Citizens or Subjects? How Individuals Relate to the Local State in Democratizing Africa.

The predominant, regime-based conception of democracy has in effect dismissed individuals, conceiving of them merely as voters, and implicitly assuming that all of the necessary functions of an individual in a democracy are fulfilled in the single act of casting a ballot. But democracy resides at least as much in how engaged citizens relate to the state in the long intervals between elections as it does in the all too brief moments when voters go to the polls. And the most obvious place to look for real citizen engagement with the state is not at the national level, but at the local level. This study utilizes data on evaluations of and engagement with local governments gathered by the Afrobarometer from nearly 25,000 interviews in 20 countries in Africa during 2008. We focus particularly on who takes action in response to perceived problems in the performance of local government. The analysis explores socio-demographic (age, gender, urbanism), cognitive (education, media exposure), attitudinal (political and economic orientations) and partisan (affiliation with the ruling party) explanations for these behaviors. Not surprisingly, we find that democratic engagement with the state lags well behind democratic commitment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]