African traditional institutions and support for democracy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Existing research emphasizes popular support for democracy as a key ingredient of democratic regime consolidation. Both formal and informal institutions are commonly seen as the key actors that generate the requisite attitudinal shift, socializing ordinary citizens to adopt democratic values. It is thus puzzling that existing studies of attitudes towards democracy in the developing world have neglected to consider the impact of widely prevalent traditional institutions. Not only do these institutions vary considerably in their own democraticness, they also play a prominent role in the daily lives of many citizens. Filling this lacuna in extant knowledge, this study links a continent-wide dataset of the institutional features of contemporary traditional institutions in Africa with over fifty thousand survey respondents. The results indicate that the degree of democraticness exhibited by traditional institutions is a robust if weak predictor of ordinary Africans’ support for democracy.