From PreColonial Conquest to Political Chaos and Back Again: The Development of Democracy in Rwanda

Abstract

This chapter adopts a state–societal approach in its interrogation of the Rwanda. It does so by assessing the quality of democratic development within Rwanda by virtue of its supporting state–societal relations. It traces the state–society relations and the development of democracy from: The inception of the Rwandan state in the 1700s; under the period of German (1895–1914) and Belgian (1916–1959) colonial rule; throughout the period of decolonisation, the social revolution, and independence (1959–1962); during the subsequent First (1962–1973) and Second (1973–1994) Republics; and lastly within the contemporary, post-1994 political dispensation. This chapter finds that while state–society relations had initially been amicable and reciprocal during Rwanda’s precolonial era, it began to take on a reactive nature as a result of German and Belgium colonial rule. This has inevitably resulted in a constant competition for state power between key social forces at both an inter-ethnic (between Bahutu and Batutsi) and ethno-regional (between the northern and southern Bahutu) level. For this reason, this chapter concludes that Rwanda does not bear the necessary reciprocal state–society relations to fulfill the democratic component of the Democratic Developmental State model; rather, it exhibits features of an anocratic state.