ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Peace and Democracy
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1571462
This article is part of the Research TopicNon-Western Democracies – Theories, Conceptual Analyses, Case StudiesView all 5 articles
Balancing the Imperatives of Nationbuilding and the Lofty Aspirations for Democracy: South Sudan's Long and Difficult Road to Democratic Immortality
Provisionally accepted
- University of Juba, Juba, South Sudan
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Pursuant to the 2018 Agreement, South Sudan (SSD) is set to go to the polls in December 2026, marking the world's youngest country's first ever democratic elections since independence. Accordingly, this article evaluates the country's institutional readiness for this transformative exercise. It also examines the historicity of democracy as well as assesses, more broadly, the timeliness of transplanting democracy in SSD, considering the country's fragile socio-politico-economic structures. More importantly, the article appraises, a priori, the relationship between a nation's level of economic development and democracy, having regard to the empirical findings that non-democratic countries that solely rely on natural resources for their economic development, rather than on economic growth berthed at the pier of capitalist ingenuity, tend to retard their transition to liberal democracy. Furthermore, in order to appreciate (a) whether SSD's current socio-economic and political climate mirrors the models of developing countries that have successfully transitioned into liberal democracies;(b) whether the upcoming elections could usher in the country's era of sustainable transition to liberal democracy; or (c) whether such elections are purely a veneer of democracy; the article systematically analyzes the country's current socio-economic and political conditions vis-à-vis its potential to leapfrog to liberal democracy and, thus, achieve democratic immortality. Finally, considering the prevailing material realities about SSD, including the need to balance the inherent trade-off between the imperatives of nationbuilding and the dark sides of democracy, the article concludes that SSD's effort to adopt democracy, at this stage, may only leave the country deeply entangled in illiberal democracy-at least in the short run.
Keywords: South Sudan, liberal democracy, illiberal democracy, democratic immortality, Per capita income, natural resource endowments, Economic Development, economic growth
Received: 05 Feb 2025; Accepted: 01 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dau. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Santino Ayuel Longar Dau, University of Juba, Juba, South Sudan
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