Consolidated Democracies or Not? a Comparative Study Between the Dr Congo and Mozambique
Introduction: How can the existence or absence of a consolidated democracy be measured?
In my paper I am going to compare the democratic advancement of two African countries.
After defining the key points that will help me to measure the respective degrees of democratization, I am going to evaluate whether or not one can speak of consolidated democracies or not.
When it comes to finding criteria for consolidated democracies, there can be found many resources not only in the academic world, but also by the United Nations and the IPU. The main criteria (see Dahl 1971, Lijphart 2010 or Linz and Stepan 1996) are:
· universal suffrage
· free and fair elections
· rule of law
· freedom of the press
· freedom of speech
However, considering the volume of this Assignment I will have to focus on the aspect of free and fair elections.
Free elections are globally recognised as an important indication that a state is capable of implementing a genuine democracy. They gain a great deal of attention amongst politicians, researchers and journalists alike. For young democracies, they are an important event to measure their success in transforming to a democratic state. Examples during the last decade can be found in Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2006, the first free elections for 40 years were held in the DR Congo (see Tull 2006). In 1994, the first free elections took place in Mozambique.
The last two examples were accompanied by external endevours and great expectations regarding their impact on the democratizations of the two countries. When reading articles by both the international press and researchers, it becomes clear that free and fair elections were being assigned a central role in the process of democratization. This claim was not only made by almost all western government representatives, but also by large parts of the scientific community (see Tull 2006).
Nevertheless, as important as free and fair elections are, there are many
In my paper I am going to compare the democratic advancement of two African countries.
After defining the key points that will help me to measure the respective degrees of democratization, I am going to evaluate whether or not one can speak of consolidated democracies or not.
When it comes to finding criteria for consolidated democracies, there can be found many resources not only in the academic world, but also by the United Nations and the IPU. The main criteria (see Dahl 1971, Lijphart 2010 or Linz and Stepan 1996) are:
· universal suffrage
· free and fair elections
· rule of law
· freedom of the press
· freedom of speech
However, considering the volume of this Assignment I will have to focus on the aspect of free and fair elections.
Free elections are globally recognised as an important indication that a state is capable of implementing a genuine democracy. They gain a great deal of attention amongst politicians, researchers and journalists alike. For young democracies, they are an important event to measure their success in transforming to a democratic state. Examples during the last decade can be found in Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2006, the first free elections for 40 years were held in the DR Congo (see Tull 2006). In 1994, the first free elections took place in Mozambique.
The last two examples were accompanied by external endevours and great expectations regarding their impact on the democratizations of the two countries. When reading articles by both the international press and researchers, it becomes clear that free and fair elections were being assigned a central role in the process of democratization. This claim was not only made by almost all western government representatives, but also by large parts of the scientific community (see Tull 2006).
Nevertheless, as important as free and fair elections are, there are many
Bibliography: Boda, Michael D. (Ed.) (2004): Revisiting Free and Fair Elections. An international round table on election standards organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Union. Lijphart, Arend (2010): Democratic Quality in Stable Democracies, 24 November 2010, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3003825/ (last visited: 15.12.2012). Weibezahl, Tinko (2011): Wahlkampf mit zweifelhaften Mitteln, DR Kongo Länderbericht der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_21580-1522-130.pdf?110110212228 (last visited: 15.12.2012). Documents: IPU Members of the Union, http://www.ipu.org/english/membshp.htm (last visited: 15.12.2012). United Nations (2005): Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation and Code of Conduct for International Election Observers. New York: United Nations.