ABSTRACT
The institutional level of development of churches, trade unions, business interests, students and the urban intelligentsia became a fundamental factor in the late 1980s and early 1990s in driving the process of democratic renewal. The circumstances in which democratization occured, of economic and social crisis, and of state instability, remain capable of undermining every gain. Because the democratic reforms which affected Africa in the early nineties coincided with wider international events, there was a tendency to perceive them as local manifestations of a ‘global democratic resurgence’ which signalled the historic triumph of liberal democracy. Starting with Ghana’s independence in 1957, British colonialism rapidly withdrew from Africa. Even where the elections produced limited democratic progress, even where they were aborted, as in Nigeria, they nevertheless put democracy and pluralist competition on the political agenda and provided African voters with a rare opportunity to express their opinions on the matter.
