with democratic processes and norms; a

high degree of violent opposition to the democratic government; a democracy under siege of

domestic terrorism, insurgency, or civil war.39 These attributes tend to have an influence on

their foreign policy and relations.

The notion of liberal democracy consists of two components – one, ‘democracy’,

referring to a political process, and the other, ‘liberal’, referring to a political outcome. As

such, any attempt to conceptualise democracy should not ignore the twin pillars of liberty and

freedom. Even if a consensus on precise definitions has proved elusive, most observers today

would agree that, at a minimum, the fundamental features of a democracy include

government based on majority rule and the consent of the governed, the existence of free and

fair elections, the protection of minority rights and respect for basic human rights.40 However,

a question arises whether reference to these irreducible minimums is sufficient for a

satisfactory concept of democracy. It therefore puzzles the mind of some scholars if the

United States of America which prides itself as the ‘arsenal of democracy’ can be said to be

democratic in practice. The full integration of blacks into the political architecture of the

United States places a big question mark on the purity of America’s democracy. Furthermore,

as Aaron Gana has argued, ‘in spite of its gaiety, largely a function of its electoral process,

American democracy remains a poor reflection of its Athenian antecedents’.41 It is therefore

difficult to disagree with Burnheim’s overall assessment that ‘democracy does not exist in

practice.’42 It bears emphasising therefore that most contemporary discussions of democracy

assume that the task of democratic theory is to provide either some justification for

39Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986’,

The American Political Science Review, No. 87, Vol. 3, 1993, p. 625. 40Democracy Index 2010: Democracy in Retreat, A Report from the Economist Intelligence Unit,

http://www.eiu.com (Date accessed: 18 November, 2012). 41Aaron T. Gana, “The Democracy-Development Nexus,” in Aaron T. Gana and Yakubu B. C. Omelle

(eds.), Democratic Rebirth in Nigeria, 1999-2003, Vol. I, New Jersey: African Centre for Democratic Governance (AFRIGOV), 2005, p. 264.

42John Burnheim, Is Democracy Possible? The Alternative to Electoral Democracy, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2006, p. 1.

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democratic regimes or some normative guidance for their improvement. This vagueness in

the concept and practice of democracy continues to challenge the core assumptions evident in

the democratic peace theory.

Furthermore, in Fareed Zakaraia’s view, democratic procedures, such as freely

contested elections, can sometimes lead to doubtful or even profoundly undemocratic

outcomes.43 Some scholars have argued that the fact that leaders in elective democracies are

accountable to public approval and electoral rejection does not guarantee that they will not

use force to settle disputes with other democracies. To this end, the use of democracy as a

label does not completely refrain a state actor from carrying out acts of violence in its

relations with other state actors. Greek states fought against each other despite being

democratic type regimes; France collided with Britain in expanding their empire during the

colonial period and the United States had a war with Mexico to obtain new territory on its

southern borders. As such, there is no certainty that liberal democracy will become the

universal assurance for peace and therefore satisfy Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis.44

Moreover, the attainment of such peace can only satisfy Galtung’s label of ‘negative peace’45

since it reflects only the absence of war. As such the democratic peace argument continues to

remain a contested scholarly concept begging for increased historical and empirical

examination.

Armed Conflicts in Post Colonial Africa and the Democratic Peace Theory The democratic peace theory claims that the spread of democracy around the globe

would concomitantly lead to widespread peace (albeit negative peace). It suggests that as

states become more democratic, they reduce their overall chances of being involved in armed

conflicts. The prevalence of dictatorial regimes as opposed to democratic government has

been spotted as a major cause of armed conflict in African states. It was Immanuel Kant in

his essays Perpetual Peace that first placed the societal conditions of tyranny and dictatorship

at the centre of forces responsible for war. Kant maintained the position that democracies

43Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003, p. 17. 44Francis Fukuyama uses the phrase ‘end of history’ to describe the end of human ‘ideological

evolution,’ that is, the search for the optimal government and economic system. He argues that Western liberal democracy will ultimately be accepted in most countries of the world. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History….

45In the negative sense, peace is the elimination or absence of violence; but in the positive sense, peace entails cooperation among individuals and groups for goals that promote justice and freedom. See Johan Galtung, ‘Cultural Violence’, Journal of Peace Research, 1990, Vol. 27, No.3, pp. 291-305.

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were inherently peace loving compared to dictatorship and as such the absence of democratic

government usually resulted in conflict and violent confrontation.46 Francis Fukuyama

viewing the entire gamut of historical scholarship as the study of events - in which the sole

event is war - argues that with the post-cold war triumph of liberal democracy over other rival

forms of government, the world would cease from war bringing about the ‘end of history’.

Clothing this western normative philosophy with the African situation, Wole Soyinka argues

that because dictatorial regimes are shadowed by crisis of legitimacy in Africa, their

repressive method of state control tends to strengthen ethnic identity and encourages

separatism.47 The democratic peace position views democratic governance as a system for

peaceful resolution of conflict and maintenance of a relatively peaceful society.

Most armed conflicts in Africa are linked to armed challenges to existing

governments – a contagious disease nearly every weak state suffer from. Most African states

are weak and this weakness is attributed to flawed structures built upon non-democratic

values. Most African states do not fulfil the Weberian defining properties of a state which

includes but not limited to the ‘unchallenged control of the territory within the defined

boundaries under its control, monopolisation of the legitimate use of force within the borders

of the state, and the reliance upon impersonal rules in the governance of its citizens and

subjects’.48 Armed non-state actors parading as insurgents frequently challenge the state’s

authority within its territory denying the state of its monopoly in the use of force. Also,

dictatorship and other forms of authoritarian rule which is widespread in African states such

as Madagascar, Ethiopia, Morocco, Burkina Faso, Togo, Comoros, Niger, Sudan, Eritrea etc

employ personal rule in the governance of their citizens. This in turn increases the tendency

of sectarian challenge to the authority of the state. Moreover, a good number of African states

gained external sovereignty after independence through international recognition, but have

46Carl J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings, New

York: Modern Library, 1949.

47Wole Soyinka, ‘The National Question in Africa: Internal Imperatives,’ Development and Change, No. 27, 1996, p. 279.

48Donald Rothschild and John W. Harbeson, ‘The African State and the State System in Flux’, in

Donald Rothschild and John W. Harbeson (eds.), Africa in World Politics: The African State System in Flux, Boulder: Westview Press, 2000, p. 7.

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yet to develop the internal sovereignty that defines the basis of statehood in Weber’s

definition.49

In Barry Buzan’s view, the notion of the relative weakness and strength of states is

captured in three inter-linked components: the physical basis of the state, the institutions of

the state and the idea of the state.50 The physical basis of the state includes defined territory,

population, resources and wealth. The institutions of the state ‘comprise the whole machinery

of government, including its executive, legislative, administrative, and judicial bodies as well

as the laws, procedures and norms by which they operate.’51 The idea of the state provides the

mechanism for persuading citizens to subordinate themselves to the state’s authority. Strong

and vividly held ideas serve to bind the state into an entity and provide the necessary socio-

political cohesion, which gives legitimacy to the state entity. If the ideas themselves are

weak; or if they are weakly held within society; or if strongly held, but opposed, ideas

compete within society: then the state stand on fragile political foundations’.52 States were all

the three components are clearly defined, well articulated and interconnected to sustain and

support each other, are thus stronger than states with the opposite characteristics.53 Such

weakness in the African situation has greatly been a function of an external attempt to

democratise a particular state. Such rapid democratic transitions or reversals in Africa have

been associated with an increased risk of armed conflict.

The nature of the problem of democratising weak states as noted has three interlinked

dimensions which, taken together, constitute a formidable challenge to participants in the

process as well as to the external actors seeking to support it. Democratisation proceeds along

a relatively set path of political steps, moving relatively peacefully from political

liberalisation to democratic consolidation.54 However, a large number of countries in Africa

49R. H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1990. 50Barry Buzan, People, State and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold

War Era, Hemel Hampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p. 82. 51Ibid., p. 83. 52Ibid., p. 79 53Mimmo Söderberg and Thomas Ohlson, Democratisation and Armed Conflicts in Weak States,

Department for Cooperation with Non-Governmental Organisations and Humanitarian Assistance and Conflict Management, Sida, 2003, p. 11.

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are either stuck in the democratic transition without moving towards consolidation or have

already experienced a partial or complete reversal of the transition process. Gambia,

Madagascar and Ethiopia witnessed a reversal from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian

government in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively. Ghana saw an upgrade from a hybrid

regime to a façade democracy in 2008. In some cases, the transition is usually accompanied

with large-scale occurrences of political violence or the outbreak of intra-state armed conflict

as witnessed in Nigeria 1993 and Mali in 2012. Söderberg and Ohlson argue that in such a

situation, the positive transitional dynamics of the democratisation process disappears and

instead a situation occurs in which a democratic ‘shell’ without content or substance is

cemented and superimposed onto more or less unchanged pre-democratic power structures –

a situation referred to as ‘façade democracy’55 witnessed in African countries like Cape

Verde, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Ghana, Mali and Benin. As captured in the 2010

Democracy Index, the only full democracy in the African continent is the Indian Ocean island

of Mauritius, which has maintained a strong democratic tradition since the country gained

independence in 1968. South Africa falls short of being a full democracy because of

weaknesses in political participation and political culture.56

The denominator understanding is that while democracy is, by definition, a method of

resolving societal conflicts in a non-violent manner, the route to it, that is, the process of

democratisation is a revolutionary and conflict-generating process. Söderberg and Ohlson

argue that this is so because such a process involves dramatic changes. These changes in their

view include new methods of deciding who is to have political power, new methods for

exercising political power and often – and as a consequence – new balances of power and

new power holders.57 This has been argued to be conflictual, particularly in a weak state

where the hold on state power is often the only route to influence and wealth. Indeed, the

structural foundations for moving successfully from democratisation to consolidated

54Guillermo O’Donnell and Phillipe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative

Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 7-11. 55Mimmo Söderberg and Thomas Ohlson, Democratisation and Armed Conflicts in Weak States,… p.

8. 56Democracy Index 2010: Democracy in Retreat, A Report from the Economist Intelligence Unit,

http://www.eiu.com (Date accessed: 18 November, 2012). 57Mimmo Söderberg and Thomas Ohlson, Democratisation and Armed Conflicts in Weak States,… p.

45.

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democracy are most often lacking in African states. Historical experiences have shown that in

most African states, such processes may be halted, arrested, reversed, resulting in renewed

autocracy, state failure or terminating at some other point on the ‘nearly-democratic’

continuum. In most African states which claim to practice democracy, civil liberties and

media freedom are denied to the citizens, despite the fact that they have granted political

rights. Examples of such countries include Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville,

Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar and Rwanda. By 2010,

elections were judged to be both free and fair in only five countries - Botswana, Cape Verde,

Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa.58 In 2009, Freedom House identified 10 African

countries as ‘free’, 23 as ‘partly free’, and 15 as ‘not free’.59 Democracy tends to have a poor

endurance record in Africa60 and despite the ‘baby steps’ taken by African states towards

consolidating democracy, the practice has failed far more than it has succeeded. The African

democratic experiment in countries such as Nigeria, Liberia, Gambia, Mali, Sierra Leone etc

has shown that voting during elections is often accompanied by a simultaneous transaction in

guns and bullets resulting in casualties. As such most African states seem to satisfy Paul

Collier’s thesis of ‘democracy in dangerous places’.61

It would be quite difficult to disagree with Fareed Zakaria’s overall assessment that

while the two strands of liberal democracy (i.e liberty and democracy) are interwoven in the

Western political fabric, in other parts of the world they are ‘coming apart’.62 Africa seems to

be satisfy Zakaria’s ‘other parts of the world’ as it has to do with its democratic experiment

and experience. Alex Thomson has identified the challenges of democracy and

58Democracy Index 2010: Democracy in Retreat, A Report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, http://www.eiu.com (Date accessed: 18 November, 2012).

59Freedom in the World 2009 (Washington: Freedom House, 2009), p. 5. Freedom House defines a

‘partly free’ country as one in which there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties. ‘Partly free’ states frequently suffer from endemic corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic or religious strife, and they often feature a single political party that enjoys dominance despite a façade of limited pluralism. It defines countries as ‘not free’ when they are characterised by repression, authoritarianism, and the absence of civil liberties.

60Richard A. Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second

Republic, Ibadan: Spectrum Books Ltd., 1991, p. 19.

61Paul Collier, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, London: Vintage Books, 2009.

62Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003, p. 17.

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democratisation in Africa to include: lack of credible opposition; weak civil society; weak

economies; no separation between state and ruling parties; ethnicity, religion and nepotism;

potentials of military intervention; weak democratic political culture; lack or regime change

(incumbency continuum).63 The dominant consequences for African states and their near-

democratic experiment have been the proliferation of armed conflict manifested mostly in the

form of intra-state wars. When it comes to intra-state wars (civil wars), studies have found

that in-between forms of governance (anocracies), that is, states that are neither fully

autocratic nor fully democratic, are more prone to intra-state armed conflicts than are other

states.64 Lessons from democratic transitions and democratisation in Latin America, Southern

Europe and, to some extent Eastern Europe are quite glaring. Unfortunately, African states

seem to have the largest number of anocracies currently and this has negative consequences

for the attainment of democratic peace in the continent.

Democracy-Autocracy Nexus and Armed Conflict in Africa Liberal democracies have been argued to be the only type of regimes that can truly

insulate themselves from violent internal challenges.65 In Africa, this reality does not fit into

theory. Democracy is not a necessary condition for the attainment of peace in Africa and

there is little evidence to show that alternative regime types can ensure peace in Africa. As

the African experience has greatly shown, democracy is not an artefact that can be introduced

and sustained regardless of context, either as an intellectual enterprise or as part of a foreign

package.66 Africa to use Claude Ake’s phrase ‘has not been a favourable environment for

democracy’.67 The idea of building democracy in Africa as a solution to armed conflicts has

not only been challenging but daunting. Western style democracies like its counterparts have

not been successful in bringing about peace (considered here as the absence of armed

63Alex Thomson, An Introduction to African Politics, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 245. 64Mimmo Söderberg and Thomas Ohlson, Democratisation and Armed Conflicts in Weak States,…, p.

6. 65Barbara F. Walter, “Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War,” Journal of

Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2004, p. 382. 66M. Mamdani, ‘Democratic Theory and Democratic Struggles’, in Eshetu Chole and Jibrin Ibrahim

(eds.), Democratisation Process in Africa: Problems and Prospects, Dakar: CODESRIA, 1995, pp. 43-62.

67Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995.

23

conflict) in Africa. As such in African states, one can observe the phenomenon of armed

conflicts both in democratic and autocratic countries.

This suggests that African political systems should not be understood as a dichotomy

between autocratic regimes and Western democracies but more in terms of how the

government has attempted to represent diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious groups in

governance. Ethnicity serves to bond a particular group together and it is within such

primordial cleavage that they (group) realize its identity. The instrumentalist conception of

ethnicity holds that those of the same group manipulate and mobilize their ethnic affinities for

political ends. Strong ethnic cleavages could be said to have contributed to the Nigerian civil

war of 1967-1970. To this end, the operational difference lies in the reality that while some

governments have been more successful in integration of the composition of their multi-

ethnic groups, others have reversely alienated them after gaining power through an electoral

system. What is important and significant in mitigating the manifestation of armed conflict in

Africa is the degree of success in aligning and reconciling various interests represented by

diverse groups within the polity. As such it can be argued that regime type is unimportant to

the consolidation of peace in Africa. It is not the type of regime that matters but the quality of

the regime.

The democratic peace argument fails to recognise that many wars in Africa (e.g.,

Congo, Western Africa, Sudan, etc.) originate from the colonial history which artificially

divided many tribal and ethnic regions and created a hierarchy for their rule. Based on this,

the democratic peace argument presents itself as ahistorical. Instability in parts of Africa,

including Burundi, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone,

Somalia, the Sudan and Zaire, does not necessarily reinforce the need for democracy. This

consolidates Frederick Wiseman’s view that ‘in no African state can democracy be said to be

fully consolidated and immune from serious erosion or termination in the future’.68

Furthermore, democracy as Wallensteen noted ‘also has difficulties in managing ethnically

highly divided societies, either those with strong polarization between two or three sizable

competing groups, or those with considerable fragmentation, whose coalition-making may be

68Frederick Wiseman quoted in J. Haynes, ‘Limited Democracy in Ghana and Uganda. What is Most

Important to International Actors: Stability or Freedom’, Online Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2001.

24

difficult’.69 Democracy is a political system and offers political solutions to political

problems. However, most of the problems confronting African states (such as religious

extremism and poverty) are more social than political and as such their solution does not

solely require democracy.

Conclusion

Western style democracy has been argued to be a credible way out of the recurring

armed conflicts in the African continent. This is based on the democratic peace theory which

argues that liberal democracies are inherently peaceful (monadic assumption) and hardly go

to war with each other (dyadic and systemic assumption). However, what is ‘democratic’ has

been superficially defined by democratic peace theorists. The argument that democratic states

seldom engage in armed conflicts is not derivative upon the fact that they are democratic but

because they are parts of a larger alliance comprising Western European countries and the

United States. Overall there are no agreed indicators of democracy or peace. A democratic

peace in the African region does not seem viable given its vulnerability to the African

democratic experience and experiment. Bringing African states into focus, democracy has

been a glass either half-full or half-empty as most of them have been challenged by their

attempt to govern their people under a western-style democracy. African states seem to be a

dry if not stony ground for the fragile root of liberal democracy to spring out. Western

systems of democracy have failed to take root in many African countries. This failure has

been associated with the root cause of armed conflicts in many African countries. Those who

propose Western liberal democracy as the way out for Africa’s armed conflicts have argued

that democracy promotes peace and stability. However, Western liberal democracy in Africa

seems to have increased armed conflict in the region as the apparent difficulty of most

African States to establish democratic societies that produce violence free changes in

government has eluded the possibility of a democratic peace in the African region.

69P. Wallensteen, ‘The Uppsala Conflict Data Program 1978-2003’, in M. Eriksson (ed.), States in

Armed Conflict 2002, Uppsala Publishing House, 2004, p. 27.

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Recommended citation

Ubong Essien Umoh, “Armed Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa and the Democratic Peace Theory”, Nasarawa Journal of General Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, January, 2012, pp. 7-25. About the author

Ubong Essien Umoh is a Lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies, University of Uyo, Nigeria. His areas of specialisation and research interest are Military History and Peace History, respectively.