The National Conferences and Their Outcome and the Future of Democracy in Africa: Evidence from a Comparative Study

Abstract

In the 1990, taking advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, many African States, mainly French speaking countries, the opposition elite in alliance with the civil society took to the streets for a national encounter in order to set new grounds for the political competition in almost 30 years. This paper tries and analyzes the impact of the so-called National Conferences on the current shape on the democratic transition and the democratic process in some of the States that hosted these public discussions. In contrast, it argues that countries failed to take advantage of these National Fora are less prone to embrace democracy, with for all of them a failure to bring substantial social changes in terms of well-being.