Insecure Democracy

Abstract

A Review of Politics in West Africa by W. Arthur Lewis (The Whidden Lecture for 1965). 90 pp. Allen and Unwin. The relation between the book's focus and the solution it proposes is curious. West Africa at the time when the book was written-before the military coups in the two former British possessions-was made up of several small-to-medium sized states, almost all of which had some form of single-party system, and one very large and populous federal state controlled by a type of coalition. The Nigerian example is obviously the most directly relevant to the solution proposed; one would expect the author to seek to establish that federalism and coalition had given better results in political, economic and social terms in Nigeria than the single-party system had done in, say, Ghana. This is not done. Until almost the end of the book (p. 81) the allusions to Nigeria are little more than asides. When Professor Lewis does get round to Nigeria he does not claim any notable success for federalism and coalition there; rather he is concerned to make the point that Nigeria in practice fell short of his ideal solution, since the ruling coalition was not one of all the major parties.