Elections in Africa Essay

The Aim of this essay is based on the clarity on the picks in Africa if they ar a good Measure of giftcracy. It basic eithery analyses the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives (in an argument form). The solvent of how citizens influence policymaker is central to an understanding of democratic political system. We normally bind that country should allow the citizenry to manicipate in policy qualification. and so elections are peerless of the ways to establish connections between citizens and policy makers and by elections citizens encourage the policymakers to pay attention to their pertains. How perpetually there are rough disagreements about whether and how elections serve to link citizens to policymakers a number of schools put much than emphasis upon accountability and others do on representativeness, even if there train been a lot of theoretical debates about this issue, we seduce few attempts to assay the role of competitive election on popular attit udes towards the law-makers.An election is a formal decision making process in which the population chooses an respective(prenominal) to hold a public office. Elections crap been the mechanism by which moderne representative country has been operated since 17TH century. According to Business Dictionary (BD), Election is the act of a party casting vote to choose an individual, for nigh type of position. It may involve a public or cloak-and-dagger vote dep winduping on the position. Most positions in the local, state federal g everyplacenments are voting on the same type of elections. According to (Abraham Lincoln), the word democracy means the g overnment of the flock, by the people and for the people .Democracy is enclosure that comes from a Greek and it is made up of devil other words, demo which means people and kratain which means to govern or to formula. Democracy plunder then be literally translated by the following terms, Government of the people or government of t he majority. Electoral systems are conventionally divided into two categories, majoritarian. And proportional representations, (Lijphart 1999). Majoritarian system usually employs exclusively single-seat distrust with plurality rule and tends to roll great representation to the two parties and that which receive the near votes. relative representation (P.R) System must employ multi-seat districts, usually with party lists, and typically produce parliamentary representation that largely mirrors the vote shares of multi-parties However elections be it Proportional Representation (PR), or Majoritarian type, are putzs of democracy to the degree that they give the people theinfluence over policymaking,.(Powell 2000).One fundamental role of elections is the military rank of the incumbents government. Citizens use elections to reward or punish the incumbents although on the other wad increasingly competitive elections raise the risk of outgrowthd election violence, this chiffonier be raised in two ways. Firstly, closer elections hind end increase tension throughout the electoral process when the outcome of the election is in doubt, all stages of the process including the appointment of the members of the electoral management body, the registration of parties, candidates, and voters campaign voting and vote counting and tabulation, wrenchs more heated. For example, Kenya erupted in chaos in 2007 when incumbent president Mwai kibaki was sworn in hours after being declare the winner in the countrys closest presidential elections ever the ensuing violence left 1,500 dead and 300,000 displaced.Secondly, as long-term incumbents stunner the growing strength of the opposition candidates, they may feel increasingly imperilled and hold down more fiercely on perceived threats, example, after losing the introductory round of Zimbabwes 2008 presidential elections and subsequently manipulating results to force run-off, president Robert Mugabe presided over a wave o f widespread and brutal violence against supporters of Morgan Tsvangirai to ensure himself triumph in the second round. While these above examples demonstrate the potential of elections to perform conflict, elections are often used as a means to end conflict and solidify peace. For this reason, elections usually form a key part of the agreements ending civil wars or conflict. The basic principal behind these mail service conflict or transitional elections is that of Ballots over Bullets citizens choosing their political leaders by voting rather than fighting, although in the 1992 Angola elections which was intended to end the civil war, this election instead reignited conflict for another ten (10) years. cases such as these set about led many to argue that elections are not appropriate for pip conflict environment.In majority, however, there is no viable alternative to affix conflict elections as a means of achieving legitimate governance a non elected government is far more su sceptible to accusations of illegitimacy than the one chose by the people, and legitimate governance must be achieved as short as possible following a conflict. Moreover, elections suck the potential to fashion government broadly representative of all disputing political factions. Demonstratively, severalcountries claim recently held remarkably successful post-conflict elections. For example, Liberias elections in 2005 intended to over a decade of civil war were remarkably peaceful and hailed as generally tolerant and fair. Another example is the DRCs 2006 elections, the first multi-party election in 46 years, were also relatively successful, especially when considering the tremendous logistical challenges that had to be overcome. in these cases therefore, elections facilitated an ongoing transition from devastating conflict toward greater perceptual constancy and development.Based on a multi-level analysis of Afro barometer survey entropy from 17 sub-Saharan African countri es, the study examines the influence of these two types of electoral systems Majoritarian and Proportional Representations-on popular confidence in African parliaments. Controlling for a variety of individual and macro-level characteristics, it was found that citizens perceptions of Members of Parliament (MPs) representations pull in a positive and significant effect on their trust in legislature. In addition the results suggest that the effect of political representations is mediated by electoral systems. Powell (2000), distinguishes between two versions of elections as instruments of democracy accountability and representation. Accountability pretending tries to use elections to bring the power of the people directly to bear on policymakers. Elections offer citizens a periodic opportunity to change the policymakers.Citizens entrust have control because they will be able, at least occasionally to do away with elected officials who are doing the wrong. Competitive elections crea te a pressure on all incumbents or rather the current policymakers to worry about the near elections and make policy with voters review in mind. On the other occur representation model emphasises citizens should be treated equally at the vital stage of public policy making. Elections are instruments of citizens influence in policy making. Elections should create equitable reflection of all points of view into the legislature. They instance field as an instrument to choose representatives who can bargain for their voters interest in post-election policy making.Elections are not only built-in to all these areas of democratic governance, but are also the most gross representations of democracy in action. They are also in most cases the most complicated and expensive single event a country will ever undertake. Good governance, upholding rule of law, and supporting civil society, this testimony examinesall these areas in the context of elections. International support to electoral processes is crucial if democracy is to continue developing on the African continent.Indeed the very invention of elections is to achieve participatory governance without violence- through political rather than physiologic competition and this has succeeded in a number of African countries. South-Africa and Botswana, for example have proven themselves among the continents most stable democracies, while Ghana, Mali, and Benin have emerged as democratic stronghold in West Africa. Moreover, countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, among the poorest in the world and only recently emerged from civil war, have demonstrated the power of elections to foster and solidify peace. In reality, then, Africas have it away with the electoral democracy has been flowed progress has been made but challenges remain. The versatile elections in past several years-from Kenya and Zimbabwe to Ghana and Sierra Leone- have become historical landmarks for different reasons, varying drastically in thei r conduct and outcome.This mix of electoral experience has generated considerable debate and passion on the subject of transparent, free and fair electoral process among election stakeholders, especially as democratic progress itself can come with further challenges as more elections are held as these elections become increasingly competitive, one-party and military regimes governance potentially destabilizing challenges that could increase the risk of fraud and violence. In conclusion elections-especially free and fair, competitive and multi-party elections, are assumed to be a critical particle of democratization in emerging democracies, while an election can intensify the polarization of a society along ethnic lines. Competitive elections can force political elites to legitimate their rule through the ballot box.However, we are still debating about how elections serve to link voters and elected Officials. While a group of scholars emphasise the directness and clarity of the co nnection between voters and policy-makers, others do the representation of all factions in society. Elections help voters to send Members of Parliament (MPs) representing their interest to the parliament, to some extent elections constitutes a principal avenue of citizens mesh in political life. Understanding their effects on public attitudes towards the legislature and the role of the individualtherein has important implications for theories of democratic governance in emerging democracy. Therefore with this information, elections are a good measure of democracy in that they give citizens the participatory right in policy making through their elected representatives. Making it the government of the people by the people and for the people, thats democracy according to Abraham Lincolns definition.BIBLIOGRAPHY1. Powell (2000), Elections as instrument of Democracy.2. Easton David (1965), A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York john Wiley. 3. Norris, Pippa, Eds (1999), precise Citizen Global Support for Democratic Governance. New York oxford University press. 4. Lebas, Adrienne (2006), Comparative Politics 38 419438. 5. Margolis, M (1979), Viable Democracy.6. Tordoff, W. Government and Politics in Africa. London McMillan (1993). 7. Rose, Richard, William Mishler, Christian Haerpfer (1998), Democracy and Its Alternatives. 8. Sisk, Timothy D, Andrew Reynolds, Eds (1998), Election and Conflict Management in Africa. Washington United States Institute of Peace press. 9. Powell G. Bingham (1982), Contemporary Democracies participation stability and violence. Cambridge University. 10. Almami l. Cyllah. Democracy and Elections in Africa.