Vanguard News
Why democracy fails in Nigeria
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By Hussaini Abdu
Globally, democracy has been under significant critical interrogation – both in the advanced and new democracies. The interrogations are informed by increasing right-wing populism, inequality and poverty, slow economic growth, and shrinking civic space. No time has democracy been this interrogated since the end of the Second World War.
While the left and Africanist criticism of liberal democracy have been consistent, we have in the last 10 years seen increasing concerns about the failures of democracy even among liberal scholars. The conversation has shifted from liberal triumphalism of the Fukuyama’s “End of History” to a more interrogative view of democracy even among liberal scholars: See for instance, “How Democracy Die” – Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, 2018; “People vs Democracy: Why our Freedom is in Danger and How to save it” – Yascha Mounk, 2018; “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe and America” – Timothy Snyder 2018; “Us Vs Them: The Failure of Globalism” – Ian Bremmer, 2018; “Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth and How to Fix it” – Dambisa Moyo, 2018; “Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal democracy” – Willaim A. Galston, 2018. Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue’s “Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarisation”, 2019.