Abstract
The two decades spanning the end of the 20th and the start of the 21st Century were important phases in the global process of democratisation. The 1990s were epitomised by the ground-breaking 1991 publication of Samuel Huntington’s The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Huntington’s book crowned the global success of democracy, with a growing number of states adopting the principles of democracy. It seems that the next decade from 2000 to 2010 would be the continuation of the democratic trend with authoritarian regimes and their leaders toppling before the “next wave of democratisation”. This notion was strengthened by a significant number of countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Libya and Ukraine, disposing of their leaders and adopting democratic principles. However, it seems that the transition from an authoritarian to democratic rule was more challenging, with the new democracies progressively showing distinct signs of vulnerability in sustaining democracy. The challenges to new democracies seemed to coincide with a wider, more comprehensive disillusion with democracy in general. The scepticism towards democracy increased at a juncture when authoritarian rule seemed to pose a real challenge to democracies, with the rise of China on the global stage. The article is concluded with an investigation into the state of democracy in South Africa in the form of a case study. The reference in the article to other countries is for explanatory purposes only.
Highlights
In a lecture to commemorate the signing of the Magna Carta, Tom Bingham (2010: 172) emphasised the importance of the rule of law, its interrelationship with democracy and good governance
The World Justice Project (WJP) and Freedom House agencies have consistently over decades provided empirical evidence to demonstrate the critical importance of the rule of law as the overarching umbrella for good governance and the protection of basic human rights
I will argue that the inability to deepen democracy, which invariably leads to a defective democracy, is the inability to establish a link between the rule of law and good governance
Summary
The shortcomings of a democracy can hardly be obscured because the openness of democracy is the hallmark of the system. Huntington outlined the upsurge of democracy in three distinct waves, with the third wave in the 1990s, that have substantially increased the number of transitions from dictatorship and authoritarian rule to democracy. He pointed out that the successes of newly democratised countries by far outstripped the perceived democratic breakdowns. The Arab Spring seemed to strengthen the global notion of the desirability and supremacy of democracy This early optimism was soon tempered by the general instability of the ‘new’ democratic systems in Egypt, Ukraine, Iraq and Libya after the overthrow of their autocratic rulers (The Economist 2014: 64). The ruling African National Congress’s (ANC’s) 20-year political dominance has effectively institutionalised a de facto one-party state and its rule has been progressively associated with high levels of corruption, breakdown of security and self-serving members that threaten a still vulnerable democracy (Mail & Guardian 2014: 10)
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