Regional Integration and Democracy in Africa

Lucio Levi
Member of WFM Council and UEF Federal Committee, Former President of UEF Italy

K. G. Adar, G. Finizio, A. Meyer
Building Regionalism from Below. The Role of Parliaments and Civil Society in Regional Integration in Africa
Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2018

This book is part of a line of research dedicated to the democratization of international institutions and specifically it studies the process of democratization of regional and sub-regional organizations formed on the African continent after decolonization, and especially after the end of the Cold War. The work is made up of contributions from subject specialists, almost all of them from Africa, who therefore have first-hand knowledge of the region’s reality. The aim of the research is to offer the most exhaustive overview of the ongoing democratization processes. An appreciable goal has been reached: to describe the achievements and to illustrate their limits. The results are meager, because the governments hold firmly in their hands the control of the processes of regional integration, and leave very little space to the international parliamentary assemblies. The latter have exclusively advisory powers, and where the treaties have recognized their legislative powers (as in the case of the EALA, the East African Legislative Assembly), they are weakened by the veto power of the Council, the intergovernmental body in which the Heads of Government sit. At the same time, governments oppose a structural resistance to recognizing the proactive role of civil society organizations, which have also become increasingly important players in the international post-Cold War and globalization context. Furthermore, none of these assemblies is elected by direct universal suffrage, such as the European Parliament, although this objective was indicated in the founding treaties of the African Union, CEMAC and ECOWAS. Finally, the operational capabilities of these assemblies are limited by the lack of financial resources.

Faced with such poor results, a question is to be asked: why invest intelligence, time and resources in a project of this nature? One answer can only come from a comparative view, which allows to situate the process of democratization of African regional organizations in the global context and takes the EU as the institution that has gone further than any other in the realization of the goal of international democracy. Enlightened by this perspective, research can reveal its usefulness (and the authors should highlight it), because it can show that:

1. the process of democratization of international institutions has global dimensions and has begun to affect Africa, even though it is the most backward continent in the world;
2. the African parliamentary assemblies are an expression of a first stage of development of the processes of democratization of international institutions, the second stage being the direct election of such assemblies and the third the conquest of legislative powers, as shown by the experience of the European Parliament.

In the same comparative perspective, one might ask (another question that is not answered in the book in question) whether it is not in place what, according to Huntington’s theory (The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century), could be called a “phase of reflux” of the third wave of development of democracy, which would also affect international institutions and international democracy. According to the 2018 Freedom House report, 2018 is the twelfth consecutive year in which there is a retreat of democracy in the world. Unfortunately, the analysis of the processes of integration and democratization in Africa is not framed in a long-term historical horizon or in a broad theoretical perspective. As well known, the third wave, which began in the ‘70s with the fall of the fascist regimes in southern Europe, was followed by the fall of the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and those of Central and Eastern Europe, and the fascist ones in Latin America and Asia. The retreat of democracy in recent years at national level in Russia, Turkey, Hungary and Poland, but also in an international democratic organization such as the EU - highlighted by Brexit (it is the first time, after an uninterrupted series of enlargements, that a Member State has decided to leave the EU), the suspension of the Schengen agreements, the steady decline in voting participation in the European elections (61.99% in 1979 and 42.54% in 2014) and the spectacular increase in votes obtained by populist, nationalistic or openly anti-European parties – confirm the hypothesis of a reflux. The fact that the process of European unification has stopped and shows clear signs of regression has had a negative influence on the processes of unification in other regions of the world. The direct election of Parlasur, scheduled for 2014, was postponed until 2020, and that of the three African parliaments mentioned above was postponed sine die.

The fact is that the processes of democratization are a variable dependent on factors of a systemic nature, which can favour or hinder these processes. The first report on international democracy promoted by the International Democracy Watch (The Democratization of International Institutions, London-New York, Routledge, 2014) proposed the fundamental elements of a new paradigm for the study of international institutions based on the concept of mode of production, borrowed from the materialistic conception of history, and on the concept of international order, borrowed from the theory of raison d’état.

Schematically, we can say that the long wave that, beyond the regressive phases, has determined the constant extension of the number of democratic regimes, has its driving force in the process of industrialization, and more recently in the scientific revolution of material production. It is a process that has integrated individuals into large national spaces, and made them active first in economic-social life and then in political life; the process of urbanization has plucked large numbers of workers from the isolation in which they were in the countryside; mass schooling has allowed to raise the level of political consciousness and of the conscious participation of the popular masses in the formation of political decisions. Africa’s economic and political backwardness, which is reflected in the limits of the process of democratization, must be interpreted in this context.

Changes in the international order, instead, contribute to explaining changes in trends and discontinuities. In fact, democracy can develop in the presence of favourable international conditions. It is not just the fact that, when a state is at war, constitutional guarantees are suspended. More generally, in the presence of international tensions, centralism and militarism prevail. In other words, when security needs demand it, democracy is sacrificed to the salvation of the nation. On the other hand, international detente should be seen as a factor that promotes democracy, while the opening of markets, especially in the era of globalization, favours the development of the industrialization process, which in turn is a contributing factor for democracy.

It can therefore be said that at the base of the first wave is the extraordinary international political stability determined by the functioning of the European concert, which produced the “Hundred Years’ Peace” (K. Polanyi, “The Great Transformation”) between the Vienna Congress (1815) and the First World War (1914).

Instead, the reflux of the period between the two world wars must be attributed to the end of the European balance of powers, to the contradiction between the organization of Europe in national states and the internationalization of the production process, and to the fragmentation of Europe because of the disintegration of multinational empires.

The second wave is the consequence of the affirmation of the bipolar world order and, more specifically, of the international influence of the United States, which has promoted democracy within its sphere of influence.

The second reflux is connected to the crisis of the bipolar system, that is, the relative weakening of the two superpowers with respect to the small and medium states subjected to the respective spheres of influence, which opens the way to centrifugal thrusts and to the use of force, in a direct or indirect way, by the superpowers, aimed to restore order within the respective blocks. I recall, by way of example, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968, to stifle the “Prague Spring” and overthrow the government of Dubcek, and the military coup d’état of Pinochet in Chile in 1974, supported by the United States, overthrowing Allende’s socialist government.

The third wave is the consequence of the affirmation of a new world order based on the tendency towards the unification of the world, which has its roots in the scientific revolution of material production and in the process of globalization. The first positive effects are seen in Europe, where the international influence of the European Union is increasingly felt; it plays a decisive role in determining the fall of the fascist regimes in southern Europe and of the communist ones in central Europe, and in integrating these countries through the enlargement of the borders of the Union towards the South and the East. In turn, the fall of communism in the Soviet Union is the determining factor of the Russian-American reconciliation and the start of the reduction of armaments, which have had positive effects on the process of democratization all over the world.

The rebirth of nationalism and international terrorism have made the world more unstable and insecure, have slowed down the process of globalization and halted the expansion of democracy.

On the one hand, most of the new democracies, precisely because they are organized into many national states, too small to ensure the development of productive forces and torn by acute international conflicts, do not have the strength to prevent the authoritarian degeneration of their institutions.

On the other hand, the limitation of individual liberties, the habeas corpus violation of hundreds of prisoners detained for years in American prisons and military bases, represents the reaction of the US government to the danger of terrorism. They are not isolated measures. Other countries in the Western world have also moved in the same direction, especially Great Britain, which for centuries has represented a model of free government.

The end of the old bipolar order and the slowness of the transition to a multipolar order without hegemonies define an international political context that opens the way to a third phase of reflux in the process of democratization. The fact is that a new world order cannot simply come from the states that have adopted representative democracy and the market economy. Ultimately, in an international context characterized by increasing instability, democracy is destined to a progressive decline.

Despite the gaps reported, which concern the interpretation and explanation of the facts and not their description, the book is a useful contribution to outline the lights and shadows of the processes of democratization under way in Africa.