Preventing things from falling apart: Democracy and its discontents in West Africa

For those who like to describe phases in a country's democratisation process in terms of "waves" (Huntington, 1991; Schraeder, 1995), the current wave of democratisation in Africa, which began with the end of the Cold War between 1989 and 19901, has arguably been the most promising for the continent. The defeat of communism in that great ideological conflict had led to a proclamation of a 'New World Order' driven by an infrastructure of liberal democracy said to be the 'end of history' (Fukuyama, 1993). Democracy therefore became the new mantra, a wind of change that blew from the Berlin World through Eastern Europe to Africa like wild bush fire in harmattan.