Political Science

Democracy implies a system of leadership that guarantees citizens freedom to decide their desires. In the third world countries, efforts aimed at founding democracy are still shaky because of the absence of a number of preconditions. Research shows that democracy in developing countries, such as Latin American countries, African countries and some Asian countries, such as Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea among others has failed thus there is need for greater commitment by developing countries to put into place appropriate measures that will help them attain democracy.
 Some of the factors that have hindered attainment of democracy in developing world have included the following differences in culture, religion and language have hindered attainment of democracy.

Research shows that the split of countries on the basis of culture, linguistic and religion has undermined the stability of many governments in developing countries because such  difference cause greater rifts among people from different regions of the country2. In Africa for instance, it is argued that cultural and religious differences have hindered efforts aimed at founding unified and stable governments. The most important thing to be realized by citizens of developing countries, most especially the leaders is to look for ways of addressing tribalistic kind of leadership and this will ensure that developing nations are unified.

Poor leadership is yet another factor that has hindered democracy in developing countries. Developing nations have been characterized by dictatorial or authoritarian leadership, corruption as well as leaders that have no interests in the welfare of citizens, thereby leading to high rates of poverty in developing world. The trends are worsened by inequitable distribution of resources where leaders have located major industries, improved infrastructure and other vital services in areas where they come from. This makes other regions to lag behind in terms of development and acquiring their share of national cake. Such happenings have caused rifts in many developing countries governments because leaders from all angles of the countries keep on fighting each other in their bid for proper leadership that guarantees all citizens equal opportunities2.

Similarly, lack of free and fair election is another obstacle for attaining democracy in third world countries. It is believed that elections that have been conducted in most parts of developing countries have always been characterized by violence, rigging and bribery, thus failing to guarantee free election exercise. Research shows that in sub Saharan Africa most nations have held very competitive elections exercise for many years. It is also indicated that its difficult for opposition parties to win elections in Africa 3. The existence of such hostile environment where the ruling government cannot concede defeat in elections has been a great obstacle to attaining democracy in third world countries. Some of the recent examples indicating absence of free and fair elections in developing countries are the 2007 disputed elections in Kenya and 2008 disputed elections in Zimbabwe where the government failed to accept defeat and instead manipulated the electoral commissioners to announce results in their favour.

Failure of democracy in developing world has also been enhanced by lack of strong civil societies such as labour unions. The existing societies are very weak and are easily influenced by the ruling governments thus becoming difficult for the civil societies to single out the inefficiency of such governments4. The efforts towards attaining democracy requires civil societies that encompass the potential to influence political and economical elite to organize themselves into stronger unions that can pinpoint all the inefficiency within the government and this will help developing countries head towards attainment of democracy. Lastly, to reach commendable level of prosperity in terms of democracy, there is greater need to first ensure that education has reached all categories of people.