The mesomal State

The Mesomal State

A Community Liberal Democracy

The urgency of the democratic question in the struggle for the advancement of humankind is at the heart of this study. To establish and to develop a representative democracy, it is necessary to have a rationale free from the State regulations sufficiently liberated to place really at stake the cultural forces and spirits native to each country. Now the history of the last forty years in Black Africa proved fully that it is rather a counter-productive logic which was adopted by the elites of independences. First of all, the more or less totalitarian countries ignored the unavoidable cultural background for anyone who wants to build on something to last. Afterwards, the Colonial State model - liberal and individualistic - was reproduced almost completely with the native rulers more or less designated or « elected » from abroad (at 99%) not to say sprung violently from the military fold. Yet, the community or communitarist nature of African rural as well as urban State is undeniable. Not stopping there while one is making a reflection on the « good governance » is simply a counter intellectual economy. The burning question has proved the necessity of building a new practice of political power supported by a new theory of democracy, forged from both liberal Western political philosophy and community political thought of traditional Africa.

Elie P. Ngoma-Binda is from the DR Congo. He teaches political philosophy, African philosophy, political science and business ethics at the University of Kinshasa and abroad. A former Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, he studied and has brought research stays through postdoctoral Scholarships of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (universities of Witten-Herdecke, Hannover, Tübingen, in Germany), the International Human Rights Institute (Strasbourg, in France), the Hoover Chair for Economic and Social Ethics (University of Louvain-la-Neuve, in Belgium) and the Fulbright - Hubert H. Humphrey Program (University of Colorado at Boulder, and University of Maryland at College Park, in the USA). Founder and Director of the Institute of Political Studies (Ifep), he has published intensively in philosophy, political science and many other social sciences disciplines.