Understanding The Theory and Practice of Federalism and Democracy: Achieving Rapid Democratization in Developing Nations (Achieving Rapid Industrialisation and Democratisation in Nigeria)

The vogue of democracy is quite new. It is coming long after the vogue of industrialization and wealth. As Otoide (1992) wrote, ‘the fall of communism in eastern Europe and the emergence of a new world order or more accurately the emergence of an American world order has brought to the lips of nations of the world, more than ever before the word democracy……. True to history, democracy is not an American parlance, but it is a system which has been greatly championed by the Americans in the cold war era. So, the vogue of democracy is post the cold-war era, 1945 – 1990. It again originated from the West as did the vogue of industrialization and wealth. Associated with democracy is the concept of federalism. What does it mean? What does it mean to the majority of people in the rich half of the world? What does federalism mean to majority of the people in the poor half of the world? What is the relationship between democracy and federalism? Quite often the Technologically Advanced Nations (TANs), especially the United States of America (USA), Canada, and Germany are cited as examples of successful federal and democratic systems. Are democracy and federalism the main basis of the stability and dynamism now enjoyed by these nations? Is there a relationship among wealth, democracy and federalism? Australia, New Zealand and India are also examples of the world’s federal and democratic political systems. Most of these nations are capitalistic nations. Are capitalistic nations necessarily democratic nations? Are the Scandinavian nations not democratic? Is there a relationship between ideology and democracy? Does capitalism promote democracy or not? Does socialism/communism promote capitalism? Which social, economic and political factors promote democracy? As it is the case with advanced technology which the West and some parts of Asia possess, Western intelligentsia have not been able to explain whether federalism and democracy are means to ends or ends in themselves and how they (federalism and democracy) became associated with the Western development experience. Westerners only arrogate to themselves the leadership position in all areas of human endeavour, claming that the West achieved maximum level of human development in the sixteenth century. The West is also arrogantly demanding democracy in Africa as a pre-condition for allowing Western capital to flow into Africa. The African leadership, especially the intelligentsia on the other hand, has tried for decades to create the impression that the so-called great federal and democratic systems like the United States of America, Canada and Germany are products of federal-constitutions and culture dependent elections. To African leaders, the flawless constitutions of the great federal and democratic systems were created overnight by the exceptional constitution-writing skills of their naturally well-behaved citizens. Hence, all that Africa needs is “good constitution,” rule of law and human rights. Western social scientists and their African students do not understand the human development process. Consequently, the common conceptualization of democracy and federalism by Western and African intelligentsia are ahistorical, mechanistic, non-scientific and misleading. This explains why Western social scientists and their African students prescribed International Technology Transfer (ITT) as the strategy for African nations to acquire advanced technology and International Political Transfer (IPT) as the strategy for African nations to achieve democracy and federalism. Because of the great advantages associated with democracy and federalism, it is quite necessary to analyse and understand these political systems. Unfortunately, democracy and federalism have not been well analysed and understood. This book presents the results of decades-research on democracy and federalism.