A Historical Perspective on Political Culture in Contemporary African Politics

Abstract This article offers a historical but critical perspective on the influence of colonisation on political cultures in African states. It seeks to interrogate how colonialism has influenced Africa’s political systems. There is little literature that exists to explain the influence of colonialism on contemporary African politics. As an oppressive system, colonialism was rooted in white dominance, “racial hierarchy”, and exploitation. This led to the setting up of coerced institutionalised colonial systems of government. Notable examples were the British indirect rule system and assimilation by the French. This encounter led to the dismantling of Africa’s precolonial traditional systems of governance and their replacement with oppressive colonial systems. This article argues that colonial structures led to the instituting of, among other things, ethnic fragmentation, one-party states and military takeovers. This underpins “contemporary” discourse as it relates to democratic and non-democratic political cultures in Africa. The main sources used in this study are literature studies, but the article also uses a variety of other sources to investigate political cultures. This includes analysing reports and historiographical and postcolonial theorising. The article makes a unique contribution to colonial, postcolonial and, more so, contemporary discourse on Africa’s political culture. Using the framework of Almond and Verba (1963), the article identifies three classifications of political culture: participant, subject and parochial. Thus, the article not only to applies this theoretical framework as it is but adapting it to the African context. It includes a salient focus on The Gambia’s 2016 presidential elections, which led to the democratic transition from autocracy.