Is Senegal a Consolidated Democracy? Alternations, Corruption and Cultural Relativism

Abstract

Abstract For the last two decades, scholars within the dominant, largely Western, approaches to democratic consolidation have considered the consolidation of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa to be stymied, if not impossible. Drawing on the various models of this democratic consolidation, this article seeks to examine whether African (and Latin American) democracies have really failed to meet all the necessary criteria of democratic consolidation, or whether the measures and/or application of the dominant approaches are methodologically flawed in their application to non-Western cases. The case study analysis suggests that while Senegal has sufficiently met the ‘alternation of power’ requirement as well as demonstrating significant deepening of democracy, it has failed to maintain low levels of governmental corruption – a necessary criterion for consolidation according to the dominant approaches. Moreover, given their contagion effect, larger regional instabilities pose a significant threat to the country’s democratic survivability. However, as the case study analysis suggests, while these factors remain a matter of concern, when comparisons are drawn with countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, they may not be as crucial in explaining why Senegal and other new democracies are not considered consolidated democracies as they may initially seem.