Imbalances And Contradictions:Democracy And Governance In Africa’s Political Development Process

Around the end of World War Ⅱ,African countries were liberated from colonial domination and embarked on the path of democratization.After more than seven decades of development,the democratic level of African countries had been constantly changing.While the overall standard of democracy has improved,the gap between different countries has also become more and more wide.In this Land of Hope,there are many countries that have successfully established democracies,but at the same time,they are also full of failures on the road to democratization.Although the democratic development in African countries is well documented in domestic and international academic studies,relatively few studies have focused on the correlation between democracy and governmental governance capacity.This essay is dedicated to further exploratory research in this area,which is to explain the internal causes of differences in democratic development from the perspective of government governance.This essay gathers the democracy scores of African countries from the Polity Ⅳdatabase and the governance scores of African governments from the World Bank’s Global Governance Index,both dates are from 1996 to 2018.After making a regression analysis of the two variables,it is found that there is a tension between democracy and governance in Africa,with increased government capacity in the areas of ’Political Stability and Control of violence’,’Government Effectiveness’ and ’Regulatory Quality’leading to a decline in democracy,strengthening the government’s governance capacity in the areas of ’Voice and Accountability’ and ’Rule of Law’ helps to improve democracy.The different focus of the governance process in each country ultimately leads to differences in democratic development.The incomplete compatibility between governance and democracy has led to a decline in the level of democracy in some African countries,which has further led to differences in democratic development among African countries.The deep contradiction between governance and democracy reaffirms that a better democratic standard is not exactly the correlation with a stronger governance capacity.The purpose of this essay is not to distinguish the superiority and inferiority of governance and democracy,but to suggest that third world countries should choose the appropriate priority development goals according to their own national conditions in the development process,should not blindly make the improvement of democracy the first development priority.For African countries,finding a development path that can balance democracy and governance is a critical challenge that needs to be addressed.Looking around the world,China’s model of "State Governance" to promote social development and ensure democratic development has achieved remarkable results.Not only has it provided a stable and sustainable basis for democratic development,it has also succeeded in achieving many governance goals such as economic growth,state capacity building and social stability,truly achieving a harmonious development of democracy and governance.China,as a brother country,has a long history of friendly interactions and mutual recognition with many African countries in various fields.Although China has no intention of exporting its revolution or institutional model to other countries,China is willing to share its effective Chinese development model with its African friends.The interaction between China and Africa in the area of democracy and governance will also play a positive role in promoting China-Africa relations.