The US presidential election and what it means for Africa

America’s model of capitalist democracy is facing its stiffest challenge from populists. While the turbulent 2016 presidential election campaigns are already shifting America’s domestic public policy orientation in an emphatic way, they are also likely to affect its global leadership and policy especially towards Africa.

After the recently concluded party nominations, the ideological battle-lines are clearly marked. In Philadelphia (July 25-28), the Democratic Party endorsed Hillary Clinton, an ultra-insider, as its flagbearer after defeating Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old self-declared democratic socialist.

Clinton faces Donald Trump who, once thought of as a joke, has emphatically won the Republican Party ticket in one of America’s most dramatic and hostile takeovers that has left the GoP badly divided.

Intellectually, the right place to begin to make sense of what seems like the unravelling of America’s democracy and its implications for Africa is the concept of “power elite” popularised over six decades ago by Wright Mills’ classic The Power Elite (1956).

In a gist, Mills saw the rise of Nazism to power in a democratic state like Germany “as a warning of what could happen in a modern capitalist democracy”.

Presciently, Mills highlighted the dangers inherent in the concentration of power in the hands of a single power elite, a triumvirate of the military, corporate and political elements of society that dominates and manipulates the ordinary citizens and projects American power abroad.

Academics and policy thinkers are drawing attention to the large number of voters who, feeling victimised and left out, have turned to radical outsiders during the 2016 election in the hope of wresting state power to change their fortunes.

America’s angry voter is the target of the next stage of the campaign. The Democrats hope to turn into electoral victory the economic gains under President Barack Obama, including the creation of about 10 million new jobs, sustained growth, stable financial systems and doubling of the values of leading stock markets. “We can do more for you,” they say.

Trump’s Republicans are counting on the reality that the benefits of Obama’s economic recovery have not trickled down to all American social classes, but flowed to the wealthiest of Americans (contributing to a widening of inequality between the 1 per cent wealthy and 99 per cent poor). Promising to “Make America Great Again”, they are targeting many Americans still out of work or living with declined incomes.

What the 2016 contest means for democracy in general and Africa in particular has sparked a heated debate in academic and policy circles. Three trends are discernible.

First, the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in American politics and populist parties across Europe is seen as proof that “capitalism, in its current form, has reached a dead end”.

INHERENT TENSION

In a review article titled “Capitalism in Crisis” (Foreign Affairs, July/August 2016), Mark Blyth points to an inherent tension between the mass democratic politics that emerged after World War II and capitalism as the source of the crisis.

In the first three decades (1940s-1970s), democracies tamed the markets by establishing labour laws, financial regulations and expanded welfare system. But in the 1970s, the rollback of the state created a globalised and largely unregulated capitalism operating across national borders. Increasing inequality, poverty, stagnating wages and joblessness led to a serious backlash as victims of the markets try to reclaim the powers of the state to protect themselves.

Second, the protest movement that has produced Sanders, Trump and populist parties across Europe arises from a response to political decay in Washington. In his new article: “American Political Decay or Renewal” (July/August 2016), political scientist Francis Fukuyama posits that American voters have risen up against what they see as a corrupt, self-dealing establishment, turning to radical outsiders like Sanders and Trump in the hope of a purifying cleanse. But the dark cloud over the 2016 election has a silver lining. Fukuyama rightly sees the new voter populism as evidence of the resilience of the American democracy, which is finally responding to the rise of inequality and economic stagnation. “The turbulent campaign has shown that American democracy is in some ways in better working order than expected,” he writes. It has also seen the return of social class to the heart of American politics, trumping divisions along racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation and geographic lines in past elections. While the populist crusaders are freeing America from moneyed elites, if embraced, their extremist policies could stifle growth and worsen the situation.

Clinton is the front-runner. If she wins, she has a difficult task to find more effective solutions to the problems of inequality, unemployment and poverty in order to resolve the twin-crisis of liberal democracy and capitalism.

Third, in a sense, America’s 2016 election reflects a worldwide phenomenon of democracy in decline. American scholar of democracy Larry Diamond attributes the retreat of democracy to four factors.

One, established democracies like America have become increasingly dysfunctional and less interested in promoting democracy as part of their foreign policy. Two, democracy itself has lost appeal. Three, and related to the above, decades of China’s steady economic growth have proved that states need not liberalise to generate prosperity. Finally, in Africa as elsewhere emerging democracies have failed to meet the hopes of their citizens for freedom, security and economic growth.

Diamond suggests that the next president should make democracy promotion a pillar of America’s foreign policy. But democracy promotion has its naysayers. Regime change schemes in the name of democracy have thrown African countries like Libya to the abyss of anarchy.

Despite the simplistic hype around the “Africa rising” mantra, it is clear that the era of Africa as a backyard of Western hippies and academic tourists is over. The future of US-Africa relations lies in forging genuine partnerships with the new assertive Africa keen on shaping its own destiny in a multipolar world.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is chief executive, Africa Policy Institute, and visiting scholar, Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of Nairobi.