| Democracy has become the trend of political development in the world. Under the impact of the third wave of democratization, African countries have embarked on the road of democracy-building. However, democracy is exotic to African countries, and the role of endogenous factors are clearly insufficient in their democratic transition, together with the African countries have a long colonial rule and authoritarian rule, therefore, while stimulating the awakening of the African people, democracy also brought about a series of factors of instability to the closed society in Africa, and even resulted in the long-term instability and confusion in a number of African countries and regions. It is found that in the comparative study of several typical country in Africa: The rule of law has a significant influence on the consolidation of the democratic system in African countries. Countries that have the tradition of the rule of law or respect for it have achieved some results, while countries that ignore or even trample the rule of law have caught in a long-term chaos of military war, the process of democratization in those countries have also been interrupted. So democracy is not equal to political development, instead, it may lead to political decay. The rule of law has a long history in western countries, and democracy was established and developed basing on that. Therefore, western democracies have an effective system to protect it. But for African countries even all developing countries, the long-term existence is absolute monarchy or a dictatorship. In that situation, the law is only a tool for autocratic rulers. Thus, the basis of the rule of law is very weak in African countries. Democracy is full of passion, and absolute democracy goes after unlimited power, it will certainly move toward authoritarianism without an effective system of constraints. Therefore, the development of democracy can not stand alone, it should be guaranteed by the rational rule of law. Only with the establishment of both democracy and the rule of law, political development in Africa can really move forward. Similarly, it is also the case in China. |
