Panel 87: Understanding Democratic Culture: Municipal Politics and Local Development in Africa

Some 15-20 years after the wave of political liberalisation in Africa, democratisation processes are continuously characterised by a complex mixture of authoritarianism (the Postcolonial State, decades of one-party State and military rule) and democracy (multiparty systems, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties). The ambiguity is that while democratisation has increased political and economic liberties, it has also favoured corruption, criminalisation and disorder.

In the panel we explore municipal politics as a key challenge to democratisation. First, municipal politics constitutes a local political arena, where traditional structures based on ethnicities, clan-memberships and family belongings interact with national political processes and international development aid. Second, democratisation processes are crystallised locally in struggles over resources, positions and meanings. Thirdly, local political actors constitute an interesting social category of, e.g., political wannabes,chiefs, local leaders with power base outside of politics and retired civil servants.

Democratic culture denotes the ways in which democracy is practised, and attributed meaning by political actors, and refers to the cultural repertoires according to which people creatively appropriate democratic processes, such as the implementation of electoral laws, the formation of political movements and other public actions. The panel aims to stimulate new ways to approach democratic practice with papers presented by scholars with long-term ethnographic fieldwork on local politics in African municipalities. Panel participants are invited to explore the conceptual opportunities of democratic culture, its methodological potentials and constraints, and its practical and pragmatic usefulness in understanding municipal politics, local development debates, and collective belongings.