From Political Transitions to Good Governance in Africa

Resolving the Socio-Economic Roots of Insecurity in the 21st Century

Authors

Keywords:

Democratisation, Political Transition, Governance, Democracy and Insecurity

Abstract

Over the past two decades, African countries have experienced major political transitions that seemed to have checkmated the excesses of governments with authoritarian tendencies leading to aggravated security and development challenges. What has been the impact of democratic governance on socio-economic development and security in Africa, past and present? To what extent has the opening up of the political space impacted on the peoples’ living standards in Africa during the same period? Understanding the impact of democratic administrations on the provisions of social and economic needs of the citizens will provide real insights into the roots of insecurity in Africa’s quest for national stability and protection of their citizens. The perspective of this paper is that one of the causes of escalating trends of insecurity and obstacles to the achievement of human security as well as guarantee of national stability is heavily, if not fundamentally, bad governance. We identify and interrogate substantive issues involved in governance styles which create the current socio-economic challenges, and serves as the source of human insecurity, in Africa. The paper identified good governance approach in tackling the raging menace of insecurity in the continent. Finally, the paper concluded that one important missing link in the current democratization as well as guarantee of security in Africa is the challenge of flawed democracy.

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From Political Transitions to Good Governance in Africa: Resolving the Socio-Economic Roots of Insecurity in the 21st Century

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Published

10-01-2016

How to Cite

OJO Oluwole, P., OJO Mathew, O., & ESAN Vincent, A. (2016). From Political Transitions to Good Governance in Africa: Resolving the Socio-Economic Roots of Insecurity in the 21st Century. SOCRATES, 3(4), 76–96. Retrieved from https://www.socratesjournal.com/index.php/SOCRATES/article/view/182

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 4 (2015): Issue - December

Section

Politics, Law and Governance

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Research Papers published in SOCRATES are licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)