IS Academy seminar: Negotiating Islam and Democracy in Sahelian Africa: Senegal, Mali, Niger

This talk will address the issue of the elaboration of democracy in Muslim societies, via a comparative consideration of three West African countries: Senegal, Mali and Niger. It departs from analyses that ask whether democracy can be established in Muslim societies, to examine instead how the democratic question is framed and discussed in such religious contexts. As overwhelmingly Muslim countries that have been deeply involved in efforts at establishing democratic systems for some two decades, these three countries present particularly fruitful terrain for exploring this question. The talk will focus on the the ways in which the launching of African democratic experiments in the 1990s provoked significant negotiation and discussion both within religious society and between religious groups and the secular elite about the desired substance of democracy, in a number of key domains. I will argue that these processes have gradually empowered Muslim majorities to challenge and nuance the agenda presented at the transitions, but that this is a direct outcome of the democratic process itself. Rather than seeing the increased public presence of religious discourse in these societies as a reflection of an Islamic resurgence, I argue, we should consider it a normal byproduct of democratic politics. I will suggest in conclusion that these cases may bear interesting lessons for the likely evolution of politics in the North African countries.

Leonardo A. Villalón is Associate professor of African Politics at the University of Florida, where he served as director of the Center for African Studies from 2002-2011. His research focuses on Islam and politics and on democratization in the Francophone countries of the Sahel. From 2007-09 he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, for research in Senegal, Mali and Niger on a project entitled: “Negotiating Democracy in Muslim Contexts: Political Liberalization and Religious Mobilization in the West African Sahel.”

Language: English.