Abstract
Democracy is a configuration of governance molded by the general values, biases, prejudices, and nuances of a given culture. Individuals in Western countries typically identify with the state as reflecting the desires of the body politic. However, in the African world, including Northeastern Africa (or the Middle East as it is labeled in Western literature), identity is primarily reflected in one's ethnicity, religion, and communal adaptations and traditions. That is, the state's conception of governance is not always congruent with the heterogeneous peoples of a particular nation-state. As a result, ways of governance and perceptions of the “good” life are often conflicting at the local, state, and national levels. These clashing ideas are viewed with incertitude and trepidation in the Western world of democracies. Thus, Western democracies label non-Western democratic experiments as “the other.” Hence, without a more holistic understanding of why ethnicity, religion, and communal attachments are so salient in non-Western societies, Western democracies limit the “democratic playing field” as well as circumscribe cooperative, enduring relationships with “the other.” A reappraisal of democracy as a form of governance is needed to find a paradigm that is more suitable to the context in which various African nation-states exist. That is, one size does not and should not fit all.
Published Version
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