Implications of Universalizing Liberal Democracy on Non-Western Societies: Africa in Focus

Abstract

Although political culture as a framework for analysis revolves around and implies a trivialization of political economy, the focus here is to evaluate it as a complex whole in a bid to regurgitate the supposed interplay between culture and institutions. Contrary to conventional knowledge the study upon reviewing relevant theoretical and parochial literature is of the views that no individual or society was birthed with democratic or non-democratic culture. Further claiming such values are inculcated over time conditioned by certain socializing agents in a given society. However, on the viability of liberal democracy in non-Western societies, it opines attempt to replicate with little or no efforts at domestication has affected the probability of liberal democracy to bring about certain predetermined outcomes. Against this; the research is of the views that governments or its institutions should not be imposed; rather it should embody the collective shared and adhered values cum beliefs and prevailing norms in a society. Alternatively, in ethnic heterogeneous societies such as Africa, it could be arrived at by consciously ingraining and teaching values such as tolerance, moderation, efficacy, and amongst others participatory orientation which is thought to be conducive for democracy. The single most important aspect for this study remains its clamor for domestication as opposed to the current system of copy and paste.