Western democracy fallacy exposed in Ivory Coast

The fallacy calling democracy a Western tradition. It is not. It is a modern tradition. In many parts of The West it has only very recently been in operation and even democratic ones still have vestiges of monarchy. The first attempts of many countries at overthrowing monarchy in favour of democracy and republicanism resulted in totalitarian regimes.

Even the early adopters like the US started more like ancient oligarchy than a modern democracy. White, male landowners only. In some cases with extra powers (via upper houses) to aristocrats.

Science is also not western. Neither is medicine. Nor is women's suffrage.

Europe has just as much history of monarchy and autocracy as Africa.

What a defeatist article! In spite of the fact that I believe that western style democracy does not work all over the world (see the alternative democratic models of singapore and botswana as counter examples), there has to be a clear method to remove people abusing power.

I believe the best method that would work in many African countries, particular the decentralised tribes of the Niger-Congo A language group, would be a system of consensus selections of locally organised 'leaders'. One man, one vote does not work for such societies. Rather, the local leaders who are chosen by traditional methods should represent the people who choose them. The western system of senators and delegates results in people who do not represent any group being selected to represent groups.

Historical leadership structures in African societies should be adapted to work in a modern concept. Trying to force the european model on non-european societies has caused a lot of trouble all over the world - the illusion that this will ever work should finally be abandoned.

I love the Republic of the USA, but I firmly believe that it cannot work in any country where it is not self-organizing and self-chosen.

The fallacy then, is not Western Democracy itself, but the arrogant mentality which believes that where Democracy is not already chosen by any people, that it can be imposed upon them for their own good.

The result of this imposition cannot be called Democracy, for it is only a stage-managed parody of Democracy whereby petty dictators and totalitarian zealots manipulate public opinion with one hand, while pointing a gun at the populace with the other. Only now, instead of being decried for their strong-arm tactics, the west in her arrogance pays them homage.

While it's true that African democracies often function badly, I'm not so sure that the open return to heritary monarchies that this article flirts with would be an improvement. After all, these dictators aren't exactly heading prosperous and happy countries...

By the way, pg may want to fix the domain name handling - it should read monitor.co.ug, obviously.

I had to giggle when I saw "democratic fallacy" and "Ivory Coast" in the same sentence.