Democracy in Senegal Tocquevillian Analytics in Africa

Providing an in-depth comparative study of democracy formation, Gellar traces Senegal's movement from a pre-colonial aristocratic order towards a modern democratic political order. Inspired by Tocqueville's methodology, he identifies social equality, ethnic and religious tolerance, popular participation in local affairs, and freedom of association and the press as vital components of any democratic system. He shows how centralized state structures and monopoly of political power stifled local initiative and perpetuated neo-patrimonial modes of governance.

Sheldon Gellar is a Visiting Scholar at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. He has worked in francophone Africa as researcher, teacher, and international development consultant for more than forty years on democracy and development issues. He is the author of Structural Changes and Colonial Dependency: Senegal: 1885-1945 and Senegal: An African Nation Between Islam and the West. Dr. Gellar also served as Democracy advisor to the USAID/Senegal mission in 1998-1999.