ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the essential preconditions for democracy by the nature and level of organization in civil society and the ways in which these conditions impinge on the state. It explains the reasons why Africa has not been characterized by the emergence of liberal democratic regimes. The chapter aims to raise some theoretical and, to a lesser extent, practical issues that seem to arise, of course in very different ways, on a worldwide basis in connection with democratization and certainly if we are to speak of democratization in Africa. Capitalism as a world system is redeploying its strength, involving attempts to put the periphery to new uses but at the same time driving more of its own workers—including migrants, perhaps a key link in a democratic socialist global strategy—into poverty. The socialist camp, which fell apart in the early 1960s, is witnessing patterns of disintegration in several of its former members, with increasing numbers of their people demanding democracy.
